Kon-Tiki

Things the Diagram Has Done to Strengthen Dalinar's Position: Pushed Kaladin to swear his Third Ideal Put a very pliant Emperor on the Azish throne (why else kill two Azish Emperors in a row?) Removed Jah Keved as a rival neighbor (can you imagine how much harder it would have been to build Dalinar's coalition with a belligerent Jah Keved still in the way?) Created a Skybreaker willing to follow Dalinar instead of the will of Nale (it was only a rock) Giving Dalinar the idea to capture Nergaoul Helped persuade the Theylans to join the coalition with the Kharbranthian surgeons, which in turn helped bring in the Azish because Fen was willing to help I'm sure I could come up with more if I took more time. I'm also going to guess that Dalinar is going to receive a friendly tip about how Odium can't see the future where Renarin is concerned. At pretty much every relevant turn, The Diagram has been beneficial to Dalinar's progression into the leader of the coalition against Odium. So to answer your question, yes I believe that The Diagram foresaw Dalinar's Ascension. That said, I don't think current Mr T or the Diagram's members see anything they're doing in that light. Diagram Mr T, fueled by Cultivation, is playing modern Mr T and friends for a greater purpose than they realize. It's also worth attempting to summon @Calderis since Calderis is a Diagram junkie

I'd guess its also more of a lighteyes thing. I'd kind of be surprised if Kaladin and Tarah never boned down

He wasn't put off balance by the whore he saved when she offered him her wares, for whatever that's worth. The Alethi are internationally regarded as prudish though. I think him being put off balance by Shallan was as much surprise and some weird social propriety as it was sexual awkwardness, maybe more

I'm not saying she decides not to care. I'm saying that she does not allow the fact that she cares rule her

I looked up the word callous because I think a lot of the conversation we're having rotates around it. It maybe is not the best word. I never meant to imply that Jasnah is emotionless, passionless, or without empathy. Jasnah is, however, willing to snuff her emotion, passion, or empathy if logic dictates. I do not think this is a bad thing. Nor do I think that Kaladin throwing caution to the winds (often literally) and forcing an issue where logic dictates that he should withdraw is a bad thing either. In Jasnah, her logic-oriented approach inspires her to make really hard choices. In Kaladin, his emotion-oriented approach inspires him to do the impossible. These are both important. But I do not think they are particularly compatible.

I want to throw this in here because I think its relevant, though not directly, especially in evaluating Jasnah's moral character. Jasnah would have killed Renarin if he had not changed the future. Jasnah knew that 1) there is a traitor in Urithiru, 2) Renarin's spren is not a Truthwatcher spren and Renarin is claiming to be a Truthwatcher, and 3) Renarin was seeing the future, a thing everyone on Roshar knows is "of the void". It is a fair conclusion that Renarin is the traitor. In steeling herself to execute Renarin, she reminds herself that threats to a dynasty generally come from within the dynasty itself, and given her insistence that learning from the past is the best way to move into the future it makes sense to her that she should remove intra-dynastic threats as much as extra-dynastic threats. She is callous. That is not to say she is immoral. If she had been right, she would have been doing the right thing. The problem is, she didn't have all the information. When Renarin responds to her execution by tearfully nodding his acceptance, he signals to her that he is suffering from a different manifestation of the same problem that has plagued him his whole life: something difficult is happening to him that makes him different from anyone else and he doesn't understand it. He never even really commits to the claim that he is a Truthwatcher, he cites Glys instead. He worries throughout Oathbringer (and much of Words of Radiance, probably) that he is a fraud. All of this is new information to Jasnah. If Renarin had reacted with surprise and pleading, not knowing the future, she would have killed him. But knowing the future and having time to make some sort of perverse peace with the fact that Jasnah was going to kill him, he is able to send her a different message. That is why she didn't kill him, not some previously unplumbed depth of compassion or familial love. Why is this relevant? It shows the kind of person she is. Jasnah, to my mind, is willing to kill without having all the facts in hand, just enough to satiate her perception. She is willing to kill Renarin with a lot of circumstantial evidence that he is the traitor, nothing definitive. She is willing to kill the Heralds based on merely hoping that it could forestall the current Desolation, knowing only what the Stormfather told Dalinar about how the Oathpact works (read: not much). To use Mr T's model of leadership as pertaining to crime and punishment, her threshold of guilty punished per innocent man caught up wrongly in the system is very low. I imagine like Mr T, Jasnah would have hanged 1 innocent man and 3 guilty men. Jasnah deeply values dynastic stability, and as someone who flatters themselves into thinking they know a thing or two about history, dynastic stability is maybe the single most important thing that any leader can provide for the welfare of their country. Nothing in history is quite so bloody as succession wars. But Kaladin is on the opposite end of the spectrum in this. He represents the innocent man caught up wrongly in the system. Kaladin isn't happy until everyone who it is right to have saved is saved. To sum up what I am saying (and what I am not saying): 1) Jasnah is callous, but not immoral. 2) Jasnah values dynastic stability and the big picture, but Kaladin values the individual. 3) These things combined are not prohibitive of them getting married (especially if its politically motivated) or indeed having a healthy relationship, but neither does it recommend them. As I have said before in this thread, I find it terribly unlikely that these two get together (and I think there are a few things that are more likely), but I do not find it impossible.

There are examples in history and literature of militaries holding to outdated tactics and strategies through strength of tradition and some amount of arrogance. But the Alethi, to whom war is an art and a competition, are always looking not only to outplay the Parshendi but each other. I don't see that there's any evidence of the Alethi being to arrogant to adapt to a new technology or tactic. I think the opposite is true: they'll do whatever it takes to get an edge over the other guy in combat.

We do see examples of the Alethi changing tactics, both in Dalinar flashbacks and (to a lesser extent) in the modern timeline. Sadeas' bridge crews are actually an example of this. The way Elhokar talks about them indicates that they are a new tactical choice, and as they show acceptance the other highprinces start taking them up over the course of WoK and WoR. If I had to guess, I think its entirely possible that the Alethi just didn't have the skill/techniques in place to make blades like the OP described. Smithing is an incredibly complicated art, and while we don't think about it much now, the metals the Greeks used as opposed to medieval metals were very different and differently treated. Jasnah points out that access to soulcasting retarded the ancients' advancement in metalworking, and I see no reason to disbelieve that continued access to soulcasting didn't offer shortcuts past technologies/techniques that might otherwise have been developed post-Recreance.

Yeah Inkspren and Logicspren appear to be paired. Lifespren and Cultivationspren as well. I can't figure out for the life of me what goes with Highspren or Lightspren, though I'd guess Starspren go with one or the other. Flamespren pretty obviously slot in with Ashspren (though we don't know much about Ashspren), and we know nothing at all about the stoneward spren and their potential pairing except that some great stone spren hang out near Shinovar

You double posted an entire thread somehow! In any case, the penetration factor of a shardblade is probably irrelevant. It already slices through stone just fine. And since the carapace is technically part of their body, the Shardblade probably just travels right through it the first time same as any other living organic material. I'd guess that the curves, serrations, and hook are purely ornamental

Granted! But the hangover never ends I wish to skip past the cyberpunk future right into the space opera future

I got the original version at a signing when it came out and had no idea that he retconned it until after Oathbringer came out. The new version feels weird to me, but I did wonder how Nale was able to heal Szeth without lurking right there in the stormwall waiting to heal Szeth as soon as Kaladin killed him

Just use a relatively lower grain count. It wouldn't be any more difficult to control, I wouldn't say, you'd just have to account for it. And getting a small bit of metal to bullet speeds with gravitational acceleration would require boatloads of stormlight (due to many many lashings/bullet), especially since one lashing is ~7m/s^2, not 10m/s^2 like on Earth EDIT: For clarity's sake, Rosharan gravity is .7 Earth gravity, so the acceleration caused by that gravity is proportionally lower

We haven't seen any lighteyes eye color change when they summon their shardblade. I don't think they change

In order to have one flashback for each order, Ash would have to be a Dustbringer, unless for some reason Taln decides to be a Dustbringer and Ash decides to become a Stoneward. As Ash has been destroying things all over the place and we have no reason to think Taln would change orders, it seems pretty likely that Ash will go Dustbringer

I think the weirdness he's referring to is that Ash is our Dustbringer, despite being the Lightweaver Herald. At the time, we hadn't met Malata yet

Lift will also be more than double her age by the time her book comes around (nearly 30) I suspect her and Renarin's flashbacks will have a lot to do with filling in the blanks between the first five and second five books

Do you mean WoK Prime? I didn't know that. In any case, I don't know that I can point to something specific and say "this is prohibitive to a relationship between Jasnah and Kaladin". Its more of a feel thing to me. Even if they learn to work together (inevitably they'll have to), I don't really see either of them looking at each other and saying to themselves "this is what I want". But, even in real life I've found myself looking at a couple and saying "I have no idea how that worked out but I'm glad they're happy together" and that's probably the closest I could get to buying that relationship. And, to clarify, I didn't feel like I was kicking over your sandcastle specifically. Some people become passionate about their ships, so I avoid criticism of them. Your post was clearly a lot more than a passionate ship. At the end of the day, I think you're right, it depends on how Brandon writes it. Brandon could probably sell me Kaladin and a chull and while I might wonder how we got where we are, I'd go with it.

I think some sort of genuine relationship is much more likely than a political marriage between Kaladin and Jasnah, and even then I think its frankly incredibly unlikely. I hate saying that that way because I know a lot of people ship the two and I don't like kicking over people's sandcastles, but I just don't see it.

@Razrback16 As an FYI, you should avoid necro'ing threads that have been dead this long, especially since there are a few more recent threads on this same topic. But since we're here... I do not believe that a political marriage between Jasnah and Kaladin makes much sense, and considering Jasnah's position on marriage for herself and for others, I believe a political marriage is just about the only kind of marriage she'd engage in, and with major reservations at that. Kaladin is already effectively part of House Kholin. As a Shardbearer, he's a lighteyes of the fourth nahn already. Practically, he's probably the most important non-highprince highlord in all of Alethkar, especially now that Amaram is dead. He has Kholin lands, and he's been in just about every Kholin strategy meeting since he got made Captain of Dalinar's Guard in Words of Radiance. And on a personal level, Dalinar gave him the house cloak at the end of WoK and told Kaladin that anyone who had that cloak was "part of [his] family, in a way." (I have not read WoK Prime, but I understand that in that Dalinar actually formally made Kaladin family.) Certainly after having sworn his Third Ideal, his loyalty to Dalinar personally is pretty beyond question. I don't see what, exactly, would be gained by the Kholin family/dynasty politically if Jasnah were to marry Kaladin. You couldn't tie Kaladin more tightly to the Kholins than he already is. However, Kaladin is effectively part of House Kholin. As a Shardbearer, he's a lighteyes of the fourth nahn with immense influence within House Kholin. And as a Knight Radiant, he is probably the most important highlord in all Alethkhar. And (unlike Teft, who at least on paper shares many of these qualities) he's young and single. If the Kholins wanted the loyalty of a family/nation not already part of Team Dalinar, a marriage to Kaladin Stormblessed is a huge bargaining chip. And I don't think Queen Jasnah is above using one of her liegelords to gain political advantage, especially when the fate of the world could be on the line. To speak to @Alderant's perspective on character growth, one of the major areas that Kaladin has been avoiding dealing with is the fact that he is a lighteyes, part of the Alethi nobility. There's a lot that Kaladin needs to learn in order to properly discharge those sorts of duties, and more importantly there's a lot that Kaladin needs to accept. A really good example of this is how Kaladin needed three separate encouragements to find married housing for Bridge Four. Sigzil brought it up in Urithiru, and is apparently was a revisitation of a conversation they'd had in the warcamps. Even then, it wasn't until Rock's family showed up that Kaladin realized he needed to do something about it. This is basic lighteyes type stuff. You have to take care of your people off the battlefield, not just on it, and Kaladin has been pretty happy to ignore any needs that don't really feed into Bridge Four's performance as soldiers. And arranged marriage is part of the territory when you're nobility. If an arranged marriage between Kaladin and someone foreign noble can assuage the concerns of that foreign family and bring them into the Urithiru fold, thereby maximizing the lives saved of that foreign noble's people, Kaladin should jump in willingly. He doesn't even have to kill anyone! But I think we can all agree how he'd take being informed that he's going to get married to someone he's never met. Certainly not teeth grit and resigned, like Wax. He'd balk, probably refuse up front and have to swear his fourth Ideal half a book later just to get in the right mindset (I'm being a little flippant here, but not that flippant). And I've said it in other threads, but I think this is the most likely thing to happen on the Kaladin front. It would challenge Kaladin in all of the ways that he's been ignoring so far. And from a storytelling perspective (not that this is the most important thing), it allows Brandon to keep Jasnah mysterious and a little removed from the main narrative, which is something that it seems pretty clear that he's trying to do. I don't see Stormlight 4 as being the book where he changes that. I do see him pressuring Kaladin on the relationship front and on the lighteyes front, and political marriage challenges both of those things for him.

Aesudan is dead. She was consumed by Yelig-nar

I think "Shardblade" is just Alethi for "magic sword" the way "lighteyes" is Alethi for "nobleman". The way the sword is described makes it sound like it isn't similar to a regular Shardblade physically, and it obviously doesn't have the same effects. Adolin kind of did

He said in the reddit post that this outlining should take 2 months maybe 3. He outlined the first 5 books initially, but hasn't altered the book 4 or 5 outlines to reflect changes that he's made in the first three books. He'll be outlining both so that he doesn't write himself into any awkward corners

Read and find out! There's a greater Cosmere out there

Her name is Azure. I recommend reading Warbreaker, if you have not