Morsk

Vedel might be styled after a messenger goddess, with the keys her version of Hermes' caduceus. They might represent diplomacy, trade, etc. And generally that she's welcome anywhere. The Edgedancer oaths seem styled after diplomacy.

I see the tangent about "apricity" as an expression of mania. It's not the only strange word choice. He also says the Desolation can and well "sit" where it pleases, and calls the Unmade "a flair". Brandon couldn't explain Mr. T's reasoning on the Shin anyway. Handwaving, and covering it with a mention of apricity, or something like "but of course", is as good as it's going to get.

Something that never works for me, is that in-world they're considered angelic, almost divine, and worshiped. I'm guessing Brandon chose Herald because it's a synonym for messenger, and "angel" also means "messenger". But even understanding that, I can't think of a Herald as anything but an important person with magic. They've been humanized too much, starting with the Prelude.

I think she's just a carefree person, and spooks Dalinar because he's so dour and formal.

I would not want to be the Nightwatcher, if this happens. Navani will track her down, and turn her into a fabrial.

Okay, chapter 22 is "The Darkness Within" and I could have sworn "Darkness within!" was a curse phrase somewhere in the cosmere. I can't find it in Kindle searches on Stormlight 1 & 2, or Arcanum Unbounded, so maybe I have it confused with something else. It sounds so familiar though.

edit: post deleted

I don't want to see more hateful language about teenagers anytime soon. If anyone feels excluded about this, please speak up about it. Or PM me or someone you know, and we'll speak up about it for you.

I remember reading about this on Wikipedia, so I took another look at it. Its entry on "Macdonald triad" is dismissive, and the section on enuresis goes so far as to call it "a destructive myth entirely discredited". It's amazing how callous and dehumanizing psychology could be 50 years ago, compared to today. It doesn't mean Brandon isn't using it for Nan Balat, since nothing stops authors from using bad science. It's not the impression I got from his Interlude though. I saw it as dramatic irony, that Balat thinks only him and Shallan weren't "broken" by abuse. He's unaware of how it effected him, but the reader can't miss it. I didn't get the impression that he was getting worse.

I also think it's spren. The writer says the "Knights Radiant turned against us." Most humans mistakenly believe that, but the writer here seems to know a lot, and should know better. Unless it's a spren; the KRs really did turn against the spren. In WoR, the Stormfather seemed to hate humans and not want Surgebinding to return, so I don't think it's him. Maybe the Nightwatcher, or maybe some spren in one of the Shadesmar cities we haven't met yet. The certainty that one of them "will destroy us," matches how Pattern feels about Shallan in the book; he helps her anyway, but expects her to kill him.

I never expected her to die. There aren't enough female characters! The story is basically 2/3 male. Dalinar is so male that he spawned an entire child PoV that's also male. Navani and Syl are cool, but they mostly exist to make Dalinar and Kaladin more awesome, not as whole characters. Jasnah was half of the real female characters, and the story would be a mess without her. She's also the only character that can provide exposition on lost history, and on her theological perspective. She might be the only character that can't die. I was hoping for something more awesome than just disappearing though. I thought she'd teleport to Urithiru, or show up at the end finding something the others needed. She still has time to do that later though.

Riding skirts are real, but perhaps the choice to include them had some influence. I considered being reminded of Bela with the one gentle horse. But there's only one Bela! Although Egwene did make a dream Bela once...

I agree. Here are the two epigraphs. They're on the same page of the in-world book too:

Dalinar and Kaladin have both been drawn into highstorm visions against their will. I think this is just Renarin's version of a highstorm vision. That makes Shallan break the pattern though. I didn't notice anything weird happening to her during storms, except that Pattern would make strange noises. Maybe she needs to try drawing during highstorms.

Even better, we have confirmation from Kalak's PoV, who uses both names for him. So if we see any more Herald introductions like Talenel's, we can be pretty sure it's the real names, and that the language magic isn't localizing them.

The Almighty does tell Dalinar that to speak of the future is forbidden. Then there's this: This one goes farther, and says they never spoke or wrote of what they did. So I think Renarin is misusing the powers by writing down the predictions where others can find them. It doesn't make the power itself bad. He probably just has to spend Highstorms alone, so that when he's compelled to write things no one else can see them. Then he'll have a burden of using the knowledge without being able to tell anyone about it.

Did anyone else recognize this while reading WoR? I was either lucky, or unlucky as it turns out, but as soon as I saw WoR chapter 62 "The One Who Killed Promises", I knew it would tell me who the old WoK quote was about. And once I knew it was Kaladin, there was no suspense about him getting his powers back; the quote showed him doing something magical with a storm. I was still worried Syl was dead though! I thought he might get a new spren and Syl would just be gone.

I'm also fond of this. We don't know what the Bondsmiths can do yet, but we know they're Ishar's order, and Ishar was able to choose the form the Nahel bond took. Combined with the special placement of Order 10 on the chart, and the very small number of Bondsmiths, they could have something very powerful. In the Prelude, Jezrien mentions Ishar's opinion on whether the Oathpact will still hold with one Herald. Even if Ishar wasn't directly responsible for that one, it's more association of Ishar, and possibly Bondsmiths, with world-changing magic. I wonder if it's related to Stormseat exploding and making the Shattered Plains. Is there anything that narrows down the time of when the Voidbringers were enslaved? I'd always assumed it was at the Last Desolation, but there's another theory that it didn't happen until the Recreance.

This is a huge Mistborn spoiler. You might want to tag the whole thread as Mistborn spoilers, or if not that at least rephrase the spoiler from to "[one or more places early in the story]" or something. As for stuff about the ending, I think Wit's "Gibletish" comments refer to breaking down and recombining some Shards in the system into something new, preferably something better at fighting Odium, or something that doesn't include Odium at all. (Blow up all 3 Shards and make Justice and Atonement, or something, etc. It has to be a little unpleasant if it includes Odium, but it could be better.) I agree that the Fleet story suggests Kaladin's death, but it's almost pointless to kill Kaladin the way Fleet died; it's so glorious that there's no sense of loss. Especially if it's the end of the story anyway. I'm more worried about the spren. The back cover of Way of Kings says someone "will destroy" whoever the speaker is. I think it's the spren.

You could ask if he even meant to tell us about Khriss, or if it was completely spontaneous.

Someone knowing much more than Hoid seems odd, unless she has a Shard or is running a spy network. If it were magic giving her more knowledge than Hoid, he could just acquire the magic somehow. Maybe Hoid spends too much of his time hiding from Odium and the 17th Shard, and helping random people in strange places?

I was expecting the gemheart to be needed because of the Weeping, and smaller gems running out of Stormlight without highstorms. Perhaps some timing issues were changed, with the army striking earlier in the Weeping than originally planned.

Well "journey before destination" obviously means the ending of the series is terrible, and that we'll enjoy rereads more than the ending. Right? *runs and hides*

My guess

I actually tried indexing Pattern 1, but I did it by word and not letter and it went nowhere. (I thought it suspicious that Pattern 1 had clear spaces between words, and also that it had the word "sit"; I figured it used that word due to having limited vocabulary. So I imagined it being a circle of glyph words on the ceiling, and numbers saying which to combine into sentences.) I can't explain why I never thought of indexing the letters. I never would have figured out that the code starts 11 1 8 25 though. I always thought that had to be an 18. And then the palindromes! I guess Shallan was right talking to Kasbal, that palindromes aren't necessarily evidence of anything. If anyone wants to see how the numbers break down, and why it was so tricky, I made this following Darmad's solution: And the key itself: (I'm not sure if these breakdowns are posted anywhere else, but I can't find them in this thread anyway.)