earthexile

At this point most of the bridgemen are resigned to the fact that they will die horribly very soon. None of them have any hope of a future.

The Rhythm of the Tower sounds to me like Tool's Pneuma. It's based on this wonderful polyrhythm that weaves together and apart over and over again. The song is a masterpiece of mathematical and instrumental precision, balanced against prayerful lyrics praising humanity's spiritual nature. I think Navani would groove to it. The epic drum solo that starts a little after the six minute mark is especially amazing.

I was convinced that Dawnshards were terraforming fabrials

Gods in a lot of religions can be pretty damn whimsical. And remember, like Odium and all the other Shards, this would be the divine sense of Whimsy absent any of the context or balance of the rest of Adonalsium's aspects. Whimsy that doesn't care about Preserving, or Dominating, or Cultivating. A god of absolute wacky mayhem. And we have no idea what kind of person is holding it. They could be the greatest abstract artist in the universe, creating amazing things just because. They could be a capricious Kim Jong Un tyrant, the kind of guy who'd have his favorite foreign actors kidnapped so they could be forced to make him a movie at gunpoint. They could be a misanthrope who inflicts nonsense on the befuddled masses out of boredom. Whimsy would be a troubling god to try to build a civilization around.

I think Jasnah is yanking a big old rug out from under the Ardentia with her abolitionist plot. They have huge influence and power in Alethi culture, most notably in their control of Soulcasting, but also education, moral instruction, science and history and art, etc. Their religion is absolute garbage, encouraging things like wholesale civil-war slaughter as a noble expression of faith. If there's anything good in their teachings, it barely matters, because the highest ranked people in Alethi society just pay the ardents to do their religion for them. All the apparently intentional cultural handicaps placed on Alethi people don't apply to them. They are free to pursue their own interests and research, at the expense of their 'owners.' I think they get away with a lot of power and privilege by ostensibly being slaves. It's a very weird system.

I think Renarin saw that Taravangian could become Odium, and set him up to do so. Cultivation seems to agree that it was the best move. It seems like anyone with knowledge of the future would rather deal with Tarvangian-as-Odium than Rayse-as-Odium, which makes sense when we consider the sorry shape Rayse seemed to be in in RoW. Instead of a shell of a man shaped over seven thousand years into an avatar of pure hate, we now have an Odium somewhat reined in by the will of a man who wants to save the world.

There's an interesting irony to the 4th Oath. Accepting that you can't always protect everyone confers an extremely powerful ability to protect others.

In Mem's interlude, we see hints that Mraize collects uniforms from different militaries. I get the impression he's sneaking around behind a lot of peoples' scenes.

I have suspected for awhile that Mraize's bird somehow causes people to accept his presence and idiosyncrasies, despite how distinctive and weird he is. It seems like he can just show up anywhere and people willingly gloss over his strangeness. Hey Ialai, who's this middle aged weirdo with a slashed up face and an alien pet that he brings to work, that I've never seen in your honor guard before?

"I will bear the burden of sending my soldiers to their deaths for the greater goal." Windrunners are a military order, and the natural progression of a great soldier is to become an officer and a leader. That's why their resonance to to amass large groups of squires. There is a balance that a war leader must strike, between saving lives and spending them. That's the essence of Kaladin's struggle, as I see it. His Windrunners may have started as "Those who cannot protect themselves," but they aren't that anymore. They're superheroes now. It's no longer Kaladin's job to protect those men, he needs to make peace with leading them into danger.

I did not call anyone evil and I resent the implication that I mentioned the Borgias as an example of high level religious authorities living outside of the moral codes they demanded their peasants adhere to, because I'm anti semitic. Chill.

A lot of the Alethi Ardent stuff paints the picture that they, like the lighteyes they serve, also spend a lot of time doing their own thing and letting Vorinism be someone else's problem. It kind of reminds me of some of the cultures on Earth where fundamentalist religion is used to keep people in their place and mollify the underclasses, while the aristocracy and even the clergy are just going buck wild and politicking behind the scenes. Think Borgias, or the Saudi royals.

Also, Jasnah has assassins on the payroll, so the Highprinces might be right anyway.

Jasnah can convince stone that it should be smoke. It's hardly surprising that she thinks she can convince people to free their slaves. I mean rust, Alethi slaves already draw wages, albeit crappy wages. It shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Nobody carried a Blade unless they're using it, so I don't think we know whether Cord has one.

Economics is going to go through something of an overhaul with the presence of Lightweavers and Elsecallers in society. Soulcasting is the backbone of the Alethi war machine and therefore the economy, and before now it's been a very bottlenecked business controlled by the Alethi government and Vorin church. Now, any random neighborhood darkeye could theoretically open up Bungo's Soulcasting Company, turning peoples' trash and extra rocks into food and lamp oil. If there was ever a time to take the drastic step of ending slavery, it's now, before everyone adjusts to the new world and slavery's still an essential part of it.

If you've read some of the books but not all of Oathbringer, it's full of spoilers. There is a lot of art specifically depicting events from the big Oathbringer moments.

I don't think this is really a big problem, in terms of being something the Fused can set up. They have magic to alter their bodies and shape stone, and Voidlight probably heals and sustains life just like Stormlight does, and they're always full of it.

I believe the Dawnshards are terraforming fabrials. Roshar is covered with the evidence of massive Surgebindings- the Shattered Plain, Urithiru, the Windblades, the Purelake, and I kind of think Shinovar is a chunk of the world that was Soulcast to be a different world instead. All of these strange, unnatural places seem to have been changed to make them suitable for humans, one way or another, except for the Shattered Plain. I believe that's evidence that the Dawnshards can be weaponized, and thats why they were locked away.

I've been wondering if Shallan's unendurable shame for this story, and her next oath, might involve her birth-controlling herself and forgetting it. It seems like she could Soulcast a pregnancy away with a stray effort. Turn it into blood and decide that everything's normal. She'd probably have a really hard time squaring that with Life Before Death and Vorinism and such. But she's been telling herself, she won't create any more people...

Between Stormlight healing and Edgedancer support staff, taking fatal wounds isn't as final as it used to be. I bet a lot of Windrunners who lose their fights still manage to survive, and if they do, they're back to 100% real quick.

I've spent some time with psychedelic substances, and the descriptions of being filled with Stormlight always make me think of those times. The way the world becomes more vibrant, more alive, and you feel full of light and potential. You can see every blade of grass, you almost think you can see the wind. The world seems to sing and dance. Your mind works differently, more positive and active. And then when it's over, you're absolutely drained on every level. I can imagine a deeply depressed person becoming addicted to that sort of sensation. Personally I can only enjoy it once or twice a year, anything more and I think I'd start to have a real hard time with real life.

Elsecallers also have Transformation, which could be a big part of how this all works. Like in the Wheel of Time books, the magic users describe one way of connecting distant places as "making them so similar that they temporarily become the same place" or something along those lines. Maybe your location in the Physical is something you can Transform in the Cognitive.

I've been working on a theory that the Dawnshards are epic-scale fabrials, maybe it's one of them! Massive devices designed to terraform Roshar for human use.

Bridge Four should get themselves a Soulcaster fabrial. Picture flying high over an enemy force, transforming a raincloud into iron, then Lashing it down at six or seven times gravity.