gremlin303

With regards to subconscious uses of arcana by unknowing individuals such as Kaladin and Vin I would say the intent is there, it is just subconscious. Kaladin wants to protect his men and Vin wants to influence those around her to protect herself and both want to survive, so they subconsciously provide the intent to subconsciously trigger their abilities.

I think this revelation will present a bigger problem. Why would thousands of radiants and spren choose to break their bonds? What were they trying to prevent? Yes they may not have known how bad it would be. But I’m sure even before deadeyes the process of breaking a bond was not pleasant for spren. So what was so bad they would be willing to break their bonds? I think these revelations might lead to some new spren forging bonds, but it may lead to even more, including ones who were already on humanity’s side, deciding the nahel bond is not worth the risks.

I think it is just worded weirdly. I got the impression that Dalinar was leaving out the broken Jezrien line from his count of 8. So 7 weak lines for the rest of the heralds bar Nale, Jezrien and Taln, and then the strong line for Taln (because he never broke)

It is highly unlikely 4th ideal radiants create the spren that make up their plate, that just isn’t how spren work, it is much more likely that they summon/attract already existing ones that then stay with them (side note: when plate parts get destroyed what happens to the spren making up that part? When it reforms is that a new spren showing up? Or the old one healing?)

Just want to add to the discussion as I have seen a couple of people wondering about progression fused. we have seen them twice now. First time at the battle of Thaylen Field and the second time when Jasnah is fighting on the frontlines in Emul. They appear to use the surge to grow their carapace into whatever they want, shardplate-like armour, weapons, etc.

Yeah okay that’s a fair point

If I am remembering correctly in RoW Rabonial (or maybe another Fused?) shows extreme disdain for a set of dead plate. Or am I making that up? Also, it does seem odd that there haven’t been many appearances of singer used shards since they have a fair few. Here is a list off the top of my head: (storm) Moash’s blade and plate Graves’ blade and plate Eshonai’s blade and plate Elohkar’s (sp?) blade Jezrien’s honourblade a blade or set of plate or both taken (can’t remember which) from a shard bearer at Urithiru during its invasion in RoW All the Veden blades are assumedly now controlled by the enemy, as well as any belonging to other nations that’s have sided with Odium. They have probably also taken some more during their conquests but probably not many. if anyone can think of any others they have let me know and I will add them. As far as I can recall we have only seen shards used by singers for menial tasks, Venli mentions getting a shardblade in to be used to cut rock, and we see a singer use one in an attempt to get past the shield at Urithiru, those are the only examples I can think of.

While this may be a small part of their plans, I do not believe this goal is actually as much of a big deal to the Ghostbloods as Mraize makes it seem. I think they have much more ambitious aims than just moving investiture about. Ooo this is an interesting idea. What would happen if someone bonded a seon?

Wow I love this. It seems so in character for Adolin as well. I wonder what abilities would come from this. The usual radiant ones? Or something else?

Hmm I dunno. I think Ishar was only able to do that because of what he did messing around with Dalinar’s bond, he managed to gain that ability from it. He seemed surprised when Dalinar first opened it. But maybe not. We shall see

Rosharan spren are splinters of the shards there

I thought Dalinar's ability to open perpendicularities is due to being bonded to a splinter of Honour, that's why Odium was so surprised by it

Yeah quite true. We do know next to nothing about the process of breaking oaths. One thing I do want to point out is that Shallan didn’t break her oath when she killed her mum straight away. She breaks it in the garden talking to Testament when they are in spren form, not as a blade.

I don’t think testament can be summoned as a blade. The reason the spren killed by the Recreance are all blades is because they were manifested as blades in the physical realm at the moment the radiants broke their oaths. But as Testament was not a blade when shallan broke her oath there would not be a blade.

As far as I recall they said the soulcasters were gifts to the guardians, but specifically says that the plate was traditionally used by the guardians

That is a good point about the plate needing spheres for power, but I think that is just a basic functionality of plate, it must be powered by stormlight. No blades (nightblood excluded of course) require stormlight to function, whereas dead plate (powered by spheres) and assumedly living plate (powered by the Radiants themselves) need stormlight. So maybe the plate needs stormlight, and as Cord isn’t a surgebinder, it needs it from spheres? I’m not particularly convinced by this either but that’s my best explanation for it. The part about the difference between honourblades and other blades is interesting to think about, but I’m not sure It really changes it. No one is bonded to the plate when Cord finds it so I don’t think that is really a way we can determine what kind of armour it is.

Oh yeah good shout, I forgot about that, I’m not ruling anything out to be honest. There’s a chance he influenced the Sleepless all this time to keep the Dawnshard out of the hands of humans, so in a way he would be responsible. But the issue with that is surely if Odium knew about it he would want control of it.

Yeah they are the secondary spren for the Lightweavers for sure

They are like peasants from the middle ages, only the nobility have surnames as it was your house name, like in the WoB above. Kaladin would get to choose a surname now as he is a landed lighteyes, but until that point he would just have been Kaladin or Kaladin son of Lirin

Yeah I am fairly certain darkeyes don't have surnames in Vorin culture. I can't think of a single one who does

Well that’s why I think maybe they decided to do this after taking over guardianship of the Dawnshard, maybe when the Larkin were dying out and the Sleepless took over in the duty, they decided that it was too dangerous to be kept in a populated area. Or another thought that just came to me, do we know when the destruction Stormseat happened? Maybe the Dawnshard was used to shatter the Shattered Plains and then the Sleepless decided on these new measures.

PLEASE NO ROW SPOILERS TLDR; The Sleepless caused the Scouring to protect the Dawnshard. Dawnshard revealed many things about topics long debated. But one event that I thought would get explained to us in this book but wasn’t stands out to me. The Scouring of Aimia. I thought we would get answers as to who/what caused the event that left the islands of Aimia lifeless. The only nugget of information we get on the event is a story told by Nikli while he is still hiding his true nature. So this whole story told by Nikli has to be taken with a grain of salt as at the time he was lying to Rysn about his true nature, but I feel in this instance he has no reason to lie, and the emotion he shows at recounting the story supports that. My theory is that it wasn’t invaders or treasure hunters who destroyed the fabrials that supported life on Aimia, but the Sleepless themselves. It is quite clear that they will go to extreme lengths to protect the Dawnshard. I believe that at some point (personally I think this was when the Larkin died out and the sleepless took over protection of the Dawnshard) they decided that a whole population of people living on the island above the Dawnshard was too much of a risk, so they forced the inhabitants off the island by sabotaging the fabrials. I also think that maybe the sleepless spread rumours of a terrible ‘Scouring’ to make the event sound a lot more catastrophic than it was to further keep people away from the place. Nikli’s strong emotion when talking about it could be because he is sad about what happened there, or it could be similar to Taravangian’s sorrow whenever he speaks of the terrible things he has done. Maybe the Sleepless also encouraged attacks on Aimia to further isolate the place and scatter the populace? Or maybe they drew the attackers there by accident? Or maybe those are lies to augment the tragedy myth surrounding the place? I am not sure. Obviously this theory has lots of holes (most of the rest of Nikli’s story doesn’t really line up with this but as I said, he isn’t really the most trustworthy of characters at that point) but it was just something I was thinking about so I thought I would open it up for discussion. Thanks for reading. And please don’t put any RoW spoilers in the replies, I haven’t read the previews.

TLDR: Cord’s new plate was made by Honour and bestows powers to its wearer. Now this is really just a mostly unfounded thought I had while thinking about the lore surrounding the Dawnshard on Aimia. One nugget of information that I feel was easy to overlook amongst the massive info dump that was the latter part of the book, was Cord’s new Shardplate and Nikli’s reference to it being used by guardians of the Dawnshard. I feel that there is something odd there. Firstly, who were the guardians? The Larkin? The Sleepless? Neither seem likely to use or even need plate. So who were these guardians, and why did they have such a seemingly mundane tool for the defence of what seems to be the most powerful weapon on the planet. One set of plate seems hardly sufficient to defend from many of the threats on Roshar alone let alone the rest of the Cosmere. Another oddity about the situation is the plate itself. How did it get there? Where did it come from? Currently the only way we have seen ownerless shardplate created is through the breaking of a spren bond. So did a Radiant purposely break their oath to give this plate to the guardians? Or was it simply recovered post-Recreance and there is nothing more to it than that. Anyway, to the point of the theory. This plate is no regular shardplate. It is instead a set of Honourplate (name pending). I believe that the plate was, like the honourblades, created directly by Honour specifically to be used in the defence of the Dawnshard. I also think it bestows special abilities on its wearer, just like the blades, making it much more useful for defending the Dawnshard. No idea yet what these powers might be. Anyway, if you have managed to make it this far, thank you and sorry. I did try to keep it brief but I got away from me. Would love to hear your thoughts.

I agree there was something more down that corridor. I thought it was odd we didn’t explore more down there? How were the gemstones Cord found infused? The other larkins Nikli mentioned could be the ones in the Reshi isles. Didn’t the Reshi Prince say that he’d seen two others there that never grew very large ?

The main issue with this is is the timelines are all wrong. The Scouring happened hundreds of years after the recreance