Wit Beyond Measure

O come, all ye Radiant Glowing and triumphant O come ye, o come ye to Urithiru Come and swear oaths to Spren splinters of Honor! O come, let us unite them O come, let us unite them O come, let us unite them Vanish the Void O come, let us unite them O come, let us unite them O come, let us unite them in Urithiru

Though I agree with Govir that six years is a great approximation for the amount of time Ulim has been with Venli, I do agree that the voice speaking to Klade, supposedly, rather than Venli is heavily implied to be Ulim. Whether that is Ulim or not is not definitive but strong evidence against my theory, yes. As for Urithiru: Urithiru is quite unlikely to be powered by an Unmade of Odium. Shallan just worked hard to rid Urithiru of their negative influence. I strongly suspect that Urithiru will be powered by the Sibling, sibling spren to the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher, who is likely of Honor or Cultivation or both. I've talked about that theory extensively here:

They do come from a combination of stone and red-eyed spren that we can assume is of Odium, Voidspren. We saw some in Dalinar's visions, and I specifically recall the one vision (Chapter 4 of WoR) in the Purelake where they were chasing a Voidspren that went into the stone and woke a thunderclast. I speculate that there are gemstones embedded in the stone that the spren bond with to bring these stone monsters to life, like a golem. Their physique makes me wonder if they are not the last stage or form of the chasmfiend given their resemblance to these creatures. I'm not certain that thunderclasts can be raised anywhere there is stone and the right spren, but maybe. The Shin do not walk on stone perhaps for this reason. I imagine very special spren are needed. WoR calls the thunderclast spren "Sja-anat's spies." I do wonder about Sja-anat. She did tell Shallan the truth about the Oathgate, but she seems so very evil. Is Glys a child of Sja-anat? He seems trustworthy, right? Even Ivory agreed that it was right not to kill Renarin.

Thank you, again, @Dylol. I have a lot of reading to catch up on and look forward to, it seems!

Thanks, Dlyol! Is the Secret History in Ars Arcanum? I have it but confess I've not read it yet! I am in the middle of Edgedancer at the moment. There is a "Mistborn: Secret History" under the Scandrian section, and I've read that Mistborn trilogy (though not the other books). Is that the history you mean? Thank you, again!

I don't think they even have to be Voidspren, BBE. Any spren can be trapped, is my impression. The fabrials use regular spren, and Taravangian implies that his half-shards use spren that are associated with the Knights Radiant. All trapped in gemstones. However, given that these spheres are infused with the dark purple Voidlight rather than Stormlight, I believe we are dealing with either Unmade or Voidspren. I don't think Ulim is one of the big nine Unmade. Or ten. Or however many there really are. I do think Ulim might have helped the Fuzed to find the gems/spheres for the Unmade.

I think we are all just speculating on the status of both of these spheres, BBE. The reason I think Ulim might be one is because we last saw Eshonai's sphere when she took it from the table after speaking with Gavilar on the night of the assassination. If she hid it or lost it or gave it away, Venli might have found it and released Ulim. That and the fact that Ulim precipitates the return of all of these Unmade is the very best evidence I think we have for one of the spheres being Ulim, most likely the Eshonai sphere. Many are saying that Szeth's stone was left in Jah Keved, and I seem to remember something about a stone there, but I couldn't later find the reference. Why are we thinking Jah Keved, other than Szeth's appearance there? Is the stone mentioned there? And then BAM being the most powerful Unmade, it would make sense that Gavilar would say that BAM must not be given over to enemy hands. But I think this is all just speculation. I personally don't think that the spheres for Aesudan and Ameram have to come from these two that Gavilar gave away but perhaps the ones that he didn't give away.... Aesudan seemed to know much more of Gavilar's activities than Elhokar or Dalinar, right? Perhaps she was one of the Sons of Honor, the other lady besides Ialai Sadeas! And so I really think Aesudan was given her sphere by Gavilar separately, or she knew where to find it. BTW, now I am thinking that Braize is the spiritual realm. Odd, I know, because I've thought of the spiritual realm as heaven before now, but hell is spiritual, too, and Braize = Damnation = Hell, right? So Heralds die and go immediately to the spiritual realm, which makes sense. Odium is trapped in the spiritual realm. That sort of makes some sense. I don't know. Just speculating.

@Fourth Of The Night, thank you! I vaguely remember now that the Aimians are odd, indeed! @Dlyol, so you don't think that Brandon meant we need to look for creatures with perfect Investiture when he said, "And the ability of certain creatures on Roshar to hold Investiture permanently..."? I guess that could be. So if not creatures, where would the King's Drop, Honor's Drop, the Stone of Ten Dawns, and the other perfect gemstones the Elsecallers guard be coming from? Are they cut using Shardblades? Thank you!

So which creatures are perfect forms of Investiture and thus hold perfect gemhearts? Not Parshendi. Not chasmfiends because the King's Drop was said to be as big as a chasmfiend's heart but perfect. So... Santhids? Is that why they are so rare? Or are Santhids really just chasmfiends that have been hunted, which is why they are rare? Larkins? They do love to suck it in, but are they good at keeping it? (Just realized that the King's Drop thief is a Fuzed wearing a lightweaved disguise and exposed when Chiri-Chiri sucks off his Voidlight!) Greatshells? Dude, if greatshell gemhearts are perfect, then that makes Akinah (also known as The Rock of Secrets and The Void's Playground) in the Kaza interlude ever so important! Important enough to have an Oathgate, which Jasnah believes destroyed (Pg 994 of OB). When Kaza wakes on Akinah: Ooo, a larkin! Perhaps the larkin is sucking up all of the Stormlight from the greatshell gemhearts, which are the very best sources of Stormlight since they are perfect like the King's Drop. So it isn't that larkins hold Stormlight so much as eat it. Rather, the larkins follow the greatshells around because the greatshells have the perfect gemhearts. Maybe. Umm, so the cook transformed into dozens of larkins? The larkins protect the secrets of the perfect gemstones to keep the worlds from ending? Dude.

@hoiditthroughthegrapevine, I'm loving this so much! Thank you! Yes! You know what holds Investiture really well? (I'm assuming Stormlight is Investiture but I'm such a newb to all of this cosmere speak.) Perfect gemstones like the King's Drop (and Honor's Drop or the Stone of the Ten Dawns) hold Stormlight for ages and ages and ages. Perhaps that is part of the reason why they are perfect for trapping the most powerful Unmade. And then Celebrant: And then the connection to the physical realm: So Parshendi Surges without Stormlight probably actually come from the Stormlight they've stored in their perfect gemhearts? And the floating natures of chasmfiends, skyeels, and greatshells might come from their stored Stormlight, too? And are the mandras the spren for these animals that give them all their floating Surge? Bonding with mandras grant the Gravitation Surge?

Most "spheres" (think Roshar currency) are gemstones inside glass spheres, http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Currency. And now I'm intensely reminded of Shadesmar, where all objects in the physical realm are represented by itsy bitsy tiny replicas trapped inside of glass spheres: Objects fully in the physical realm (Roshar) are represented as miniatures inside of glass in the cognitive realm (Shadesmar). And objects fully in the cognitive realm (Shadesmar) - all of those enormous gemstones - are represented as miniatures inside of glass in the physical realm (Roshar) - as currency inside of little glass spheres. Right?!!! Wow, wow, wow! Sorry for the tangent! But I always pictured Gavilar's two mystery spheres as gemstones trapped inside a glass sphere. The cut of Szeth's gem would be crystalline while the sphere surrounding the gem would be perfectly round, perfectly spherical. Capiche? Or, as the Lopen would say, entiendo?

Parshendi Forms: From Eshonai's prologue, after Gavilar explains the fabrial: When Venli first meets Timbre, at Eshonai's body: And then Venli bonds with Timbre: And then when talking with the Fuzed named Rine: So the Nahel bond is more powerful than the Parshendi forms bond from capturing spren inside their gemhearts during highstorms to transform, presumably because the only stormlight needed for the Parshendi bond to work is during the bonding itself but not for any of the surges that come after the bond. When Aesudan and Amaram bonded with the Unmade spren, that seems to be a Parshendi bond since they swallowed gems (spheres) to make the bond, with Amaram's purple gemheart glowing in the end and Aesudan's gemheart glowing through her dress. Thunderclasts From the Thaylen City battle: So the stone has gemhearts that, when inhabited by Voidspren, transform the stone into something else. No wonder Szeth's people aren't stonewalkers, right? Does stone have other forms? Chasmfiends Chasmfiends obviously have gemhearts. I think they must have other forms, too. We know chasmfiends, skyeels, and greatshells all have the same spren. From the Kaza interlude, we know that greatshells do also have gemhearts. Are these three different forms for the same being? Do chasmfiends have other forms? Are they also thunderclasts? From Adolin's fight with the thunderclast: Urithiru And then: So we wake it just as the Fuzed woke Thunderclasts from stone, right? We bond Urithiru with a spren. Or multiple spren. Spren that can be trapped in a heart of emerald and ruby. And from the gem library: Dude, is Urithiru the Sibling?!!!! Sibling to the Nightwatcher and the Stormfather? So the Sibling was stolen away? And from the Stormfather's conversation with Dalinar: Slumbering! Sleeping! Just like Dalinar said Urithiru was! And this is why the Radiant says goodnight to Urithiru, goodnight to the Sibling! So we need to find the slumbering Sibling spren and restore her (or probably "them" because the Stormfather refers to the Sibling in the singular and the plural) to Urithiru's heart to waken Urithiru, right? And what will a wakened Urithiru be like? Will she move? Will she protect? Will she destroy? *************************** Related ideas: Fabrials are similar but not as alive as it would seem Urithiru will be and certainly not as alive as Parshendi, chasmfiends, or great shells. Parshmen may not have had gemhearts until the first Everstorm, which restored their gemhearts and thus enabled them to now have forms, including Voidforms. Different Parshendi forms likely come from different types of spren, with Voidform (forms of power) coming from corrupted or Unmade spren. Dullform might be having a gemheart with no spren bond since dullform is so close to parshmen. Are there secrets to other cities, not just Urithiru? Kabsal draws Kholinar as a triangular shape with three outlying wings and a peaked center (Pg 510 of WoK), which incidentally is the symbol on Gavilar's shardplate (Pg 29 of WoK), saying that the city was built on a rock formation already there. The stone windblades of Kholinar seem particularly significant, where Kaladin says the interior corridor of the windblades reminds him of the strata at Urithiru (Pg 785 of OB). I'm equally interested in the City of Shadows and even the City of Bells, but perhaps these cities are special in different ways.

Brandon implied that Szeth's sphere's contents could be deduced by looking at Navani's journal translations, here. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Navani's_notebook But I think we still need to know what type of gem it was that Gavilar gave to Szeth and what cut. And I'm still not sure how we would then know the type of spren, but at least we'd know more. Crystalline was perhaps the cut of that sphere? I know it was described as crystalline.

I love how we see modern-day Jezrien, King of the Heralds, three times in the series. The first time we see him in the prologue of WoK as Szeth passes him outside of the Beggar's Feast next to a line of statues of the Heralds themselves, with the Shalash statue missing, of course. I wonder if she saw her beggar father at the Kholinar Palace when she came for her statue. The second time we see him (Ahu) in Dalinar's recollection of the day of Gavilar's assassination in OB (just before the feast so just before we saw him for the first time) on the Beggar's Porch at the Kholinar Palace sharing drink with Dalinar. Jez rants and raves about Damnation, just as Taln does, and he mentions several of the Unmade: The Black Fisher, the Spawning Mother, the Faceless, and Moelach. And then the final time we see him is when Moash kills him, sadly, in the Kholinar Palace gardens. Each time he asks, "Have you seen me?" Yes, I have, Jez. Yes, I have. The sapphire is the gemstone associated with the essence of Jes and the Herald Jezrien. Navani's journal, https://coppermind.net/wiki/File:Navani1.jpg, says that the cut and the type of gem determine what kind of spren can be trapped inside. Gavilar tells Eshonai in our prologue that, "with a very special gemstone, you can hold even a god." The Rhys interlude mentions the King's Drop being in an inner vault with some seemingly insignificant objects including an "old knife." It's possible that this knife had a sapphire pommel and was what Odium was really after. So, what does this all mean? Did Jezrien have a spren that is now trapped in the sapphire or is Jezrien himself trapped? The Fuzed are like spren in that they can bond with Parshendi and be reborn, but the Fuzed were once just Parshendi themselves. So is that what the Heralds are like?

From the prologue where Gavilar tells Eshonai of their secret ways of trapping spren and how he wants to help her bring back her gods, giving her a sphere of unusually dark light: So what happened to this sphere Gavilar gave Eshonai? That's the million-dollar question, right? Along with the sphere Gavilar gave to Szeth. I'm wondering if Ulim could be the spren trapped in the sphere. Eshonai does take the sphere. Perhaps she hides it or throws it away (or gives it to the Five), but these paths might eventually lead to Venli. Ulim, a spren the Fuzed (Ancient Ones) call the Envoy, did succeed in convincing and helping Venli to bring back stormform and eventually the Everstorm and the Fuzed.

When the honorspren captain asks Kaladin which of the three Bondsmiths Dalinar is, he appears calm and uneager, as if he fully expecting Dalinar to be any one of the three. When Kaladin says Dalinar bonded the Stormfather, however, the captain is "aghast." Aghast! (Page 1016 or 1017 of OB.) So I'm thinking that the Stormfather doesn't fit the expected mold for the three Bondsmiths. I wouldn't be surprised if there was only one Bondsmith or if the Stormfather is significantly more powerful than any of the three spren usually bonded. Perhaps this signals that this desolation will be significantly worse than any that have come before, the True Desolation, given how powerful the Bondsmiths will be, with the Nightwatcher and the Sibling possibly being the other two if there are to be three. When Dalinar originally bonded the Stormfather (around Page 1070 of WoR), the Stormfather said that he wouldn't be bonded in such a way to allow himself to be killed, but Dalinar eventually convinced him otherwise. The Stormfather does seem to never have been bonded before, except for his bond with Honor. BTW, I simply love how the Stormfather has Dalinar promise not to use him or any dead spren as a sword, putting Dalinar on the pacifist path for the next book. I wholeheartedly believe that 1.) this path of peace, 2.) reliving his violent Blackthorn past, and 3.) facing down a god and two armies all by himself with nothing but a book (his new pacifist nature) are what allowed him to resist The Thrill and deny Odium of his champion. Victory via peace. Do you have a weapon? Nope. Can't read.

Thanks, Dlyol! I didn't realize that the gems told which Order, but that makes so much sense. I don't think Dustbringers and Skybreakers are inherently evil - I have actually always loved Szeth, well before Oathbringer, so I'm thrilled to have him pledged to Dalinar - but I think they have the potential to be destroyers. I see Dustbringing/Voidbringing as a weapon of mass destruction: only as evil as the person who wields it but with tremendous potential to be evil. And so, when they do turn evil, they are insanely dangerous. And if this theory was based on one epigraph, I would agree I was reading too much into it. But there are three quotes linking void and dust specifically (historical WoR quote, the similar quote from Teshav in OB to Navini about Dustbringers and Voidbringers, and Dalinar's vision of the physical void left after the storm of dust). And then there are tons of other quotes that point to the humans (specifically the Heralds and Radiants) being the true villains, not simply innocent bystanders who have fallen victim to Odium. Lift's awesomeness (her Abrasion Surge) in her first interlude chapter in WoR is done by eating rather than by Stormlight. She seems confused why the Skybreakers are moving the spheres far away from her because she never uses those. Wit lightweaves in his stories but seems not to be a Herald nor a Radiant, though possibly on that path in the OB epilogue. Do I contradict myself? "Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" Seriously, I don't know exactly how the Recreance went down. Obviously. I have said that I was only speculating that they didn't know the offending Order since Nale seems to be targeting all Orders. On the other hand, the ashspren quote makes it seem like Honor was targeting ashspren specifically. Perhaps both could be true at once in a way we cannot quite imagine yet. Or perhaps both are misdirection. Where is the Voidbinding chart? I can only find one reference to "Voidbinding" in OB, in the Ars Arcanum after the Ten Essences chart: I tend to think Voidbinding and Surgebinding are similar if not the same, just with different fuels. Dude, God is dangerous. Seriously. That's why we fear Him. He is good, but dangerous. Humans have made the assumption that spren are inherently good, that they cannot be evil, and therefore that they are the perfect check on the Surges. But the Malata quote (and quotes from the Singers about the surges) makes me think that is an erroneous assumption. Of course, all of that could be deliberate misdirection, too.

On the first point: Odium is the emotional void, yes. Only when one let's Odium in can he bring an emotional void, a void that might destroy a person but not a world. That isn't the True Desolation. The truly frightening, truly dangerous void is the physical void, the destroyer of worlds: the physical void that Dalinar sees in his first vision and that destroyed the original world of the humans. Not emotional. Physical. Though much Surgebinding seems of Honor and Stormlight, both Lift and Wit use Surges seemingly without Stormlight. Eila Stele, the oldest document in written memory in the language of the Dawnchant (the Dawnsingers = singers = Parshendi), provides witness of the first coming of the Voidbringers before the first Desolation: The implication from Eila Stele is that Voidbringers brought their Surges from another world, a world they destroyed using those Surges. And Adolin says the Fused are Surgebinders: On the second point: Yes, Division is the dustbringing power of destruction, common to both Dustbringers and Skybreakers, where bringing dust and breaking the sky imply the destructive power of Division that they share in common. Both Dustbringers and Skybreakers seem to have a stigma attached to them. Pattern says Dustbringers are destroyers: The Diagram named Dustbringers as their BFFs: Syl admonishes Kal for thinking like a Skybreaker after Kal regrets telling Dalinar of Amaram because he wants to find his own justice: And both the WoR historical book and Teshav talk about how much Dustbringers hate the term for its similarity to the term Voidbringer. On the third point: The quote definitely speaks specifically of what Honor and Radiants did to "ashspren" and to "Spark's friends." "Never mind what the Radiants did to Spark’s friends, never mind that organized devotion to Honor is what killed hundreds of ashspren in the first place.” If the ashspren were only angry about the normal Recreance, then they would be angrier and less trusting of the Dustbringers like Malata who killed them rather than the other Radiants, as implied by the quote. ********************* On a tangential new point: The Recreance brings up a great point I wanted to make: The knowledge that humans were invaders and conquerors many millenia ago isn't what caused the Recreance where the Radiants abandoned their oaths and killed their spren. Instead, the Recreance came from the Radiants discovering that they themselves were the monsters, the Voidbringers who would eventually bring the True Desolation. Why would Radiants keep being Radiant if they knew that being Radiant would destroy the world? (It seems to me like the Radiants didn't understand which particular Surge and therefore which Orders were the Voidbringers and perhaps thought all were Voidbringers.) One Order did not abandon their oaths, however. The Skybreakers, particularly Nale, saw it as their mission to prevent the True Desolation by killing all of those who could bring the void. While about to execute Lift: Ironically, it is he who must be stopped, not Lift. But such are the joys that Sanderson gives us! Delicious ironies. Truths. And lies!

If I am late to this party, I apologize. I read WoK and WoR last year on a very superficial level. This month, I reread both before OB while taking copious notes on all three. And so I was among the genuinely shocked by the we-are-the-monsters reveal. We are the Voidbringers. But not all Roshar humans are Voidbringers, right? I mean, Kaladin and Dalinar have taken enormous steps in bridging the divide between humans and Parshendi. From the historical version of WoR: From the second viewing of Dalinar's first vision with Honor in WoK: And then from Oathbringer, we find an enormous rift between the Dustbringer spren (ashspren) and Honor and his Radiants: So Dustbringers = Voidbringers? And once Honor realizes that the Dustbringer-Voidbringers will bring about the True Desolation of the entire planet, he advocates the killing of ashspren? But that sprenicide might be the main impetus for the True Desolation in the first place, right? And so Odium wants us to turn against one another and squabble and bicker and make the Dustbringers angry. Humans will turn against one another and destroy themselves with the Voidbringer weapon of mass destruction. We are our own worst enemies, which is why he keeps telling Dalinar that he must "unite them." Unite the people. Unite the Radiants. (Unite the Heralds. Unite the humans and Parshendi. Unite the realms. Unite the Shards.)

Wit's entire mission to Kholinar was to save that one wee spren. He wasn't there to save Kholinar from the Fuzed and Parshmen armies, though he helped some with that. He wasn't there to save Kholinar from the two horrible Unmade, though he helped some with that. And he wasn't there to save the queen or the king-in-waiting or Shallan or Kal or any of our heroes or the Oathgate. Wit spent all of that valuable time in Kholinar to find and save that single spren.

I've fallen in love with how Sanderson packs these gems in all over the place that can only be truly valued on rereads! Currently, I'm obsessing over the significance of this quote from WoR (Pg 418) of a quote from the historical WoR: Malata, are you a Voidbringer? In her best Wyndle impersonation voice: "I am not a Voidbringer!" Something tells me that I should be steering my ship far, far away from this Bermuda Triangle that sucks you in to never let you go. And yet here I am. I should be able to see it; I couldn't agree more. Except that I am just still not seeing it. Kind of like I didn't see the actual wedding. I can't help but wonder if Sanderson wants us to not see it, wants us to doubt, wants us to question, and wants us to call foul. Though we could have heard more Aesudan backstory, for sure, everything we did get pointed toward her being evil. In the prologue of WoK, for instance, Jasnah is hiring an assassin for Aesudan. Though she says she wants only tracking and reporting, she does add, "for now." Gun hung. That prologue left me expecting something wicked from the queen. And then also in WoK, Pai joins the monastery of debauchery attached to the queen, finding herself the only righteous ardent in a sea of sycophants. Pai loudly proclaims that Aesudan embodies all ten fools, and then Pai finds herself executed, presumably by command or at least consent of the queen. Regarding Kaladin's Kholinar reaction, I actually loved that he was sent into shock by killing the enemy he had personally known and loved. Kaladin's inability to easily overcome slaughtering good folks is the only thing that separates him from the Voidbringers.

I've only read the three Stormlight Archive books and the three Mistborn books so far, and I absolutely loved Oathbringer. I'm relatively new to Sanderson and enjoy reading others, as well, and so I've not had time to read more. I've just started Edgedancer and plan to read much more. For me, Azure was obviously from another planet ("another land" that wasn't Roshar) and she was chasing the weapon and person who stole that weapon from her planet. I am crazy in love with Wit (obviously) because of all of the mystery surrounding him. I had put together that he was leaving the planet and coming back, as well. Though I'm lost by much of the cosmere conversation here, I didn't feel lost reading the books beyond what lends a nice air of mystery to the tale.

Jezrien was killed by a knife: And I'm wondering if Odium was really after that knife from the inner, inner, inner vaults of Thaylen City, which is what they were truly after, instead of the King's Drop or in addition to the King's Drop.

Thanks! Where is the Willshaper spren described? There were only three bondsmiths last time according to the Honorspren captain (Page 1017, Kindle). There were hundreds of Windrunners and Stonewards. There seem to be hundreds of Skybreakers. I seem to recall that the number of members per order varies greatly depending on the order, but I couldn't find that reference yet. I have always thought that there would be one critical Knight Radiant from each order who was loyal to Dalinar and key to the plot, which was confirmed when Dalinar said that there were seven (plus Ash and Taln) when there should be ten of them at the big final showdown. I don't see how Ash and Shallan can count separately, though. And I'm not sure Taln counts. So I'm expecting one to three more. ETA: I adore how we get many "Ash's eyes!" and "Taln's palms!" and finally get to see these seemingly random curses tying in. Ooo, I love that idea!

Was the other officer Sadeas? Gavilar first suspects Szeth has been sent by Thaidakar but then guesses Restares and Sadeas in the same breath. Being a Son of Honor might explain why Sadeas was so wholeheartedly loyal to Gavilar. And then Ialai might be one of the ladies? Don't you love the irony of the Sons of Honor not being all sons, having no honor, and being puppets of Odium, the Death of Honor?