Wit Beyond Measure

Warning: This post contains a single Stormlight 5 prologue spoiler, masked, and potentially significant spoilers should these theories prove accurate. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. Just as the Stormfather provides Stormlight and surgebinding powers to all of Honor's children, Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM) became the Voidmother proving Voidlight and voidbinding powers to all of Odium's children, all of her Singers, during the False Desolation. One BAM to Connect them all One BAM aligned them One BAM to draw them all And with her Voidlight bind them One gem severs the whole One gem divides them One gem rips away souls And then the darkness finds them In the Land of Roshar Where the Singers die And Listeners live We'll explore much relevant history leading up to and beyond BAM's imprisonment (see Coppermind's BAM and False Desolation articles for supporting canon references) and theories explaining the magical science behind what happened with BAM, her Singers, and related events. BAM-SINGER CONNECTION HISTORY The lead up to and fall out from BAM's gemstone capture includes: Long, long ago, Odium unmakes 9 spren who fight during many desolations in which BAM serves as highprincess and commander of Odium's forces, The last desolation comes where all but Taln survive, Taln holds Odium and his Fused on Braize all by himself (spanning a total of 4500 years), During the long imprisonment of Odium and the Fused, BAM somehow gains the ability to pull Voidlight into the Physical Realm and to Connect herself with all the Singers of Roshar, a feat previously only managed by Odium, making herself a little god (RoW 847-848), Even though Odium and the Fused are still trapped on Braize, BAM's newfound powers give her the ability to provide Singers with forms of power including all the Regal forms plus stormform, which allows BAM to wage war against the Knights Radiant during the False Desolation, with no end in sight, The Listeners, tired of endless war and manipulation from both Odium and Honor, "cast off everything - including our very forms - to find freedom," which severs their Connection to BAM (RoW 159), Honor's long, slow death begins around this time, The Knights Radiant form a special Strike Team to imprison BAM inside a gemstone in order to end the False Desolation, Because BAM is a little god and holds strong Connection to the spren and souls of every Singer in Roshar except the Listeners, these tethered souls and spren get sucked along their Connection to BAM, ripping out pieces of their souls, removing both their Identity and Connection, and possible damaging or destroying their gemhearts in the ripping process, Somehow even Honor and Cultivation's spren and the Sibling get damaged by BAM's imprisonment, though to a much smaller degree that perhaps signals a much smaller Connection between the Voidmother and "all who belong to Roshar," affecting the Sibling's abilities to make Towerlight and crippling Urithiru (RoW 621), Close to dying, Honor cannot help the Sibling, Urithiru, or the Knights Radiant, The Battle for Feverstone Keep begins before BAM's imprisonment since the enemy still pushes for that ground and parshmen are anything but pushy (OB 809), BAM's imprisonment, if during the Battle for Feverstone Keep, would have caused all fighting Singers to experience excruciating pain and then simultaneously transform into docile, mindless parshmen, All Singers Connected to BAM become parshmen through a break in Identity and Connection; only the Listeners escape because of their previously broken Connections to her, Hundreds of Windrunners and Stonewards at Feverstone Keep become the first to abandon their oaths en masse as Honor says, "they are the first" (OB 547), Two thousand years later, the Everstorm travels to Roshar through the Cognitive Realm and is brought through to the physical realm, and The Everstorm restores both Identity and Connection by repairing the Singers’ souls and possibly their gemhearts. SCIENCE-MAGIC THEORY BEHIND CONNECTION, CAPTURING SPREN, AND THE SINGERS' SOULS From Newton, we know: Force = mass * acceleration From Jasnah (OB 1179), we know that "concentrated Stormlight has a faint mass to it." So the more we accelerate the physical mass of the Stormlight, the stronger the physical force we have acting on the Stormlight and anything Connected to and by the Stormlight. How do we move or accelerate Stormlight? Navani's lecture on fabrial mechanics includes details on sucking Light into a gemstone in order to trap a spren inside a gemstone. We first lure a spren into close proximity to a gemstone with something it likes (e.g., flames for flamespren) and by using the type of gemstone it prefers (RoW epigraphs, Chapter 1). Interestingly, we already know the type of gemstones preferred by each Order of Knights Radiant (and each associated herald). Moash's knife had a large sapphire gemstone hilt that gave a subdued glow after capturing Jezrien's spren-soul (OB 1205), which makes me wonder if the gemstone in Leshwi's spear (RoW 80) that drained Kaladin's Stormlight and nearly sucked out his soul (RoW 101) was sapphire, as well. The first questions we must ask ourselves would be 1) what would BAM be attracted to and 2) what kind of gemstone would she prefer? To answer the second, maybe the Voidmother would prefer a heliodor, as the Stormfather would. As for the first question, she appears to like war and commanding, and she has shown particular interest in Feverstone Keep (OB 809). One might imagine Melishi, the False Desolation's Bondsmith, and her Strike Team showing up at the Battle for Feverston Keep with a large and perfect (or nearly perfect) heliodor gemstone, knowing that BAM would be nearby commanding her troops and in search of something in the area that interested her. Navani's next stages in capturing a spren (RoW epigraphs, Chapters 2-5) would be filling the gemstone to around 70% full of Stormlight (Voidlight in BAM's case) and then quickly sucking that Stormlight out to create a vacuum that will suck in a nearby spren. Suppose you take a brown paper lunch sack and suck the air out. It collapses, right? The same would be true of a Ziploc bag. By collapsing to reduce the volume, the bag equalizes the pressure. But what about something that has a rigid structure like a gemstone, especially a gemstone that doesn't leak? If you suck all the air out of a glass, for example, you'd suction that glass to your face since you've created a vacuum of extremely low pressure. Because air and Light will always seek the lowest pressure possible, they'll get sucked into a vacuum until the pressure outside of the gem roughly equals the pressure inside the gem. Since volume is inversely proportional to pressure, the larger the gemstone, the lower the pressure (where the lower pressure goes the stronger the vacuum becomes). And finally, the tighter the seal, the less a gemstone will leak and the stronger the vacuum will be. So large, perfect gemstones make the perfect traps for these gods. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how does the spren gets sucked in along with the Stormlight? That's where Connection comes in. When the Stormfather gives Stormlight to his children - his spren and his surgebinders - an invisible cord of Stormlight will Connect that spren or that Radiant to the Stormfather. The same can be said for the Voidmother's children - BAM's spren and her Singers: they're all Connected to their mother by a physical force from the Voidlight she provides. Let's say you have a massive gemstone and a larkin quickly sucking a ton of Light out of your stone. The gemstone will quest out seeking to replace all or almost all of the light it just lost with a powerful force. Once it captures a nearby Stormlight Connection cord, the spren will be drawn in along with the Stormlight the spren is tethered to. Yes, the Connection is mostly spiritual, but there is a small physical Connection, too (because the Stormlight Connecting them has a small mass, as Jasnah said, and mass * acceleration is force, as Newton said). If we yank hard enough on that tether, the spren cannot help but be pulled in. We see this with spren pulled into fabrials, yes, but also with human and Singer souls, tethered to their home planet by their Connection to the Investiture there. We saw Jezrien's spren-soul sucked into Moash's sapphire knife and Kaladin's soul nearly sucked into Leshwi's gemstone-capped spear, both of which had metal that specifically draws in Stormlight including the Stormlight cords of Connection. Let me digress for a smidge to explain that Identity and souls are nearly synonymous. For instance, the Fused (where each Fused is the soul of one ancient Singer fuzed together forever to a surgebinding spren, granting surgebinding powers and immortality) maintain their Identities - and most of their intellect, knowledge, and memories - even though they constantly lose the rest of their bodies because Identity is stored in the soul. Connection for the traditional Singer bond appears to be stored in their gemhearts since that is where their spren and probably their souls reside. Now I said all that to say this: this, this, this is how Singers' souls were ripped away, how their Identity and Connection were stolen, and how they became mindless parshman slaves, by having parts of their souls that were tethered to their Voidmother ripped free, likely destroying their gemstones in the process, as BAM and all her many Connections were sucked into her gemstone prison. With Singer souls damaged, they were not quite soulless and mindless nothings but nearly so. And with Singer gemhearts damaged or destroyed, the parshmen lost their abilities to bond any other spren or to hear the rhythms of Roshar inside their gemhearts. The Listeners were spared, maintaining their Identity and their abilities to Connect with other spren because they had previously severed their Connections to BAM before her imprisonment. TRAVEL & WORLDHOPPING We'd be remiss if, while we're here with Connection, we didn't speculate on travel and worldhopping. Connection tethers Invested individuals to their home planet, not letting them escape lest they rip out part of their souls, their Identity, and destroy their Connection. But of course there is a way around this problem, a way out, because this is Sanderson, after all. The remainder of the post includes a little speculation about how off-world travel may be possible based on what we know of Connection above and a single spoiler from the Knights of Wind and Truth prologue that gives a bit more detail regarding the quote above. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. I've kept all non-Stormlight cosmere spoilers out of this post.

Just over 2 weeks ago, my eldest started Stormlight!!! We're more than halfway in, now, and she wants us to fly across the country to do Dragonsteel 2024 for the Knights of Wind and Truth release. We would love to propose a panel. Are there submissions? If so, where and approximately when (for 2024) would I look to find them? Would your best guess be that KoWaT would be released before, after, or during Dragonsteel 2024? Thank you!!!

Thanks, Treamayne, for the insights on why other shard mergers will likely not be so unstable: that makes so much sense! I love the WoB quotes. alder24, I forgot the mention our 17th Shard organization! I meant to. Yes, Wayne's 17 references could definitely be pointing to a future alliance or membership. At the same time, the 17th Shard group name could be the kind of double-ironic foreshadowing we see with the dead Survivor's survival hoax in The Well of Ascension: a hoax no longer.

Mistborn Era 2 counts in base 16 with "sixteens of years," "sixteens upon sixteens of cars," and "sixteens of feet," all crafted from the premise that there are 16 base metals. Wayne's fascination with 17 instead of 16, however, in the "Lost Metal" particularly drew my interest. Wayne chooses 17 for his scale of 1 to 17, instead of 16: And then he keeps his scale at 17, despite Marasi's reaction to the number: Hoid surprisingly accepts Wayne's live rat in trade for his precious harmonica after Sir Squeekins escapes from Wayne 17 times: And finally, Wayne uses 17 bags of bendalloy to become the surprise hero of Era 2, where Harmony thinks 17 will be enough: Seventeen. Now, if you're a normal, well-adjusted reader sauntering through these passages, you probably just keep on moving. But I have never been a normal, well-adjusted reader, particularly after Sanderson took hold of me. There is always another secret, and Sanderson leaves the best crumbs. Even though I'm reasonably sure Wayne's 17 is meant to grab our attention and point to a future secret, what I don't know - what I really have no idea about - is what Wayne's 17th secret truly is. My best guess points to one more base metal: 17 base metals instead of 16. Does this mean we also have one more god? One more shard? A hidden one? The new shard of Harmony? But Harmony as the 17th shard doesn't really seem to fit, in my opinion, because there will likely be lots of mergings of shards in our journey to putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, to a new Adonalsium, which is where I think the whole cosmere is headed. And are we truly done with Wayne? Most of me cannot fathom Wayne sticking around or ascending, and yet part of me marvels at how blatantly our tale's Blatant Barm beginning mirrors the ending: "It gets better," Wayne's Ma tells us, "because the ending has a surprise." Jak defeats his villain by being swallowed by the beast and then choking the beast from the inside as he goes down with him, both ending in tragedy. Sound familiar? But there is always another secret with Sanderson, the promised surprise ending. Jak "sauntered out down its tongue—like it was some fancy mat set outside a carriage for a rich man" (where Wayne describes himself as "a fancy rich guy now"). Another interesting observation, which may or may not be related, is how atium (Ruin's body) and lerasium (Preservation's body) disappear as Preservation and Ruin disappear while Harmony emerges just as ettmetal, also known as harmonium (Harmony's body), emerges. The only known method for separating harmonium back into atium and lerasium occurs by applying trellium (Autonomy's body), with limited success. Is this metal splitting a foreshadowing of how Autonomy herself will eventually split Harmony back into Ruin and Preservation, in Era 3 perhaps? Or is this a metaphor for something that already started to happen with limited success? Miles Hundredlives describes trellium as "the final metal" (Lost Metal pg 58). I'm not sure what that means but it seems significant. Wax describes trellium as extremely hard and brittle (Lost Metal pg 86), where surely hard and brittle describe both the metal and the shard itself. "Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends." (A Clash of Kings, GRRM) Harmonium, on the other hand, is "pliable" (Lost Metal pg 86) and so "highly unstable" that the metal must be kept in a protective oil to keep it from reacting to the very air (Lost Metal pg 89). Just. Like. Harmony. Oh, I hate that for Sazed. He's so good, a wonderful person to be a vessel. But no one would be able to hold Harmony for long by its very nature. Will all merging shards be highly unstable until we reach back to a new Adonalsium? Is a 17th shard needed as glue to unify the shards permanently and make our new Adonalsium truly eternal?

Our eldest daughter has finally been convinced to read a Sanderson! She's been intimidated by the length, so I tried to get her to start with Skyward without luck. But my having a hard copy of Tress that was completely gorgeous and hearing me rave about the book, our artsy daughter decided to dig in. I had told her that my favorite character (Wit, of course) had a major role but not that he was the narrator. And the first comment she had was how much she adored the narrator! She was confused when I said that he was my favorite, though. She was like, his name is Hoid. And now she's all, are they joking about the talking rats? And, I hope this little rat sticks around. Love, love, love being able to share Sanderson and Wit with her!

If I were a movie producer wanting to dip my toe in some surefire Sanderson that would 1) have broad appeal, 2) cover a short lifespan, 3) and whet the world's appetite for all things cosmere, this story is the perfect place to start! As a movie or a 4-6 hour mini-series, the budget would need to be large, yes, but with a Princess-Bride-like appeal to all ages and the Sanderson name, very little would be as guaranteed as this deal. When done well, can you just imagine how perfectly this series could promote future cosmere stories? I picture Hoid narrating the tale on a different planet to perhaps a well-known character or species, and his facial expressions as he relays the bits about his cabinboy days - oh, please make this happen!

Ah, since the Eye was a seal of the Dark One's prison, I'd assumed that it was co-located with the Dark One's prison. I must be wrong. I have forgotten so much from the WoT books, the price of being just a casual fan, I suppose!

Cytonic spoilers on my guess on a Lift-Spensa encounter: ******************************************** My Reactions: My overall reaction was that this novella was the best of a great set of novellas! I think I prefer the novellas to the novel, actually, and I heartily agree that the novellas should be merged with the novel if made into a TV series. I'm not certain the first two books would have enough for an entire season each, but perhaps they could be merged into one season. I'd still love to see more sprinklings of the Detritus gang in the Starsight portion. Heck, I'd have loved to see that in the books! I squealed with delight at the "Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time"! It's as if the fox-gerbils are overcompensating for the size of their beings with the size of their proper nouns. My favorite of their proper nouns is only five words, though, instead of the full dozen: Big Enough to Kill You. Gran-Gran must have much the same superior comms skills that Jorgen has since she was able to listen and hear Cobb (a noncytonic) and the cytonics trapped inside the Nowhere, neither of which Alanik could hear. I wonder if Gran-Gran has mindblades, too, but I believe that's a separate skill. I screamed again when Jorgen manifested mindblades - so awesome! I adored every single time Boomslug said boom. I screamed yet again when the entire freaking planet hyperjumped. I paused immediately and asked my husband what would happen to two planets in extremely close proximity to each other, knowing the effect of the moons on tides (which Sanderson kindly reminded us of in this book). Tsunamis, for certain, but gravity comes from huge bodies like moons and planets, so I was thinking they might gravitate together and collide. (That's before I got to the part about planetary gravcaps, so Sanderson was thinking along the same lines!). It wasn't until later I recalled my favorite Bible expert's theories that Mars' cycle used to bring it within spitting distance of Earth every 54 years (hyperbole, but close enough to make out and describe the two moons of Mars with the naked eye), which is where we got lore of Mars as the god of war and so much fear of Mars in the ancient world. Such near drivebys would have been accompanied by meteors, earthquakes, and of course land tides, experts said. And the Mars driveby was likely not nearly so close as Detritus was to the Den of Everlasting Light Which Laps Gently upon the Shores of Time. ****************************************** I loved, loved, loved that we got hundreds of new taynix along with new taynix colors! Comm (purple with orange), mindblade (red with black), and hyperjump (yellow with blue): all of which we already had and knew but needed more Inhibitor (blue with green): found on a Superiority ship on Wondering Leaf Unknown cytonic powers: Wrinkled gray with black & white spines Unknown body-color (wrinkled gray, too?) with fading rainbow spines "Strange" mostly blackish but iridescent blue under control room lights Teal with pink (smaller in size) Since mindblades spines are black, especially the 3rd unknown but perhaps the 1st, as well, could be weapon slugs. I'd love for the rainbow slugs (2nd unknown) to be multi-talented with especially diverse cytonic abilities. And I'd love for the teal and pink (4th) to have some sort of cuddly and cute skillset. The black turning blue (3rd one) reminds me of shows like CSI and Dexter where blood shows up blue under their special lights and sprays. That's fairly ominous, but it might not be the intent. I'm thinking that human cytonics are much like the slugs but without the obvious and helpful color-coding. Spensa and Alanik are hyperjumpers while Jorgen and Gran-gran are comm. Jorgen is also a mindblade. I'm sure some could be inhibitors if they could figure out how. And, like the rainbow taynix, the cytonics can be a jack-of-all-trades if they practice, train, and exercise long enough.

The Eye of the World, which is where Rand and Moiraine ended and is also the Dark One's prison, was created in Lews Therin's time using 100 male and female Aes Sedai, which is why the symbol had both yin and yang. These Aes Sedai likely used the "unbreakable" cuendillar to seal the prison, as well, but the cuendillar broke.

Was Lews Therin called the Dragon Reborn in the Age of Legends or by Moiraine? I'd be okay with him being the DR in the Age of Legends because he wasn't the first Dragon, for sure, and so was the current Dragon Reborn for that age just as Rand is for this age. But yes, Moraine would do better to describe Lews Therin as the previous Dragon. Did you notice Lews Therin's ring that covered four fingers? And how "the Dark One" has the same ring? Do you reckon that's the male Aes Sedai ring? Favorite Moments: 1) Moiraine: She was everything that I wanted to be: strong, controlled, precise, … terrifying. 2) Min getting the heck out of dodge 3) Perrin: How can we sit just here and do nothing?!!! Loial: I’m standing. 4) Perrin: What can we do? Uno and friends: Here’s an ax. 5) The horn! 6) Seanchan!!

I'm loving Episode 5! Spoilers from the new episode since it was only released an hour+ ago.

Definitely felt an Arturo-Alanik vibe! Am I the only one? He was watching me quizzically, like he didn’t understand why I was hesitating. “You’ll be right here,” I said. He looked surprised. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice barely a breath. “I’ll be right here if you need me.” I was a cytonic. With the inhibitor gone, I was in power here. I didn’t need some human watching my back. --p. 178 Arturo put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me outside. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice. “You’re shaking.” My whole body was trembling, and though I tried to get a grip on myself I couldn’t make it stop. “I’m fine,” I said. “The hell you are,” Arturo said. “What’s wrong?” --p. 190 Saying that out loud steadied me a little. Arturo dropped his hand from my shoulder. I wished he hadn’t, because that was steadying me too. --p. 192 Arturo came up beside me, staring up through a skylight at the battleship that was breaking into pieces above us. --p. 200 “I told you he wasn’t going to turn on you,” Arturo said. He leaned against the corridor wall, watching me. --p. 203 Arturo at least had been open to talking about his former girlfriend when we spoke before. Though the idea of asking him about human mating rituals felt…disorienting. --p. 205

The sole narrator typically has plot armor because if the narrator dies, the story ends midsentence and we never know if she's really dead. I guess there could be exceptions if they cheat and add a second narrator at the very end.

Love, love, love, love, love!!! I am actually blown away by how much I love the series and surprised by how much most dislike. That said, though, for those expecting television to closely follow the books and keep all the favorite moments, I can understand why they'd be disappointed. Good adaptations are never very close to the books unless, like Pride and Prejudice, say, the book is 250 pages long. I'm not happy with the politically correct female edition to the Dragon Reborn candidacy because it creates all kinds of logic issues that have already been mentioned. Spoiler through Episode 4, which has been out for a few hours because they release at midnight GMT!!! (That's 6 PM CST and even earlier for those out west.) We discovered this by accident at the end of Episode 3 when it just let us go to 4. We will get the good side of Mat, but it may take a while. My eldest called him the prick, but I defended him. (That's another thing I absolutely adore! I've been begging my eldest, the only other reader in the family, to read Sanderson for aaaaages, and she wouldn't. So I'm finally getting to share something that will hopefully make it into Sanderson territory with them all: husband, eldest, and youngest. They all absolutely love it, too! We watched all four practically back-to-back tonight. I insisted on bathroom breaks and the youngest complained!) I absolutely adore the landscapes, sweeping vistas, idyllic countryside, storybook villages, cinematography, gorgeous lighting, and scenes that occasionally bleed into each other. I loved many of the costumes, as well. The full clothing color thing is really helpful to newcomers, though it did make me wonder how someone in all one shade could so easily pretend not to be Aes Sedai. I believe that both story and characters are extremely well developed and similar enough to the original storyline and characters to please me well. All four of us are very eager for Episode 5. I hope the eldest, who is visiting from college (and why I'm just now watching the first three), won't make us wait for Christmas break to watch Episodes 5 and 6 with her. My eldest is shipping Nynaeve and Lan hard, and she's sussed out that Rand is the Dragon. And she's calling Perrin wolf-boy. They are laying the groundwork well. ETA: I forgot about the intro! We all loved the intro, too, with the colors of the ajahs being woven together in a tapestry. Not only was it gorgeous, but the loom itself reinforces the central theme that "the wheel weaves as the wheel wills." The intro starts with the threads of time being pulled apart and moves on to some individual threads and then reaches the massive loom where the threads of time and the threads of people and their life trajectories intersect and weave together to form the tapestry of this new age.

Loved: References to Elysium and Jason Write and his blindness and his little bell pin The reveal that Chet was actually M-Bot's pilot and then the reveal that Chet wasn't actually M-Bot's pilot - screamed both times. I realized Chet was the pilot when he gave his age, but I didn't quite see the delver thing coming even though I knew something would be coming with him. Doomslug saying that her reality ashes were poop and thinking of all the times Chet had fondly held and sniffed them!!!! The reveal that Jason Write's silvery "sphere" was his Baby AI and was actually a Baby Delver!!! I screamed, again, realizing the truth and what that meant for M-Bot the moment the sphere's spines and tunnels were described. "I melted a little. Girlfriend? Was that how he thought of me? I mean, we’d kissed. Once. But…I didn’t think it had been formalized or anything. I hadn’t even brought him any dead orc carcasses, which I was pretty sure was the way the stories said to show a guy you wanted to go official." (Fun Fact: Just as Spensa is the current pirate champion, I was once the Grand Champion in a carcass show. I have a trophy and everything! Alas, not orc carcasses, though.) “You fly like a sunset, Spensa,” Hesho whispered. “Like a living glimmer of light escaping the horizon at twilight’s last moment.” Favorite Theory: Since reality icon ashes, created from taynix in the edges of the Nowhere, humanized DelverChet, could Spensa and Jorgen bring in hundreds of taynix to create mountains of ash to use to humanize the delvers? The key to reconciling with the delvers, as the memories have hinted, will be Spensa growing in touch and radiating her softer side, which she started to do at the end by accepting delver pain. Using the ashes could be a way of softening delver hearts, too, in a first step to finding common ground. Overall: Nothing will ever live up to the perfection of Skyward, but I will be very put out if all the major characters I love fail to have significant and cohesive roles in Defiant. The greatest weakness of the 2nd and 3rd books is having to start from scratch character building without relying on pre-existing characters from the series.

Honor died, but we have several clues in RoW indicating that he may be re-emerging. We've known since OB that Dalinar has taken up Honor's perpendicularity. Rayse believes Dalinar ascended, but I don't think Dalinar is the one ascending, actually. Like ... like ... like Odium. Everywhere we see red and gold together, it is Odium. Perhaps this is merely an indication that Kal is close to becoming a Child of Odium at this particular moment, howling after losing Teft and then these eyes. At the same time, Odium-red eyes have previously always been caused by a bond with voidspren, which seems not to be the case here. And why would soldiers fear a child of Odium, like themselves? Instead, perhaps these colors point to Kaladin's coming ascension. Honor's robes are gold, as well. Moash's continual insistence surrounding Kaladin's immortality certainly points to ascension. Finally, Tara-Odium notices a "growing" and "verdant" power, which is clearly pointing toward Cultivation. However, just as the back of RoW falsely implies that Navani will be a Lightweaver with its half-dozen references to truths and lies, I believe this most obvious allusion to Cultivation is not the one actually intended. Verdant can also mean brand new and budding. Growing points to something new.

Audible is working but I don’t believe it ever downloaded, just streaming. But working is working! Not a spoiler: Barely into Part 2, and I’ve decided that when Veil cheats on Adolin with Kaladin, Adolin won’t be too broken up. He’ll have realized he’s gay by then and come out of the metaphorical closet. Not the literal closet, mind. That boy will never abandon his wardrobe!

Is anyone else having an issue with the Audible version? I submitted a help email to Amazon Audible. It says 0 parts and so will download nothing! The Kindle version works without a problem.

Love. Love, love, love, love, love!!! I think I may have salivated more than Veil at all the theories, ideas, research, and connections that Mraize inspired in me in this chapter! I'm going to talk a lot about all of the prologues, too, because that's where we tend to get the most info on what Gavilar was up to and who his cronies were. Gavilar had two meetings the day he died: the first was with the Heralds Nale and Kalak, and the second was with five others - two soldiers of whom one was Amaram, two females of whom one was almost certainly Ialai, and an old dude in robes. I'm 75% certain that the other female was Aesudan because, like Amaram, she was easily lured by the enemy, and there is another huge reason that I'll get to later in this post! As someone else has already mentioned, I believe the Stormfather was previously sending Gavilar visions from the Almighty and was likely to bond with Gavilar before his death. I also suspect that, with nine of the current heralds forsaking their oaths, we might see replacement heralds in this series. However, as another person already said, I think that Gavilar's aims might be even higher than that. I suspect Wit's mission might be to "unite them" with "them" being the shards, and that may have been what Honor meant, too, when he said "unite them." I'm reasonably sure that's how Gavilar interpreted his messages from Honor, and I'm also reasonably sure that Gavilar intended to be the new Adonalsium, the new holder of the shards, the new single God. So Mraize wasn't lying about power, both literal power (Investiture) and metaphorical power (all powerful God). I wonder if that might be Mraize's aim, as well, but it could just be making money by transporting literal power. I believe that Wit's aim is to find someone else worthy of holding all of the shards, like Sazed or Dalinar. I had thought Adolin being the new Adonalsium would be perfect because of the similarities in their names, but I no longer view him as capable of handling that much power well. Perhaps no human is worthy. Someone mentioned that the spheres Gavilar had in the prologue seem to have come from Braize, and that might be true, but I tend to think they were at least not transporting the Unmade back and forth from Braize. Surely at least some of these spheres contain the Unmade: Navani's RoW prologue implies they contain Voidlight and spren; Szeth's WoK prologue implies something extremely dangerous is in the sphere Szeth received from Gavilar; and Eshonai's OB prologue implies that the sphere Eshonai took contained the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM). Immediately before Gavilar gives BAM to Eshonai, he shows her a fabrial and explains that they work by trapping a spren. And then he says, "with a very special gemstone, you can even hold a god." He said that humans robbed the parshmen of their abilities to transform by capturing "an ancient, crucial spren," the spren that he gives Eshonai to bring the Everstorm. So I think that humans had captured BAM and perhaps some other Unmade spren he had trapped in his Voidlight-infused spheres. I don't think humans would have stored trapped Unmade on Braize, because Braize is controlled by the Fuzed. However, Gavilar may be sending empty gemstones back and forth to Braize, and Braize is surely where the Voidlight came from that infused the spheres. So, how did the Voidlight and/or spheres get from Braize to Roshar and vice-versa? That's the six-million dollar question, innit? And I think I know part of that answer!!! From Navani's RoW prologue where she sees Aesudan and her famous artifabrian: Later, Ausudan claims that Gavilar was the guy who invited Rushur Kris, and I thought that was the worst lie I had ever heard. Until now. Now, I believe that was 100% true. Because what I hadn't noticed the first time I'd read through the RoW prologue was the box connection!!! Rushur has a box that might work like a fabrial because he is the fabrial master, after all, and Gavilar had mentioned his heating fabrial to Eshonai a bit later in Eshonai's prologue. Before that, though, Gavilar has a box, in Navani's same RoW prologue after we see Aesudan and where Navani overhears this exchange between Gavilar and the heralds: So Rushur's fabrial box that he was showing Aesudan seems to be an identical box (both likely designed by Rushur) to the one Gavilar is using to transport "them" (spheres?) back and forth from Roshar. So Nale and Kalak and especially Rushur seem the best candidates for knowing what is going on followed by the five with Gavilar, three of whom are (probably) dead (Amaram and Ialai and Aesudan). But that leaves one soldier and one guy in robes. Restares, Torol Sadeas, and possibly Taravangian (he'd definitely been playing the game with Gavilar but seems less likely to be a Son of Honor than Restares or Torol) seem the best candidates for these two positions. Sadeas is dead, but Restares and possibly Taravangian might be good sources. ETA: The epigraph of Chapter 13 may provide further clues as to how the box works. Are there conjoined boxes with matching half-spren and half-gemstones? Was one box delivered to and left on Braize via Shadesmar while the other box is in Gavilar's hands? And they're transferring gemstones via these boxes? Are the boxes lined with metals? What kinds of spren? What kind of gemstones? I'm thinking transportation gemstones and spren from either the Elsecallers or the Willshapers. Other thoughts?

I think the pilot is the FTL. M-Bot says that the component is missing. The pilot is missing. Doomslug isn't missing. When Rig tells Spin that someone must have taken the hyperdrive device, she speculates that the old pilot took it. Irony. Yes, yes he did. He takes it everywhere he goes. The empty box is a red herring and a nod to the room at the PC that held the secret FTL communications device, guarded by some dude wtih a strange lever. The lever was a coffee machine and the guard was the FTL device. Gran-Gran-Gran (Gran-Gran's mother) was the engine. Spensa was the FTL. And the pilot before her was, too. Doomslug could possibly become M-Bot's FTL, too, but I don't think he has been before.

Defending Elysium describes one of the primary alien lifeforms, the Varvax, as crablike creatures with exoskeletons but who were actually tiny creatures living inside nutrient baths in these exoskeletons. Varvax consume nutrient baths, but WoB says that they consume something else that would be extremely telling. My thought: mushrooms! Doomslug could be an alien creature who lived inside an exoskeleton until he crashed on Detritus and busted his exoskeleton open. M-Bot has been finding Doomslug mushrooms to survive on. And the "Krell" are actually Varvax, so while M-Bot isn't Krell, his passenger in the foldout jump seat was. Questions still remain. Who was M-Bot's pilot, other than his name of Commander Spears? What were Spears and Doomslug trying to accomplish? Will Doomslug be able to liaison with other Krell on Spensa's behalf or give Spensa vital info to escaping the Krell? If Doomslug were imprisoned in the same way that other Varvax in Defending Elysium were, no Sense or FTL would be possible at all - or at least that's my impression. The cytonic-suppression device would also likely never be able to cover an entire planet.

Here are some more quotes I'm reviewing on the Varvax and their similarities to the Krell, and what that may or may not mean for Doomslug. From Page 503 of Skyward: And then from Defending Elysium, describing Sonn the Varvax: The murdered Varvax ambassador was described as a "burned carapace." From Page 255 of Skyward: So the Krell (creatures inside living crablike armor that is squat, squarish, and bulky) seem amazingly similar to Varvax (creatures floating in nutrient baths sealed within inorganic exoskeleton shells, also called carapaces). Knowing Brandon, I cannot think these similarities are coincidental. So, Skyward tells us several times that most burned out Krell ships are empty, which jives with what we learn at the end when Spensa discovers that the Krell are "prison guards who fly mostly unmanned drones." However, some Krell ships contain burned out armor with no bodies inside. Those nutrient baths could be consumed by the fires, but what about the creatures inside? Would there be nothing left? Is Doomslug the only one who survived?

Thank you! I need to spend some Skyward time on the Arcanum... This one is pretty cool, too!

In Defending Elysium, Faster Than Light (FTL) communication and transportation - and all of cytonics, really - were viewed by alien life forms as interchangeable with Primary Intelligence and Civilization. And later, near the end of Defending Elysium: So the aliens have assumed that a civilization must reach Primary Intelligence and a completely peaceful society before attaining FTL travel (cytonic hyperdrive). Both Jason and Spensa seem to prove this theory incorrect to a degree, though I am certain that M-Bot's cytonic hyperdrive would never have been engaged had the Battle of Alta not been won a decade before, allowing the clans to come together and Spensa to grow up with some civilization in Igneous. The primary mission of the Krell (Varvax? Tenasi? Those and more?) seems to be preventing humans from congregating in large enough groups to form a society and gain civilization because they know that this is the path to FTL. Pre-Battle of Alta, Spensa's dad (Pages 6 & 9) says, And then later, from the top brass (Page 95): And then the big reveal at the end (Page 509): So annihilating civilization without annihilating human race is the Krell goal because the Krell know that civilization leads to FTL. The Krell must suspect Spensa is close to FTL, as they suspected her father was, but Spensa indicated that they didn't know she could listen in on them and that they certainly didn't know she could FTL travel. The Defiants are far too uncivilized for FTL, yet, at least according to Varvax theory, and still, humans seem to be defying this law of reaching a peaceful civilization before achieving FTL. So this theory seems both partially right and partially wrong. I'm convinced Spensa's cytonics bloomed as a result of the Battle of Alta and Igneous's civilization, but Spensa is a far cry, even at the end of Skyward, from a peaceful person, and Defiants are a far cry from a peaceful civilization. So perhaps the aliens are wrong about what constitutes civilization. Is peace at all costs civilized? Are cytonic-stifling concentration camps civilized? Is what the Krell have done to the Defiants (bombing to scatter, making Defiants warmongers) civilized? My hope is that the Defiants will soon be undergoing an FM revolution, one that will raise them all to Primary Intelligence even if they aren't the same peaceful civilization the aliens insist must occur to reach that level. FM's philosophies on civilization are explored on Page 190: And as a bit of an aside but still related, Doomslug! That Doomslug FTL travels seems at least 90% certain given how she moves with lightning speed whenever Spensa's not looking. Aliens tell us that one must reach Primary Intelligence to obtain FTL, and so Doomslug appears to be a creature of Primary Intelligence. Dude!!! That would mean, at the very least, Doomslug is sapient. So is Doomslug Krell? I think that is a distinct possibility, but I definitely see her as friendly even if she is the enemy. The Varvax are "small creatures that floated in a nutrient bath sealed within their inorganic shells [enormous exoskeletens]," but what if Doomslug lost her exoskeleton? Could Varvax survive without these and their nutrient baths?