earthexile

In addition, adding Honor to Taravangian's substance has severely hobbled his capacity for senseless violence and destruction. He's already struggling to balance the desires of Honor against his desires as Odium, they are compatible in many ways but incompatible in others. Dalinar has infected the god of hate with a divine sense of justice, and it's pointed out that Honor has gained a measure of sentience and personality that makes it even more resistant to misuse. The very weakness that ruined Tanavast is a part of Taravangian now, his might depends on keeping promises and playing fair. And we already know, based on what he's done with his own city, that at the end of the day our boy Vargo is an emotional man who would break his word to save people he loves. You can shove a lot of god into the man, but you can't take out the man.

Without the Spiritual Realm quest, Dalinar can't take up Honor, because Mishram stays imprisoned, and Odium doesn't become Retribution, therefore the other Shards continue to ignore the situation. There was no version of participating in the contest of champions that would be an actual victory, because another thousand-plus years of race war isn't victory. Maintaining a disgusting status quo isn't victory. Imagine if Dalinar and Navani had spent those ten days refilling Stormlight for the troops at the battle fronts. Hell, imagine they win. They hold the Shattered Plains, they don't lose nearly as many people at Azimir, perhaps they even keep Thaylenah. They get Alethkar and Herdaz back. Cool. So now half the world is human lands purging singers and half the world is singer land, probably enslaving humans. The Listener nation remains in exile. The Heralds keep going even more insane. Dalinar continues working with a Stormfather who's consciously deceiving him and probably more convinced than ever that it's right to do so. Odium begins the process of creating his Space Conquest Army, and the human nations can either watch in horror or blow the truce and attack, and it probably wouldn't take them long to decide they need to, because they'll be seeing singers get their hands on offworld tech and magic, building spacecraft or whatever, advancing and growing. The only thing that makes sense is to flip the table. This game sucks, we can't really win, and the longer it goes on the more pointless suffering there is.

I'm curious about all the human Radiants who will be living in conquered lands. Warlight is of Honor, so it does seem like they should be able to use it, but it's also apparently only going to be granted on a case-by-case basis to faithful followers of Retribution who lay out their spheres at midnight and pray. The simplest answer is that they'll be able to steal it, but not get it renewed. Meanwhile the Fused, the singer Radiants, and any human Radiants who are loyal to Retribution, will be full powered all the time. Renewing spheres nightly instead of every Highstorm will be a massive net gain in available Light. They could theoretically use their entire supply on a daily basis. I wonder, with the new weather patterns, will there still be something like the Weeping? A couple weeks of no storm?

I think it's about the level of expectation and externality of a promise, versus what Adolin thinks of as an oath. Oaths are a thing of formality, law, religion, cultural tradition, etc. They're meant to be binding and permanent, and upheld by outside forces like those laws, traditions, and supernatural forces like spren and Shards. A promise is something from one person, on behalf of himself, and he decides how much it means. And I can see how he could get to seeing that as a more meaningful version of the same general idea. There's a way to interpret some of Kaladin's character arc where a lot of his development and choices were made either as intentional trades for the power he needed to survive a moment, or as needing not to kill his spren. It got him to good places but it didn't have to. Adolin's a real authentic guy, and he doesn't like crem dung and manipulation, and part of him has to be looking at all these people "getting better" and being handed power in exchange for pledging themselves to supernatural forces and ideologies, and wondering how real any of these changes are, if they're all just trying to level up for the war. So he doesn't want that for himself or with Maya, he doesn't want to make an arcane pact with her. He wants to be a real dude, a real friend, himself no matter what. Within the structure of Oaths, that's a lot harder. A promise is different.

I believe at least some of the Fused, finally triumphant and freed from conflict to share their wisdom and productive capacity with their beloved singers, will undergo a process of healing not unlike what Kaladin and the Heralds hope to accomplish. There was that Husked One who seemed very excited to be farming. Raboniel expressed how much she would prefer to just do science all the time. I think that these burned out, exhausted beings are going to rediscover some joy and vitality by building a singer nation under a supportive God. And they're not going to want to start fighting again.

I think all of the Heralds are likely to be more understanding of a mortal man's troubles and mistakes than the average person. They've all killed a *lot* of people. Maybe tens of thousands each with their own hands and Surges. They know what it means to be drafted. Chana was nearly ready to ice her own daughter for being an up-and-coming threat, surely she'd understand someone killing a fully grown Shardbearer he didn't know on a battlefield.

Valor seems like the most obvious choice, since Dalinar has always acted with valor even when his actions were dark and twisted, and especially at the end when he gave up infinite power for the sake of others having a chance at a better world. His courage is legendary. On the other hand, Reason might approve of someone who learned to read and turn aside from violence in the pursuit of greater knowledge, so that he could make the most intelligent and farsighted choice possible at the crucial moment. The Sunmaker's Gambit is an act of reasoning, of understanding the situation well enough to look forward to distant potential outcomes. And since he committed that act as a divinity, it may have created a powerful Connection to the concept of Reason. My weirdest idea is that the God Beyond claims him. That would explain why he stretched into the Beyond, rather than being obviously protected or yanked away by another Shard. Dalinar is perhaps Roshar's first Prophet of the God Beyond, and may be the way that the recognition and worship of that being, whatever it is, spreads on a whole world.

We've seen the perpendicularity blast away Invested beings, the Fused in Shadesmar when Dalinar first summoned it. It didn't affect the humans and spren, but it drove back the Fused, which suggests to me that it was to do with their Voidlight. When this perpendicularity gets blown up or whatever by Anti-Stormlight, maybe a similar blasting effect would be felt by people with Stormlight in them?

Hey is this the first time Shallan has just straight up iced a guy with her 'illusions?' She can just unleash Radiant as a real lady in real armor with a real blade and kill people? That's insane

We haven't seen group teleportation besides the Oathgates up until now, right? Maybe that effect was a Voidbinding thing? I still don't know what that is, really. Of course if they were feeling really ballsy, there's always the other option. I made this work in a D&D game once. The Ghostbloods didn't teleport away. One of them crafted a Lightweaving that made them invisible, and the unsettling flash of color is the distracting flourish disguising a simple trick. They're still in the room.

It seems to be the case that a Lightweaver like Shallan can, somehow, use their art to genuinely change things about themselves for the purpose of an illusion. Maybe it's a Connection or Identity thing, but we've seen hints that she's reaching into the mystical to make her art. She designs Veil to be an experienced con artist, and somehow she is, even though Shallan at that point isn't. (Although she kind of is. She did rob Jasnah.)

The problem with Sadeas is that he was an open, active, traitorous threat to everyone, but his rank and Blade made him someone who could basically never face justice that wasn't being executed by someone like Adolin. Everyone raised this boy to be a Shardbearer Highprince, a man who rules through overwhelming force, so what else is a guy like that to do? You're literally standing toe to toe with an enemy Shardbearer who's saying plainly that he's going to try to kill your dad and conquer your kingdom. Why do we need a referee for this, why do we need paperwork and witnesses and someone selling chouta in the stands? Just shank the guy. Every hour you don't, he's working towards your destruction. I've been thinking a lot about the Fourth Ideal of the Windrunners. "I accept that there are those I can't save." Sometimes saving people means stopping a spear from going through them, or getting them some mental healthcare, or healing them with surgery. But sometimes 'saving' someone might mean convincing them to stop being such a vicious, destructive asshole. There are people you can't help. Sadeas seems to have been one of those people. Maybe even a Windrunner might eventually realize that murdering this man is the correct thing to do.

Oh sure. And it'd be a great twist, especially for Dalinar since he credits his brother with so much of his own growth and honor. Dalinar started reading a book that completely changed his life because of Gavilar, and he probably thinks Gavilar was thinking these kinds of thoughts on the night he died, while Dalinar was getting hammered and living in a blur of traumatized depression. He doesn't know that Gavilar was still every inch the miserable, selfish, cruel bastard. When Navani has started to say so, Dalinar doesn't want to hear about it. Facing his brother would be disturbing enough, but facing the reality of who his brother was, that's even more so.

I strongly suspect that something about Jasnah's ability to Soulcast at a distance makes her way, way more dangerous than most people have added up yet. The key here is Dalinar. Connect Honor's Bondsmith to an Elsecaller, open her up to infinite Stormlight. How large of an object, or area, or hey why not- concept can she impose her will on and change? Could she point to that twenty-acre plain your army is camped out on, and turn it into a deep hole? Or fire? Could she turn every drop of water in your city's supply into blood, like an angry Old Testament God? Being a living weapon of mass destruction is the kind of thing Jasnah would keep in her pocket. I think if it were something like additional teleporting or Realm-shifting power, she would already have been making use of it. No reason to send an emissary across half of Shadesmar with twenty useful people if you can just step him up to the front gates of Lasting Integrity, for example. But once you're laying waste to whole regions, everything's different. The moral calculus you've all been operating by goes right out the window. The impression you're trying to create in the minds of your subjects, as their new heretic Queen who's trying to upend a lot of old, important social orders? That's now tied to the fact that everyone knows you can erase them from the world. Jasnah wants to promote a more humanistic culture and be Alethkar's last monarch. So she doesn't want to be a planetary tyrant. But we know she's had genocide on the mind, at times. She probably wouldn't worry about it, if she didn't think it was an option.

One of the things that Zahel said to Kaladin is that a person needs to be Invested for their shadow to linger and get manipulated, if I remember right. And the Stormfather says to Eshonai that the reason he's able to take her on her brief exploration of the world is that she was Invested when she died. What we don't know is whether Gavilar managed to get Invested at all. And if he did, it wasn't in a way that let him do anything special about Szeth.

That sounds like an absolutely miserable ending for Kaladin. Alone, unique, burdened with endless responsibility, slowly becoming more and more a creature of raw emotion. No stews with his men, no woman, no family. I guess he could still have Sylphrena but what would ascension do to their bond? To be Odium would be the loneliness and unfreedom that Kaladin has always dreaded. Whether or not he'd be good at it, no matter how much good he could do, I would be so sad to see it happen.

I don't think Dalinar is a candidate at this point for a War shard. As of the later parts of RoW, he's sickened by war, and is prepared to bet his soul to end it, to say nothing of letting a bunch of countries remain under Odium's control. Anything to make the killing and destruction stop, even if it's just for some amount of time. He has sworn oaths to bring men together and do better than he has in the past. For Dalinar to become War, leaving aside all the magical nonsense that would have to happen for there to be a War shard, he would have to undo most or all of his character growth. Dalinar at 30 could be War. Dalinar at 60 wants no part of it.

Music, or at least patterns of sound, seem to be woven into the behavior of magic and reality in the Cosmere. It would not surprise me one bit to find that music is an essential part of what Wit is doing with his stories.

It's the use of art to convince spren (spirits, seons, whatever we're calling living bits of Investiture) to become something else. Yumi convinces generic spirits to become useful tools, and Painter convinces hostile spirits to become harmless objects. In both cases, a thing with its own will is shaped by human intent, by art, into something more suited for human existence.

Total War: Roshar could be incredible

This is an interesting question, because Nahel bonds seem to be based on things that the characters lack, or need, or don't yet understand about themselves. It's about growth and change. By my natural inclination, I'm an Edgedancer. I love the small and strange people of the world, and I would help them if I could. I want the healing power. I want to be graceful and kind. I care about what happens to the people that society and culture would leave behind. But that's already me. I don't need to learn it. So the question is, what don't I know about myself?

I've said it before, but I think Mraize's aviar has the power to make people accept Mraize's presence as normal, even though he's a distinctive and unusual guy. Some kind of Spiritual Connection manipulation, like Dalinar's power to learn the local language in an instant. The final straw for me was when he infiltrated Ialai's guard, as though she'd have some scarred up weirdo who brings his pet to work as a bodyguard. It seems like he can get any job at the drop of a hat, to the point of having various nations' military uniforms at hand. He's doing the kind of stuff you pull off with a 20 Charisma score in D&D. It ain't natural.

I wonder if Lift has any relation to Rayse

Also, people don't live off their Breath for the rest of their lives, Jewels says her family ate for a year after selling her Breath to a god.

I just find it horrifying that so many people wind up selling a precious and magical portion of themselves, the part that feels alive, that experiences color and music and joy, that puts the twinkle in a child's eyes. And where does all that life and beauty go? Thrown into the indolent necromantic abyss that is the Hallandren Court of Gods. Fifty two childrens' souls circumcised every year so some worthless mega-aristocrat can keep turning away the hopeful, drinking wine that doesn't affect them, eating food that doesn't nourish them, enjoying great art and then burning it, while poverty ravages the nation they "rule" from their playpen. Times the number of Returned there are. It sickens me. In Mistborn, the powerful burn metals or charge up their own attributes for later use. In Stormlight, power washes over the world like weather for anyone to use in a variety of ways. In Warbreaker, every time you see magic being used, you're seeing slightly emptier lives being spent like pennies.