cfphelps

1 minute ago, CrazyRioter said:

Nightblood's sheath behaves very weirdly for aluminum. Common joke is it's actually made of handwavium.  Realistically aluminium won't very effectively as a shield.

No they didn't use the spanreed at all, iirc. It wouldn't have worked through the aluminum plates.

I'll be at that point on my reread soon and see what I was thinking of then. I think it was to hide the soul casting of food now that I think about it. 

Regarding aluminum as a shield:

I think it again goes back to thickness. Aluminum could be made thick enough to block the blade physically. Aluminum has no fatigue limit and is less stiff than steel, but it can be very durable when properly designed. We use it extensively in aerospace for structural applications. 

38 minutes ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

My thoughts, based on this statement from the coppermind is that they’re just huge slabs of aluminum with the fabriel boxes on back being a red herring. What are your guys ideas?

Items can be Soulcast into aluminum.^[7] However, aluminum resists attempts to Soulcast it into other essences.^[24] Shardblades are unable to cut aluminum through magical means but would be able to cut it physically, like a conventional blade, if the aluminum were thin enough.^[25] Aluminum can block spanreed communication, and can prevent Soulcasting from being detected by others.^[26] Aluminum cannot be affected by the surges Adhesion or Gravitation.^[27] It likely can't be affected by any surge.

Didn't they use aluminum plates to block the screamers from detecting the spanreed, but it still functioned to communicate with its pair? 

Regarding Sadeas,  

Adolin even comments to himself at one point when Sadeas is trying to rile him up that Alethi society is messed up in that Sadeas can abandon them at the tower and pretend it didn't happen and the rest of the court goes along with it, but any slights in person must be dealt with in the proper way. So I think he didn't expect Adolin to snap so spontaneously and break social convention and the law. 

Regarding Adolin joining him, I think as has already been said that he was just trying to get Adolin angry, but also it goes back to the Alethi ideal of might makes right and aggressively fighting for what you want. He sees Adolin as a Dalinar that isn't as well controlled, but he doesn't really know how honorable he is, per se. So it's possible that in Sadeas mind, with Dalinar out of the way, Adolin would fall in with him just to keep Alethekar united and gain power, something he himself did with Gavilar and Dalinar when they were uniting the kingdom. 

Regarding his thoughts on Kaladin. For the duel Kaladin did have to go mostly on the defensive, so he would be seen as mostly a distraction allowing Adolin to finish the other opponents. Very talented, Yes, but if he's not actually defeating the other duelist per se, the uninformed (about Stormlight) observers might just see him using cheap tricks, similar to how Adolin was looked down upon for not sticking with standard dueling convention and just rushing in and defeating his first opponent. 

That plus pain old prejudice of his entire life being taught that darkeyes are lesser and it's not surprising that most people, Sadeas included, saw the duel as primarily Adolin's accomplishment. 

Also I believe it was some of Adolin's earlier duels where we get Sadeas's PoV where he realizes how good Adolin is to just barely win while looking like he's struggling. I think on the 4v1 duel he is more worried about his gambit paying off and then leaving before he can be pinned down on a duel once Adolin challenges him. 

Kaladin surviving the high storm strung up is also probably something that should of note to him, but Kal wasn't really in his radar at that point. Plus he's seen Dalinar go out in storms, and Kaladin mentions sheltering from storms while out with the army, so while being strung up during one is very likely a death sentence, surviving probably isn't so unlikely that he would start to suspect magical powers that most of the world believes to be either exaggerated myth or gone forever. 

Even once many of these things start to happen, it's probably a lot lower on his radar than worrying about his plots to take over the kingdom. Once it becomes obvious there's really nothing he can do about it anyway. 

12 hours ago, ZenBossanova said:

I think we can say that revenge is a toxic form of honor. 

Remember, the Shards aren't good by themselves. Preservation could be just as deadly as Odium. 

And honestly (Mistborn spoiler) 

And cultivation have a lot in common (especially if you believe Odium) 

Although it's typically thought that Cultivation is making changes to improve the situation, and obviously was somewhat aligned with Honor. 

She used Pattern as a blade to kill her mother so she has at least at one point been high enough in the ideal path to get the blade. And spent much of WoR denying that she didn't have to wait the heartbeats, etc. 

So I think most people think she's father along than we originally realized before her backstory came out, but I'm not sure if it can be determined how far she actually is. We know she doesn't seem to be aware of plate from her conversation with Jasnah on being done with her wardship, so I don't think there's a similar denial thing going on there, or even an "intent" thing blocking her. Different orders also get plate at different levels, so that does leave some slack for her to be in that higher range. I think she has to back up and accept some of what she's sworn before she can really unlock what she's achieved and continue to progress, though. 

BTW I've always thought of the newer radiants leaking too much Stormlight as more of a factor of how efficient they use it for a given surge, and also how quickly it bleeds away when they are holding but not using it, but hadn't made the connection between it bleeding away more rapidly being what makes it more visible when they hold it, so neat idea there! 

9 hours ago, Numuhuku said:

Well again, it's worth noting that people familiar with shardblades might have an explanation for that by assuming the bearer had not yet fully bonded their shardblade. Perhaps due to the previous owner having died recently. And oathbringer did establish that the gem stones that allow bonding aren't integral to the blades themselves, and can even be destroyed. I don't think that historically speaking, it'd be that out there for someone to have to go into battle/campaign with a blade that wasn't fully bonded, or that had it's gem stone damaged.

People are probably over focusing on how odd a non-bonded Shardblade would be. At least in the short term.

 

(Actually, given that the gem stones that allow blade summonings/dismissing aren't native to the blades themselves, do we have any basis that Azure's shardblade couldn't be fitted with such a gemstone, and that Azure just hasn't had a chance/reason to try to acquire one yet? Might be a decent Brandon Question).

I agree with you overall but wanted to point out that Navani tells Dalinar that she discovered the gemstones weren't natively part of the shard blades, and mentions it as a new discovery, and Dalinar sounds surprised. So while it is probably somewhat "normal" for someone to not have bonded a blade yet, I think the average Roshan would expect a gemstone. I also think that Navani mentions that the blade changes shape to accept the gem though (or maybe that comes up as part of Adolin winning one when he smashes the stone and says it wasn't necessary but he wanted to make a point), so seeing a shard blade with no gem and no socket for one might be more normal. 

The other thing is that while we focus on the main characters, many of whom have shards, we get to see and hear about them a lot. But from the numbers listed shards are not terribly common compared to the general Roshan population, so many Roshans have never seen one. There's so much mystery and legend surrounding them that the average Roshan probably isn't going to notice some of these inconsistencies. Like Numuhuku says, if it operates and is magical looking like a shardblade, that's what it would be classified as to the non scholars. 

1 hour ago, Wander89 said:

 

I don't think anyone is saying that Dalinar was or wasn't doing the honourable thing. I agree with @Karger that Dalinar, Moash, Kaladin all do what they think is honourable, even though we may perceive a different idea of it.

I don't think Moash does think he's honorable at this point. I think he probably does feel like killing the king was for his grand parents, but throughout his time with the singers he thinks about bridge 4 and says he doesn't deserve them, he thinks he should step up and do more for Kaladin's group of singers but doesn't and hates himself for it. I think at this point he doesn't like who he is or feel he's honorable, but he's accepted that it's not his fault and given it to Odium. 

On 6/4/2019 at 0:38 PM, Kaymyth said:

Okay, so it seems that I'm not the only person who's come up with a version of this idea (hi, @Truthless of Shinovar!), but I presented the theory at JordanCon during the Cosmere Speculation panel, and it seems as though I should codify it in some sort of organized fashion so that all my crazy details can be seen. And also so I can go on record with this thing so when it actually happens you can all hate me.

We all know Brandon has been moving the plot forward faster on Stormlight than most of us expected. So I think that Stormlight 5 is going to be the Knights Radiant vs. Rayse, final round. Rayse has freed himself from his entrapment on Braize and is ready to wreak some havoc on Roshar to make sure nobody there can challenge him (and root out Cultivation in the process).

Ultimately, he will be defeated. I think he won't be re-trapped, though; I think he'll be killed. However, there is one important detail when it comes to killing Shardholders:

Dropped Shards will Splinter naturally if not picked up.   (Correction here: It's not an automatic given that a Shard will Splinter when dropped. There is a WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/132/#e1877) that states a voluntarily dropped Shard could Splinter, or become self-aware, or any number of other things. None of them if applied to Odium are going to create Super Happy Fun Time for Roshar.)

Imagine the chaos that would inflict upon Roshar's entire Investiture biome. That much Hatred Investiture (and no, I do not believe Rayse's nonsense about Passion) spreading out throughout the planet, loose, leaking into everything? It'd be a disaster. Cultivation has more than enough knowledge to be aware of this; certainly the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and the Sibling are as well. I'd bet money that most, if not all, of the Radiant spren have a pretty good idea of it.

So it's reasonable to expect that the KR will be aware of this danger when they take on Odium. They may even have a plan in place to try to re-trap him, but I expect that ultimately to fail. They'll have to kill him. There will be no other choice.

What then happens when the Shard of Odium drops, ready to Splinter into a million pieces of Hatred and leak into the planet's Investiture irrevocably? Or become a self-aware monster spren? Or get absorbed by one or more of the Unmade? Or any number of other potentially apocalyptic results?

Dalinar picks it up.

He doesn't do it to gain power. He does it to protect his friends and family. He does it for Honor (though his decision may involve his bond with the Stormfather being broken) - because humans brought Odium to Roshar; it's only proper for a human to fix that mistake.

Most of all, because he has managed to deny Odium's power before, he does it because he believes he's the best person to do so. He believes that he can resist the Shard's intent better than any other person on Roshar. He might even be right.

So he picks up Odium, rips every last shred of power that Rayse Invested into Roshar, and leaves.

There are several reasons why I think Brandon will take this route:

1. It's an interesting full circle to take for the character. He starts out life as the perfect scion of Odium, though he doesn't know it at the time. He's ruthless. He's violent. It's through a huge amount of experience and development that he learns to control and reject that side of him. He becomes a better man. Then as a result of becoming that better man, he takes on the embodiment of what warped his past in an attempt to shield others from the evil that tainted him. That's some serious heroic tragedy.

2. Brandon likes to hurt us.

3. So far, our experience of the "negative" Shardholders has been pretty after-the-fact. We never saw Ati before he picked up Ruin; likewise we don't know exactly how awful Rayse was before he picked up Odium. We've seen Harmony, yes, but he's been pretty Light Side so far. It will be much, much more interesting to take a character that the readers have a strong emotional investment in and have him take up an "evil" Shard. The impact of seeing our hero Dalinar slowly corrupted by Odium's influence as he becomes an overall Cosmere Big Bad will cause internal reader conflict, and that's a good way to tell a story.

 

Neat idea. This is very similar to the story for Diablo (PC game) though so I hope Brandon goes in a different direction! 

I could see Dalinar resisting Odium if he also held (most of) Honor, since the two opposing shards might make it difficult to do much, and Dalinar's will making up for the difference of having only most of Honor's power. 

The most important step a man can take is always the next one. If he can start stepping in the right direction maybe he can be redeemed. It may also be like in Mistborn 

Or maybe not, lol. 

9 hours ago, CrazyRioter said:

No, I think the flashbacks will be done in the same style they always have.

I imagine Eshonai's flashbacks will be used to highlight or contrast things in Venli's current narrative.

That's my thought as well. 

On 6/11/2019 at 5:13 PM, Karger said:

But we have to go absolutely over the top.  This is Kaladin we are talking about.  He can't just be betrayed, assaulted, endure attempts on his life as a matter of course, have people he cares about put in places of sure death, and then not be able to take vengeance on any of them.  He must endure more.

Confirmed next oath for Kaladin.

Pattern also mentions that he fully expects to die by that it's worth it to research and learn about the humans and physical realm. It's possible that the other Cryptics feel that the risk of dying is worth it as well. 

17 hours ago, Karger said:

Here is a thought:  We know that spren have been bonding individuals on Roshar for at least 6 years.  Considering the ghoustblood's information network I would not put it past them to be aware of this.  We also know that these people like to collect magical swag.  We don't know why but that is not important as we don't realy know enough about them to speculate.  I would not put it past these guys to already have at least one Radaint member in their organization(not including Shallan).  We know that they are aware of how Radiance works and that a certain younger brother with a cryptic died under mysterious circumstances and his spren is still unaccounted for.  We also know that spren may have to adopt less then optimal candidates for survival as per Hoid.  If they manage to draw out the war the ghostbloods can harvest spren for dead radiants gaining surgebinding for themselves.  They might already be doing this. 

I feel like Iyatil would not have been so surprised and impressed by Shallan losing her in the streets and finding her/sneaking up on her while watching for her to take the Taln investigation instructions if they were aware of Radiant powers. If they had another lightweaver in their group from Tien's cryptic, they likely would have figured out how she achieved what she did, rather than Iyatil following her to watch her infiltrate Dalinar's medical center. Instead Iyatil asks who she really is and lists the ways she's impressed the Ghostbloods. 

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They don't even have to break oaths or swear them without meening to. Taravangain has a surgebinder for example. I don't think some cryptics would be oposed to bonding the correct ghostblood member. The same can be said for Inkspren, Ashpren, and potentially "Truthspren."

Agreed. In fact, I don't think you could attract a spren by saying oaths you don't intend to keep. In WoR when Kaladin starts to realize he can't keep his promise to both Dalinar and Moash, Syl tells him it would take him more than just telling the Moash group he's out. Other times she tells him she doesn't believe that he really believes the things he says. So I don't think a spren would be that easily devieved with false oaths, but as you point out, many spren would find what the ghostbloods are doing compatible with them. 

On 5/1/2019 at 0:33 PM, Firebolt-101 said:

 

As for why he never confronted Dalinar, I feel like it would be part of a sense of duty to not tell everyone and a bit a fear. He did just lose his mom, and I'm assuming even the Alethi court wouldn't just let Dalinar walk away from what happened at the Rift if they knew.

Keep in mind that the things we see Dalinar doing in the flashbacks may be appaling to the readers, but are the very things that made Dalinar a hero to the Alethi. 

6 hours ago, ZenBossanova said:

Of course, they are peaceful because they imprison anyone who disagrees. 

Well yes. My point was about what the alien races considered civilized, and was pointing out that it wasn't cytonics like the person I responded to was saying. 

On 12/4/2018 at 1:30 PM, Ashertliden said:

The Varvax take no outrage because the humans are “uncivilized”, and they are thought of such because they don’t have cytonics. If the humans developed cytonics, becoming “civilized” and continued their violent lifestyle, which seems likely to me as they’re humans, the varvax and all of the allied alliens might be forced to take action. 

It's not that humans don't have cytonics that makes them uncivilized, it's the fact that humans still have war and crime. Jason talks about how most races figured out how to be peaceful and thus civilized way earlier than humans, and before they develop technology past steam power.

The entire issue is that humans have cytonics to obtain FTL while still being uncivilized with crime and violence,which is why Jason is worried about the rest of the galaxy.  He's also worried humans will develop technology for FTL even if he keeps the cytonics FTL away from them.

Usually races are already peaceful by the time they can FTL, but in the case of humans, they're still violent and can already FTL. 

I wondered if Detritus could be an astroid that was harvested for resources, and built into a giant shipyard/manufacturing complex.  Spensa notes that Detritus doesn't have any oceans (possibly any bodies of water?), and it has such an extensive cave network, that originally being a giant chunk of space-rock that was mined out for resources could make sense...

I also thought one of the comments/thoughts from Spenda early on mentioned Detritus showing the scars of the previous inhabitants war, so it was sort of implied that whoever lived there went full on world war and eradicated themselves, but maybe it was really part of the greater war with the Krell and other alien species.

On 3/31/2019 at 2:08 PM, Angsos said:

I'd like a conversation between Alcatraz and M-bot.

Seriously though, I think every ship designed before Detritus was meant to sync with Cytonic humans but either because of what happened on the Defiant or everyone who know how was killed, the ability was lost. Welcome to the shard

I agree.  It sounds like the Detritus humans were able to create Starfighters because they discovered plans and machinery capable of producing Starfighters, rather than doing much design and engineering themselves, so likely the knowledge of how to make Cytonic compatible ships doesn't exist for the Detritus humans yet, since they aren't even willing to officially acknowledge the "defect".  Based on Spensa's revelations at the end of the book, I expect the Detritus humans will work in that direction though.

3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

We know this is untrue from Ash's PoV. 

 

I stand corrected, thanks. 

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Talenel: Talenel is the Herald of War and a patron of soldiers but when we last saw him he was cowering in fear avoiding battle.

I would claim he wasn't lucid enough to know battle was going on, and therefore was neither afraid of it nor avoiding it. 

The only time we see him aware of violence, he seeks to prevent it by catching the blow darts. 

My take was he's crawling up the stairs because they are built for heralds and too large for him (10 strides tall apiece) . Since we know the Heralds are actually normally sized, I take the paragraph as hyperbole as the author didn't really know the truth. 

20 hours ago, The Night Watcher said:

Really? Wow. Now I'm curious. Where can I find info on that? And where was it first mentioned?

It's the epilogue of OB. Hoid/Wit PoV and he's in Kholinor and gets into the palace. 

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He passed the sentry post, and wondered if anyone else thought it irregular that the Fused spent so much time here near this fallen section of the palace. Did anyone wonder why they worked so hard, clearing blocks, breaking down walls? It was good to know that his heart could still flutter at a performance. He ducked in close to the work project, and a pair of more mundane singer guards cursed at him to move on toward the gardens, with the other beggars. He bowed several times, then tried to sell them some trinkets from his pocket. One shoved him away, and so he acted panicked, scrambling past them and up a ramp into the work project itself. Nearby, some workers broke rocks, and a patch of blood stained the ground. The two singer guards shouted at him to get out. Wit adopted a frightened look, and hurried to obey, but tripped himself so he fell against the wall of the palace—a portion that was still standing. “Look,” he whispered to the wall, “you don’t have many choices right now.”

Above, the Fused turned to look at him.

“I know you’d rather have someone else,” Wit said, “but it isn’t the time to be picky. I’m certain now that the reason I’m in the city is to find you.” The two singer guards approached, one bowing apologetically to the Fused in the air. They still didn’t realize that sort of behavior would not impress the ancient singers. “It’s either go with me now,” Wit said to the wall, “or wait it out and get captured. I honestly don’t even know if you’ve the mind to listen. But if you do, know this: I will give you truths. And I know some juicy ones.” The guards reached him. Wit pushed against them, slamming himself against the wall again. Something slipped from one of the cracks in the wall. A moving Pattern that dimpled the stone. It crossed to his hand, which he tucked into his rags as the guards seized him under the arms and hauled him out into the gardens, then tossed him among the beggars there. Once they were gone, Wit rolled over and looked at the Pattern that now covered his palm. It seemed to be trembling. “Life before death, little one,” Wit whispered.

 

8 hours ago, The Night Watcher said:

I found the scene with the drawing in the chest but not where Jasnah assesses Shallan's eligibility. Could you perhaps, pretty please [OR ELSE] tell me the location [EXACT PAGE NUMBER] of said scene?

It's in tWoK when Shallan first finally manages to convince Jasnah to be her ward. Don't have specific pages or chapters off the top of my head. 

4. I think Veil runs into him while spying on Amaram. I thought we had confirmation this was the same Hav. 

5. They mention baskets on the end of long chains that can be lowered into the storm to recharge spheres. 

Could definitely be a fun/interesting twist!  

23 hours ago, I think I am here. said:

 

Please use the spoiler tags when posting about Mistborn inside the Stormlight Archive forums.