Gilphon

Lift also talks about Rosharan trees a bit in Edgedancer- there are basically two varieties: willow-like trees that grow alone and lie flat when the Highstorms rolls by, and more foresty ones that grow very close together and intertwine their branches so the storm can't knock them over. So a Rosharan forest is gonna be much thicker than forests on earth; probably you wouldn't be able to travel through them with much ease. But they certainly exist.

I suspect that bullets would take down Shardplate eventually, but it would take more than one shot. And that a Shardblade could kill a lifeless, but it wouldn't stop an Awakener from bringing it back. I'm thinking that if it comes down to Roshar vs. Scadrial, Scadrial probably wins under these rules. But there's a lot potential for things to go bad for Scadrial early on, with the other three capitalizing on their lack of experience. And if things play out like that, Roshar probably wins.

Roshar has two sizeable advantages for my money- The first is that they probably have the best generals and the best training for their soldiers. The second is the Fused, because they seem to be pretty numerous and there's not gonna be any easy way to put them down short of completely exterminating the Singers. (Oh, and this is a situation where the Windrunner resonance turns out to be very useful, because creating dozens of squires could be a game changer. But they'd have to very lucky indeed to start out with a third-oath Windrunner, given these parameters and the fact that only two of those currently exist on Roshar.) Not that it would be a clear cut victory of them- the Lifeless are the most dangerous Rank-and-File forces, outclassing even Soulcaster-supported armies. Elantrians are the biggest powerhouses around by a quite a bit- if you give them breathing room to draw an Aon, they can screw you over in more ways than you can count and it's not clear what it would even take to get rid of them- and Scadrial has clear-cut technological superiority. Speaking for Scadrial: between the tech, and the 32 distinct varieties of metalborn, and hemalurgy, Koloss, Kandra and medallions, they just have so many tricks up their sleeves that nobody's gonna have time to adapt to them all, so they could very well have it in the bag if they play their cards right. But what they do not have is anything approaching experience fighting a war like this- so realistically they'd spend those 90 days figuring out stuff that everyone else got done in the first week, and then get blitzed by the Lifeless. So I think it's between Roshar and Sel, all in all.

I mean, I feel bound to point out that Brandon made the distinction between 'magic' and 'magic system' in the very WoBs this thread opened with- he sure doesn't appear to be counting the Old Magic as one of Roshar's thirty magic systems. So the Old Magic isn't a magic system, and I sincerely hope that nobody will be in any way interested in challenging the statement that 'the Old Magic is magic', and therefore not all forms of magic are part of a magic system. But I equally feel bound to point out that if the Unmade's powers don't turn out to be at least thematically similar to the Voidish surges, I'd be flabbergasted, and I suspect most readers would share my reaction.

/nods. That makes sense to me too. And, really, if we try to fit every magical effect we've seen on Roshar into the ten surges paradigm, the Unmade are just the tip of the iceberg. Like just about nothing in Shadesmar obviously maps onto any particular surge.

I mean, the 'third system' has been seeded pretty obviously, it's gotta be the whole 'putting spren in gemstones' thing that fuels Fabrials and various native Rosharan Fauna. And I kinda don't think we're gonna get a super in-depth look at all ten levels of Voidbinding. But there's a vast gulf between 'the Unmade don't map cleanly on the Surges' and 'the Unmade are their own thing'. The surges are fundamental forces; which means that things that can map cleanly onto a single surge are gonna be rare and usual- most things are gonna be a complicated interaction between lots of surges. I'm sure they are using voidish surges to some extent- A lot of them fall into the similar general themes of manipulating emotions, power at a cost and weird time stuff, which feel like the right kind of thing- but where you're losing me is the idea that they're clean representations of the Voidish surges. They're more likely to complicated combinations of the voidish surges and the regular surges.

You're gonna need to back up a step further than that to get at the heart of the disconnect between you and me there. I didn't intend to suggest that the Unmade are the combinations of two distinct surges. What I was saying was that I'm not sold on the idea of connecting the Unmade to the surges in any way beyond the incredibly broad 'well, the Surges are supposed to be fundamental forces, so everything's gonna tie back to them in some way.' Like they could all just be different mixes of all ten surges in ways that are tricky to precisely define. I do want to zoom in on Nergaoul in particular here, but I feel like he's the one we understand the most. He's embodiment of the urge to fight. A creature very similar to standard emotional spren we see all over the place, just on a much larger scale. It doesn't make sense to try to pin down exactly what surge the captive Painspren in Navani's Painrail is drawing upon, because it's probably a combination of all the surges in-universe scholars believe go into creating the sensation of pain. And, I'd argue that it's similarly odd to try figure out which surge is causing the Thrill.

Well, no, not entirely. We've see Shallan do some weird clairvoyance stuff with her drawings from time to time, like that time in WoR she drew Yalb washing up on shore and then Shallash destroying a statue. Given that that's possible, and that the other Illumination order is called 'Truthwatchers', which sounds a lot like what that ability is, which implies that it's an Illumination thing, not a Transformation or Resonance thing. Presumably it's an application of the Surge that's harder for Lightweavers to pull off consistently for whatever reason. This, meanwhile, is generally taken a sign that the Fused aren't Voidbinding. Or at least that the powers we've seen them use aren't voidbinding. All the surges we've seen them use work just the Radiant versions, and if Voidbinding is an entirely different magic system, you'd expect a lot more divergence than what we've seen. All that strikes me as a bit too meta-textual to be persuasive. Which is not to say that its complete nonsense or anything like that, just that there's too much potential for Brandon to have changed his mind about stuff like that for it to be a reliable guide. Certainly not reliable enough to be prioritized over more direct textual evidence. But that's honestly a nitpick that doesn't actually matter; the larger issue is that you haven't sold me on the idea of associating each Unmade with a single surge. Like Ashertmarn and Nergaoul in particular seem to embody specific emotions rather than forces. That said, I do find it interesting that Taravangian's wording in that bit you quoted implies that some of other Unmade may have better future sight than Moelach. Which doesn't really match what we've seen, and drives home to me just how little we know about these guys. Like, if other Unmade have future sight that's just as good or better, then that implies that future sight can't be Moelach's primary purpose. And so we get that one of the ones we've known about for the longest has a purpose we can only speculate about.

Interesting idea. Not one I'm totally sold on, but it's the most complete framework for this kind of thing I've seen. But, well, to be perfectly honest, you kind of had to crowbar most of the Unmade powersets in order to fit the surge. Most conspicuously, you're ignoring the obvious interpretation that Renarin's future sight is Voidish Illumination. Which I consider a pretty serious flaw, because 'Renarin has future sight and doesn't seem to have normal illumination' is the only real concrete piece of information we have about Voidbinding. Like, if we're going down this road, why not just make Moelach the Illumination unmade. And then Re-shephir to Progression maybe? Her power is all about growing minions to do her bidding, and growth is totally progression.

He had told Dalinar about Amaram by that point. Dalinar said 'yeah, so, I can't really act on any of that without proof' and Kaladin interpreted that as brushing him off. Of course with the benefit of hindsight we can say that Kaladin was wrong to interpret it that way, and that Dalinar took his accusations completely seriously, but Kaladin's whole deal in WoR is that he can't convince himself to trust the Kholins and can't look past his grudge against Amaram, so when we reach the intersection of those things we get him wasting a golden opportunity to get legally get rid of Sadeas and getting himself thrown in prison for reasons that turned out to be totally unnecessary.

I dunno about this. Like, Voidlight doesn't heal in the same way Stormlight does, yeah, but Stormlight healing isn't Progression. If it was, only Edgedancers and Truthwatchers would have access to it. And I believe that we saw Kaladin fight a Progression fused in Thaylen city- there was a guy who changed his skin colour to blend in with the ground, regrew his arms almost instantly after getting them chopped off, and then grew spikes on them just as quickly. I think the more likely candidates for the missing Surge are Transformation, because they sure didn't seem to have a response to Jasnah, or Tension, because if the nine orders of fused correspond to the KR orders, then Bondsmith is the one they're least likely to have an equivalent of.

That was Relis. I kind of assumed that Radiants make the swords come back to life just enough to make them start screaming, and ordinary bearers have enough Connection to hear it when a Radiant does that to their sword.

I suspect that's partly because the Cryptics are the only ones who've decided to return en mass- Syl and Ivory and Windle were able to grab the best candidates on the planet, but the Cryptics are all competing with each other and so not all of them ended up with top-notch people. And partly because the Lightweaver powerset isn't all that great at getting you out of dangerous situations unless you've progressed far enough that you can use it consciously. It's probably the worst one by that standard. But I digress. The 'I wish to sleep' one is... I mean, I think I'd technically consider it a Death Rattle, because I do think that guy said that because of something Moelach showed him, but it's an odd one in that he's refusing to play along. Interesting and worth noting that that's apparently possible; the other Death Rattles seem pretty involuntary. And then there's 'Bastards, you've killed me' one. The main thing that makes it sounds like a Death Rattles is 'while the Sun is still hot'. Which sounds to me like another reference to Shadesmar, where the sun is weird and cold.

I mean, the Sibling was probably used to power the giant fabrial that is Urithiru, but I don't think they were Urithiru. I think the common theory is that the Sibling is a spren of Stone; perhaps continent of Roshar itself. (whereas the Nightwatcher is the spren of everything growing on the continent, and the Stormfather is the weather.)

Despite the fact that the Silent Gathers mark this as one of particular note, it seem questionable to me that this is really a Death Rattle. To me, it feels like this one is more just this guy getting a glimpse into the Cognitive Realm as he dies. Like, he's describing Shadesmar, and apparently there was a Cryptic hanging out in the room.

I mean, Aluminum may resist investiture, but it's not a particularly durable metal. There are gonna be ways to force your way out. So I'm rather skeptical of the Aluminum cell idea working.

It sounds like it's talking about the Honorblades to me. 'The only people left with magic are us, people who are not Radiants or Voidbringers.' Which doesn't exclude the possibility that they have some magic system we don't know about, but the Honorblades seem more likely.

Man, although I do think that Dalinar has done things to redeem himself, my personal thoughts on that are entirely orthogonal to the point. What's important is that many people feel that he has done such things, and therefore claiming that he hasn't as an objective reality, and not just your opinion, comes across as really arrogant, and most to the point, has no hope of being a persuasive argument towards people who disagree with that premise, and will only serve to antagonize everyone else. As far as proof that people feel he's done things to redeem himself go, well, this thread currently contains seven pages worth of proof that people who think like that exist. Some of which I wrote myself. But, for the sake of being absolutely clear, and with the understanding that I'm doing so because you directly asked me to, and that I don't expect it to prove anything other than 'not everyone shares your opinion on this', here's what I feel Dalinar has done to redeem himself: Recognize that the orders he gave were wrong, and attempt to cancel them. Resolve to never again let himself make a mistake like that. Decide to become a better person; a person who would never have made that mistake in the first place. Spend the next six years holding himself to the highest moral standards he can muster, no matter how impractical it appears. Give up being a killer altogether; only ever fighting in self-defence or as sport. Refuse to overlook the wrongdoings of those around him, even when doing so costs him old friendships. Drag Alethi culture in general into a much less destructive direction by leading through example. Consciously go against his cultural values by choosing to rely on diplomacy instead of conquest, no matter how high the stakes get or how tempted he is to do otherwise. Apologized to Kadash for making him complicit in the slaughter. Rejected any suggestion that he wasn't responsible for his actions, refusing to abdicate any responsibility or make any excuses. Reacted to a betrayal as grievous and less justified than Tanalan's by offering the perpetuator a second chance, despite the fact that the stakes were higher. Sealed Nergaoul, who directly inspired the slaughter at the Rift and is responsible for the death for thousands of people in the past year alone, ensuring that nobody else will ever walk the same path as Dalinar did. Wrote a book confessing his crimes in their entirety to the world, in order to further take responsibility for his actions and further ensure that nobody will make the same mistakes. So that's a decent list of good things he's done. And it's not like I'm claiming he's fully redeemed because he did all that, just that redemption is a road that Dalinar has already taken a rather lengthy walk down. And please don't try to, like, nitpick that little list apart point by point, because doing so would be missing my point rather badly; that 'Dalinar has done nothing to redeem himself' is far from an objective stance.

I don't think that denying them bodies is gonna work directly- they'll always be some idiots willing to give themselves up- but I'm not certain you'd need to go quite that far. I feel like if a majority of living Singers were against them, that would weaken their resolve. I feel like if they had face their descendants saying 'you've done enough; it's time for you to move on', they might allowed themselves to be convinced to stop. Or at least I'd like to think that. I'd like to think that when they said they intend to let their descendants rule once the war is over, they meant it. The contest of champions and the Oathpact are both fundamentally just delaying tactics; at best you might be able to get a few thousands years out of stuff like that, but they'll never be permanent solutions. Stuff like Nightblood and Vyre's Knife could work in theory, but there are a lot of ways it could go wrong. And that's the kind of solution that tends to create more problems than it solves in any case. Like it could be a decent plan if you just wanted to get rid of a specific especially nasty Fused, but trying to beat them all that way is gonna go bad.

Furthermore, it doesn't seem like Odium knows any particularly hidden details about Taravangian- he knows enough to choose to visit him on a 'stupid' day, but didn't seem to realize that the higher emotional intelligence he has on those days actually makes him better suited to a negotiation like that. And Odium didn't seem to know just how in-depth the Diagram went, and had to figure out the specifics of Taravangian's intentions by reading it. I got the general of feel him having given Taravangian cursory looks in the past, but hadn't made an in-depth study of it. So we can infer that he probably wasn't paying special attention to the Valley on the day Taravangian visited. And since no one in the Diagram seems to realize that he didn't meet the Nightwatcher, there's no other way for him to know what happened.

So, a thought: Kalak's current goal is more or less the direct opposite of the goal of the Sons of Honor. Which further implies that Gavilar's motives had ceased to be aligned with theirs by this point.

We may have already known this, but this also confirms that the Diagram was written after Gavilar's death, because Cultivation said that Dalinar was the first human she'd personally interfered with in centuries.

So. To be clear. You're saying that just 'it formed the entire backbone of the arc of one of the protagonists and facts coming to light about it will almost certainly fundamentally change the way he interacts with other major characters going forward' isn't enough for it to reach the lofty threshold of 'discussed'? Alright. That's certainly a sentence. But, well, as for your three problems, or more specifically why the claim that they're not just personal opinion holds no water: 1. The idea that he has done nothing to redeem himself is purely your opinion. 2. The idea the a redemption arc can only follow the specific structure you just laid out is purely your opinion. 3. The idea the reader isn't supposed to question Dalinar is purely your opinion. And, if I may be completely honest, is a frankly absurd position. So, y'know, all of those things are your opinion, and not structural problems.

Yeah, um, 'no discussion of the crime' is demonstrably false. Like, even ignoring the way it forms the entire backbone of his arc and colours every action he takes and thought he has after he remembers, the note OB ends on is 'and then Dalinar wrote a book confessing his crimes to a world that already mistrusts him'. Like I honestly dunno how you got the idea that it's not gonna come up in the future. Even ignoring the wider context, I can't imagine Adolin not having some strong feelings about the truth of his mother's death. He already gets weird and quiet whenever anyone mentions the Rift.

I'd call him a misogynist. Look at the way he talks to Navani. More specifically, look at the way he calls her 'woman' as a dismissive insult. He's most of the way towards telling her to get back in the kitchen and make him a sandwich.