Oudeis

Youre still assuming that you have to be a good person to be a Radiant. "Journey before destination" does not by default mean you cant be a jerk. Youre able to justify to yourself why Lifts actions are acceptable. Im sure Relis can justify his own actions to himself. People are excellent at justifying actions. Just because you, personally, excuse one of them and not the other doesnt mean Lift was a good person. When the rich get robbed, its rarely the rich who starve. What of the poor guards who will be punished for failing to keep out a Surgebinder? The urchins who will be rounded up by the police to make an example? And Shallan? She's a liar. A manipulator. Killed both her parents, among others. Spied on men to provide information to a secret society exploiting her family. There are many qualities you need to become a Surgebinder. We have many examples showing that "good person" is not one of the requirements.

I considered that, but it seems like an odd way to say every color she had, and a more natural read is, every color there is. It is, of course, entirely possible thats all it is.

Excellent catch!

Tried searching, cannot find another thread on this subject. My apologies if I just didn't look hard enough. In chapter 7 of Way of Kings, Shallan says "she was forced to use spheres of all nine colors." Surely there are 10 polestones? Is she counting sapphire and zircon both as blue? Ruby and garnet both as red (though garnet is sometimes listed as azure)? Is there a polestone not used for currency?

I believe you are missing my point... Radiants don't have to be nice people. They can be selfish and cruel. There's no Ideal I've heard yet which says, "I won't be a selfish jerk." Shallan is a liar, a spy, a thief, a murderer, marrying a man for political and financial gain from whom she is keeping a number of critical secrets. Sure, she'd like to safe the world, but that's hardly selfless. I mean, she's part of the world, right? "The end of the world" isn't exactly something that's only happening to the other guy. Assuming she'd like to continue living in "the world," saving the world is, if not selfish, at least not exactly selfless. My point is simply this. Maybe Relis is a jerk. Maybe he's selfish and mean and vindictive. Maybe he only cares about his own family's glory, and maybe he's willing to sacrifice others to attain it. But we have very little in the way of proof that any of this forbids you from being a Radiant, or at least a Surgebinder. Nohadon comments in Dalinar's flashback that Surgebinders were on the bad side of a conflict. "It's too bad not all spren are as choosy as Honorspren." Based on the fact that we've seen two Radiants who are deep down decent blokes, yet have each done things which were at best questionable, and we've briefly seen a bit of two others besides, it's difficult to make the case that it's impossible for a Radiant to be a jerk. Remember, you need a damaged soul even to become a Surgebinder. Perhaps Relis is deep-down a decent person, but whatever trauma he's endured, much like how Shallan has a nervous breakdown for years any time she tries to remember a certain night, causes him to react in terrible ways. Seeing how he acts in a single instance is hardly enough to say, "this man has no redeeming qualities, and there is no justification for what he did." Perhaps he was bluffing. Adolin did, after all, challenge him to a duel. It's not like he picked some hapless orphan off the street to torment, he attacked a well-trained soldier and one of the best duelists there's ever been. His threats against Renarin could have been mere posturing; if Adolin had called him on it, maybe we'd know that he actually would never hurt the poor boy. I don't actually believe that Relis is a Surgebinder. I think the balance of probability lies in the far simpler explanation, that Kaladin's touch made the Blade speak to anyone who was holding it. That said, it's not an impossible scenario.

Hrm... not a bad notion, however it is also specifically said that she only just notices the door when it opens and she is rushed through, so there's wiggle room for her not picking up on the outside edges. Also, since presumably even if this doesn't have the Heralds, there must be metal art of the Heralds somewhere, how does whoever is disfiguring Shallash's images deal with that?

The building is an interesting shape, if I recall. Inverted pyramid, yes? Like a stadium, almost? Yet with side rooms for books, unless I am mistaken. I'm trying to brainstorm to what purpose it could have originally been made, but I'm at a loss. Do we know of any lore from the shadowdays, of a place people are looking for but don't know the location of, which might turn out to be the Palanaeum? Maybe the Dawnsingers (said to be the ones who made the chamber) are just the Heralds. Also, just now noticed, Dawnsingers, Worldsingers. A connection, maybe?

What if any applications does the "meat and flesh" Soulcasting Essence have in healing? If I've got a gash on my arm, can I turn the air inside the gash into flesh? It presumably wouldn't be as seamless and perfect as Regrowth, but would it be better than waiting to heal on its own?

I realize this is a huge stretch on my part, but I got the impression from the first book that Jasnah specializes in three of the Essences; crystal, fire, and smoke. She sorta implies that she's not good with blood, and we only really see her use the other three. And Shallan only ever successfully Soulcasts into the same Essence. Blood and water, for some reason, are the same essence. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is true; for the purposes of this question, I ask you to accept the hypothetical possibility that anyone with the Transformation Surge tends to be best at three specific essences. If you were an Elsecaller, and let's assume you get to pick your three, which three Essences would you want as your hotkeys? Starting off, I'll pick. Fire. It has some utility when I want to begin an actual fire, and like Air, it's excellent for simply getting rid of things. Balancing the usefulness of being able to make fire, against the occasions that air is better for making something be gone, I think fire will end up being more utile. Metal. If you get really good at it, metals have a wide range of physical properties you can take advantage of. Also, we know that you can Soulcast metals that will work for allomancy, so apart from being able to provide ammo and anchors for a Coinshot, you can even fuel any Allomancer friend of yours (if you get REALLY good enough to Soulcast the alloys properly). Also, if you're opposing an Allomancer, just make aluminum and some of its alloys and use those as weapons. ... Heh, actually, imagine if you were fighting a mistborn, managed to sneakily Soulcast one of his vials into flakes of aluminum, and when he drank it he automatically burned it and accidentally cleared out all of his own reserves. I think I've settle on "Meat or flesh" for my final Essence. See below if you'd like to read the stream-of-consciousness that led to this conclusion. I'm less sold on this one than I am on Fire and Metal.

One minor, almost-ancillary point to bring up... remember, "Knight Radiant" doesn't necessarily mean "good person." Relis is a total jerk, but that doesn't mean he won't form a Nahel bond and become a Surgebinder, and it also in no way precludes him from becoming a Knight Radiant, as long as it's an Order which doesn't include the "I won't be a jerk" Ideal. There are a few virtues even Relis exhibits, even if they're mostly subsumed in terrible ways. Clever. Proud. Works well in a team.

I thought she was the woman everyone suspects to be working in Taravangian's hospital? Or is that Vedel? I dunno, I'm terrible at the "spot the Herald" game. Another thought... people often call the other chart the Voidbinding chart. I asked the artist once why the woman's safehand was covered, and he said it was probably designed for or by people who subscribe to those precepts of Vorinism. If so, that's presumably relatively new, since until the Recreance women could be Radiants as easily as men. Do we think it may have been designed well after the Surgebinding chart, with the border added in? Maybe it was made concurrently, in which case the Palaneum doors are newer than the shadowdays. Since we know from Jasnah that even the books in the Palaneum were subjected to Hierocratic review, how old is the actual library? I know we suspect that the physical chamber itself was there first (and what exactly was its purpose?) but did the library exist, and then the Hierocracy went through and adjusted it? Or did the hierocracy happen first, and books were thereafter collected and the Palanaeum was formed?

If it is the Surgebinding chart, do you think it includes the faces of the Heralds around the edge?

I suspect he means Taravangian. The doors could have been installed by him, but they could also have been made far earlier. It's been said that the chamber was carved by the Dawnsingers themselves, that it extends back to the shadowdays. This could be an artifact from the actual Radiants themselves. ...Or it's just as likely to be a renovation that Taravangian commissioned. Maybe something in the Diagram told him to.

According to chapter 7, the doors to the Palaneum are "some kind of chart" made of "circles and lines and glyphs." ...

Ask me about steelministry.com

Can we Kickstart? EDIT: ... To be clear, my faith in Kickstarter is even lower than my faith in this game ever being made, but for a Sanderson property I will kick the football one more time.

Moogle: Very well-made point.

As Nowhere mentioned, Hoid isn't necessarily a good person. He has his own goals, and they don't always align with those of the protagonists of any individual book. There's been WoB on it, and the semi-canonical deleted prologue to Emperor's Soul, showing the levels he's willing to go to in order to accomplish his own goals. Just something to mention, as some people have mentioned that he'd only support Rashek because he knew what would happen in a thousand years to make everything better; "make everything on Scadrial better" might not be his goal.

This thought occurred to me while I was away from my computer. Good catch!

It seems a little premature. It's possible that "a bond with Nightblood" allows you to inhale Stormlight, but just as it's not directly contradicted, it's also a bit of a stretch to assume it's that simple. Perhaps it is, and that's all there will be to that. Still, I think it's worth speculating for now.

Ooooh... sorry, did not get that. Can it be assumed that his horse was a Rhyshadium? Could it have carried a full Shardbearer otherwise?

At the end of Well of Ascension, Elend mentions that the map in the cache points to Statlin City. In Hero of Ages, it's called Satren city. Typo?

If Vin and Kaladin met, and neither were trying to kill someone under the other's protection, would they get along?

A question i have for Mr. Sanderson is if Is ralakest. Also,

Yet even then, no spike has ever stolen 100% of a living human's spiritweb. That we know of, it steals one trait, allomantic, Feruchemical, or fundamental. (Or other arcane). That i know of, there's no concrete support for the idea that more than a scrap is taken. In fact, there's WoB that Hemallurgy staples a "scrap" of spiritweb, and we know it's possible to survive theft, something presumably impossible if it left you with no spiritweb. In light of these facts, my confidence is much lower than yours.