Ashbringer

Not sure if that's known for certain, as the Coppermind doesn't mention the Stormfather using Honor's Perpendicularity besides when Dalinar or Ishar makes it. Or rather, the Stormfather can slow time because he's very highly Invested, which may let him do things that you'd need a perpendicularity's power to do... or a Shard's. But if the Stormfather can do it on largely a whim, a Shard can likely too. Eh - the trick with these is most of Trelawney's "prophesies" (besides the big two she did) either come true definitively or end up just plain wrong. Death Rattles are pointedly vague but almost always correct. Renarin's are more in principle, showing a few possible futures, but they also have a tendency to be right and seemingly reach beyond Odium's foresight. The other point is that we know that the Death Rattles that connect to the WaT Day 10 chapters are definitively referencing those events, because that's how they're set up narratively. We know, as certain as possible, that that Death Rattle references the Unoathed, and that most Death Rattles did come true in a specific way. But that's not something the characters know, that's something we as readers know because of how the book is chaptered. Maybe Moelach isn't sapient enough to be truly aware of what he's reading, true. But Moelach is accessing that Fortune, and he shouldn't have access to any future sight that Odium doesn't (unless Odium specifically cut out part of his future-sight... but he's still described as being one of the best at it, and why would he do that?). But the multiple Death Rattles referenced do show that Moelach successfully predicted a majority of these events. Meanwhile, Renarin is aware. Maybe doesn't have the full capacity to interpret, but he does to witness, and he also saw events more contingent on Retribution than the Unoathed (namely the reforming of the Oathpact in the Spiritual Realm). We don't know if Moelach is getting any more than what his Death Rattles say, but Odium's futuresight should be much stronger than Moelach's, and Moelach's is accurate. So I think it's reasonable that Odium, with his much greater capacity, should have had a better picture about what that (and several other) Death Rattles are leading to, but Odium, Wit, and Cultivation seemed to discount any of these possibilities. Wit even makes a comment that he has no idea how Dalinar, even with Honor, foresaw this outcome of Retribution. But somehow Moelach could give the Fortune that regularly saw it.

Are they that different? Clearly with a Shard or similar power holding the reigns, the Spiritual Realm can act as a pretty good Physical Realm analogue, or the little Kharbranth experiment is going to end very quickly. The Stormfather did explicitly slow time Physically for Kaladin in RoW, before Dalinar sent him into a vision, and also does so when the highstorm grants Stormlight. There's also a WoB about Bondsmiths being able to compress time to some degree. Maybe Taravangian didn't have the proper Connection to the assassins to pause their time, but Kaladin wasn't dramatically connected to the Stormfather... and Odium certainly could harm them, seeing as he crushed them with a tsunami. It does correspond - it's the title of the WaT Chapter when the Unoathed appear. Maybe Moelach trades in interpretability for accuracy, somehow, but we also never see anyone try and interpret the Death Rattles. Presumably Taravangian and the Diagram tried, but we never see what their successes with that are past OB, and before then they were doing quite well but not perfect. And that's kind of the issue - Fortune being wrong or misinterpreted is a recurring theme in the Cosmere. It's not a recurring theme with the Death Rattles. Those have almost always been correct, if cryptically so, and referencing events that have passed beyond plausibility for other future-sighters like Wit and Odium himself. I think the only explicitly wrong Death Rattles we've seen is the Thousand Days one, which predicted the Everstorm's arrival but off by 200 days, and the Scholar with a Spear one that Sigzil both knew and specifically acted to make impossible. And there's not many unattributed ones left. Or to the point of the thread - Moelach had an idea of what was to come. The Wind did as well, and both before the Everstorm even arrived. And Renarin's visions. But somehow, not Odium. That's strange. When Ishar is explaining his plan to leave the Oathpact to Taln, Honor sees 'a frightening number of futures where the Heralds stopped fighting'.

Shards and similarly very-high-powered Invested individuals can cause Physical Realm time dilation. The Stormfather and Dalinar stretched time in RoW when Kaladin was falling off the tower, and I think Rayse stretched time to talk to Taravangian while Szeth was stabbing him. The Spiritual Realm's an easier way to do it, for sure. But also for the case of minds, Shards exist mostly in the Spiritual, so I think they'd be able to take time to think without necessarily dilating the Physical. Maybe for that example. But for another, a Death Rattle predicted "Ten People, with Shardblades Alight" which seemingly refers to the Unoathed - who specifically foiled Taravangian's plans to win Azimir. So Moelach, a Spren of Odium, not only predicted that the Unoathed would defend Azimir, but also that there would be a defense of Azimir when that only became possible when Taravangian killed Rayse. Moelach is weird. I can see it going to Kharbranth to tempt Taravangain to side with OB, but then it went to go hang out in the Peaks, then came to the Shattered Plains seemingly only to spook Sigzil, which seemingly just let Sigzil escape with his life. He seemed to see the outcomes of the Heralds fully breaking their Oaths - but only once he actually looked at Ishar's prodding. He's not great at it, but Odium's supposed to be one of the best, and he clearly missed some things. It may just be for Taravangian there that because so much of the ending cascaded from Renarin and Rlain freeing Mishram, he had too much interference there.

I too haven't given a ton of thought into this, but a few things I may want to add in: Metals may be the key or Focus for Scadrial, but as we've seen in a few places (WoBs about Nightblood being made from Steel, the fabrial metals in RoW, the sprouter's tools in Tress, and Aluminum and God Metals in general) indicate metals may have a more cosmere-versal relevance. Scadrial also has a few Focuses - Metal is one of them, but the other that comes up so much is that Scadrial's powers are all inherited rather than earned, passed on through generations or Hemalurgy's Spiritual gene splicing. Roshar's focus may be not the Oaths, but instead Ideals. They take the form of Oaths, but they're also called Ideals, and Ideals can also connect more strongly to things like the Unoathed (an Ideal without Oaths) or Soulcasting (where the default is using a color-based key to make an Ideal material). Perhaps it could even connect to the idea of Surges being an "Ideal" application of Investiture

Depends if I want one that fits my temperament (Invention), or one that I'd want to do something with (Mercy, Endowment), or just a fun one (Ambition). I think Mercy does fit most of the boxes. I would... not be a good Dominion.

After a re-check of the section, Dalinar's soul was pretty dramatically dragged away from Retribution, so it wouldn't just be Taravangian's lack of paying attention. Hmm. A few possibilities: Cultivation's Bane let her take him as a failsafe, either to actually keep him or to let him pass to the Beyond peacefully. How much Cultivation foresaw (or wanted) this I doubt, but it's something to consider. The Beyond itself claimed Dalinar, through Dalinar's own will or some other way. Technically speaking, Dalinar broke his oath to Odium to serve him, so there's no reason for him to forcibly remain in order to do so. Another Shard interfered. Perhaps the rumors of the fourth Rosharan Shard, or perhaps Mercy decided to act. Seems like a thing Mercy could perhaps do.

So there's some points I think there's more of a reason for, and some that aren't. Taravangian destroyed Kharbranth not to just deal with Cultivation's assassins, but to clear it off the board. If he'd just killed the assassins or otherwise stopped them (which I'm not sure the then-bound-Odium could even do), Cultivation would just send more. Wiping out Kharbranth permanently stops Cultivation or anyone else from being able to manipulate him in that way, and sends a much greater message to Cultivation about what he's willing to do to win. Of course, there's also the asterisk that Taravangian wasn't able to go through with actually killing the people of Kharbranth, which may come back to bite him, but it was a very good move. (I think also, slowing time in order to have more time to think, as a Shard with a theoretically infinite mind, wouldn't necessarily be effective - for a more grounded example, no reason to burn Bendalloy to gain more time to plan alone when you could tap Zinc instead.) Kaladin needing to renew the Oathpact came as a consequence of Dalinar giving up Honor, so that follows, and also had interference from Wind. Adolin holding Azimir and Venli winning the Plains are weirder. It's possible there are explanations for why those moments come with interference - the strange Fourth Moon Metal and the Well of Control messing with Shard's sight around Narak, and the Unoathed possibly being a result of Shardic interference - but otherwise Taravangian just made a plan and was wrong. However, I think there are some discrepancies about. Taravangian (and Rayse, by proxy) both didn't seem to be able to predict the creation of Retribution and the arrival of the Night of Sorrows, as ... but many of these events are alluded to in Death Rattles or by Renarin's Voidbinding. Indeed, those have been proven wrong only a few times, and often because of something like how Vin beat Atium, where foreknowledge of a predicted future can beat that future (i.e. Sigzil stopping Vyre because he knew the future from Leyten). A clue might be in Tanavast's PoVs - he frequently just lets events happen because he becomes too distracted with other things and doesn't notice the centuries pass by. He had no idea that Mishram's binding would have such disastrous effects. Perhaps Taravangian would have been able to prevent Kaladin's renewal of the Oathpact had he cared to look at what could happen from that, but he was so dumbfounded by Dalinar's table-flipping. (Or as a corollary, perhaps Taravangian would have predicted Retribution happening, and the following issues, had he ever even conceived of the possibility Dalinar would hand him Honor.) As Darth_Hal notes, we also really only saw the Diagram pieces that succeeded even though several had failed. But also the Diagram was largely unopposed - it was Cultivation's design, and worked to Odium's interest for the most part, with no other chance for Fortune-based interference besides a little from Renarin and Shallan(?). Taravangian is directly competing with Cultivation's plans, has Renarin and Rlain now sticking into a major point of interference in his plans in Mishram, and is also just new to this level of power. As for Cultivation having planned even this... I'm not sure. It could go either way. But the Wind, perhaps, had some influence to this.

I could see Honor partially-saving Dalinar like how it partially-saved Tanavast into the Stormfather. That'd also help explain perhaps why Retri could grab the Blackthorn. But I'm pretty sure he's dead. Retri could have forced Dalinar to become his servant, but he was so distracted he didn't even notice Dalinar dying and slipping away.

I think "getting as far away from these storming people as possible" is also an objectively reasonable thing, seeing as what all the other Shards are like.

Eh, I'm bored, I'm a fan of Mercy, let's see how it goes. Mercy is compassion to the ones beneath you and a personal involvement, but as it's missing the other Shards like Reason and Devotion and Endowment, it becomes a bit different. She also "worries" Harmony, is somewhat pointedly not reached out to by Tanavast, and I have a sneaking suspicion she had a greater involvement in Ambition's demise than Odium suggests. Coup de grace, anyone... Anyway, spoilered for size.

I think to rephrase my idea - based on what Mishram and Ishar could pull off with the Well of Control, if Cusicesh really had access to the full might of Honor's Perpendicularity, it probably could just make all the Elsegates immediately and not need to wait to charge up on people's souls. Which I don't think it's necessarily a game of Cusicesh makes the portals as soon as it's Invested enough, because that doesn't necessarily make sense, but it'd be a question of why bother to soul harvest. And the Elsegate into Shadesmar is seemingly different than the one from Ashyn to Roshar, but it seems to work similarly to an artificial perpendicularity in that sense. Pozen managed to drag people into Shadesmar just fine (and Jasnah has done so herself, technically, to survive her assassination attempt in WoR). It's also probably likely that the Long Trail always happened this way - there's been several Lands before Roshar when none seem to have the technology for interstellar travel yet, and even Lumar suggested that the Iri up and vanished in a day, which doesn't seem like a rocket launch. But who knows with them.

I like this - I think scraping the souls of people is probably how Cusicesh powers up (although the Highstorm are is also likely a source - I'm not sure about Honor's Perpendicularity, because if Cusicesh could drain that it probably would be ready a whole lot faster? Depends if it really is Honor's Perpendicularity Cusicesh is manipulating vs creating its own artificial one, both of which are impressive, but since the Irali left Lumar which has no perpendicularity I lean towards the second). I will note - I'd have to recheck, but I forget if Cusicesh actually is making full intra-cosmere Elsegates or just sending the Long Trail into Shadesmar.

iirc, it was actually legal under Alethi law to kill the King's / Queen's Wit - just doing so made you forfeit your titles and lands. Which could be interesting, if Honor cares about that, but Taravangian also was never Alethi. Wit has been specifically noted to have lost certain protections that would otherwise stop Shards from directly messing with him and the bonds between his cells, but I don't know if those necessarily apply to Retribution anymore. (And, the extra kicker - Taravangian didn't actually successfully kill Wit. Whether he knows that, idk.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it's the mechanism by which the Iri have made their other jumps, but given a spren-like form due to being on Roshar where those kind of mechanisms gain personifications.

Just to put this somewhere - I noticed there being an Amputee and Prosthetics Expert in the acknowledgements before the book. Couldn’t figure out who that was for for a while…

Rayse is very good at provoking people. He nearly provoked Tanavast into destroying Roshar to get at him, and he managed to get Aona and Skai of all people to fight each other. Perhaps someone like Endowment could simply wipe out an incoming army, but I also don’t think that’s an absolute inevitability - Endowment (or say, Harmony) may be limited by Intent rather than agreements, and there are ways to hide such an army or force from a Shard’s gaze. Odium also doesn’t seem like the type to care if his forces get regularly annihilated, as he can always get more, while most Shards would probably not stand for constant enemy forces attacking them. Especially with the addition of anti-Lights and Nightblood (and perhaps the power of finding an enemy Shard’s perpendicularity, or the destruction of a people) that can actually threaten a Shard. But one other thing we learned in Wind and Truth - Rayse was forced to agree to hold a Contest of Champions, once in the past by Tanavast and a second time in OB by Dalinar. Rayse wasn’t very happy with the agreement in RoW, I imagine, but he needed to make one to not break his word and give Cultivation another opening.

I have returned... with Wind and Truth over! So now I can make spoilery memes.

ooooh! shiny (I think double posting after significant time is fine but just in case)

Praising the Ja never gets tiring! Praise Ruin the Ja!

... oh Well welcome back to SE, I haven't been here in a while clearly!

Sure! Welcome to SE, always glad to have new faces. Or temporarily disembodied spirits, in this case

To toss in my relatively oblivious hat: The SE Rules post does say that we follow the general 17th Shard rules, and provides a hyperlink to them. However, the link is simply on the word "here" at the end of a sentence on Player Etiquette, and that link also takes you to a set of 3 other links as the Forum rules are somewhat split. It's there, but could be much clearer. Especially if this has been a recurring problem. It would be a good idea to explicitly restate the forum rules concerning harassment and similar things in the SE rules, as well as saying that yes we follow the greater 17th Shard rules, instead of just saying that "we do that" and leaving it to the people who need support to learn more about them. The SE rules themselves, on a quick skim, don't say much about when something needs to be escalated any higher than the IM. And while the IM can adjudicate during the game, and I assume the IMs do discuss things that require intervention amongst themselves to look for patterns, it can dilute things when someone is asking multiple IMs across multiple games if something is a concern versus going directly to a (subforum or forum) moderator for something that is above a single game of SE. I agree with Rae's point that there should never be a single individual who make a final decision on things, but there could also be specific people to contact in the event of possible harassment, or a direct link to where one would report something that is clearly marked, whether that's directed to go to the subforum mods or the official forum system. Even just... copy-paste this into the SE rules page. Like it or not, and whether we're trying to change it or not, SE is a very insular community, which means that people will be more reliant on the subforum rules and moderators than the forum ones. I'm fairly fortunate in that I've had very few issues with SE myself, but I also know that I probably wouldn't notice an issue in front of me: anything involving Gears went right over my head, and when Illwei left they addressed me as a reason why, to my major surprise. As far as I know, nothing came of that, but maybe something should have.

Bit of a setup question - are these Olympics being held in any country in particular? Or just in a country somewhere? I know the basics of Dreamer, but not the specifics (and am currently scared of the Coppermind and its potential to do WaT spoilers)

May want to add Signups to the title Wasn't expecting my first game back to be a Dreamer one but the kandra in me won't skip on body hopping. May have to defer to pinch hitting because of the timing of the first day vs my midterms, but since it seems like that one's mostly strategy I can live with that for now. In as... Faleast? Not sure how that's going to work...

I could possibly run this one, a bit drained this week but next week I've got a lot less. Steeldancer also had some interest in running a game per the Discord, though, and I may let him or another go ahead.