Valigus

It seems reasonable to conclude given that they are known to be significant splinters of honors power. Whereas shardblades are not. I do not believe it’s ever directly stated but honorblades are proper splinters of honors power whereas shardblades are never referred to as such. a point regarding their sentience though is that it may not actually be indicative of lower levels of investiture given that the sentient spren of Roshar were seemingly intentionally shaped, furthermore they only gain sentience in the physical world with the bond, and honorblades connection to their wielders seeming to be much weaker than bonded spren, it could be they cannot manifest minds as easily.

So given that honorblades are significantly more invested than shard blades, do we think that this has a bearing on their ability to cut more invested entities? For example let’s say you can’t cut some entities with enough investiture (tbh I think this is highly unlikely given that we have seen them cut people invested by unmade and heralds.) would an honor blade do better given its much greater investiture?

Here’s another good question, if a shardblade cannot cut a dragon (frankly I find this unlikely at least in terms of its bare flesh. They can cut heralds for example and I suspect heralds are at least as invested if not more invested than (most) dragons. would a honorblade be able to? Do honorblades have higher cutting potential as a result of being much more invested entities?

Possible, or the cost of transporting it is prohibitive, but also consider that jezrien was the tattered remains of a herald, these are reforged heralds with their honor blades, and full power intact, I think you need a substantial gemstone for that. The big question about the new oath pact is why they would ever come back cause it kind of seems like that would let retribution just kill all the spren

My suspicion is that they can’t rly, the amount of anti-light needed is probably far too substantial. we’ve only seen any light interact with low levels spren, kill fused (which mostly seemed to happen because of the pressure) and collapse a perpendicularity with heralds being literally reconstituted from investiture I doubt antilight would slow them down much more than poison or just being stabbed rly good so the amount they would need (and getting it there) is probably prohibitive, nothing anywhere close to as strong as herald as been gone after with anti light, for comparison nobody ever seriously considered using anti light to kill the stormfather

Yeah it would’ve been pretty funny, but the problem was that it would have been fairly transparent, and taravangain can prob like force fen into a vision or something

So you’re saying because people have imagined the heralds to be these insanely strong godlike warriors they literally got super strength and a host of other things?

They also have moderately explicit super strength and speed which is the main one I noticed. Like taln seems to just blitz fused, and nale moves so fast in their fight that he literally makes what seems to be mini thunderclaps, and hits kaladin way harder than a normal human should be able to as a receipt on page 1031, Nale moves in a blur, on the next page he then super speeds through his defense to grab him and smashes him against the rocks so hard it breaks shardplate.

So now that we have seen the heralds fight for real we gotta ask a few questions. 1. what are there undisclosed powers, specifically the super speed and strength, how do they work, what are the upper limits, etc… 2. with these powers, how we rating fullborn vs herald now? And random side note, how op is kaladin gonna be when he shows back up

But that rly is what’s called for here, the whole cosmere is quite explicitly at stake, and dalinars decisions will damn Roshar to save the cosmere. He had consigned 100s of thousands of innocents to suffer and probably die, in order to win, and made a decision for which he may be reviled (or at least not loved if people found out about it). The irony of the ending is that he did exactly what tarvangian has been preaching, he took a horrible action for the sake of everyone that had to be done, while jasnah and tarvangian wavered.

My two cents on the moral themes the great irony of the ending is that dalinar in his moment of “weakness” did the utilitarian thing nobody else was strong enough to do, he damned Roshar to save the cosmere. jasnah and taravangian in the end revealed their commitment to their ideals to be hollow, the irony being that the man who rejected them made the right choice by them, and has done so, nearly every time. (I think this in part represents a common lack of understanding with the philosophy but I don’t begrudge him that, he’s a fantasy writer not a philosophy PhD) but also it’s just rly funny and I think it may be somewhat intentional

Part of the huge problem for Jasnah here is that she can’t argue things about epistemic position without losing. This is even specifically acknowledged by her in the debate, where she wants to say that she seeks the greatest good for the greatest number with what she has available. Which is often the requirement people are held to in regards to their actions in utilitarian moral philosophy. the problem here was if she admits that, she concedes, because taravodium is a god and has infinitely more information than her, so in part out of pride she cannot admit her own infallibility and in part she cannot concede this and say “I am wrong sometimes, but I do my best with the info I have” because he has more information. she was very unprepared, but also showed a lack of flexibility here, the only path to winning this debate as I see it would have been 1. Admit the epistemic position(makes her seem more reasonable(cause it is reasonable)) 2. Attack taravangians sincerity to undermine his epistemic advantage (which she did but not without the first position) 3. Literally just deny all the letters and orders were written by her (kind of Hail Mary tho) follow-up to this- the great irony of the ending is that dalinar in his moment of “weakness” did the utilitarian thing nobody else was strong enough to do, he damned Roshar to save the cosmere. jasnah and taravangian in the end revealed their commitment to their ideals to be hollow, the irony being that the man who rejected them made the right choice by them, and has done so, nearly every time.

I strongly agree with this but take it a step further, we have a number of very curious things that look like the kinds of things cultivation had done I think she is cultivating “perfect” vessels for all the shards who can control the intent(as we see with what she says to Todium) for example- 1. Syl is awoken by a pure tone, before coming to Kaladin, could it not be cultivation, why did nale who knew about tien not know about kaladin despite him being way more conspicuous. 2. Nale had nightblood which was given to cultivation and he then presumably gave it to szeth on cultivations orders which is odd 3. Jasnah references a psychological break she had has a child where she was declared insane and kept in the dark for a period of months which literally nobody seems to remember or ever references. this goes on and on and on

Yeah that’s all fair tbh, but im almost done and I get why people would want this but if there is a sequel I am almsot 100% sure they will get together. In a solid half of Joel’s interactions with melody he things about how she is “quite pretty” or is a wearing a dress that is “quite fetching” and the book actively puts them in situations where they look like a couple and neither of them seem to rail against the suggestion. speaking personally when i or others I’ve seen have been in situations like that they will usually tail against the implication if anyone brings it up, people generally find it very uncomfortable I feel like to be implied to be in a relationship or attracted to someone who they aren’t (attracted to or in a relationship with). So in my mind that goes a long way. I could see her not reciprocating but Joel is attracted to her.

Yeah though I’d say solid chance I’m wrong about re-shephir specifically being from ashyn. However the idea that Ashlyn’s disease magic system was based on aethers seems very plausible. (Though I will say I think solid chance it just became spore-eaters from tress)

that is a little ambiguous but yeah I guess that means probably wrong. though I will say the way he hesitates makes it still possible as the prime aether that re-shephir was and the unmade may be more or less separate entities and the unmade is native to roshar. Cause he does specifics that they “count as being native”

So I recently finished tress and was listening to the podcast and I had a thought. If we believe as was discussed that potential the primal aethers are essentially cultivating a bunch of aether strains all over the cosmere, and we have re-shephir on roshar it is as proposed entirely plausible that this is a prime midnight aether from roshar or ashyn. however going from this I think it makes way more sense to be from ashyn. because as Brandon has said ashyn was supposed to have a magic system based around diseases that infect you and give you powers, given what we see in tress this sounds right In line with another very virulent strain of aether as we see in this book. so essentially the magic system on ashyn was an essentially viral strain of aether possibly similar to that seen in tress though potentially far more stable due to potentially a lot more water. Re-shepir is just a corrupted prime aesther from ashyn then. granted it’s also very possible that the ashyn magic system has been scrapped and possible that the idea was actually turned into the aether gestator we see in tress

I think lifeless should probably count for more militarily, they are relatively few but the logistical advantages are huge, not to mention they are probably the only military force in the cosmere shown to date capable of reasonably beating rosharan troops in morale and maybe in skill.

Yeah I also realized you addressed this right after I wrote it, but I m gonna replace that comment with some observations I’ve just had about rosharan military capability relative to tech and social ordering

One thing I do think is missing is that rosharan military capacity is in many cases well beyond that of other divided planets. overall the planet seems to about early renaissance or late medieval era in terms of technology lacking notably guns and with the very notable point in their favor regarding fabriels which all them some industrial/modern era capabilities without a lot of the disadvantages like pollution that usually come with it. this is based on their general tech and the fact that despite being largely feudal they have a relatively advanced economy and some sprawling urban centers. it also seems clear that based on the casualties and numbers seen in rosharan warfare we are talking an industrialized military machine in most cases, these aren’t feudal armies they are often professional armies with a state war machine at their back. for example- Azimir is a classical republic/empire which has similarly advanced logistical and economic capacity. Notably the vorin peoples(it’s like always the vorins) are capable of feats and military industry and power projection similar in scale to classical/napoleonic states of similar sizes. Specifically the alethi sent o be able to field an army similar in size to napoleonic France and mustered an army of about 130k for the shattered plains, which was basically about as much of a peer to peer conflict as anything the us has fought in the Middle East. Plus barring the minor pitched battles the war probably has strategically more in common at least to my eyes with counter-insurgency than a full scale war. plus even after being cut off from large portions of their kingdom they still are able to supply a significant number of coalition forces and each high prince seems to be able to muster about 30k or more professional trained soldiers. thats insane, the vorin states are decentralized feudal societies with the military capacity of an industrial napoleonic era state. tldr: vorin people’s punch far far above their weight in military capacity based on their tech level, economic level, and decentralized social structure. Now to the next point, the rating of armed forces seems to be to not count the huge quality advantage for roshar. of all the planets in the cosmere roshar has by far the oldest military history and the largest scale of military development, as well as the best troops bar none. as of Stormlight 5 the average rosharan human soldier faces a foe that is 1. Likely a demon in their religion, and 2. Is a 7-8 foot armored crab man, that can jump 30 feet. Warform singers are in my estimation objectively superior to koloss in nearly every way. rosharan troops have clearly exceptional morale, are largely professional soldiers and with millennia of military theory behind them. this is especially notable compared to Scadrial who has very few real professional experience troops(at least in the north) and roshar still seems to be on par in terms of macro scale with Nalthis and sel. but large numbers of rosharans troops come from militant warrior cultures, are professionals plus they are able to stand their ground against superior troops and win. But they can take their ground and defeat them due to their skill and that of their commanders.

First for the guns, I think gunpowder would be pretty easy, and the exact mechanism may not be soulcasting actual guns, it may be soul casting individual components and then assembling them though I think soulcasting guns would be possible. Also every firearms have almost no moving parts and I think a flintlock would be very easy to figure out for a fused with a little help and then assemble with soulcasting. im also gonna disagree with you on the matter of tactics and training, guns are much easier to train people with than many historical weapons, or at least get people to enough skill that they can impact the battlefield. Additionally musket tactics are sufficiently similar to the pike blocks common on roshar with pike and shot and infantry blocks in later warfare that the tactics shouldn’t be hard to transition to. Additionally it would likely constitute such an advantage that even used very inefficiently it would be impactful and my argument is more that he would have done this earlier and by now the fused would have tactics developed. plus I’d they did manage like a couple wary machine gun type weapons then they Ben deployed in the worst way possible it would likely be devastating. essentially I’d argue guns are in and of themselves (unless they were really bad like pre flintlock) such an advantage and the similarities to their current tactics would make the changes needed for an impact to be minimal. Overall I just think he needs to have a better reason to have never even tried to introduce guns. Now the warrior culture argument I admit I can’t dispute other than to say that I am interpreting him calling roshar s training ground in a more literal sense. This is probably the best counter argument to my theory and in all likelihood it is correct, however the myth of the tranquiline halls being present in the worlds most martial cultures where the thrill also usually hangs out influencing, and the thrill being a nearly perfect delivery mechanism for this plan is a lot of coincidences.

So while I may agree there the one thing that counters that is basically soul casting, all odium would have to do is explain guns to fused soul asters allow them to briefly tinker for a time and then they should be able to make large quantities of funs with enough investiture. Even if this couldn’t be made in super high quantities it should be possible in large enough quantities to turn the war. I’m not disagreeing that odium was trapped or that human wave tactics are eventually going to win him the war, im saying that his claim that roshar is a training ground as well as him not introducing advanced weapons seems to indicate to me that we must be missing something unless he is almost completely irrational. it doesn’t make sense to say “look at this place to train an army” get everyone there for training and then nuke them and repeat for 4000 years, that doesn’t train anyone except for the few immortals who are going mad anyway.

He could and in fact it would are sense to wipe their memories seeing as most likely died fighting odium and it would be difficult to get them to serve him. fair but my problems with that are outlined in the first post, his actions are simply not conducive to winning the war. Especially given that we know harmony was able to just introduce guns, and unless this was his goal it seems to me he would have simply done that before. in the end it just seems to me that without doing something like that to win the war, or harvesting the dead then rayse was far less cunning and far more irrational then we have suspected this far which I find unlikely given taravangian seems to have broadly signed off on the plan. basically my argument is that it rayse was somewhat rational and cunning his plans, stated goals and actions fail to make sense unless this is (a part of) his plan. As well as if this is his plan we have a perfect mechanism for achieving this in the form of the thrill, which does the right thing, to the right people, at the right time and in the right places at least within the events we know the thrill was involved in.

Fair but I think it’s pretty clear that odium doesn’t shares a ton with the fused, and seems to prefer humans. I also suspect that these spirits would be dormant, in fact one thought I had was the everstorm may be made of them but that’s seems weird. that’s valid but if it’s true then the thrill has essentially severed no purpose in all this time since it’s only real benefit to odium is opening people up to his influence which doesn’t help if he doesn’t then use them like at thaylen field. yeah shades may be a good comparison though I do imagine odium has some plan to give them physical form.

Unsure on that one I mean returned as an example of much weaker cognitive shadows though it is possible odium plans to staple them to singer bodies or some kind of like robots though that’s a little far fetched. generally I have no specifics I’m just noticing that given Odium’s resources, goals plans and actions there seems to be a large gap in our picture of what’s going on that this mostly fills. it’s also possible even likely that other unmade are in on this as many are connected to death but who they are recruiting and why would be far less clear and I’m not quite sure how that would fit into Odium’s plan compared with the army part