earthexile

Skybreakers under Nale are taught to revere the Law *because* it is the Law, not because it makes the most sense to them. An orderly, valid legalistic argument is more important to them than however any individual feels about something, or whether the Skybreaker in question completely approves of what it means they have to do. When Gawx becomes a ridiculous child Prime through the cynical, cowardly assent of the legitimate government, and calls for his friend Lift to be pardoned and released, Nale does it. He is completely personally certain that Lift HAS TO DIE to STOP THE APOCALYPSE, but the rightful legal authority where he happens to be standing says he can't do that, so he can't. He drops what he's doing and leaves. It is completely obvious to everyone that what's happening is a wacky farce, but the letter of the Law is being obeyed, so that's that. This is how they justify submitting to the Singer cause. The argument is presented that Roshar rightly belongs to the beings who have lived there the longest, and that their grievance against humanity is valid. And when it's put that way... I'm not sure I disagree, either. Those things shouldn't have been done. Singers shouldn't have been displaced, or enslaved. They were put here by God, on a world made for them by God, and the undeniable reality is that in this context, humans are weird aliens who came from somewhere else and took more than they were offered. The argument that the Skybreakers should have remained loyal to their species, or nations, or their own hearts, is basically an emotional appeal. The facts are the facts, but I'm a human and I don't want to be exterminated or subjugated or hated. I think that's valid, in its own way. I think it's horrible to pick up ancient grudges and just keep battling each other. But where is it written in stone that people must forgive and forget what's been done to their ancestors? Where is that the Law?

Wow good call, I did completely forget which conspiracy Helaran was thugging for. It's nutty when you lay it all out. Lin is a Ghostblood, Chana is storming Chana, Helaran is a Skybreaker, his Blade winds up with a Son of Honor. All we need now is to find out their maids were Envisagers, and Balat likes to murder bugs because he's a renegade Sleepless.

I'm carrying a torch for Kaladin + Tarah. There's an offhand mention of a curvy Alethi woman in Thaylen clothes, hanging out in a bar in Urithiru, when Shallan is teaching herself to do Veil things. She wears bright colors, and Shallan decides that she's "confident, used to playing with the attention of men," and that she seems to have "came here looking for someone." I think that's enough clues to reasonably put us in mind of Kaladin's Perfect Girl That I Blew It With. I have my half-articulated Story Sense reasons that I think it'd be nice. The back half of the story is going to have a lot to do with reckoning with the past, with getting back in touch with the happier, healthier pieces of who you used to be. All the Heralds need that, not just the other nine. And I like the idea that our Herald of Second Chances could somehow have a nice future ahead of him, when he's ready to come home and make things right. An ordinary cool human lady, one shining thing from the darkest time of his young life. One way to have something again that he's given up as lost.

Here's a weird one: No Kaladin means Helaran probably lives. Amaram's forces lose, that day. Amaram doesn't gain the Shardblade that Kaladin won. Maybe he even dies. Maybe Helaran succeeds on his mission, gets in touch with home, learns that his jerk father is dead, and swoops in to reclaim the Davar family name as a Ghostblood-aligned Shardbearer. Bam, we're Fourth Dahn aristocrats, House Davar is golden. Shallan's mission to capture the Soulcaster either never happens or gets called off, because now it's not the Only Way To Save My Family. Shallan does not get involved with the Ghostbloods by happenstance, but by grooming. Her wonderful mighty hero brother is there instead, to offer her a whole new way to disengage from the world she knows. She probably learns the truth about what went down with her parents a lot sooner, although it's hard to imagine her being ready for it.

El's "crime" against Odium was that he suggested an honorable, quite reasonable course of action. I think it's interesting that his proposal mirrored what Taravangian would wind up deciding to do, unite the world under one banner and march on the Cosmere as an unstoppable military and economic force. Rayse found this idea infuriating and worthy of punishment (though I suppose Odium would feel that way about most anything) even if it seems to make sense as far as accomplishing his goals, and stripped El of his Rhythms for bringing it up. But he didn't kill him. Or withdraw his Fused status. Why not? It occurs to me that in seeking the unity of the world, and looking past the skin of his enemies to perceive their worthiness and potential, El may have connected to Honor, the way we see Kaladin connect to the power of Odium when he's cutting loose against Lezian and partially separated from the other powers. And maybe that made him someone Odium wasn't allowed to fully smite.

If I could pick any two, I'd go Gravitation/Progression. I like the idea of an Order of heavy search-and-rescue and disaster-recovery Radiants. They could deploy with ease, flying to where they're needed, and establish healing centers and fast food production. They could easily and safely move rubble and wreckage, restore damaged crops, and so on. And I had this kind of psycho idea where they could potentially pull off an emergency rescue move, based on Wax and Wayne's "Spoiled Tomato" combo: Infuse the subject with a Lashing and a heaping helping of Progression, and just launch them away from danger. When they land, they aren't going to enjoy it at all, but the Progression ought to sort them out quickly. I'm not sure whether pouring two different Surges into a person is actually feasible, since being Invested causes one to resist new infusions, but maybe the factor of coming from the same Radiant and sharing that Identity would make it work. And I suppose you could always infuse the person with Progression and just yeet them with their belt or something.

I think Sadeas was almost an idealist, strange as it sounds. He just had a set of ideals that made him monstrous. He's a man of his culture and time. He spent most of his life at war with other Alethi, and as we know from a lot of Vorin people, constantly battling your neighbors isn't bad. It's what the Almighty wants. The Highprinces are attending parties together at the war front, while the people they 'rule' are still fighting wars against each other. Kaladin regards his time in Sadeas' army as an audition for a chance at meaningful service, not the appalling tragedy of misrule that it so clearly is. Imagine living in Vermont, having violent regular battles against New Hampshire, and meanwhile both your Governors are hitting nightclubs in Tunisia and acting like friends. Telling these traditional Alethi aristocrats to stop fighting and act like a real nation, is like trying to tell Americans to stop driving cars and watching TV. You can stand there explaining how obviously better it would be, but most of them aren't going to hear you. You'll just be a weirdo who snapped under the pressure of keeping up with how life is supposed to be. We see Sadeas make choices against his own preferences, *just* to spite Dalinar and stay fighting, while knowing for sure that Dalinar has the right idea. The uniform thing, for example. His inner monologue is that he'd like to stick to old school respectable military dress, but Dalinar's making a point of it, so he's got to make a point of going the other way. Letting his men be slovenly, disorganized, and cruel to each other, because Dalinar's being such a prude about these Codes. Leaving thousands of able-bodied Alethi to die uselessly on the rocks, men who are (on paper) on HIS side of this war. But they're Dalinar's men, so... screw 'em. His need to be the opposition and bedevil Dalinar leads him into many impractical, wasteful moves. I don't think Sadeas is a utilitarian, I think he's the product of a culture and politics designed to make men fight everything around them, forever.

After reading Wind and Truth, and then going back and reading Way of Kings? Absolutely intentional. Dalinar's entire arc is bent around the conflict between following one's heart, acting practically, and acting honorably. Do I hang all the suspects or let them all go? Can I really make this darkeyed kid a Captain just because he saved my life and my son's life and thousands of my men with acts of superhuman courage and skill? Do I marry the woman I've loved for years, even though nearly everyone around us will be disturbed and offended by it? The specific idea of 'killing one guy to benefit everyone' comes up a lot. And in Sadeas' case, Dalinar also makes the choice to fully let the confessed murderer off the hook, because of who he is, and what he means, and what he brings to the war effort. He was specifically betrayed and nearly killed by Sadeas, along with a son and army he loves, but Dalinar's the only 'good guy' in the story who really gives a rust that his explicit "yes I am going to get you some day" Enemy has been murdered. Everyone else thinks it's either fine or good. Are they right? I sure don't know. Elhokar was a useless prick for the most part, but he started to turn it around. Alethkar was about five minutes away from having a Radiant King reigning over a rescued capital, directly connected to Urithiru. The whole war could have gone different if just that one guy had made a little more personal progress. So what could another year in a city of spren and heroes have done for Sadeas? What could a changing Sadeas have done with his armies, rather than leaving them to be devoured by Odium's desires and needs? Amaram sucks, but he's not worse than Dalinar, if we want to chalk up bodies and betrayals. He knew useful things and people, he was skilled, he knew how to be devoted to a cause. His life had value, and rather than being used, it had to be destroyed. The only reason we wouldn't rather see these guys all united is that they've done terrible things and deserve to be hated. Is it wrong to hate them? It doesn't feel wrong, it feels correct and rational. The dictionary definition of "Odium:" The state or fact of being subjected to hatred and contempt as a result of a despicable act or blameworthy circumstance. It always makes sense in the moment.

The logical development for Urithiru would be to work real hard on establishing a foothold in Shadesmar. Jasnah needs to get it together and expand the scope of her Elsecalling, maybe create fabrials for it or something. That's going to be the way in and out, if the force field thing remains for long. The city can probably sustain itself for a really long time, maybe even for generations, and the people there will live an isolated technological arcology life. Jasnah and Renarin's new representative government, the political and physical isolation of the city, the bizarre economic potential of a city with Transformation abilities and infinite access to Towerlight, it's all going to be a cultural revolution. On the Shadesmar side, Urithiru is not especially useful but it's very defensible, at the top of a very long spiral ramp. The draining of Cultivation's Perpendicularity will probably lead to a mass migration of the Shadesmar side of civilization, since the whole reason so many beings are living there is the interaction with the rest of the Cosmere. One of the logical places to expect a lot of them to turn up is Urithiru. Worldhoppers and merchants whose interests depend on traveling the Realms will be racing towards the city once they hear about the situation it's in: An impenetrable arcane city flowing with endless free Investiture, that hasn't decided how it's going to work yet. Every secret society and galactic conspiracy with guys in-system is going to want to be the one handling Urithiru's needs. I think it's possible Urithiru becomes deeply connected to Shadesmar and the other worlds, way faster and more effectively than Retribution, the Listeners, or Azir can. It's going to be where the agents of the other Shards start showing up, because Taravangian is the universe's least favorite guy now. It might have a hell of a lot of interference and corruption and outside interests to contend with, but it'll all be happening anyway. And if that all goes as crazy as I think it could, it's possible Urithiru is who breaks the stalemate, and begins to act against Retribution's world. Once again, alien humans will invade Roshar.

I know she's not everyone's favorite character, but Lift's chapters and the Edgedancer novella hit me like a ton of bricks. A grown man, laid low by a deliberately goofy tween's little adventures in basic, essential compassion. Me and Nale, destroyed together. To be brief about it, being a kid was kind of weird, being a teenager was awful, and a lot of how I got myself through the lean, lonely part of my early 20s was by disconnecting. If things stressed me out too much or made me afraid, I'd let them drift away. I was barely even conscious of doing so, a lot of the time. Lost touch with a lot of people, lost interest in the wider world and the troubles of the people around me, living in a dreary rut working a pointless job and scurrying home to play World of Warcraft in an undecorated room. I had no plans. I had a girlfriend who was great, and would eventually join me in making a better life together, but she was away at college most of the time. I was always afraid she'd realize I was worthless and meet someone cooler, so I just tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about a lot of stuff. I let everything slide unless it'd get me arrested or homeless this month. I was existing. "Wasn't even like being alive." Getting better was a process of waking up again, caring about things again. Trying again. I had to remember who I'd been forgetting, and listen to what I'd been ignoring. I didn't have those Words, this was all awhile ago now. Coming up on twenty years. I tried therapy, tried the gym, all the things you do to sort yourself out. No one thing really 'did it,' nothing clicked and made me feel fixed, but something about just living as though my effort was worthwhile and imagining that I even could be better began to make a difference. At some point I realized it had made a huge difference. I would look back on my self of years past and feel pity. And I'd realized how just the attempt, just trying right now, was everything I really needed. And then I stumbled into reading these books, and I could relate to Kaladin or Dalinar or Shallan just fine. But the annoying little Edgedancer hit me like a thunderbolt. I saw my path articulated, examined, and vindicated. Codified and coherent. Sometimes hearing something you already believe can be a kind of revelation, if you'd never laid it out and considered it quite that way. The concept of the Edgedancers has become deeply meaningful to me, and I try to live like it. These days I'm working for a subsidized childcare program, which feels right in a way that my jobs mostly haven't. And I feel like I know some of what's to come for Lift, because I know what the next step was for me. There is still someone Lift has been fanatically ignoring and forgetting, the same person I was neglecting to care for, for awhile: herself. She has poured herself out on helping and healing, on being the best Edgedancer she knows how to be, but she's also been lonely and starving and delusional a lot. Letting things about herself slide away on the Awesomeness. She is going to have to look herself in the face at some point and realize, that's a person who deserves my attention and care too.

I don't think so. We haven't seen a Night Watcher Bondsmith yet, but we do know that Cultivation's touch (which seems to at least somewhat mimic a Night Watcher booncurse, whether or not She is doing so on purpose) made Lift able to synthesize Lifelight. The Sibling produces their own Towerlight, and the Stormfather is part of the force that brings Stormlight. These greater spren are connected to greater forces, and when things line up right they can draw forth their own Investiture rather than gathering it from what's already in the world around them.

The Hoid who was present for those events would have already been informed and experienced enough to perceive the difference, it was thousands of years since the Shattering already. He may have experienced similar visions, and learned to discern when he was inside one, like the people in Inception. He also may have been carrying tools, when it really happened, that would help. He's usually got some weird stuff on him. In the novel of "Project Hail Mary," the protagonist wakes up in a mysterious location, with no easy way of figuring out where he is or what's going on. But he's able to notice a subtly disturbing thing about the way an object falls when he drops it, because he's a science teacher who constantly reviews the means by which we investigate reality. Then he's able to slap together an experiment with the limited tools available, measure a few key numbers, and determines that the 'gravity' he's experiencing is indeed different from Earth standard. So now without leaving a small windowless room, without anyone explaining anything, he knows he's not on his home planet. That's not the same as knowing exactly what's happening, but something isn't right. That's kind of how I figure it went with Vision Hoid.

I think a spren who'd formed a Nahel bond but never manifested as a Blade would just become a Deadeye with no corresponding Blade in the Physical world. The Connection to the Physical that they need to manifest as a Blade is created by the advanced Nahel bond.

I think El isn't a human, because of the way he talks about them. His musings illustrate Us Singers and Those Humans in contrast. He's not just without rhythms, he's had them removed.

You would have to do some kind of Aluminum Feruchemy trick for this, or at least it's the first things that comes to my mind for removing Identity from something. The question becomes, what process do we use to be able to apply that force to the metallic Aether? If we can bring in off-world knowledge and powers, a copy of "Rhythm of War" sure would be a handy thing for a Scadrian to get their hands on. They were doing stuff with blanking Identity with sound.

I have suspected for awhile that Jasnah's illness will turn out to not even have been an illness. It'll be one of those insane cultural things, like how in America rich people have had their 'troublesome' daughters hospitalized and even lobotomized. Twelve-year-old Jasnah probably made some comment about religion, or gender roles, or her utter disinterest in kissing boys and picking husbands, and freaked everyone out. And it's just been "her madness" ever since, and we don't talk about it.

You're completely right and I just plain forgot. Cultivation doesn't have that situation to grasp at yet, in the Stormlight timeline. Good catch.

I think AonDor makes a really interesting contrast to the more... I suppose 'primitive' magic systems like Allomancy and Surgebinding, which are often described as feeling very natural and instinctive to use in general, but can be developed and honed for specificity and complexity. They're like having a new kind of arm added to yourself, it doesn't take long to learn to swing it at someone, but you won't be doing calligraphy for awhile, especially since practicing is expensive, you have to burn through the little amounts of energy you can gather. AonDor is the opposite. Do pretty much anything you can think of, with limitless energy from nowhere, *if* you can put in the scholarly and manual dexterity work to become an expert in a complicated programming language of divine symbols and modifiers that you hopefully have a way of learning. And you've got the extremely detailed outside information that it takes to calculate the correct way to write your spell. And you make no mistakes. And nobody interrupts. And unlike those other systems, with active, willful Shards enforcing their will and intent on the powers they allow into their worlds, and over the beings that use them, Elantrians are just working with an inexhaustible well of loose high-intensity Godness that probably doesn't have a perspective on what's done with it. I am very, very interested to see what they are like in the high tech space age. They seem like they could be the scariest of all invested peoples, if they decided to.

I think she didn't, because Harmony and Autonomy are warring over the system, and it seems like one or both of them would have taken notice if yet another Shard popped in from offworld while the whole situation was coming together. Of course, her nature is to move carefully and let people not know she's around. So I could be wrong. Until we know for sure, she could be anywhere doing anything that smacks of growth and development. But I think of all the places for her to go when Roshar fell, places with active Shards and advanced civilizations already crawling all over them would make poor choices. Harmony might be the only thing in the Cosmere as dangerous as Retribution, not just because he bears two powers but because he's so young. The elder Shards are way more constrained to their powers' Intents, it's what destroyed Tanavast and left Rayse so vulnerable. Harmony has only been at it for a few centuries, and still behaves very much like a human man with his hands on great power, rather than a melodramatic false god like so many of the others. And Harmony may be one of the Shards who can perceive and manipulate the future even better than Cultivation can. Leras' capacity for plotting in a way that his confused and ignorant humans could actually discover and execute was *insane.* But that's the nature of Preservation, keeping things together. Holding steady. Not falling apart. Knowing what comes next. If I were Cultivation, I think I'd try to set myself up on Drominad. There is great potential for growth and development there, and it's got the potential to remain safe and neutral in the larger Cosmere conflict while also becoming more and more vitally important for everyone. And in my more cynical moods, I might try to do something with the fact that these people have placed a lot of trust in a giant magical serpent recently. I'm kind of a giant magical serpent. And these Aviar are just thrilling to my sense of Cultivation, aren't they? I wonder what happens when I feed the worms to more kinds of creature...

For all we know, the Diagram included a chain of calculations that made it make sense for Azir to stand for some reason. It works out to draw Coalition forces away from places Odium considers way more personally vital, like the Shattered Plains and Thaylenah. Maybe it even works out for Retribution that there's a single powerful human nation still planted on Roshar. His galactic conquistador army has to practice with *someone.*

I've written a bit about this before, but I think the Order names are built on more poetical and interpretive understandings of the words. For example, Edgedancers. This seems like a straightforward reference to sliding with Abrasion, sure. It is. But I think it's also other things: They are the Order that goes among the forgotten and ignored, and brings them miracles. We could say they're at the *edges* of society, doing something beautiful and inspiring. Someone showing they're particularly skilled and agile at anything is often compared to a dance, even if it's something like cooking or computer programming. We speak of elegance, grace, confidence. They can reach across even the *edge* of death itself, and get you back on your feet. And of course we should keep in mind the way these compound words probably work in Vorin writing and language. It's probably a glyphpair, and these glyphs are open to some amount of interpretation themselves. I think a very fun example is the Elsecallers, which as you pointed out seems like it specifically refers to Transportation. But if you think about it for a minute, you'll probably recall that our only Elsecaller is Jasnah, and she does a heck of a lot more Transformation than she does Transportation. In fact she seems way better at Transformation than any of the Lightweavers, when it comes to changing this stuff into that stuff with speed and precision. So there's more to it. The glyph pair for Elsecaller would probably be one symbol for "else," and one symbol for "caller." But we know these symbols are all used with a little poetry and subtlety. "Else" could also be "difference," "change," or "other." "Caller" could be "announcer," or "demander," or "messenger." Jasnah behaves the same way with humans as she does when she's commanding objects and substances to Transform: Sheer obdurate willpower, and the ruthless force that it takes to back up her demands. She doesn't try to inspire people to realize complicated moral truths on their own with clever stories and questions. She says "We're not doing slavery anymore, and that's what it is, and if you don't like it, get your sword and I'll kill you in front of everyone and do it anyway." So I see Elsecaller as something like "One who demands for things to be different." They're all like that, the ideas and powers all operate on the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual levels. Windrunners and Skybreakers both fly, but they fly differently because of their other powers: Shaping the winds and air pressure with Adhesion, versus just slamming through the world full-force.

The Shards are not merely superlative expressions of their Intent, it also matters that they are out of context. Each of the Shards is a piece of a whole, so they're all incomplete. Honor is separated from Mercy, or Ambition, or Preservation. It's one million percent focused on doing what you said you would do and behaving how you promised to behave. Leaving an abusive relationship bothers it, showing up to a duel and killing a guy pleases it. We like the idea of honor, but without all the other things, it's just a kind of stubbornness. I think that's what makes Odium's "Passion" something different from love. Without the context of those other parts, raw raging emotion isn't really good for anything, it's not constructive or sustainable. I can crave and enjoy things just fine, that's a part of life and it can exist in balance with the others. But without the others? No sense of honor, no call to grow and change, no drive to preserve, no devotion, no reason, no whimsy? You couldn't love anyone or anything properly like that. What a hollow, pointless way to be. Truly a void, despite feeling so intense at first.

Honor and Odium are frightfully compatible, I think that's how the people who worshipped them could fully switch religions and forget. They're both obsessive, relentless, and rigid. They both have no chill at all. Tanavast trashed his Connection to Honor largely through pretty reasonable choices, although that one thing was pretty gross. Honor and Odium are both things that can keep people at war forever.

It seems to be the ability to imagine something and then, from scratch, make it real enough to matter and exist in the Physical world. Like a version of what a Shard does when they conjure life on a world, only it might be even crazier than that, because it seems like something that's not easy for them to do. Honor's account mentions discovering the Singers, and shepherding Humans from somewhere else, and finding them in places, but not making them. The beings he creates with Cultivation are primarily Cognitive, only kind of touching on the Physical world where "real people" exist. The sentient lifeforms of the Cosmere seem to be either Adonalsium's work, or there's some other reason they exist in places, but it's not the Shards doing it. You can convince something that already exists to Transform, you can puppet an illusion around, you can bring random things to a semblance of life, you can bring a just-murdered guy back to life. But what Shallan did is take nothing and make there be a whole armored knight with a sword instead. That's getting into the kind of divine shenanigans that could really wreck a planet if you started being silly with it.

I don't know whether they've got any big hairy Shin looking fellows in the Ardentia, but I'd love to play Brother Lhan, the Party Ardent from the interlude in Words of Radiance. Like many of the interludes it seems at first to just be a random little story of some Rosharan slice of life, and in this case it's this ridiculous fallen priest who starts new recruits on their first day with a blunt explanation of how chill and easy this job is, if you're just willing to suck up to the Queen. It's so revolting and corrupt, and it's baffling, how could this be happening? Are the Lighteyes really this psychotically self-indulgent? I thought the women were the smart ones, how are they partying even harder in Alethkar than the guys at the Shattered Plains? At this point in the story we're experiencing a lot of Kaladin's struggles with racism and injustice, Dalinar's frustration and disgust with his culture, it kind of just blends in. Alethkar sucks. But it's not just that, and when we find out what's been growing in the city, centered on the palace, Brother Lhan and his bizarre culture of worthless party Ardents take on a whole new shade. I think it would be a lot of fun to be a guy whose religious dignity has begun to bend to the will of demonic hedonism. He'd make some interesting expressions.