Mage of Lirigon

At the end of the day, her army attacked fellow Alethi and an allied nation. She is in charge, so the buck stops with her. They might not be culpable legally, but some recompense will have to be given. Even assuming she can still pay them, the stink of treachery is still very high. I don't think any of them signed slave contracts that force them to stick around, and the Almighty knows that for the nobility, alliances are shifting sand. LOL! No one on Roshar would believe that tripe, not after Amaram publicly invaded a allied country that was already broken down by the Everstorm, especially after all the bad press House Sadeas already had, both in Alethkar and in Theylen City. Ruthar's dumb, but not that dumb. House Sadeas is sinking, he's not going to go down with them. And I was giving my reasons why they could hold their noses and work with her anyway. Shallan has nothing to do with it. Don't think there are many other ways for her to remain relevant though...

Like Pathfinder said, she committed open treason. I don't think he'll have much trouble getting at least a fine from her. The army is loyal to Sadeas money. Now that House Sadeas is attainted, how many will stick around for that when they could get work elsewhere? This isn't like when they abandoned Dalinar's army. There's no heroic way out of this. The most they can do is tell the truth, but since no one liked them anyways, no one will care. Stupid enough to stick with House Sadeas. I was talking about the Sons of Honour, not the Ghostbloods. Azir most likely. Plenty of places to go, where she'll be relatively unknown. I think Ialai is done too, but if she were to return, secret societies are the best bet for her

Well, if it can be soulcast that's a different story. Come to think it, why didn't Hoid tell Jasnah about the useful properties of aluminum? I don't think it'll be as cut and dry as signs, but yes,I wouldn't be surprised to see some Skybreakers wanting to stand with other Radiants. Szeth would be very helpful consolidating support there. He's a rookie, but he's famous, and Nale was very partial to him as well. Makes me wonder f that's why he brought in Szeth. How much of that money can she use immediately anyway, that wasn't stored in holdings in Alethkar. Not tom mention, I'd be shocked if she wasn't forced to pay some serious fines due to Amaram. I wonder how many of her army would be willing to stick with a group of proven traitors though? Her political skill has diminshed value currently, and Ruthar has probably dropped her like a hot potato. If he found a use for Shalan, he could find something for Ialai to do. Yeah, but for him Ialai isn't very useful I think. This is true, but Ialai, however grudgingly and for however short a period of time, was hooked into the very top of Urithiru and the coalition. Info from that high up is not easy to come by. Great question. Depending on what they heard from Amaram, they might be either biding their time or in a state of collapse. Investigating them would take a lot of time and energy seeing as their only lead is dead though. Maybe Jasnah will use more of her underworld connections for that?

Taln maybe, I can't believe we'd get no Ash at all. I doubt even miscontents would want to hang around Ialai, unless she's paying a lot, and something tells me she's not exactly flush at the moment. True enough, but Ialai is desperate now, and desperate people are easier to control. If ever Mraize was to make use of her, now would be the time. He seems to be avoiding being repetitive this iteration. Plus, I don't think there's much she can offer him. Again, all true, but the Sons of Honour are probably starving for intel on Urithiru right now, and it's debatable how much Amaram could have given them. They probably have some other spies, but how many could be as well connected as Ialai? They may just hold their noses and go ahead despite disliking her.

Obeying an immortal crazy person is definitely not the best way to foster open dialogue, creative thinking and confidence in your own opinions. I'm actually beginning to be a little curious about those rare ones that attained the Fifth Ideal in the past. Did they have a break with Nale as well? Will we see some of that in the future, maybe with Szeth at the forefront?

Assuming anyone will want to stay with her Again, House Sadeas is not one that inspires great loyalty in people, iespecially when they're in this bad a position. The most she could keep would probably be a honour guard. Considering Mraize hanging around her, she might go over to the Ghostbloods if they make a deal. Even diminished, Ialai would have good info they might be able to use. Same for Odium, though I find that less likely since he already went for Amaram. Maybe the Sons of Honour could want her inside perspective on Urithiru. Do they even aluminum in quantities that would make it militarily useful, or even enough to test with? Odium is no dummy, he's probably keeping them close to hand to avoid such a situation. Taln is likely not going to be that useful, Ash might be, depending on how noble she's feeling (or if they're holding her captive, how she feels about that) or what she is offered. This is something I'm interested to see. Even the Skybreakers can't be totally monolithic on this issue, even if they swore to follow Nale. I hope we can see some more of them. and how they're dealing with the Desolation.

Why? Seriously, no one likes House Sadeas, and after Amaram's public betrayal and Ialai leaving Urithiru, I can't imagine anyone actually replacing whatever dregs are left. More likely, whatever materials they have remaining will be divvied up (some going to Thaylen City, they need it and it would ease tensions a fair bit).

I'd love to see some more Eshonai flashbacks, because I like her character. But Venli flashbacks would simply provide much more, in terms of worldbuilding and plot, so I have to go with her.

Does this perhaps mean that Fused and by extension Parshendi, have perfect gemstones as gemhearts?

Is Rial an original Bridge 13 member? The bridge crews were recruiting new members. I don't know about Thaidakar, but it does seem like a great opportunity for spies to slip into the Radiants.

Well I can see where he's coming from. Eshonai was introduced as a paragon, while Venli...wasn't. Seeing Venli change a bit from all her mistakes would undoubtedly be an interesting story.

Whoops, sorry, my mistake there.

And what makes you believe that standard enforcement could do better than the almost zero bonding that the Recreance and Skybreakers achieved? As I've mentioned before, I don't think the Recreance alone was supposed to be the plan. The plan was always for the Skybreakers to clean up any outliers that bonded anyway. I'll repeat myself again as well. The plan worked. Bonding stopped happening for the most part. How is making bonding more well known, as it would inevitably be if humans and spren worked together to stop it, conducive to the goal of stopping bonding. I replied to this already. Wyndle would have chosen the gardener if he could choose who to bond with yes, I never denied that. What I am saying is that Wyndle never wanted to bond at all. He is doing it only because the Ring is instructing him to. He has said on multiple occasions that he would like to go home, back to his garden. Odium is not active at all times. We know that the False Desolation happened just before the Recreance, and that Odium was most likely not involved overmuch in it. It's not implausible that with the Parshendi, Fused and Unmade neutralized, and Odium inactive, they viewed the end of the world more important than him. You don't have to believe it. We literally see this in the book. The Recreance made bonding taboo to the point that only only weirdos were doing it for years, and the only reason spren society as a whole started experimenting with it again is because of Odium. Same to you.

I was referring to the Recreance, not the Oathpact. I'm well aware. Dirty bombs are dangerous, but not as dangerous as something like Fat Man, for example. Failed in what way exactly? Let's recall that for 2000 years, bonding was nearly unheard of. In terms of deterrence, that's a smashing success. I really don't see how any kind of standard enforcement would equal this. What I said is that there is no way to prevent every single spren from bonding. That's just no how people work. There will always be outliers. The Recreance made most spren too afraid to bond, which is what allowed the Skybreakers to get rid of the outliers, to the point that bonding became unheard of. I never said that enforcement was unnecessary, simply that standard enforcement, i.e. making something illegal and enforcing that was never going to stop bonding when it's something that literally all spren can do. Yes, like I stated myself, Wyndle would have preferred the shoemaker if he could choose. But he would have preferred no bonding at all even more. Again, Nale didn't fail. The Recreance and the Skybreakers stopping Radiants worked because bonding was literally not a thing for 2000 years. Only very few people bonded and those were dealt with. The only reason it's returning in larger numbers is because of Odium. I find it very hard to believe that standard enforcement could have a comparable effect.

By the time of the Recreance, the Parshendi had already been turned into parshmen, so Odium was lacking in servants. The guy is immortal so it's not weird if he decided to leave things alone for a while. In fact, that could even be a part of his plan. This isn't even remotely the same thing. Nuclear weapons are not something that everyone can use, only countries with advanced scientific knowledge. Agreements are suffiecient in that case. But at the the end of the day, it did work, the Recreance frightened the spren enough that there have been barely any bonds in 2000 years, to the point the concept became forgotten to humans. No matter what kind of regulation you use, in a world where basically any spren can make a bond, you would still have a lot of spren bonding. Wyndle would have preferred the shoemaker to Lift, but if he had a choice he wouldn't want to be bonded at all. Syl has pre-Recreance sensibilities, so you can't use her as an example. Pattern was sent to Shallan because the Cryptics were worried about Odium, so he was clearly getting to be an issue before then, same with Wyndle. For the nth time, there is absolutely no way to ensure that no spren would bond again, ever. That is impossible. They were likely hoping that the Recreance would make bonding such a taboo that the majority of spren would be too afraid to bond. We can see in the books that this tactic worked. Judging from what the Skybreakers did, I wouldn't be surprised if they were part of the plan and hid themselves away so they could get rid of the strays that would bond again. Your idea of simply banning bonding would have lead to a greater amount of Radiants, since without the cultural taboo of the Recreance stopping them, there would be many spren willing to bond even if it were illegal.

We're not sure how active Odium was back then. It could really be that they decided that the world blowing up was more of an issue for them. For the sake of order in society, obviously. But the issue of Radiants destroying the world goes way beyond that, so they decided on something extreme to prevent it. Enforcement won't change the problem. Wyndle never wanted to bond with anyone, but he would have preferred the old shoemaker (?) to Lift. Odium is literally taking over Shadesmar, and the majority of spren are still too afraid to bond, so the sacrifice is working wonders. Didn't he get that info from Jasnah? Why are you acting as if the idea was a failure because it wasn't 100% effective? Nothing is that effective. But the Recreance was pretty much as effective as it's possible to get, since the number of bonds being made is so low that the Skybreakers can wipe them out. That's no way outlawing it would have the same effect.

They decided to bond because they were frightened to death of Odium. Again, the problem is that once any kind of leadership bans something, you are going to have a huge number of people wanting to do it. No kind of law can completely stamp something out as long as people can still profit from it. I've said this before, but as long as spren knew that bonding existed, you're never going to have any situation where no one bonded ever, that's simply not possible. But because of the Recreance, the number of bonds being made was reduced to the point that the Skybreakers were able to effectively erase the knowledege of bonding from human history because there were so few spren bonding. That's literally amazing. There's no way a general ban on bonding would be that effective. It didn't fail, the Circle and the cryptics don't believe in bonding per say, Wyndle was against it and Pattern is convinced Shallan will kill him. They're simply more frightened of Odium than they are of bonding. I still don't recall any evidence that Surgebinding blowing up planets sis something a normal spren is even aware of. There's no evidence any information about that leaked at all.

The Circle and the cryptics only allowed those bonds to take place as a counter to Odium. It certainly wasn't normal behaviour for them. I said that bonds would always occur, but because of the Recreance the number went down a whole lot to the point where the Skybreakers could murder pretty much all of them until recently. Without the Recreance, there would be way more spren willing to bond humans, and even with both sides trying to enforce the rules, you would still have tons of new bonds happening, ? Weren't you saying that the reason most spren don't trust humans is because of garbled info they got about how Surgebinding was bad?

The goal should be to stop new bonds from happening. No matter how well you try to regulate it, you'd still have a large group of spren bonding all the time, which defeats the point. There'll always be weirdos like Spark around, but because the Recreance created such as strong anti-bonding message, the numbers are low enough that with the Skybreakers running interference, spren bonding was basically unheard of for centuries, to the point where human beings forgot about it entirely. That's actually pretty impressive. We still don't know that ordinary spren know that it had anything to do with powers. People like Eco seem to think it happened just because humans are essentially treacherous.

I never said it was. I merely said that simply making bonding illegal wouldn't stop it. I don't think we've heard that the spren knows the whole story behind the Recreance.

*shrugs* I think history has proved that really doesn't work. The more people are forbidden something, the more they'll want it. The fact that such a force would be public would only increase the likelihood of bonds happening, only this time it would be mostly criminals bonding instead.

The problem is enforcing non-bonding is near impossible, especially from the spren side. It's like Prohibition, the more spren are told not to bond by their leaders, the more they will want to bond with humans. They would probably continue even if they knew there was a chance it could destroy the world. That is exactly why the spren needed a grim reminder.

I'm not so sure about this one. It's not as if they have modern information networks and spren have been shown to be able to keep information abnormally secret because of reasons before (i.e. stuff with the Oaths). I don't find it implausible that only the small subset of spren bonded with Radiants would be able to maintain secrecy on this issue. Humans literally forgot all about this for the most part so they wouldn't be able to monitor themselves on a wide scale. And without a super traumatic event like the Recreance, you would undoubtedly have more spren trying to bond humans just because, no matter what former Radiant spren.

Seconded. I figured we would see this book till 2021, so this sounds wonderful!

That depends on what you call a good reputation. Dalinar's abilities as a general were certainly well known and respected by everyone, and Amaram freely admits to modelling his career after Dalinar in that respect. In terms of personal appeal however, Dalinar didn't have a good reputation at all outside his own troops. In fact, most everyone seemed to view him as a sort of wild animal in more polite settings. Amaram, however, assiduously worked to propogate the idea of him being a honourable brightlord to everyone, and in all types of settings. If anything, Amaram was copying Gavilar when it comes to how he branded himself.