king of nowhere

You make me notice, Evi sounds suspiciously like Elvis. That means her death was faked. Inside her coffin was the body of Paul McCartney instead

it's adonalsium, not andolisem

Maybe not (I don't know the law in that regard) but you certainly have a moral obligation there to at least make sure someone called the medics. If you drive by a deserted road and you see a car crash and you do not send an alert, you are guilty in my eyes, no matter what the law says. Let's not confuse ignorance of the law and ignorance related to a specific action. Ignoring the law does not let one get away, but ignoring the circumstances around your actions can and will. It's clearer with an example. Buying cocaine is illegal. If you buy cocaine and claim you did not know it was illegal, you are guilty. But! If you buy some flour, and it turned out that some drug dealer had hidden cocaine in that specific flour pack - his accomplice was supposed to buy that pack but you just got it by happenstance before - then you're not guilty. Because you had no way of knowing that specific pack of flour would contain cocaine. Now, of course you'll have to prove it at a trial - if you buy a pinch of flour for a lot of money from someone suspicious in a dark alley, nobody is going to believe you really thought it was flour. But if you actually didn't knew it, you're not considered guilty. As a real life occurrence, former italian prime minister Berlusconi had a big sex scandal several years ago, and one of his mistresses was underage. He claimed that he did not know it; and, to be fair, it could easily be true. She was 17 and she looked older, and he had so many escorts coming to his place that it is unlikely he asked each one of them for ID. Those called to testify all reported a very lax atmosphere, and some remarked that if they had wanted to bring a gun, they could have done so easily. So, while the whole business was a big blow to his political image overall, the judge ruled that he was innocent of paying an underage prostitute. Well, on the other hand, the parshmen now seem to want to kill them all for perpetrating that great evil. So, establishing that the humans do not deserve to be killed for keeping the parshmen as slaves is definitely something that needs doing. Because the one with whom kaladin talked? I didn't get much of a "well, let's fix this and move on" vibe from him. Incidentallly, I think if I went to him and tried to talk him into thosse arguments, he'd try to kill me, regardless of how well made or founded they are.

If we look at our own world, then I'd say there was slavery from well before. Slavery was practiced in practically any ancient society. Before modern morality set in, when the times were harsh and the only rule was that of survival, then enslaving a defeated enemy made a lot of sense. If you had the power to do it, attacking your neighboring tribe, take their land and kill them made a lot of sense, in that it raised your chance of survival. And if instead of killing everyone you made the survivors into slaves, it raised your chances even more. So, societies with slaves had more power than those without, and could use that to get more slaves. Furthermore, the human brain is made to think in tribes. My tribe, the enemy. In evolutionary terms, your tribe carries your genes, as there is a lot of interbreeding, while other tribes are your competitors. The idea that we should care for other tribes just as much as we do for our own is a modern construct that required a lot of effort to reach. Actions are right or wrong based on objective principles (objective, but still in part arbitrarily set by a society). Moral culpability depends on what the perpetrator knew at the time and his capability of determining the right action. Generally the law divides three instances: in the first one did something wrong but he had no way of knowing it. He is generally considered innocent in that case. In the second, one did not wanted to cause the wrong thing, but he did something else wrong that caused the bad thing to happen. It is the most common case when someone causes an accident through negligence (and I would argue that you shooting your wife's lover would fall in that category, because you should have asked what was going on before shooting). This case also would apply to humans on roshar if they never tried to figure out whether the parshmen were sentient. But we know they experimented and they never got any conclusive evidence that there was a human-like mind inside them. And the third case is when one intentioanlly does something wrong, which is probably the case of whoever created the parshmen in the first place; though there are extenuating circumstances, and if it was done in war as a way to stop an enemy, it also becomes morally justified. That's also a good point. Holding a race responsible for something that one of their members did in the past and was widely unknown by then, and completely unknown by now, is racist, big time. It would be like if I wanted to kill africans because one thousand years ago some of them took to piracy, raided european costal settlements and took slaves. It is important to note that while the awakened parshmen have a point in being angry, if they want to punish the humans they become wrong. I'd say if the humans wanted a fresh start but the awakened parshmen wanted to enslave humans in retribution, the humans would be fully justified in waging war to them. If the parshmen merely asked for monetary compensation, it's debatable. Certainly they are left stranded without resources but what they could carry on their back, they can ask at least for some equipment. On the other hand, human society just suffered major damage for the everstorm, and it lost what was a reliable and cheap workforce (think if our industrial robots stopped working) and it is unreasonable to assume that they'd also be able to pay huge money on top of everything else. Personally, I'd say that the parshmen should receive farmland in reparation. farmland was used to feed both humans and parshmen, and now the humans don't need to feed parshmen anymore, so they can spare some of it. parshmen need the capacity to make a livelihood, and having good land gives them just the chance. Some mines and other resources too. basically, split a corner of the nation where they can live, give it to them, and call it reparation. It's the best I can think of.

but did they produce offspring with humans? If there were half-parshendi kids around, I think it would have been known. I think men and parshendi hadn't produced an offspring in millennia. Possibly it required mateform, or maybe there's another reason, I just think it would be mentioned somewhere if there were offspring, as both shallan and jasnah investigated them to a good extent. human slavery, on the other hand, is quite different: alethi slaves must be paid a minimum wage, they have slave debts that they can try to pay, and they are free if they do. Now, there were evil people who abused the system on account of them having the slaves' documents for "safekeeping" and a slave accusing a master of cheating would never be believed in a tribunal, not without proof that the slave would have no way of obtaining. But from a phylosophical point of view, human slavery was entirely different from parshmen slavery. Human slaves were still considered humans under the law, while parshmen were cattle.

How about cattle? Animals are enslaved all the time, and most people are ok with it. Even if you belong to that small minority that would like to make do without any kind of animal slavery - which is a very small minority anyway, as most people don't see why human rights should go to animals - you'd have to admit that we may, just maybe, be able to make do without domesticated animals in our time only because of our technology. It is possible to eschew meat, but only with modern alimentation knowledge; people from the past would have no way of knowing exactly what kind of fruits and cereals they'd need to eat to get enough proteins. Even today, it is quite controversial if you can maintain a vegan diet without adverse effects. Food aside, before modern synthetics, leather and wool were just irreplaceable, and the labor force provided by horses and donkeys could not be replicated easily. Back in cavemen's time, when men's ancestors learned to hunt big game, it marked a jump in intelligence because they suddenly had more proteins. So, enslaving animals is necessary to survival of a medieval society. The question in whether enslaving the parshmen was acceptable or not, therefore, revolves around two points: 1) were parshmen no better than animals with a humanoid form? 2) had the other humans a chance to learn that? Now, kaladin's conversation make is seem that parshmen retained a glimmer of sentience; enough to figure out that they should not be enslaved. So no, it was wrong to enslave them. But as for question 2), which is a vital one, the answer is no. No, regular society had no way of understanding that parshmen were smarter, and therefore worthy of more rights, than pack animals. We've seen both kaladin and shallan try to interact with parshmen, and they get no smarter conversation than what I'd expect from my cats, if they could talk. except for rlain at the end, when he left bridge four, but keep in mind that rlain was dullform, not slaveform; he had troubles putting two words together, and he still was behaving more smartly than regular parshmen. So, considering all that, I come to the conclusion that enslaving the parshmen was wrong, but the humans cannot be considered guilty as they had no way of knowing the key informations that made the enslaving wrong in the first place.

At least not near the end of the weeping. Wait the first highstorm for that. He doesn't have to time anything. Highstorms travel westward, the everstorm travels eastward, they are bound to meet somewhere. He only needs timing if he wants them to meet somewhere specific. Maybe their parents died young of natural causes and brandon isn't mentioning them to avoid cluttering the narrative. there are already enough loose threads as it is. if gavilar had killed his parents to take power, I think someone would have remarked on it

if this was a sci-fi setting, I would call sheanigangs on the interbreeding, but when investiture is involved, there's really no telling.

This reminds me a lot the debate on whether it was right to use nukes in the second world war. And most notably, the fact that while a lot of debate was made afterwards, no debate whatsoever was made before. It was a secret weapon whose very existance was known only to a relatively small number of people, and most of those people didn't even see a moral question: they were in a total war, they had a new weapon, they used it and called it a day. Only later they saw moral problems. That's because when you are in that kind of war, you are kinda busy killing the enemy before the enemy kills you to consider moral implications. So, I would guess that whoever did the deed - probably a herald - didn't actually give it much thought at the time. It was a move that would cripple the enemy's ability to wage war, and that was it. And after the war, the parhsmen were enslaved because now we have all those dumb people lying around, doing everything they're told, and so why not? they were the enemy, after all. In every war, the winner exacts a tribute from the defeated. They are called "war reparations", but the principle is the same: it can be considered a mild form of indirect enslavement, because the defeated population has to pay the winning population, and the winning population can use that money to make the defeated population work for them; you sum the two, you see that the winning population can make the defeated population work for them for free. And there is little mercy for someone that just a few months before was doing his best to kill you. And so that's probably how it started, and after a few generations it became status quo and most people didn't even knew anymore the facts, so it kept going. And while the parshmen were certainly exploited, keep in mind that they themselves never objected to it, not even when encouraged. Shallan asked some parshmen if they wanted to be free, if they were unhappy with their treatment. She got no answers, and they seemed to be made uncomfortable from the questions. At this point, what was a human to do with parshmen? if left alone, they would be unable to survive. They needed to be fed, and since resources aren't that plentyful in a preindustrial society, making them work for it was perfectly justified. At this point you may want to leave them some free time, give them some pocket money... and they just spend their free time staring at a wall. their money, they have no idea what to do with it. So what then? So I'm also in the "modern rosharans did nothing particularly wrong" field. This certainly is the proper response to the situation, and I think it will be one of the oaths kaladin will have to find. Still, looking at the past and try to sift the right ffrom wrong is a useful exercice, if nothing else for the potential to learn a lesson. Anyway, you might want to revise your grammar and synthax. there are whole parts of your posts where I cannot make sense of what you're trying to say. I'd have downvoted for poor form, except that I'd also have upvoted it for the content and so I did neither.

dalinar was a reprehensible individual, but at least he was honest and no-nonsense. And he was honorable, in the way warlike societies measure it. Brandon did a good job showing how the bloodthirsty warlord had in him the seeds that would become today's dalinar. Also, am I the only one for whom the most distressing part of "stab a man with his own knife, washes knife in the wine, then uses knife to cut meat" was that after washing the knife in the wine he did not wipe it with a tablecloth? kaladin is not being good at arguing. He should say that the people who actually enslaved the parshmen died thousands of years ago, and everyone living on roshar now has no idea what went on with it; they were born in the system and so they see it as the natural state of things, because the human mind is adaptable. Modern people are abusing the parshmen out of ignorance more than anything else. He should also say that war is rarely the best way to solve disputations. From his time as a soldier, kaladin should have that figured out long ago. I think realizing that stuff will be part of his next radiant oath. It also ties well with the questions he was asking after the battle of the tower, which basically amount to "was it right to help one side over the other?". I think kaladin is going to find answers here. Shadolin keep getting cuter, but I would like to see adolin's pow for once. I don't remember having a single one of those, and I think brandon is doing a disservice here: I get that shalllan is the most important character, but we got tons of her viewpoints anyway; showing adolin's perspective for once isn't going to hurt. Unless there are details we should not know yet?

you put ambition twice, both in cognitive and spiritual aside from that, you may be up to something. It would certainly make sense, given how magic works in the cosmere, if shards were grouped like that. And if they were also paired as opposites

On the other hand, I wonder what exactly happened to Aimia. We know it was "scoured", but we have no idea how it was possible to destroy a whole race of beings as powerful as the sleepless, and why nobody tried to live in the empty land afterwards.

There was a huge city where now are the shattered plains. It was a plot point in WoR: the whole place is made of crem-covered buildings. The nation of natanatan had its capital there. There must be good defensive natural features favoring that. In europe french and germanic people had been battling around the river Rhine from before the roman empire, but the river has always been the border for most of its course. Same for hyspanic and french people around the pyrenees. Sometimes a natural division works well enough that borders tend to cling to it. Bigger, nigh-impassable features like the hymalaia or the sahara are an extreme version of this, though in that case there isn't even a real border between two countries but rather a nobody's land

I am with Yata on this, there is no hard limit but the law of physics killing it at some point. And it would also take a long time to grow because it would have to eat and digest all the extra mass first. In general, a superhuge size doesn't give many benefits.

it could be a good twist, especially in the light of the Letter. Hoid's correspondent was worried that their actions may end upfreeing odium, which had been contained for millennia so far. He may have been right.

It's been asked and answered already: it's not important. I think the missing necklace was a sort of foreshadowing, meant to increase the tension before the duel

I just realized something. I missed a few pages of conversation, but nobody mentioned it that I saw. The shin shamans have "ways" of recovering honorblades. We don't know what those ways are. We only know that szeth is certain the blade will be recovered after his death. It could be something as mundane as a good spy network, but szeth referred to it with a certainty that hinted at supernatural means. So... the honorblade could disappear at any time, for all we know. It probably won't be just gone when dalinar checks back for it, as it would be terribly anticlimatic after all the effort of recovering it. but it is yet another element in the mixture. Soon team radiants will have to deal with the shin

It is also possible that there were two murders in that place, one by stabbing, one by strangling. Seems the place where murders nearby aren't that rare. I think brandon realized all the politicking would bore some readers, and he tried to dress it in colorful scenes to make it more appealable. And it was masterfully done.

So, many interesting tidbits here. The most important question, however, is the following: what the heck do hornheaters put in their drinks!?!?!?!? In WoR, when Rock suggest the bridgemen try horneater lager, they say it melts their teeth. Alcohol alone will not do that; the only thing I can think that dissolves teeth is acid, and even coca cola, at pH 2.5, won't deal significant damage unless you drink liters of it daily. Still in WoR the barmaid said they don't have it because it melts their mugs. Now, the only thing I know corroding glass is either a very strong base, but we're talking pH > 14, or hydrofluoric acid, which is more toxic than cyanide. And now we're being told that it is also a very effective paint remover, and that more than a few small cups will kill a normal person. This resembles a mixture of organic solvents, like turpentine. This chemist would give something to have a bottle of horneater liquor and full access to his old university lab. On a side note, I liked Dalinar describing his young self as "one in a long line of idiots given the ability to kill people too easily ". It pretty much sums up the opinion I got from his flashbacks too. Why not? She can heal from practically anything. She's merely making use of it. Reminds me a bit of wayne and his "spoiled tomato" method of infiltration. Incidentally, if people think you're unhinged and dangerous, they are less likely to resist you. Unless they are really motivated and willing to risk getting hurt, but that was unlikely. and with stormlight shallan wasn't in danger anyway. She did what she had to. More than her family is at stake, and she could not know how events would have unfolded when she started them anyway Could be some kind of foreshadowing, dalinar out of stormlight using the painrial... Dalina'r boon CANNOT be battle prowess. We've seen him in flashbacks from way before he went to the nightwatcher, he had more than enough prowess unaided at the time. On roshar they are barely starting the scientific revolution. Their scientist are amateurs, because their society lacks the necessary experience and cultural background to form professional ones. They don't know yet the dangers associated with it. I was thinking of a similar reason there.

Some producers are getting interested. Brandon has sold movie rights for his books many, many times. So far, it never progressed past the planning stage, but there's a fair chance that eventually it will. So, we may see it. The most promising of those projects involves the stormlight archive and was later discussed here

And that's the least of it: in this thread we have "reached the conclusion" that may aladar is both vivenna and the copycat killer!

Or, you know, all these could happen: kaladin and adolin discover themselves bisexual and form a stable triangle with shallan and each other. No, I don't think it's ever going to happen, but it certainly would solve every problem

So far, almost every bonded spren we've seen was the gender the radiant was attracted to. kaladin a female spren, shallan a male, lift a male, jasnah a male, yn a female... dalinar is bonded to the stormfather, but that's quite a peculiar case. so somebody came up with the theory that renarin was gay because he has a male spren. Now, it is possible that the theory is just plain wrong and the spren genders we've seen so far were coincidences, or it is possible that glys is a female spren. but let's say there's at least a passable chance that renarin is gay, so may becoming his love interest is... well, no less unlikely than before, since every theory in this thread is very unlikely to start with.

Well, I bet Vivenna would be able to engage and extended fight with a trained soldier with help from awakened clothes. So there we go: May Aladar is BOTH Vivenna and the copycat murder. There can be no other rational explanation

or maybe she's just a red herring. I can totally picture brandon looking at this thread while steepling his fingertips and performing an evil laughter. seriously, I doubt we have enough ground to say much.