FirstSelector

Ah yes, I stand corrected. Thank you for clarifying that point. The eye color may in fact be a point of contention here, but I do not think we have enough information to say conclusively whether the Heralds are affected in the same way as "normal" humans by their blades. They are certainly not "normal" humans by any stretch of the imagination - they are immortal and bound to some agreement with a Shard. They must have some fragments of Honor inside them, so it is a bit unclear how that will interact with the power in their blades. Since we have not seen a Herald wielding her own Shardblade (and the Prelude is ambiguous), I am unwilling to make that logical leap yet. As for Taln's being confused and disoriented, I would like to point out that he was tortured continuously for 4500 years. I can hardly speculate what that would do someone's mind. EDIT: And GeoMancer, just because Hoid didn't swap the Blades does not mean that they were not swapped. We know that someone must have swapped them, as they are different while the man is the same.

This is a very good idea! I will admit that I too thought the burn marks and her battle-readiness came from just having survived the assassination attempt. However, her most recent fight need not have been in Shadesmar - she must have ventured back into the Physical realm at least once to get leather to fashion into her backpack.

If you look carefully, Szeth's eyes only turn blue when he is actively Investing. At other times, his eyes are normal. Thus, unless Taln is actively using Stormlight when we see him in Kholinar, his eyes would be brown. Unless I am misunderstanding your argument, I am not sure how eye color applies in this case.

If you read through recent (and some not-so-recent) interviews, whenever the subject of man who showed up outside of Kholinar (henceforth referred to as Talenel, see below) is broached Brandon is very careful to make claims such as "you assume he is the Herald" or the like. This confused and upset me because I was very excited about reading Taln's viewpoints and speculating where his Honorblade went. Upon discussing this with some friends, we arrived at a tentative conclusion why. I do ask your apologies for this Doyalist theory. Please note full book spoilers. Brandon's insistent hedging on the subject of Talenel is to set a precedent for future appearances of Heralds. This theory has a bunch of pieces, so let's look at each part. First, we have the nature of the Heralds and their role on Roshar. The Heralds feature prominently in the second group of five books. Brandon has avoided saying too much directly about them so as to not set up expectations that will take upwards of a decade to see played out. Where they came from, how they landed their current job, what that job entailed, what they have been doing for nearly 4500 years and so on are questions that have yet been unanswered. From an in-world perspective, the Heralds are practically divine. We see now that they are single-handedly responsible for keeping the Desolations away and for the protection of the world right before. Many nations and peoples revere them in some form. Their return will see them lauded with power, accolades, and admiration. Second, we have the actual appearance of Talenel himself. He appears outside of the correct (for War, at least) capital city speaking the language perfectly. He carries a (Honor)blade that does not vanish when his concentration breaks. He appears just before the Desolation starts. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he attracts Hoid. In his interlude (and at the end with Amaram), he speaks of many things that only a Herald could know. He refers to the other Heralds by their real names and knows how they will prepare mankind for the Desolation. Granted, he seems to have severe PTSD and thus unable to orient himself temporally (hence refering to Ishar's Knights as something to be created and having existed for several centuries). There is also the subject of the Gift. Though I cannot provide a rigorous argument, I believe this to be whatever magic is compelling him to say his mantra about the Heralds. It is a Gift to mankind, allowing the Heralds to be located and brought together even though they might still be "out of it" due to torture. And it is never Taln's because, being the stubborn soldier he is, Taln always is the last one out of Damnation. Thus he wouldn't need to explain what is going on, someone else would have been there first. I find it very hard to believe, given the wealth of evidence, that this is not Talenel, Herald of War. I admit there could be subtleties and clues that he has been switched, mind-reformatted, or what have you, but I believe there is a simpler explanation. Third, we need to examine the nature of this Desolation. It appears Odium has been playing the "long game," as it were, waiting for Roshar to wear itself out before bringing in new Voidbringers. Sure, the Heralds are around and could try to mount a defense, but given the current state it would likely be ineffective. I believe we are going to see (in the next few books) at least one person claiming to be a Herald who is in reality an agent of Odium (or similar). They do not have the somewhat constraining requirements of Talenel showing back up, since they have been around this entire time. Instead, they have to show up at Urithiru and demonstrate whatever powers. This will likely be a big plot point, and so Brandon doesn't want to make it seem odd that this new "Herald" gets skepticism when the rest didn't. As such, he has to be consistent until all ten of them make their appearances. The simplest explanation is that Talenel is exactly who he seems and Brandon is being intentionally vague for other reasons. I want to make something clear - I would love to be proven wrong about this theory. It's uncomfortably Doyalist and makes predictions that are very far away. Instead, I would like to have a good understanding of why Brandon is wishy-washy about Talenel. Unfortunately, Talenel's appearance and actions fit exactly with what we would expect (without being "too obvious") and thus finding what is "wrong" with him has proven complicated.

The "picking up languages" part is actually not all that hard to understand - there must be some way in which people can "learn" a langauge through Cognitive Realm trickery. This is practically a requirement for the Heralds, since there is no guarentee that when they come back next the languages the were speaking even continue to exist. Additionally, Hoid never appears to have trouble speaking the local languages, and we know from Vasher that the cosmere does not speak one uniform language. As for "the Gift," my interpretation is that this references some magic part of the Oathpact that makes sure that when the Heralds return, they are cognizant enough to explain what is going on and hopefully find someone who can take care of them. Or, it could reference some Gift to mankind, in the form of the Heralds and their leadership (and perhaps their ability to understand the language). Lastly, though this is much more tenuous, the symbols associated with each Order were supposedly stylized versions of the associated Herald's sword. A "long, straight spike" would match the symbol for Stonewards nicely. I have yet to come up with a solid reason why Taln might not be the Herald Talenel. Apart from Brandon's trickery and his statements that the Herals feature prominently in the back five books (recall at one point two viewpoint characters are Taln and another Herald), I am not convinced that there are good reasons to believe that Taln is anyone except who he claims. My closing thought is that perhaps it is Taln, but he is no longer a Herald. Unfortunately, this doesn't explain the Gift or his apparent superhuman reflexes.

Hoid is known to change his appearance with ease (cf the people seeking him in the Purelake).

After much thought, I think the issue here is determining the "fundamental unit" for Stormlight magic. We want to have an organizational system that reflects the actual construction of the magic systems. In the Metallic Arts, the fundamental units are the metals. For Stormlight magic, however, we are not sure what the fundamental units are. My gut feeling is that the Surges are the fundamental unit. They provide specific powers in each of the three systems, and the Orders in those systems combine two of these units while keeping them separate. In this scenario, Windrunners and Skybreakers both have access to the Gravitation Surge and are granted identical powers. Voidrunners and Voidbreakers are both granted Void-Gravitation, and this power is different than Surge-Gravitation. In the other scenario, Windrunners get the three Lashings. These three powers are all some combination of Adhesion and Gravitation. Skybreakers, on the other hand, get a different set of powers that are some combination of Gravitation and Division. Voidrunners are granted a different set of Void-Lashings that are a combination of Void-Adhesion and Void-Gravitation. In the first scenario, I believe it is appropriate to have pages for the individual Surges. The Surges are the fundamental building blocks. This is in analogy to the Metallic Arts, where the Allomancy page is more about overarching concepts, history, and effects without covering all of the powers directly. The Surgebinding page would provide universal ideas and information about the whole magic system. Individual Surge pages would document the powers in each magic system. Pages about the Orders would document their history, personality, spren, and perks without having to explain all of detail of their powers. Now, we could put all of the information from the individual Surges onto the system-wide pages. This could work, though it risks putting too much information on the system-wide page and cluttering it up. We could instead shift the information onto the pages for the Orders, but then these pages would have to stay synchronized and it doesn't reflect the organizational structure of the magic itself. In the second scenario, the Orders are the fundamental building blocks. The powers of a given Order are not easily separable into two distinct Surges. Thus, the pages on each Order would describe their powers and there would be overarching pages for the whole system. Clearly, pages on the individual Surges don't make sense since they get combined in different ways to give rise to the powers of a given Order. Evidence, I believe, points towards the first scenario being correct. Nin cannot determine which Order Lift is until he sees her use Regrowth, which implies that the Releasers and Edgedancers implemented Abrasion in the same fashion. Jasnah needs to have Shallan describe her spren before the former is able to determine the latter's Order. It is possible that this is not the case for the other two magic systems. I believe that there are additional "perks," such as Shallan's memory and Kaladin riding the storm, that are due to the spren themselves. However, these do not appear to modify the way in which a Surgebinder utilizes a given Surge. In summary, I believe that our organization structure should reflect that of the magic itself. Furthermore, I believe that Surges are the fundamental building blocks for the three magic systems, despite limited evidence. As such, I believe the most faithful representation of the magic (in analogy to what we have for the Metallic Arts) is to have a page for each Surge. We could collect all of the information about the Surge in different places (the system-wide page, the page of each Order, etc) but it clutters pages or does not emphasize the connected nature of the Orders in the correct way.

I think that is the optimal way forward. We also need to confirm that Orders that share a Surge implement it in the same way, i.e. both Windrunners and Skybreakers implement the Gravity Surge identically. Our descriptions would be significantly shorter, then, as we can describe the phenomenon and then say something along the lines of "Windrunners refer to this as a 'Reverse Lashing' and Skybreakers refer to it as a "Second Impulse' (or whatever)."

Brandon has stated that the recipient of the First Letter (and presumably, the author of the second) is someone from the planet Yolen, where Dragonsteel takes place.

Excellent, thanks for finding that quote. I think I recall seeing this before, but a cursory search around the site didn't bring anything up. My understanding of this phenomenon was that the shadows are mostly cognitive entities and thus exist mostly in the Cognitive realm. However, the part that "leaks over," as it were, is incredibly dangerous. Therein lies the change the Shard made to the world - not only are people trapped as shadows, they are compelled to follow the rules and their physical manifestation is poisonous. Actually, the damage they inflict seems very similar in some ways to the damage dealt by Shardblades. I wonder if there are general statements we can make about how Cognitive objects interact with living Physical beings. Finally, I would be willing to bet that Kelsier could manifest in some very ephemeral way on Scadrial (or wherever he is) if he so chose.

He didn't delve into specifics, he just said they are Cognitive Shadows.

I want to give context to the question I asked Brandon at the LA signing, but you can skip ahead if you just want the punchline. Some time ago I was reading the Well of Ascension alternate ending. It is significantly different from the original, and most of what I am interested in happens on page 2 where Sazed fights Marsh. The remainder of this post contains spoilers, so beware. In this ending, Marsh and Sazed are fighting at the remote headquarters of the Steel Inquisitors. In particular, Marsh is fighting to prevent Sazed from going back to the etched steel plate where he would discover Ruin's trickery. During the fight, however, there is a significant change. Marsh is about to strike the killing blow when several mist spirits show up. These spirits appear to have a mental argument with Marsh, which eventually culminates in him fleeing the building and leaving Sazed to discover the truth behind the prophecy. Originally, I thought that these spirits were the manifestations of other Shards. Presumably, they had enough future sight to see that Marsh couldn't be allowed to kill Sazed as the latter was still destined to pick up Ruin and Preservation. This was exciting to me, so I asked Brandon if he could tell me more about them. The answer is much more interesting! His inscription on my book is thus: He went on to say that in the alternate ending, the mist spirits are the Cognitive Shadows of the First Generation of Kandra. Of course, they were aware of the original version of the prophecy and Sazed's importance. This was removed from the book so that it didn't cloud the waters. However, there is a story where these ideas were later incorporated - Shadows for Silence! The shades are these types of objects. Furthermore, and perhaps even more interestingly, he mentioned one other person in this context, someone who "refuses to stay dead" - referring to Kelsier. In any case, I figured that this is of general interest and allows us to connect several previously disparate phenomenon.

I want to make an additional point about the current organizational scheme - we have a separate page for the three Lashings. The issue arises when we consider the fact that the Skybreakers share the Gravity surge and therefore something similar to the Basic and Reverse Lashings. Imagine that the Skybreakers group their four powers into something called "the Four Impulses." The first and second are the Basic and Reverse Lashings, respectively, and the third and fourth deal with the Division Surge. How would we organize the wiki under these circumstances? It seems inappropriate to create ten pages describing the powers based on Order-specific language (i.e. Lashings). The information on the Lashing page, however, is relevant to Skybreakers, as the Impulses page would be relevant to Windrunners. Do we really want both pages (with duplicate information) to exist? As an additional example, what about Soulcasters? This obviously is related to the Transformation Surge and the powers of Elsecallers/Lightweavers, and we would want all of that collected together. This was the crux of the original argument why we should have individual Surge pages, since the various Orders share powers but use Order-specific language to describe the combination of two Surges. Then again, if the Orders that share powers are implemented in different ways, then this is a moot point. We should get clarification from Team Sanderson on this idea before we commit to an organizational scheme.

The page on the Knights Radiant will ideally have the updated table with all of the names. I'm just holding off on fixing it until the powers-that-be decide how to proceed.

As an aside, we also need to update the file names, captions, and so on for the correct names of the Surges as well.

I had a good argument (or so I thought) for breaking out all 10 Surges into their own pages. In a nutshell, I thought that if we wanted to collect all of the information about how each Order uses a Surge (up to six total) then it would be too much information to be contained in one overview page. However, I now think a more elegant solution would be to have one Surge page that briefly describes each of the ten and then links to the Orders that can utilize it. We can redirect all of the Surge 'pages' to this one page and link to each of the orders from this page. The current "Surges" page will have to accommodate quite a bit more information. My only concern is that we will have people come to the wiki who want to learn about a particular Surge only to be swamped with information on a too-general page. Thoughts?

EDIT: I now have conflicting views about how we should organize the Surge pages. The articles on Surgebinding, stormlight, and so on all need to be updated. There are a few things we need to hammer out before changing. There is also the complicating issue that the in-world book "Words of Radiance" appears to have been tampered with (or passed through the hands of) the Vorin church. First, the Epigraph on Ch 36 clearly refers to Order 3 as "Releasers," adding that "Dustbringers" is a derogatory epithet. Which do we want to accept as the actual name of the Order? Second, we need an infotable for the three types of Surgebinding, the ten Surges, and the 30 orders. Unfortunately, unlike "Metalic Arts," we don't have a good overarching name for the combination of Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and whatever the third magic is. Does anyone know the general name? Third, with that info box, I would like to bring the ten Surge pages into line with sixteen metal pages. Have a description of the Surge, how it is used by the six (or fewer, depending on if Voidbinding/magic #3 have pairings) orders, and so on. We also have to update the Surge names. Fourth, I would like to clean up the pages on the Heralds and Orders. We can use the Vorin names for the ones we don't know and update as we learn more. Here, the authenticity of the in-world Words of Radiance is important.

I'm personally for "The Nth Letter." It is the clearest and most extensible naming scheme and permits things such as Hoid writing the Third Letter to another party completely. I think we are all now agreed that Hoid wrote the First Letter?

This quote can be taken many, many ways. My first thought was about the Second-to-Last Desolation, where nine Heralds survived incredibly fierce fighting and a very tenacious enemy. Brandon has confirmed that there is more going on beneath the surface of this event. Perhaps one of the Heralds was approached by Odium, and told that if the Heralds walk away, Odium will refrain from that whole Desolation thing. This idea infects the other Heralds - they convince the others to leave Talenel behind and walk away. Just a thought.

I agree, Zahel is likely Vasher. It explains the "voice in the head," the grumpiness, the color metaphors, the game (which I didn't even catch), and the ability with the sword. My only question is - how can he have survived for years without an influx of breath? Yes, he could have stored up a huge pile, but that's not a sustainable solution for someone who could survive indefinitely. Of course, I suppose he could just return to Nalthis for more. Really fantastic catch!

I agree - I'm fairly confident (despite the limited evidence) that Surgebinding comes with additional "perks," such as increased healing/strength/speed (common to all), ability to form Memories (Lightweavers), and "becoming" the storm while dreaming (Windrunners). I think that once we learn more about the various orders we will encounter additional such perks unique to each order.

There is also speculation moving around out there that the God Beyond is related to the force that opposed Adonalsium (and is still around). I have spent some time wondering if the whole fight with Rayse and Bavadin is just distracting from the real issue - this force or group and their ulterior motives. Perhaps Rayse is a member of this group? Perhaps it is an Outsider-style force intent on killing all life in our universe? Much of my basis for these thoughts comes from the fact that there are still six main sequence Cosmere novels after the Stormlight Archive finishes. I find it hard to believe that if Odium is the "last boss," he will be dealt with by the end of Stormlight 10. So, either there will be a new big bad Shard, Odium will somehow persist, or there is something bigger and badder still waiting out there... EDIT: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5839-odium-is-a-mini-boss/

Evil is a point of view. Odium himself is not evil. To ascribe morals to thoughtless collections of power is misleading, since that power requires a cognitive presence to function. Granted, the Intent of the Shard determines the long-time behavior of its holder, but even still one can destroy or be hated without being evil.

Good thoughts! Unfortunately, the more I think about the Purelake, the more conflicted I become on its true nature. Here's a simple model of for the draining action. The highstorms are accompanied by a high-pressure front which creates the crazy winds and such. If the Purelake was sitting on a particularly porous rock which had a water absorption rate that was very sensitive to pressure, then the high pressure would cause the water to "soak" into the rock when a highstorm was nearby. Granted, this isn't the best model - what happens to the fish? Presumably the lake is not depleted of fish every highstorm. Originally, I thought that the lake would drain through holes into the ground and the fish would simply flow with the water. However, to my knowledge we don't see any character commenting on the fact that there would be huge holes in the lakebed. If those holes did exist, we might imagine that the Purelake extends underground through these holes, and then rests on the porous rock described above. When a highstorm approaches, the water from the visible part of the lake drains into the cavern, and the water in the cavern is soaked into the rock. The porous-rock model (without holes) has one nice advantage - any impurities in the lake would likely not penetrate into the rock. So when the water drains, it would leave any impurities behind (like noodles in a colander) which would then be swept away by the highstorm. The water coming out of the rock would be as clear as water from a filter, since this is effectively reverse osmosis in action. I don't know what to make of Ishikk's thoughts on fish - do they really have the magical properties that he claims? If the Purelake really is somehow related to a Shardpool, then one might imagine that the power would leak over into the creatures living in it. Maybe the Shardpool is underneath the rock, and when the water drains away it comes into contact with said Shardpool. Lastly, there's the fact that Dalinar sees a grand keep in the center of the Purelake, and in the modern day was dissuaded from venturing to the center of the lake. There is almost certainly more to the Purelake than we have seen so far, and I wonder if it is really designed to be a defense of sorts for that keep.

I like your theory and would like to expand a bit on it. I think the evidence for Darkness being Nalan is pretty good, and if you buy my idea that Jezrien is the Stormfather, then Syl's choice to go against the Stormfather's wishes makes more sense. In particular, the Heralds realized that if they could get rid of Surgebinders, then Odium wouldn't return with his army. In fact, he could have told them this directly. How does this play out? The Heralds show themselves to the Knights Radiant, explain that if they don't step down, Odium will return. They do so, at great cost to themselves and the spren. The spren are mightily offended and refuse to make any more Surgebinders. However, they realize Odium may eventually come back (despite his claim). Jezrien works the Cognitive realm side, prohibiting spren from crossing over, while Nalan runs around in the Physical realm killing Surgebinders that somehow slipped through the cracks. The major difference I would like to point out is that while the human element is a compelling story, it is entirely possible that Odium spoke directly to the Heralds and told them they wouldn't have to fight anymore if they could purge all of the Surgebinders. At this point he would have already killed Honor and thus be in a very strong position to tell the Heralds to stuff it. Odium, of course, knew he would come back eventually after all feasible resistance had faded away. But the Heralds, sick of a lifetime of torture and fighting, would agree almost immediately out of guilt over Tanavast's death and desire to never deal with Desolations again. I really, really like your point about how Odium could use Gavilar's death to manipulate the Parshendi into researching old forms, causing them to accidentally discover the form that Odium can control. If you accept that Odium corrupts spren, then if he can corrupt stormspren that the Parshendi subsequently bond, it would give rise to the so-called Voidbringers. Of course, without the war they would have no reason to engage in such research. Overall I like these ideas, very well done.