Gigalemesh

It sounds like they are offering an alternative to it being based on heralds, in which it's based on orders, so the spren would matter

Just checked and there is no mention of her name there, so this is purely speculation on my part

I feel like she might have been the female scout that spoke to Shallan about wielding a blade. It's quite early in and I haven't gone back and checked, but I made that connection

Omg that spelling mistake, lol, the ten Geralds

If you have that WOB I'd like to see it because I've never heard that before, and I'm doubtful about the whole one desolation per herald thing until I do see it. And you are right about there being uncertainty, though I was addressing the idea that all the unmade came into being post oathpact.

As the person who had said that a few times in this thread, it's because they are described in the exact same way as the figures we saw in this chapter, inky black and filled with smoke, plus the name, it seems like a pretty solid assumption as it would be strange to have two extremely similar types of creatures that are unrelated

People seem to be using the "fact" that there were 9 desolations pretty freely, as far as I know we have only been told there were less than 99 which includes a pretty large range. Am I missing something? Because otherwise a lot of these theories aren't based on much

Midnight essences were part of desolations so at least one unmade existed beforehand

Midnight essences were in Dalinar's visvion of a previous desolation, this means at least one unmade predates the breaking of the oathpact

The midnight essences existed in previous desolations so there is proof that unmade existed before the oathpact was abandoned

I don't think that the murals are the pictures we have seen. The artists of those are recent enough that they are known by in world people, but Urithiru is much older, so they can't be the same

It made me think of a shardpool

I don't think thy shinovar necessarily has unhallowed stone, it's just that they walk on soil so they don't have to worry bout it

I'm starting from the beginning, I want to get a sense of the flow of the book, plus it's been ages since the beginning of the sample chapters and I might have forgotten stuff. And I'm going to finish the book quickly enough already that I don't need to do it any quicker

I read her comment very differently, not disputing all of vorin teachings, but rather saying that they only have Alethi word that what is currently happening is a desolation. In fact I'm fairly sure that's what it means.

Okay I get what you're saying, and the point about the mass of metals being (inefficiently) converted to energy is interesting, and I like the idea about connection, but personally it still feels off to me, I guess I'll have to wait and see how Brandon deals with it, though it'll probably be years until this level of stuff comes up. Okay good

Okay thanks, I remember seeing something about worldhoppers bringing the common cold, but had no idea that was the plague in the purelake.

Well both still work, but two different versions of the same event surely can't both be canon?Did he use that exact wording somewhere? What I recall is him saying that everything that happened in the original was still canon as possible to happen, not canon that it did happen. Though you are of course correct that either version of events can be accepted going forward without confusion. I respect that you feel that way though I disagree with you, though I suspect originally reading different versions makes us partial to prefer those versions. I think you are misinterpreting what happened, and kind of aggressively so as you don't like the revision. It reads very naturally if you don't know that there was a change, something strange happened in a strange combat, and Kaladin shifted his attack. He didn't expect that blow to go through so it threw him off when the flow of combat was broken, and he wasn't deciding to spare Szeth forever, he just had a gut reaction and acted on it, which I don't think is out of character, and if he hadn't been diving for the honourblade afterwards he may well have delivered a finishing blow afterwards. So yeah I prefer the revision and I'm happy to accept it going forward, especially as I think Brandon must have felt it was rather important to change it, and I don't think that it was ridiculous. But to each their own

Dang that's a great point, I totally hadn't considered that. But yeah everything you say makes sense, thanks for pointing that out

Just want to say I'm sorry if I'm coming across rude or aggressive, that's totally not my intention, just trying to wrap my head around all this stuff, and getting a bit excited about getting a chance to discuss it

So energy is created, but investiture was already expended in creating that mass, so is investiture constantly being consumed as that mass exerts a force on everything in the universe? But the coin was given investiture by the coinshot, and when it no longer has any, that investiture wasn't used up, it returns to the spiritual realm (at least that's my understanding), so from a broader perspective energy was still created without a net loss in investiture. Have we seen any means by which energy can be converted back into investiture? That's sort of my whole problem, there is no implication that investiture can run out, and it is definitely used to create energy, but there is no evidence of that energy becoming investiture again. Unless shards are "harvesting" ambient energy from their worlds equivalent to that created by magic, either their investiture would run out, or investiture isn't used up when creating energy. Maybe I'm not explaining myself very well but I just don't see how there can be absolute conservation of energy/investiture/mass

Personally I don't think something magical is happening there, just regular introspection as Brandon is so fond of

To me the annotation quote that @Salkara posted shows that there isn't really significance to it the silver plating, it was purely because he wanted to cover up possible mistakes in his writing, not an elegant solution but not everything Brandon does is going to be some amazingly complex secret. I feel people here have shown that aluminium being "poor man's" silver is impossible as silver is not allomantically inert and therefore definitely doesn't occupy the same role as aluminium. And my opinion is that you are placing more importance on it than it deserves, but that's just my opinion, I could be proven fantastically incorrect. Also I assumed that the metal shardblades are made of is honour's god metal.

I don't think Urithiru moves personally. A few people mentioned the purelake having a shardpool/perpendicularity, is that a theory that has been presented elsewhere? Didn't see anything about it on the coppermind. Or is it just a suggestion here?

I chose feruchemy for the reasons people have explained, I think if you weren't worried about storing up massive amounts you could store up attributes fairly easily. And some things you could store lot of without too much inconvenience. Though elantrian would actually be pretty awesome, assuming you had access to the full extent of the power. Also people keep bringing up power lines and I don't know what cities have so many power lines it would be a problem, but even if you do power lines are metal so you could just fly above them and use them as an anchor