Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Disagree: Maps died in Chapter 57 of WoK and I don't remember any evidence of Moelach in Jah Keved until Valam's death rattle to Tarvangian in Interlude 14 in WoR. It is earlier in that same interlude that Taravagian and Adrotagia first discuss the movement of Moelach away from Alethkar: Unless I missed something about Moelach being in Jah Keved earlier, then I don't agree that there is any evidence that the rattles can occur without Moelach being directly present. I only have time right now to address this single point, I have to get my daughters off to school, but I will edit this later and address your other points (I'll tag you when I do). I mis-remembered when Maps died, the fact that he died in TWoK makes it even more certain that Moleach doesn't have to be present for a death rattle to occur because during TWoK Moleach is in Kharbranth! At the very end of TWoK Taravangian gives Szeth a tour of his delightful death rattle factory. Kharbranth is in central Roshar, the Shattered plains are in Eastern Roshar. I don't recall the specific portion of the book that mentions it, but I am pretty sure it's stated somewhere that Moleach has moved to Jah Keved, and if this is the case, he most likely would have moved to Vedenar where the bloodiest battles in the succession war occured. Here's a map showing an Area of Effect circle in red, centered on Kharbranth that encompasses Vedenar. Because Moleach moved, I would tentatively guess that his Area of Effect is half what is depicted. The same sized Area of Effect is overlayed in blue and centered on the Shattered Plains, I think this is pretty conclusive proof that Death Rattles can occur without the presence of Moleach.

This fills me with deep sadness.

That's one of the dangers of seeing the future, as explored in this theory ([OB]The Dangers of Seeing the Future) by @RShara, it's the tangling of cause and effect that happens that messes everything up. Did your glimpse into the future set you onto the path where you live out that future? If you glimpse the future, do you have the capacity to change it, or are you like the cyclops in Krull, only saddened by your knowledge of the inevitability of the future? If you haven't read By His Bootstraps by Robert H. Heinlein, you should really do that, it's possibly the best short story written about the paradox of time travel. There's actually an amazing version of this, performed by Richard Dreyfuss for the radio series Beyond 2000X (hosted by Harlan Ellison) and it's REALLY good.

Holy crap! I just figured out what to call my abstract expressionist masterwork, where I swallow large quantities of paint and spew it out on the canvas. Brilliant! I am currently out of upvotes but when they trickle back in you'll get some @Subvisual Haze and @RShara. That's some funny rust.

Totally think you are right about both of those points. I'm currently out of upvotes, but will give you one later, nice catch. Looking at the coppermind page for Shardblades I couldn't help but notice this: Elhokar's shardplate has an incredible cod-piece. Holy crap, I know the dude was paranoid, but that seems like overkill. It's like a second helmet.

This thought combined with the question: Could this be the origin of the hyphen in the names of the more aware Unmade? Bo-Ado-Mishram might have a large chunk of the current God King of Tukars mind if this is the case. Interesting...

I think this is a special case where you were nonplussed in both senses of the term, one state followed immediately by the other. Let's look at @RShara's definition again: Initially upon discovering the end results of maladroit feline digestion you were nonplussed (1). Once your initial shock and confusion were past and you decided to execute a 180 and be far away from the contents of your cat's stomach while dining you were nonplussed (2) by the decorative dyspepsia currently decorating your domicile.

Oh Meridas, when will you ever learn, you don't take power from the bad guy.

I have a tin-foil hat type theory regarding Shallan's soulcaster. I think that it might be a fake soulcaster as well. We know from WoR that the only person to use the Davar soulcaster was Luesh, who incidentally was also a member of the Ghostbloods. We know that he had been using the soulcaster to create Marble deposits to fund the political career of Lynn Davar. And it's possible to assume from lack of textual description, that he wasn't turning into the cognitive aspect of what he was soulcasting, which might imply that he was using the Knight Radiant surge of Transformation instead of a soulcasting fabrial. He died in his sleep, and was physically inspected after his death with enough scrutiny to find his ghostblood tattoo, and there was no mention of his body being partially phased into a separate substance. When Lynn was killed, the ghostbloods were suddenly short a powerful political pawn that they had been cultivating for quite a long time. They are not the sort of organization to let a large investment go without some kind of separate yield. So, after this soulcaster "breaks" (like one chain link is broken), Shallan suddenly comes up with the idea to steal Jasnah's soulcaster. Pretty convenient considering Jasnah is also a figure that the Ghostbloods are actively trying to kill. Kasbal shows up very quickly after Shallan becomes Jasnah's ward to try and utilize her association with Jasnah to get close enough to assassinate her. So, if this tin-foil hat theory is true, the perceived impermanence of Shallan's soulcaster is not proof that soulcasters are not made out of a god-metal (most likely cultivations). I think that the approximation of the nahel bond that the honorblades provide is that they are a connective pathway for the kinetic Investiture to be channeled to do productive work, but unlike a nahel bond, it's not a Cognitive Energy Pathway, it's a Spiritual Energy Pathway. The reason it's less efficient accessing the surge using the Spiritual Pathway, is that a temporary Cognitive Pathway would still have to be created, allowing the wielder of the blade to direct the Kinetic Energy of Investiture. So I think using an honor blade is a two step process, the honor blade uses investiture to create a cognitive pathway connecting the blade to the mind of the wielder so that the wielder can then direct the Kinetic Energy of Investiture to do work. The creation of the connective pathway between the Spiritual Energy of the Blade and Spiritual Energy of the free Kinetic Energy of Investiture (stormlight) is the part that I think the Spren copied when they form Nahel bonds.

@Varion again, that's some top notch analysis! I think that Taravangian's writing from the 2nd Desk Drawer and the words of the dying Shin sailor (quoted and spoilered below) are the two best primary sources we have for how the Death Rattles actually work: From these primary sources I think we can make the following general assertions about how Death Rattles work: A death rattle is an involuntary vision that a dying Rosharan experiences when their "soul ... breaks apart from the body". (Analysis spoilered below) The manifestation of the vision requires some form of Energy to manifest "powered by the spark of death itself." And given the additional fact that in WoR, Maps has a death rattle on the Shattered Plains while Moleach was in Jah Keved (most likely drawn there by the rampant deaths brought about by the civil war), we can make the following assertions about how death rattles work in relation to Moleach: Death rattles occur without Moleach being present. Moleach's area of effect increases the likelihood of a Death Rattle occurring. Moleach increases the occurrence of Death rattles by "seep[ing] into [the] soul" of a dying Rosharan. From these assertions we can make educated inferences about what is actually going on. Moleach is increasing the occurrence of death rattles by interacting directly with the soul of the dying, his touch on the soul of the dying is doing one of the following 3 things: Listening in on the Spiritual Connections of the souls of the dying, to essentially tap the Spiritual Connection line of the dying individuals to gain access to the visions fueled by the spark of death. Manipulating the soul and Spiritual Connections of the dying to increase the likelihood of the visions, but still just attempting to gain access to the visions. Manipulating the soul and Spiritual Connections of the dying to gain access to the vision of the dying and to possibly alter the manifestation of the vision of the dying to spread misinformation. I think the 2nd is the most likely and that the 3rd is the most unlikely, I think that what Moleach is really doing is harvesting visions of the future for his master Odium and that the inadvertent consequence of his touch/manipulation of the souls of dying causes the Death Rattles to occur more frequently. Death rattles in their natural state are very uncommon, and the sheer level of Machiavellian inhumanity that is shown by T and the Silent Gatherers is probably something that Odium never thought would occur (because, holy crap, that's terrible!), so the inadvertent consequence of the death rattles giving others access to visions of the Future probably never occurred to Odium. I think your analysis @Varion of the distinctions that the Silent Gatherers use to classify a rattle as questionable or of particular note is very good, the questionable is the qualifier for not believing that a particular rattle is a genuine death rattle, and the of particular note is used to signify that it is a key piece of information that relates to their larger objectives. This is the part that is purely speculative, but this is how I view Moleach. I think that Moleach is a gigantic black miasmatic spider with 10,000 legs that he uses to probe the souls of the sick and dying. Using his sickly, vaporous black legs he touches the Spirit Webs of the souls of the dying, possibly even affecting how violently they break apart. At the point of near death, when the thousands of Spiritual Connection lines finally start to snap, the elastic stored energy of the connections of the Spirit Web is released and this allows information from a thousand different connections to flow back to the soul of the dying, and this aggregate information flowing back along these breaking Connection lines is what creates the Vision. Moleach sees this vision as it occurs to gather one more glimpse of the future for his master Odium.

I shall look for it. I was thinking of the idea for an Inquisitor choir with TLR singing in a bored tone on his throne. Hey @LewsTherinTalamon, you might consider the Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil, it doesn't have the bored on his throne tone you're looking for, but it has potential for a Lord Ruler tooting his own horn number. I wrote a version of Be Prepared sung by Taravangian and Diagramists: If you want to effect the bored, jerky, haughtily aloof quality of TLR, you might consider a parody of Soft Cell's Tainted Love:

Really nice Ketek!

The Nightwatcher grants your boon, you get great sleep this semester, unfortunately you sleep through most of your humanities 101 class as well. You also survive your humanities class without too much mental trauma, but this implies that you will have a little mental trauma. The Nightwatcher, being the jerky spren of poetic justice that she is, makes your small mental trauma a very specific condition. You now have a case of Tourettes syndrome which is only triggered when you recite poetry. I wish I could play chess with Robert Jordan and smoke some Two Rivers tabac from a hand carved pipe that looks like the smoke is coming from a Dragon's jaws.

Failing–to never try to create something beautiful. Beauty–something creating to try, never to fail.

Granted! You can now see through other people's eyes, but only when they are looking at a 72 year old man in Paducah Kentucky named Will. He sits on his porch a lot, and moves his dentures around in his mouth with his tongue. I wish that I had a Winnebago that was capable of Faster than Light travel.

Granted, unfortunately the Nightwatcher noticed that your wish was ambiguously phrased, and decides the "anything" that you have the willpower to do. The Nightwatcher grants you an unparalleled will to collect paper clips. So determined are you in this pursuit of paper clip collecting that it consumes your life, your personal hygiene begins to suffer, you neglect to eat most days, but your collection of paper clips grows and grows. Until, half starved, living in your own filth like an animal, the burden of never being satisfied with the completeness of collection overwhelms you, and in your great despair you fashion a noose from chained paper clips and end your wretched existence. I wish that I could understand the language of Jawas so that I can tell what they are actually saying when they shout "Houdini" all the time.

I think your theory is really interesting, how do you destroy a God? The vase analogy parallel is a nice supporting detail, but I always read this as the SF giving Dalinar an insight into how Honor slowly died. Interesting to think about, I thought that the one big problem with this theory is that there is a WoB that show a vessel is possibly able to influence the Intent of their shard, but not to the point where they can change the definition of the intent, but they could push it to synonym: The WoB actually implies that the core intent is very inflexible (as if it was set at the time of Shattering). I'll have to think about this some more, but very interesting idea @Kered.

Yeah, makes this possible scene more plausible: "Dalinar, your breakfast and mine are not the same. If I have to watch all of your bacon Burn to eat mine I will." Sometimes the profound can be hidden in plain sight, and sometimes it's just fun to know these things. I'll only have 3 questions though, I would like to know what type of donuts Vivenna likes, but I'll leave that to some other person to ask Brandon about. I would be curious if you could awaken food what the effects of eating an awakened strip of bacon that was given the command "Metabolize Well" would be, but again I'll leave that one too for another to ask.

@Varion I love this analysis! I particularly like how you are approaching the ambiguities of these death rattles like Smart Taravangian and the Diagramatists would approach them, through scholarly statistical analysis. I especially appreciate the analysis of the words used in the rattles, I think this is a useful and meaningful framework to use to try find particular categories of Rattles and to figure out which rattles fit into which category. I think though that there is an operational component to Moleach's extraction of death rattles that the Diagramitists account for that your analysis fails to take into account. This is in the realm of speculative surmise to be sure, but I think the fact that you get a brief historiography of the person who is dying along with a statement of whether the rattle is dubious or of special note is significant. The death rattle is coming from a particular individual who has led a particular life. We know (from WoB's and from in world text) that everyone has a Spiritweb. The fact that it is a web implies that it is primarily a structure built of Connection. How I see Moleach's extraction of death rattles working is that anyone within his area of effect is subject to a close scrutiny of these Spiritual Connections, and tracing them along the path of what they are connected to in the future grants Moleach and consequently Odium a glimpse of what is to come. I think the diagramatist distinction of dubious might come from the fact that in their analysis of the rattle they are checking to see if the source of the rattle could possibly be connected enough to the events that are mentioned that there is a chance of true correlation, and if the analysis shows that this connection does not likely exist then the rattle is likely to be misinformation from the enemy. One of the only characters that we have met who had a death rattle is Maps, and he died during the battle of the Tower. Here is his death rattle: We have no information about what his previous life was, but we do know that he was a bridgeman that had been fighting on the shattered plains. The "And all the world was shattered" bit seems to echo his experience on the shattered plains, this might be why his connection allows him to see on his deathbed into the future and glimpse a similar event when some other portion of Roshar is shattered like the Shattered Plains are currently shattered. Like I said before, I love your analysis, the two things that I would love to see added to your spreadsheet are the source of the rattle (usually mentions age and profession) and the diagramatist qualifier (dubious, of exceptional note, or none specified).

I personally like Stormlight the best. The visual presentation of the magic is amazing. A luminescent form of power, captured in a multi-colored assortment of gems that gets breathed in before it's utilized is one of the coolest visualizations of magc that exists in all of creative thought. The fact that KRs who are charged with stormlight glow and have wisps of stormlight that trails out of their bodies like curling smoke, and that something as mundane as an exhalation produces a puff of luminescent fog is freaking amazing. The lashing system of the Windrunners/Skybreakers is amazing. It's the mixture of hard science/magic that Brandon does better than any other writer around. But Brandon's magic systems work best when all of the limitations are known, like they are currently known for the Metallic arts. Once more of the boundaries of Surgebinding are defined, and he can begin pushing the envelope of creative application against those known boundaries, I think it will be apparent that Surgebinding is his master work of Magic. The metallic arts currently have the advantage of 3.5 books of additional content where these boundaries have been explored and pushed against, but I think by the time book 10 of SLA is done, surgebinding/voidbinding/the Old Magic will be the highest bar in the Cosmere for amazing magic systems. I am very partial to the awakening magic of Warbreaker, and I think this might be my second favorite magic system after Nightblood (warbreaker 2) comes out.

Well @Calderis, if you're ever in Eugene and feel like talking about the Cosmere over a frosty pint let me know. Obviously with the 1 out f 3 questions I would reserve the right of veto, like if your question was if Vivenna likes donuts with or without sprinkles I would have to pass, but I doubt it would be something so trivial. 1 out of 3 questions is yours if you want it (with the above proviso of course).

@Calderis, I have only been on the shard for a little under 2 months, but during that time I've been deeply impressed with your amazing WoB skills, the way you you tactfully redirect erroneous lines of speculations (usually by using your aforementioned WoB skills) and by the precision and conciseness of your writing in general. To draw a comparison, that I think is well deserved, you are like the Ernest Hemingway of the Shard, you have the ability to explain the esoteric and profound in a manner that is both concise and clear. Your essay on the Intents (along with @Steeldancer's essay on the Spiritual Realm and @Confused's essay on Cosmere magic) should be pegged in the Cosmere Theories board as must reads (which maybe something administrators would decide what goes in). For my bday coming up in February I am going to be getting the 3 volume signed hardback set of Mistborn from Brandon's store, I have one question I know I'm going to ask about the cognitive realm, but I will give you one of the 3 questions, you can PM with the question or post it in reply. The third question will be a 17th Shard derived question. I live in mini portland, otherwise known as Eugene oregon, let me know if there's going to be a signing in portland and I'll let you know if there's going to be a signing in eugene( it happened once before so it's not outside the realm of possibilities). Let me know if you're ever going to be in Eugene, seriously as thanks for you work the first pitcher will be on me.

@Govir and @StormingTexan I think Kaladin seeing this painting is to reinforce that he got a true glimpse from his vision with the sphere at Riino's lighthouse. These abstract paintings are conduits to Fortune, or a limited prescience about an upcoming momentous event. Here is the bit about the Painting that Lightsong sees in WB from the annotations for that chapter (spoilered because of length): So the painting has vague echoes of the possible future because the artist was "channeling the Tones and connected to them via Breath", so this imparts to the painting an innate predictive quality that someone who is suitably primed can percieve. This is probably drawing on Kaladin's Spiritual Connection to Dalinar to recieve this glimpse of Dalinar's possible future. That hard RAFO that you quoted StorminTexan does make it seem like the painting that Kaladin sees is more important, and I do think it would be interesting if it cropped up in the book Nightblood as a reason for NB and so many Nalthians to suddenly end up on Roshar.

@MasterJack, without knowing anything about your story line, if they are all working for the same Organization, you could have a strange occurrence on a planet/space station that needs to be investigated, and some of your characters dispatched to check it out. If you need to pull others into the story who aren't part of the Organization, you could have something happen to one of the characters that triggers a personal friend of that character (who is also part of the ensemble) come in to investigate it as well. Another possible solution would be do a serious outline of your story, pick 3 to 4 major events, and work backwards from the event to find plausible ways for your characters to arrive at the places these events take place. It's fun for big group stories like this to pick up a few characters at each of these events, gives the characters time to get more of the narrative focus, and allows for interesting character dynamics. Another thing to maybe think about is that after these events, you can have your ensemble grow but also have some of the characters go off to achieve a separate objective, and then meet back up again later. Gives you the chance to switch up the group dynamics, maybe allowing you to hit some of the plot points with a smaller part of the group, again to allow the characters to show through more through changing social dynamics, conflicts and resolution in quests, etc. If you post a very rough outline of some of the events it would probably be easier to give you more specific suggestions.

@AC12 and @Vortaan, I looked into this and posted about this on a different thread, and I don't think it's the same painting. The post includes descriptions of both paintings from both Oathbringer and Warbreaker, the one in WB doesn't have any white paint. They sound very similar in execution, so they are quite probably by the same painter.