Looter

To be honest what is an unwarranted downvote? If I downvote someone because I do not like a phrase, attitude, grammer (god forbid my grammer sucks), lack of content related to post, or really any reason I want, is there a justice system that values or devalues my thoughts based on anothers thoughts? If so,why? The upvote and downvote system is there just to objectively rate an individual post. Not to debate the merits of every post. I had a couple of posts years ago get downvoted like crazy because I disagreed about someone's opinion on Renarin. I am ok with it. I didn't want some review board to debate the validity of every downvote because I am not a child that needs coddling, and approval of everyone around me. So what I am saying is people don't have to take it personally when someone gives out a downvote. It is not an indictment of the person. It is a simple opinion don't like it? Give an upvote. Silently. Thread jacking to whine about someone else not thinking like you is not the way to behave. Also no I am not directing this at you Maxal. Now on to topic so roughly 4 chapters a week is what we are looking at then? I actually kind of hope it is done like a chapter every other day and not a week or so in between each group. That way it keeps the attention longer for a sustained buildup.

I find it funny we had a page and a half of talk about a single downvote that I am sure even Maxal doesn't care about and maybe half a page to the actual topic at hand. I should down vote all the thread jackers on principal but to be honest it is nice to not be on a forum that bans you for having a disagreement so I will forgo the downvotes. On topic, TOR probably has realized that hiding their product like they have been has been proven to have negative sales results, while sample chapters is a good way to encourage buying. This is why Nook, Amazon, Google Play, Nearly every publisher, even Brandon Sanderson himself, offer samples online with a button at the end to finish with purchase of full book. The fact that TOR was late to the game only means they did not then know the addictive properties of their product. They do now and Sanderson has always been more than willing to hook us poor suckers on his literary crack.

Sure it can count it is a fun game with little soldiers. I have my daughter paint them. She loves it.

I can totally respect not turning into a beggar for your hobby. One of the reasons I play Warlord, and battletech is you can play off one book for each and just use proxies of everything. It is nice to play with things I like, and have available, and not What You See Is What You Get.

So who plays tabletop miniature games here? If you do what do you currently play, and what would you like to play but don't? If you don't why not, and do you do anything else like paint miniatures, or play more common games like magic? To answer my own question I currently play Warlord from Reaper mini. It is a great little game with an easy tactical skirmish rules setup. In the recent past I would play Battletech but many of the people in charge, and site moderators need to focus on the game more. Well? How about you guys?

I can only hope that the meeting of Jasnah and Kaladin (if such a thing occurs) is rather dynamic as in many ways Jasnah is the ultimate brightlady boogie man to Kaladin while I am curious how she would react to such a contradictory man as he is.

I think his weakness is either being apart from Tia or harm to Tia or both. Remember when he was torn apart by not being able to go on the nasa trip? I think he was only able to stop his rampage in the school because of tia. I think this also explains their relationship of being close but seemingly not as close as when they were dating. I think she knows how important she is to him and stays around because she hopes for him to be able to return from the brink and because she is the strongest tether holding back the monster inside.

Yeah it really isn't too much of an issue my wife will also be there so if needed we can keep her occupied with our phones. It is going to be a different experience. The last one I was at was towers of midnight and we camped out with my wife being 8 months pregnant. She is awesome that way.

Going to be there hopefully stay late will be bringing my daughter with me so hopefully she is on her best behavior. I may have to leave early though if she begins to act up so as not to make the other people in line unhappy.

Kaladin nor the bridgemen are slaves at this point. Kaladin was also not a slave until Amaram enslaved him, I would actually say that because the initial enslavement was a lie it is yet another flouting of Alethi laws and Honor Amaram has committed, he will of course have some battlefield laws that totally back up his actions but even that is just more twisting of rules so Amaram can claim he killed a shardbearer by himself.

I have to agree with the OP on this one, while Shallen is ok and I love some elements about her she was pretty meh to me. I mainly read her POV for Jasnah info. Even her secrets seem kind of forced. I just don't relate to her. Most of the time she is living a lie or concealing things about herself, I will probably like her more then crappy elend from mistborn but not much. Why all the dislike for Kaladin flashbacks, his are about the only flashbacks of main fantasy characters with fairly relatable childhood instances. They are one of the best parts about kaladin, everything he does is based upon his early life and the hard work he has put in because of the type of childhood he had. If Shallen is half as developed and have family nearly as great she will be great.

Yeah actually it is because of that book I tried to read many of his others. He is a good technical writer but his characters often are terribly limited in depth and unless they are jedi or heroic princes in gary stu cookie cutouts they are moronic moustache twisting bad guys.

To be honest I totally want him to have a ton of good reasons, and make more choices based on them. Then repeating the cycle over and over again so that there is the awesome bad dude that you can see making tough choices that he feels should be made only because we know the entirety of the situation we watch him fall farther and farther from the good guy he probably once was to a really dark character that we can empathize with but still hate because of his choices. Watching a character from afar fall from grace at the same time as watch another rise is one of those good story telling elements that highlights the decisions themselves. After all it is boring to watch a mary sue always make timely and good choices while the bad guy just makes all the evil and bad ones. Look at Mike Stackpole's writing. His bad guys are so stupid and bad that his mary sue heroes suck. It is always better to beat a bunch of bad asses that did everything seemingly right than to beat a bunch of losers that can't help but shoot themselves in the foot at every given opportunity. So I have faith that Amaram made a fully informed choice and feels terrible about it. I also know it was the wrong choice and he is a bad dude for making it. Thus I totally want him to fall. Just not right away and as simply as the six fingered man did to Enigo Montoya.

You know I have been thinking about this and one thing that kinda makes me think maybe the Kholins will get a lot of surgebinders is the simple fact of it might be related to why the Parshendi had Gavilar killed. If something he did was serious enough to start this desolation it could also be related to the Kholins being so central to the storyline.

Well as far as rumors go I think it would be very easy to make a rumor that Amaram stole the shards. He came away from the fight with broken legs and living men that returned with him died in camp or dissappeared and were called traitors. If even one ghostblood spy was near they could make a rumor that is close to the truth and start it where Amaram could not respond swiftly thus destabilizing a whole region. Because Amaram is such a selfish fool that he didn't even see how a rumor that lighteyes killing darkeyes for their shards could cause the darkeyes that make up a vast majority of the population to decide they would rather risk fighting against the lighteyes than FOR the lighteyes. Revolutions are caused by rumors such as this. Hell the French revolution had the rumor of Marie Antoinette just telling aomeone that the starving poor should eat cake. That doesn't even cover his reprehensible moral actions. Edited for spelling done on my stupid phone.

And the full page is amazing. I like the new pose a bit better for kaladin and szeth is made awesome. Upvote for you Rooster. And this also lets us see the bridge 4 patch. I wish we could see the scar better but the patch itself is amazing. Edited for spelling and phone correction issues.

Yeah ok well I guess I earned the downvote with my tone I apologize and now withdraw from the conversation.

Dictators and sociopaths everywhere have surprising amounts of support. It is why I believe that sheeple every once in a while need to be fleeced to learn all over again how to value good people for their actions not their words. To me Amaram is a deluded sociopath who justifies themselves in the same way concentration camp guards did by saying their victims were in some way inferior, instead of rendered powerless by people different then they were. He has his reasons for murder but then all murderers do, and like them his excuses are lacking in worth because murdering the people you have power over and did everything above and beyond what you could reasonably expect is just plain evil.

@ 11th order, I am not sure I can really agree on your take on feminists, I think brandon might though, which would be interesting considering thepower structure of Alethi society is so heavily geared towards women holding the reins of actual power. But having all responsibility fall on men.

http://fantasy-faction.com/2014/brandon-sanderson-responds-to-f-f-award-with-words-of-radiance-teaser Well Fantasy faction has an article up with a bit of a teaser of the Epilogue. It is neat and I like hearing about Brandons works in general, and the Stormlight Archive in particular getting some word of mouth and recognition for being as excellent as it is. Edited for spelling. Ahh I forgot to put in the original list of most anticipated books of 2014 So here that is as well. http://fantasy-faction.com/2014/top-anticipated-fantasy-books-for-2014-readers-choice It is a fun read.

So I have seen several mentions of Harmony in relation to his power vs. Odium and followed that thought for a while. It didn't seem to make sense that in a brandon sanderson book the bad guy may be considerably less powerful than an equivalent good guy. Especially since Odium has on multiple occasions been said to detest everything so much he would not even take another Shard of Adonalisium to become more powerful because it would make him less hateful. So the Theory is what if there is another shard, say the one held by Bavadin, that in a way loosed Odium on his opponents to weaken many but has a backup plan for when Rayse fails due to the nature of hate leaving someone blind to certain dangers. What if that other shard already has bonded some other murdered shards and in taking Odium would fulfill a powerful need that it may have in the future and would not be consumed by the nature of Odium. What if the very Oathpact itself was influenced by an outside force that the three rosharan shards could not overwhelm. Could something like that be why Odium has now invested so heavily on Roshar unlike any other planet he has been on? I think it would be one of those moments like the freeing of Ruin that would slap you in the face with its misdirection of the true direction of Evil, or in the case of Mistborn the true direction of Ruin.

I am there with you. I like her a little bit but the art here makes me like her a ton. Awesome. Good job Whelan and Inkthinker seriously a beautiful work.

I still think that this is from the point of view of Amaram and may even suggest that he will have surgebinding powers (wouldn't that be a good kick in the teeth for Kaladin.

Actually I now know it wasn't trolling but a general lack of information on what generally constitutes Racism, since you apparently believe that people are racist towards the french(Which is a country not a race), Japanese(which actually is a race and a country but usually not differentiated between the greater Asian race), and African Americans which are a racial segment of African heritage that happen to live in the United States. I didn't say Species you did, just now. I said Race, and Kaladin and every lighteyes he has met are Racially the same. Adolin may be the farthest it gets due to his mother being from somewhere else so he may be a half mix. But the point is he is not Racist because he in not differentiating the races, Rock, and Skar may want to have a word with you on the matter. Kaladin is actually differentiating essentially between the ruling class and and the common people. This is going to become more note worthy as he starts to meet light eyes that he may actually out rank in some ways. I think Kaladin will have to grow to come to work better with lighteyes. It will probably be most of what he does in this next book just because all throughout the last one he was abused by those that ruled over him. A good plot line by the way So because it took him hours to come to the decision that it was worth murdering the men that saved him and tainting their names after killing them so nobody would believe that what had happened was different from what he said it was it wasn't selfish? Really? He wasn't selfish because he was talked into it? That is a way to avoid being selfish? Do you think that somebody saying, "Well my friend talked me into killing my roommate whom just bailed me out of getting kicked out by paying my way, but he wanted to spend the million dollars he just won on himself so because I was going to spend them on some charities and let everybody know that I was doing it just because I am that great of a guy. So because of all that I was doing the right thing." Yeah no. Amaram had many options; He could have elevated them to an inner circle status and had them be his personal guards, you know the kind of guard that actually guards you instead of murdering your soldiers at your whim. He could have talked Kaladin into giving him the shards for a couple of hours instead of talking to someone who talked him into murder and Theft. He could have done a dozen things. But his greed and selfishness got in the way. The only one he saw was himself in those shards and if this is an effect of what shards do to people then Syl is right to hate them. If it requires someone to have a moral responsibility to be near them and not be corrupted then that one aspect may be why there are Knights Radiant at all. So yes I think that Amaram was selfish, I think he is like most serial killers and think that it is OK because he has a reason. I hope he at least takes a spear to the gut, but I don't think he will because this is Brandon Sanderson. So we will see what happens.

You know that kaladin and lighteyes are of the same race right? Using completely false comments like that make me think you are trolling. Now as far as Amaram goes he is evil in just about every way. It is just that due to selfishselfish reasons that he resorts to being evil not just a maniacal version of mustaches twirling evil. Look at his motivations. It wasn't enough that a shardbearer had been killed in an assassination attempt on him and left his position considerably better off at the expense of his enemies he felt a need to falsify a level of prowess, steal items from and enslave a man whom could have been a tremendous ally, murder his own soldiers who were loyal enough warriors that they came to his rescue when all others ran. All to steal something another man was willing to give away. His actions could have had multiple positive outcomes with substantially greater gains had he followed a higher path. He instead chose the path of least resistance and callously murdered to hide as much evidence of his crimes as possible. The only outcome I hope for him is the one he has earned, a cowardly painful death alone and unmourned. Edited because my phone sucks and I missed something small and irritatingly stupid. Sorry