Darth Revan
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Thanks! Kind of makes me feel like this is supposed to be a minor thread running through the books, and it's getting a teensy bit more spotlight now. I would be pretty surprised to see a full-on pandemic in book 5, which I assume will only span ten or so days, but hopefully there's some kind of resolution.
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Is that mentioned in this book? I only remember Demoux being in that one Interlude in The Way of Kings.
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From what I remember, there are three times throughout the book where disease is mentioned. When Lirin is letting the refugees into Hearthstone, he thinks about how he has been hearing of a new plague. When Raboniel is introduced, Leshwi explains how she tried to use a disease to wipe out the humans. When Kaladin is acting as a surgeon, many people seem to have a cough, including Teft. I was sort of expecting there to be some sort of reveal. For example, maybe Raboniel released her disease again, but humans have evolved to be resistant or immune, which is why we only see people experiencing mild symptoms. However, I do not recall there being any payoff to these elements that were set up. Did I miss something or is this maybe just laying the foundation for something in the future?
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While rereading chapter 5 of Words of Radiance, I noticed this: In The Way of Kings, there is a line of dialog from Elhokar where he mentions seeing things in mirrors, which we, the audience, know as Cryptics. It is super exciting to see this early foreshadowing of him becoming a Lightweaver. I love this line from Words of Radiance even more though. It evokes Pinocchio and his penchant for lying while also referencing the Lightweaver ability to alter one's appearance, as we will see Shallan do later in this book. This is the kind of thing I never would have noticed on a first reading, and I absolutely love it!
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Thank you all for your help. That was everything I was looking for.
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I can't remember what Lirin did that was so controversial in Kaladin's flashbacks and I want to avoid possible Oathbringer spoilers on Coppermind. All I remember is that he tried to operate on someone of importance and failed, but came into money as a result.
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To me, this seems to indicate that there is some sort of soul present, but I personally think that it is less individualistic than the soul of a human (maybe it has less Identity?). To go back to the computer science style graphs, I think it's fair to say that each vertex is some sort of fundamental soul--the most basic type of object that can have a soul as defined by @Nathrangking. Then, these form subgraphs with closely Connected objects, where the subgraphs have their own souls, too. But I feel like there needs to be some measure of how closely the vertices/souls in the subgraph are intertwined. For example, a human being seems to us like it is exactly one thing. We know that the arms and legs and fingers and hair have their own souls, but in normal conversation, it is reasonable to talk of a person's soul and not worry about the fact that it is a composition of many things. This results from the individual souls composing the human soul having strong connections since they are always together and they work together. So the human soul subgraph probably has a lot of heavily weighted edges. On the other hand, a family's soul is more fragmented. There's probably relatively less Connection between a husband and wife than between a tooth and a gum. This is what makes it harder for us to see a human and a family as each having souls.
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Do you think that a group of humans could have a soul, too, then? Like a family. It's a bit more of a leap.
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I think that I was partially getting mixed up with Lopen regrowing his arm. I understand that healing oneself is an ability that the Radiants share.
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Ooh, I'm a fan of that. I can see where you're coming from there. I realize that it's a hard thing to talk about because it doesn't fit with our understanding of the universe, but I can go forward with that in mind.
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At the risk of sounding naggy, what qualifies an object as "complete" in that definition?
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I think I must have misread that section then. I read it as Kaladin losing his hand and then regrowing it.That makes much more sense with my understanding of souls and Connection. Thank you, all!
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So that implies that the tree itself has a soul and then each part of the tree also has a soul. So the tree is a physical object composed of objects that have souls, but it has a distinct soul to represent the complete entity. I feel like this makes sense, but is also a bit of a rabbit hole, because a leaf has different parts that would allow you to make the same argument, as does a forest, on the other side of the spectrum. Every atom could have a soul, and the entire Cosmere could also have a soul. If this is the case, it opens up a lot of interesting questions.
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From what I understand, a Shardblade can cut straight through pretty much everything mundane in the world. But when a shardblade goes through a human, it leaves no physical damage, but severs the soul instead. When Szeth cuts off Kaladin's hand, it makes me wonder what makes that particular cut go through his physical body instead of his soul. I assume that the reasoning is that the cut removes only a small part of Kaladin's body, leaving him mostly intact. But that begs the question, where is the line? What does the severity of the wound need to be in order for the Shardblade to cut the soul instead of the flesh?
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I have been picturing the Spiritweb as a sort of graph where Connection is the edges and souls are the vertices. However, I don't understand how this would work with something like a tree. Would the tree itself have a soul and be Connected with, say, a bird living in it, or would the tree be represented by a subgraph where each leaf or branch has its own soul with an extremely strong Connection to other nearby souls within the same tree. This partially comes from the infamous stick scene in Words of Radiance, which demonstrates that a stick, which used to be part of a tree, has its own distinct soul.
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I believe that the Ars Arcanum from Warbreaker says that people with only one breath can't notice color distortion from Awakeners below fifty breaths themselves, so if Vasher can just suppress his Divine Breath as discussed previously, it would make sense that he just lacks enough breath to have an aura visible to a non-Awakener. Plus, since he is on Roshar, he could use Stormlight to keep himself alive, which is much more readily available on a weekly basis than Breaths. He would probably feel a lot more comfortable keeping only the equivalent of a few breaths on hand, just in case. EDIT: And thanks, @Calderis, I'm a huge Star Wars fan and the KOTOR games are some of my favorites.
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Now how likely is it that I can open up Words of Radiance and find, for example, some paragraph where Kaladin notices the ground around Zahel being slightly off-color? Or is the connection between Zahel and Vasher only supported outside of the text?
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Wow, I play board games with my friends for a few hours and suddenly I have a whole bunch of replies; thanks all around. Suppressing the Divine Breath makes sense to me and everything else kind of falls into place around that. But the craziest thing that came out of this for me was ZenBossanova's comment about Zahel, which led to me Googling Zahel only to find out that he is Vasher. That's crazy! They are definitely the same character now that I think about it, but I never would have made that connection. Plus it gives me a whole new perspective about the interconnectedness of the Cosmere. I really need to get caught up on everything.
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Just finished up Warbreaker (had a lot of fun reading it). There was a lot about the magic system that was left unexplained, which I feel was intentional on Brandon's part and I completely understand. However, I was a little bit confused about how Vasher, a Returned, is ever at heightenings below the fifth, when he himself says that all Returned start at the fifth heightening by virtue of their single divine breaths. For example, in the epilogue, he and Vivenna are said to both be at the Second Heightening. Any help would be appreciated!
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Thanks, that all kind of fits with how I was imagining it, but having someone lay it out like that makes it easier to hear the voices in my head.
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I was wondering if anybody had a list of the different accents used in the Stormlight Archive and what they sound like. Perhaps some of them are similar to real life accents. Any help would be appreciated!
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In Chapter 17 of Words of Radiance, Shallan is trying to figure out how to use her Lightweaving. She asks Pattern, "So, how do I make it work?" He replies, "Perhaps eat it?" Shallan, of course, finds this a bit ridiculous, but I think she'd be surprised how far some of the other denizens of the Cosmere go to use their powers.
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Yeah, the creator definitely took the time to create a variety of answer options that lead to the different results in a sensible way without being too transparent.
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The Hero of Ages The Way of Kings Mistborn: The Final Empire The Well of Ascension Elantris
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Thanks for the replies! Knowing the curse hasn't been revealed gives me better perspective on how Brandon chose to present Dalinar's failure to remember his wife. I should have known that it wasn't as simple as I made it out to be in my first post.
