grayhicks

that might be a good catch. the three diamonds are the three realms. do we know if their is any connection between the ghostbloods and the 17th shard group, thats chasing hoid?

well, honor was a being beyond mortal comprehension. and shards could look ahead in time, if imperfectly. maybe he looked ahead and saw the recreance? and the secret taravangian is mentioning is that Honor, the Almighty, is dead. remember that most of the new coming radiants are vorin in ethnicity. and the vorin religion worshipped Honor, the Almighty as god. how best to shatter a hope, or strength, founded on a religious belief, than to tell them that the very foundation of their culture is lie?

so i keep seeing a certain pattern to hoid's activities in the cosmere, from elantris and warbreaker to mistborn and stormlight. im not sure what his goal is, though it seems that dealing with odium, likely splintering him, is part of it, but he seems to collecting powers as well. and when we see him, he almost never directly interfers, though i guess he did in mistborn by taking that bead of shard metal from the well. but he always seems to be giving out indirect aid to the heroes with advice and cryptic hints and parable stories.

i have been wondering what is the exact purpose of the ghost bloods? they seem so enigmatic. sure they attack jasnah, but that seems to have been in retaliation for her killing some of their people; they did want what information she had, but maybe that was more a target of opportunity than the goal. they are attacking the sons of honor, but we are not sure why. could they, the sons of honor, and the disciples of the diagram all have the same goal, but greatly disagree about how to go about it?

actually, i think that the recreance was the result of the Honor's death. that the radiants felt his death through their spren, which cause a religious crisis amongst them and a loss of faith. the spren, through born of the forces of the universe, first gained a semblance of sentience from the Shards of Honor and Cultivation. that sentience was further refined by nahel bonds with rediants, but they still had a connection to the Shards. so they would have felt it when tanavast died, and through them the radiants. how would you fell, when your god died, and you knew it for a fact? its that loss of faith that lead the radiants to abandon their oaths.

its seems likely, that the church, following the recreance, sought to keep the continent united. the memory of desolations was still fresh, and being mortal, we tend to have a seed of skepticism when gods tell us something is certain. call it a mortal fallacy. church could have secretly believed that the desolations were not as over and done with as the heralds had told thme, and so tried the claim the authority and "power" of the radiants for their own. now, if it was for precautionary reasons like i just mentions, or for the greed and ambition of mortal men, like happens so frequently when power falls into the hands of men, who can say at the moment?

as ive been relistening to WoR, i find i just love sebariel. he's like the grouchy old uncle or grandpa, a right curmudgeon, but only in public, because thats all he wants folks to see. in private, he is delightfully hilarious in his intelligence and shrewdness. i actually hope, after seeing how his warcramp is the closest to turning into a town, actually gearing his economy in that direction, that dalinar makes him high prince of commerce.

well, and i hope we can learn some more, now that shallan. navani, and the scholars can explore urithiru, i would have to guess that the power of hierocracy was pretty high during the time of the desolations. that was the age of the heralds, radiants, and heroes. the church was likely set up, maybe not with the heralds, then using them to propagate their doctrines. im not sure how closely the radiants and the chruch worked, but at least from the point of the view of the sons of honor, the church, the heralds, and the radiants are all closley tied. now remember thats its been 4500 years since this "age of heroes", and a lot of information has gotten either lost or twisted around by past scholars' interpretations and mis-translations. i have to think that gavilar, using his visions, and the other sons of honor, seeing all three of these glorious factions, and the connection they have in fighting the voidbringers, that they hoped that by returning the voidbringers, they could return the others. whether that was for the glory of the church, since i am detecting a hint of religious fanaticism in amaram, or for this theory of the state of civilization just before a desolation, i cant be sure. i can say that likely, during the time of the radiants and heralds, the church held sway over nearly the entire continent. with evidence of their "god" like the heralds and radiants, who could prove them false. i think that given state of readiness for desolations, the modern roshar, at least in terms of technology, are actually ahead of the desolation era rosharians. most of dalinar's visions show a world of bronze, and easily made spears, not modern steel, and anit-shardbearer tactics ans weapons like axes and hammers. those will be effective against the stone based voidbringers. i think that we might be surprised on how ell modern tactics and weapons will prove.

yet, what about the seeming lack of spren in their valley? szeth mentions spirits of stone. are there only stone/ground/earth type spren there, that only appear around rocks?

actually, in one of szeth's interludes, he does mention that should he die, the shamanate would send someone to retrieve the honorblade. now, this doesnt really, help in determining the nature of his punishment, i know, but i needed to clarify that. i do think it is religious, likely szeth , either as a member of the shin clergy, however that is organized, or as a scholar of some sort, saw the signs, or just might have come up with the theory on his own on whim, predicted the return of Radiants, and/or voidbringers. he seems to make mention of the knowledge of both being related to his sin. but the shamanate doesnt believe. i think that might go back to the what yall have said about the shin seeing the heralds as their gods, which is a belief shared with most of roshar, though the actual nature of how divine people see the heralds seems to very from nation to nation, depending on whether or not that nation is vorin. when the heralds broke the oathpact, we know they went out into the world. jezrien ( i hope i spelled that right) did say that they would tell the common folk that the desolation they had just survived, in the prologue of WoK, was the last one, and it was for 4500 years. the shamanate might have been told, in person, by those they deem gods, that their would be no more voidbringers. and maybe, and this is an unfounded hypothesis, they might have returned to the shamanate, who keep their honorblades, at the Recreance, and said that there would be no more radiants. how the shamante tied those 2 facts from heaven together might depend on long a time gap there was between the last desolation and the recreance. what szeth seems to have espoused to his superiors would have been a complete slap in the face of god-delivered doctrine. thus everything he said, and believed, would have been heresy and blasphemy against the gods.

i've been listening to words of radiance, and i have been trying to work out why shinovar, and the shin, are so different from the rest of roshar. not just physically, but so radically different in culture. i can see why many of the ethnic groups and nation are different, like how different the reishi isles are from alethkar, but a lot of that can bee explained by geographical location: the reishi isles are nearly idyllic paradises, save for the highstorms. alethkar is a firmly developed vorin nation, as is jah keved, with long standing societal constraints formed over the centuries of a developed large nation. but all these groups still hold several constants. walking on stone is a way of life, completely normal to the point of un noticed by people. stormlight is used to infuse gems for light and to power fabrials, always has been, at least to everyone knowledge, spren are everywhere, a natural part of the world and how people experience it. but the shin are none of these things, and are the only ones. they refuse to set one toe on stone, to alter it in anyway. to get metals for smelting, they trade for soulcasted scrap. its alluded to that they see spren as sacred or holy, same as the horneaters (though i might just be inferring that part), yet there are no spren in shinovar, according to rysn during her trip the valley nation. and they find the use of stormlight for something so mundane as to provide light to be a blaspheme. so what is it about them, their land, with its actual earth grass, earth livestock, earth trees, that makes them see the whole world outside their one, little, sheltered kingdom, as a blasphemy?

well, people i think are forgetting that kaladin would not have recognised all the shardbearers in the camps. he wasnt a light eyed noble himself, so he wasnt a member of the social circles that the shardbearers would be part of. he only recently became the head of dalinar's bodyguard, likely not enough time to acquaint himself with the bearers on sight or description. and elhokar was drunk and injured, no fit state to recognise his own mother. it is possible that Graves is from a different warcamp, a shardbearer that adolin or dalinar may have met before kaladin made rank. someone that likely could get into dalinar's warcamp with out fuss or comment. but not necessarily so important that he would be pulled into the constant company of adolin's peers.