The Count

I agree with Kurk on this one. There are many ambiguous uses for Hemalurgy... Example... The head of a house is a bronze misting (for example). Rather than have that power be lost on his death, the power is bequeathed to his heir and when the lord is ready to die (or on his death bed) he is spiked, killed and his power passed on to serve the family for another generation. I could even envisage a society seeing this as a positive thing, honouring your ancestors, keeping the power / legacy alive and all that. There you go, Hereditary spikes. or Hereditary Hemalurgy An interesting question for me is: If father and son are both bronze mistings, the father is spiked and his power given to the son. The son gets married and has a son (grandson) who is also a bronze misting... Can you spike the son into the grandson and get three generations of bronze in the single individual?

Where would they get the spheres / gems from to power plate / regrowth? They do not mine or break stone and do not want spheres (from the Rysn interlude) so what medium do they use to store stormlight for use in farming? I think, if surgebinding is used in Shin society it would be the express domain of the leaders of society and tightly controlled.

I guess my hesitation in naming it as Dalinar's spren is that, if it is, then he seems to have had no direct contact with it. Both Kaladin and Shallan have direct contact and conversation with their spren (almost against their will). Dalinar has not. The presence of the Shardblade to explain this (as given above) is slightly suspect as an argument since Shallan is also in possession of a blade (although I agree she has not really used it). This is why I am tending toward a spiritual connection to some remnant of Honor for the visions, glowyness and voices. On the other hand, we all agree that Dalinar is a prime candidate for a spren and really should have got one by now... I remain on the fence with this one. EDIT: We have not had a POV from Jasnah yet so we do not know if she has had an conversation with her spren or not. Either way she is too accomplished at keeping secrets to do so when anyone else is around.

I think there is a third possibility.. The voices are a hangover from the visions and are the voice of Honor. I agree this is very flimsy but we know the visions are having a profound effect on Dalinar and are definitely imparting knowledge to him. There could be some residual effects which manifest at times of stress or significant moments to prod him in more honourable directions.

out of cheese!

Tested and confirmed working. Thanks chief! Now to get back to my attempted domination of the forums...fora... whatever.

Not necessarily... '...by the blood of my Fathers' could just be a generic oath in Roshar and may have no actual connection to his real father. Also the plural (Fathers) to me indicates general ancestors rather than specific antecedents so doesn't seem mutually exclusive to hatred of his Father. I hold my judgement of this (even though I sort of suggested it!) until I get more information. I do like the 'Moash wants to kill a certain Azish man with a moon scar on his face' theory very much though.

I am planning to take a long weekend after the release and spend four days on the sofa with a never-ending stream of Tea and biscuits until I am finished. I get quite obsessive with new books, it took me about 20 hours (over 6 days) to read A Memory of Light cover to cover. I think I will probably allocate 24 hours of reading time over the 4 days (Friday - Monday) to complete WoR. @agrooster: I would guess there would have to be a deadline whereby you need to assume people have read the book if they are on the forum. I would guess keep the WoR subforum open for, say, a year? Maybe until spoilers for book three start getting released? Eventually the WoR knowledge will have to become assumed general knowledge of the world.

Honestly, I don't see a romantic interest for Kaladin really. Jasnah is far too mindful of her status as well as too obsessive of her studies to consider a relationship. She seems to distain romance almost as childish. Plus the scandal of a princess being involved with a darkeyes! That is not even to consider Kaladin's innate distrust of all lighteyes. I also think Shallan would infuriate Kaladin. One of the things Kaladin hate about the lighteyes is their ability to talk in knots and use clever words to demean others. He may well see this in Shallan's quick tongue because of his prejudice. I can see Shallan / Adolin / Renarin love triangle as a thing definitely.

Stormlight is stormlight... I do not think it comes in different types. I think there is WoB that says that the need for specific gem types is a quirk of soulcasting and not relevant to the other types of surgebinding. In lifts case, presumably she could infuse from any sphere / gem (Darkness certainly seems to think so) but she has never learned how as it would seen unnecessary for her. As far as the Starfalls Radiant goes: I do not see how the Regrowth thingy can be simply a battery as: 1) The Stonwards do not have access to the growth surge, therefore cannot perform regrowth. 2) Why have a special frame for two large gems? Why not a pouch? The Fabrial is the more likely explanation here but I think that (like ancient soulcasters) they operate differently to the modern day ones. I think the heart of it that I just cannot see the KR as thinking that trapping a spren is terribly honourable.

The point still stands though... If the Regrowth construct was similar to a modern day Fabrial, wouldn't she have said that she needed to save the Stormlight? By saying she needed to preserve the Regrowth, it seems like it is the stored 'Surge application'. The best analogy I can come up with is that modern fabrials have the function hardwired in to them. The Starfalls chapter Regrowth thingy seems more like software. That is, the function is embedded within the stored medium rather than the construct.

I recently upgraded my browser to IE11 and now when I try to use the quote button in an active post, it does not insert the relevant post in the text box. Also cut and paste (ctrl + C and ctrl + V) do not seem to work either. Is the browser upgrade responsible for this or something else? Is there a way to fix this? **sorry if this is the wrong place for this**

@ Shardlet: I love love love the idea that Moash want to kill darkness. It is way better than my airy fairy bastard son idea... +1 for you! @Gloom: +1 for making me spit tea all over my work laptop!

For Sanderson: When Kaladin says the words The culmination of Kaladin's story, the whole section from Syl declaring herself to Kaladins leap and landing is just brilliant. I actually jumped up and gave a fist pump the first time I read it... oh the shame! Non-Sanderson: I guess there are two: 1/ From Stephen Donaldson, The Illearth War there is a scene where one of the Lords of Revelstone is looking for an Unfettered One in the southerm mountain range. They find him and you think all is going to be ok for them. Only to have one of the the men they had to leave behind turn up, flesh almost warn away by the wind and posessed by a Raver. The scene really drives home how truly evil the Ravers are. I don't think I have come accross any literary creation that has struck me a so totally malevolent as the Ravers in the Thomas Covenant books and this scene exemplifies this for me. 2/ From Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum, when the Vampires are running around screaming for Tea. I had to put the book down for a good ten minutes while I laughed myself out.

tried to intervene. ***how have I only just found this!!! OMG!**

Not to nitpick (says just as he is about to nitpick... ) But if they are using first in first out, then they would sell the last 1000 of the first order before starting to sell the second order. First In First Out means that the oldest stock gets sold first. What you are describing is Last in First out (oldest stock stays in the warehouse). @agrooster: I would guess that is is just pure luck that you got a first edition.

This is not necessarily the case. Google Quantum Entanglement and then get back to me. There are examples in the real world of particles remaining linked while being separated by long distances. I agree, a remaining congnitive identity could explain the function. But it is not necessarily a requirement. In fact there are several instances of quantum properties arising in TWoK. The spren measuring is a prime example of this. The Geranid interlude always seemed to me to be like Shroedinger's Cat for the Cosmere.

How can you be so sure that the Radiants' opponents did not use stromlight? We have seen no other type of power source for 'magic' on Roshar. The existence of 'voidlight' is speculation based only on the black gem. Voidbinding could well require stormlight as a power source and some types of voidbringer may well be able to infuse from gems, we just do not know. Not to mention there could be darkside surgebinders. Major Spoiler below! I think there are many reasons for plate to have the ability to block the draining of stormlight from the gems inside. It is even concievable (although I admit it is a stretch) that this is the primary function of the plate. We have seen how deadliy Szeth can be all by himself even against full shardbearers. I do not think a set of plate would make him any more dangurous even if he could lash while wearing it.

It is possible that Elhokar is surgebinding as it does seem that he is seeing the crypics. However there are some barriers. Most notable is that he is clearly quite paranoid about them and we cannot say for certain if he has spoken to them to tell then any 'truths' about himself to strengthen the bond. If Elhokar has bonded sufficiently to the Crypics at the time of the hunt then we do not need him to actually surgebind to account for the cracked gemstones. He could simply have infused himself in panic, thus depleting the gemstones. Everyone was so focused on Dalinar's epicness that they may not have noticed the stormlight leaking from Elhokar.

Bear in mind we have not seen any definite examples of someone using a soulcaster in the TWoK. There are three characters we see soulcasting: Jasnah - does not even have a soulcaster. Shallan - Does not use a soulcaster Random interlude guy - soulcasts a wall to smoke (seems to have a single use soulcaster) We only have word of mouth from Jasnah & Shallan and Kabsal regarding the action of soulcasting with Fabrials. I suspect that we have to differenciate modern Fabrials (which include single function soulcasters) from ancient artifacts (Plate, Blade, universal soulcasters). We know that Plate and Blade do not operate in the same way as modern fabrials. I feel that the inevitable logic is that 'ancient' soulcasters have more in common with plate/blade than they do with fabrials.

I suppose such thing could be possible... but if the view it though Shallans memories of the incident, they are hardly getting an unbiased viewpoint since her memories will automatically be coloured by her emotional turmoil. I think I will evoke occam's razor on this one. That the cryptics most likely judge the truth as the one they are bonding with sees it. That is, how true they are to themselves.

Isn't the first ideal: Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. Actually a quote from The Way of Kings? Otherwise how would Dalinar know of it? He does not have an ex Envisager telling him what it means after all. This would mean that that this one was stated to get the KR on the correct path and the 40 parables were guides toward the other 40 ideals. Except Dalinar explicitly says that 'the most important words a man can say' is a direct quote from The Way of Kings.

Not sure I agree with this simply because truth by its very nature is wholly subjective and dependent on the belief of the observer. Being a murderer is how Shallan sees herself, but given what we know of her character, I double that the act of killing her father as as clean cut as that statement would imply. For example, if someone were killing her Father and she witheld some aid that would have saved him she could still believe that she killed him. Or, if she hit her father over the head wirth a vase to stop him beating her brother to death and he died because of that. Is that murder? Shallan could certainly see herself as one and so her statement can be true from her persepctive even though others might not agree. Also, a large theme of Shallan's tutalage with Jasnah is about the lack of any absolute. Look at Jasnahs killing of the three thugs... I doubt Jasnah sees herself as a murderer, even though she deliberately sought out an killed them. Indeed the whole nature fo Shallan's study is about the abiguity surrounding the nature of the act.

Also don't forget we have seem instantaneous information transfer via the use of spanreeds which don't seem to require any cognitive realm involvement. I always thought that transportation would be just that, near instantaneous travel to a predetermined location. To me it makes more sense that travel could occur purely in the physycal realm as long as the surgebinder has a link of some sort at the target destination. So a surgebinder can go (or send someone) to any location that has the relevant focus point / artefact / gemstone / whatever. Shadesmar may be necessary to locate the traget item and 'lock on' to the destination location but I think the travel itself is purely in the physical realm.

I don't know about one sided... I mean presumably the oathpact stops Odium using his immense power is a direct way against Roshar.