The Count

Bigger gms could hold more Stormlight in total and still lose it in the same timeframe. It just means that the rate of decay is directly proportional to gem size (or volume)... or it is magic

Honestly can't remember where my chosen name comes from... Seriously though, I normally use the same name for all my online dealings - Voltan (after Jack Palance's memorable scene chewing in the awesome B-movie Hawk the Slayer). But when I first read WoT and wanted to join the Dragonmount froums, Voltan was taken so I came up with MadRand. When I came here I stuck with it.

You never saw me coming! lol. Still, I am happy to share the love. +1s for yourself and Darnam

That is really interesting.. although it is not a lot to go on, I still feel my theory senses tingling... OK, here we go. I seem to recall Kaladin thinking in one of the flashbacks that if he (darkeyed) married Laral (lighteyed) then their children would have a chance of being born lighteyed... What if Moash was a product of such a union (say a Lighteyed man and a Darkeyed Woman) and when the mother died, he was cast out / rejected or whatever because his father was embarrassed by his heritage. So the man Moash wants to kill is some Brightlord or other, his father.

This is a great question. I suspect there will be alot about this in WoR. I there such a thing as absolute truth?? For example, did Shallan actually murder her father? Or is this just how she see herself out of misplaced guilt? I partially agree, there are no highstorms (or rather the highstorms are blocked by the mountains). I keep an open mind on the no spren though. Are there no spren in Shinovar? OR are they just unable to manifest because of the lack of stromlight / highstorms. They could be there but nobody can see them. However, no highstorms = no infused gemstones = no soulcasting. On Szeth / Voidbringers: His punishment says they do not exist. His honor says that they do.. My favorite theory is that there was / in a voidbringer (or voidish relic maybe) in Shinovar and Szeth stumbled accross it or attacked it (maybe picked up a weapon to do so)... or something like that anyway. Whatever it was, Szeth honor (telling the truth) says he saw / attacked a voidbringer. Szeths punishment is for telling lies about Shin sacred things (therfore he is truthless). This is all guesswork...book two is not even out yet and already I want book 3! I need help.

(1) Well every Radiant order we have seen so far has required stormlight (Shallan, Jasnah, Kaladin, Spoilery people)... I think this is the implication. (2) Are you sure about this? I was under the imression that higher denomination on spheres had larger gemstones in them... So Chips have the smallest, then Marks, then Broams, then whole gemstones. I would be supprised if a larger gem (and by implication a higher denomination of sphere) cannot hold more stormlight, although to be fair, I cannot remember this being stated anywhere in the book. I always assumed that Teft wanted Kaladin to convert all his spheres to chips so that he could not take in too much Stormlight at once and so glow visibly to everyone else.

You are right, of course. I apologise for my glibness. What do we know about Gaz... 1/ Veteran of some sort (Kaladin thinks he was a soldier) 2/ Has one eye (presumably lost during his time as a soldier) 3/ He may see things likes spren. I got the impression that he cought glimpses of Syl while dealing with Kaladin. 4/ He was paying blackmail money to Lamaril for an unknown reason. I suppose the simplest answer is that Lamaril put things in place that, if anything happened to him, would cause or lead to Gaz's death. The usual blackmailers protection. It seems like such a prosaic reasn though... I guess I just want Gaz's dissappearance to be significant in someway.

I am sure there is a quote of Brandon that at least strongly implies that the Oathpacct is still partially in force. If the face in the clouds is Jezrien then he is not a wholly reliable source on this as he maybe quite crazy...

I think the two examples you give (Ati / Leras and Honor / Odium) are different. Ati and Leras were diametrically opposed to each other, a direct confrontation would be mutually assured destruction. They really had no choice but to work through intermediaries. I do not think Odium and Honor had such an issue. They would not both be annihilated by a direct confrontation (althoug such a fight would probably have cause significant collateral damage). However, Honor is the Shard of Oaths. In this specific capacity, his power far exceeded Odiums. I am willing to bet that even another shard like Odium could not break an agreement made with the Honor Shard itself. The key for me is how in damnation did Honor actually got Odium to form an agreement in the first place...

This plays right in to the hands of a theory I subscribe to: Before Honor was splintered, there was only bond spren & symbiotic spren. That is spren who could form a Nahel bond with Humans or had a symbiotic relationship with the various native races and creatures of Roshar. After the splintering, the remains of Honor became all the rest of the spren. Hence they are so prevalent now and were not in the time of the flashbacks. Of course a far more simple explaination for the lack of spren in the flashbacks is that Tanavast just did not put them in his recordings... but I never let simplicity get in the way of a good theory... so I discount this

Indeed, you are correct. Stormlight has many benefits for Windrunners outside of Lashings. However, are those benefit still conveyed if you are not a surgebinder? Or not a Windrunner? The Windrunners (and Szeth - who is like a Diet Windrunner) are the only Order we have seen manifest this ability. I do not think it is so simple as you make out.

Ahhhh yes... What to make of Gazmodean? My solution... He was Jezrien all along! Boom.. nailed it!

Could Lift's ability to get Stormlight from food be an unintended consequence? I mean, we know from Wyndle that Lift got her ability from the Nightwatcher before she bonded with Wyndle. However, lacking a spren bond, the ability to make stormlight from food is a next to useless ability isn't it? You can do precicely nothing with it. Maybe the Nighwatcher gave lift the ability for get more energy out of her food. Then the spren bond somehow made this so that the extra energy was converted to stormlight though some weird magical interaction (since presumably Wyndle and the Nightwatcher magic are basically the same source - Cultivation).

I believe this comes from WoB when he said Szeth does not have a spren but is getting his powers from another source. Of course Brandon did NOT say Szeth was not Surgebinding.

We should also not forget that Jezrin could have been lying or mistaken when he convinces Kelek. Kelek certainly seems sceptical about the implications. It also seems strange to me that all the remaining Heralds made a descision without him. If they though he lived, why not wait to get his opinion (it was not like they has any pressing engagements) and if they thought he was dead, why wait for him... For all we know Jezrien just gave the same speech 7 more times as each Herald showed up to the meeting place. But to the matter at hand... Desolations. I will be very supprised if Gavilar's actions have not been responsible both for the resurgence (sorry) of Surgebinding and the build up to the Desolation. And the Black sphere of doom seems to be at the heart of it all. Darkness could be treating symptoms rather than cause in his killing of surgebinders, misunderstanding the underlying reason for the Desolations. Remember this is the first Desolation that the Heralds have been present at the build up, all other have been ready to go before they even showed up. For that reason, I do not think he is a very reliable source on what causes the Desolations. I see his murder as an outlet for his insanity and so based on a perverson of the truth rather than the reality.

I don't know, I think maybe some 'good' priests were recieving visions just like Dalinar's. However the bigwigs of the church were corrupt and used the genuine visions as an excuse for trying to seize power. If the 'bad' priests were passing off the genuine vision as their own, then when interviewed / tortured, it may well have seemed like fabrications.

Unless thye have fallen so far that they believe killing him will prevent / delay the Desolation. Some of them (well 1.. maybe) seem of have completely given up on morality / emotions etc.

Totally agree with this. I normally expect more from Mr Whedon... The show works as an action adventure show, and the addition of Marvel lore is always going to appeal to the fanboys (like myself). However, I think they have fallen into the trap of many modern TV shows. Throwing a group of attractive people together and putting them in 'freak of the week' peril in not by itself interesting. Agent's of Sheild gets away with this better than most because the backstory established by the Movies gives momentum and gravitas. Although even then I do not think this would have been enough without Coulson who is by far the best character. I find both Skye and Ward to be very generic and quite dull characters. Fitz and Simmons are more interesting although they are starting to become a bit 'what gadget can I solve the problem with'. May has some potential and the presence of some serious trauma in her backstory has been established. Coulson holds it together bacause the audience knows what has happend to him in Avengers (plus Clark Gregg out acts just about everyone else on the plane!) I think the TV execs have forgotten why people love the Marvel back catalogue so much. The movies and comics are interesting because of the dichotomy of the superhero characters: Iron Man is very weak and vulnerable outside of his suit... Spiderman is a geeky kid struggleing to make his rent... Hulk is a pacifist struggling to find his place in the world... Captain America has trouble reconciling his simplistic idea of good guys and bad guys with the real world... People relate to the superheroes because they recognise the Human struggles they go thorough, then the supernatural stuff has greater imapct because of the juxtaposition. All the back story and lore in the world can't compensate for true depth of character with relatable problems. I hope that the characters will go through some proper conflict and struggles as the seriess progresses.

So be it... Little does Feather know that I have managed to bond myself to a cakespren (on account of how much of it I eat) My manipulaion of the buttercream and sponge surges will allow me to surely prevail! ...Or at least have a fantastic last meal

Maybe separated from it would have been better wording. If they are both in the physical realm, I see no barrier to placing him in a separate room from his blade. Maybe Taln can still summon his blade, wherever he is... but maybe not. We have no current knowledge on weather Honorblades behave like Shardblades in this respect.

Well, initially I think he will have trouble doing anything much.. From the guards perspective, he is a darkeyes with a shardblade who just attacked Kholinar (albeit very briefly). Since his blade did not dissappear, I imagine it will be taken from him and he will be dissmissed as a crazy darkeyes and thown in a dungeon until they figure out what to do This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules him. It reamins to be seen what game Wit / Hoid is playing here but I doubt the Queen will have much time for him to influence how to treat a mad man of low birth (at least as she will see it).

This could simply be that, as far as we know, no modern holders of plate and blade can infuse stormlight. From the Starfalls vision it seems like the plate and blade of the windrunner glow when he is infusing / using his surges. This could be the sole reason for the non glowyness of the modern day plate / blades. I know we have WoB that 'something is different' about modern shardblades. But I have always believed that this is down to the blades being weilded by non-radiants (or specifically the Radiant it originally belonged to). In my opinion, The change of ownership + the lack of surges in the current weilders can explain all the differences for shardblades and shardplate. I still do not buy the Odium changed shardblades theory. why try to change a powerfully invested object when humans are so easy to corrupt?

Or, how about Szeth does not realise that Dalinar has given his shardplate to Renarin and kills Renarin thinking him to be Dalinar in plate. Ouch! As for the Bromance... There are interesting parallells between Renarin and Adolin's Relationship as brothers and Kaladin and Tien's relationship. Both have a confident and capable older brother with a more timid / weaker younger brother. I find it unlikely that Renarin will die since it will be almost like Tien's story all over again. Although Renarin dieing and Adolin going darkside in rage / dispair would set up an excellent contrast with Kaladins development following the death of his brother. I think this would work very well narratively. I think that friction between Kaladin and Adolin in WoR is inevitable. Adolin still has some notions about darkeyes place (in a kind of casual elitist kind of way - i.e. not really deliberate but a cutural inertia) and Kaladin still gets uppity when any Lighteyes order him around. Maybe they will end up best buds eventually, but for now, I doubt it. Kaladin and Renarin, I think, may well get on well as I think Renarin will remind Kaladin of Tien and he will fell that protective urge as always. Maybe this could even fuel some slight jealousy in Adolin and exacerbate the friction between him and Kaladin... We shall see. Either way, if Kaladin and all the Kholins all get on and are best buds from day one then it will all be a bit prosaic IMO.

Lets hope his spren doesn't get corrupted, turning him evil... *runs away and hides