RedBlue

I’m still very much in the process of going through all the materials that the game just released, but the first big thing to jump out at me was Liss. This pretty much confirms that Liss is not secretly a Herald, right? Stonewalkers was advertised as having the players meet three Heralds: Taln, Nale, and Pralla. Vedel, who has been widely theorised in the fandom to be Liss, is not supposed to be present, and yet here Liss is. By all appearances, Liss is just an ordinary (if fancy and well-equipped) mercenary. She’s given a standard stat block: she’s a Duellist Shardbearer. To me, that says Liss is not going to be revealed as secretly important in the main books, as none of the major characters have official stat blocks. To sum up: Liss’ only relevance to the main series is that she briefly ‘employed’ Szeth, then later was employed by the Stone Shamans to recover Taln’s Honorblade. And she helped with that mission, a bit. Which means that Vedel’s whereabouts and activities prior to the end of WaT are still unknown. Tanavast mentions that Vedel ‘became indifferent,’ and Nale lists her as one of the Heralds who grew ‘weaker’ and increasingly struggled to access the Heralds’ ‘blessings.’ Those are the only clues I could find about Vedel’s current state from a quick look.

The PDFs of the game books are all available right now to the Internet-having public on DriveThruRPG, a website that sells TTRPG stuff. If you want physical books, minis, dice, etc you will have to wait a few months.

The ‘new’ ones I like from a narrative perspective: Dustbringers. Kicking up a massive dust cloud is on theme for them, and obscuring an area at will is a neat ability. Edgedancers. They’re supernaturally nimble. Very simple, but could make for fun scenes. Also, checks out with Lift’s whole deal. Truthwatchers. The ability to make another person feel refreshed and emotionally stable. Sounds OP in this setting, but I like the idea. The ‘new’ one I’m not sold on: Skybreaker. The rules imply that they can essentially dual-wield surges really well, but I don’t recall that being an issue for any of the other Orders, so … not sure what the Skybreakers are doing, in story terms, that is different. The talents are described in story terms in the pages following the talent tree diagrams. From those: Willshapers can ‘raise the spirits’ of those around them, and Stonewards ‘show allies where to intuitively hold the line.’ I take this to mean that: Willshapers are supernaturally good at making people feel uplifted. Stonewards are supernaturally good at coordinating a team. I’m not sure if I like these. They are very straightforward, and maybe a bit woolly. But if the effects of these abilities are strong enough to have a meaningful impact, they could make really awesome scenes. In the books, I do want to see Venli turn into a person who can rally a crowd in a good way, and I do want to see Taln orchestrate a really awesome team fight.

He was created as an avatar. WaT chapter 113 (a Tanavast PoV):

You can infer certain things about the state of the world. I don’t think any of it constitutes meaningful spoilers for Stormlight 6-10. If you want a more in-depth discussion/explanation, you should post about it in the spoiler zone.

IMO a huge part of Nightblood’s character is that his entire personality is built around a really vague command. He knows that he wants to destroy ‘evil,’ but he doesn’t know what ‘evil’ is. He has very little concept of morality, just a whole lot of enthusiasm for it (although he does seem to be growing more self-aware as of WaT). If Endowment (I assume you’re talking about Endowment?) had somehow tweaked the Command to refer to the entities specifically, I think Nightblood would be a lot more focused on that and a lot less concerned about a vague, slippery concept of evil.

I think Patji would survive even if Bavadin died. The Stormfather was originally an Avatar, and continued to function after Tanavast’s death. I would expect a newly independent Avatar to be a bit weird as it awakens to personhood and develops its own personality, but we don’t know enough about Patji to rule out the possibility that such a thing happened.

‘The twins’ could be completely unrelated to everyone else here. The only thing implied by the book is that they are associates of Hoid who he thinks would help him. Anything beyond that is pure speculation on our parts. As for the wife, I think the fact that Starling’s first thought is to ask the wife for help is telling. It implies that Hoid’s wife has been active and at least somewhat helpful during the time Starling has been around. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Starling to think of the wife when Hoid is in trouble. That would mean that the amnesia is a relatively new development — within the last few decades — and she and Hoid were together prior to that point. And since Hoid is operating alone during Mistborn and dating Jasnah during Stormlight, I’m inclined to think that him having a wife is also a relatively new development.

That’s why I said I doubt the Malwish have many kandra. I could see them having one or two. I just don’t think use of kandra agents is an assumption we should make about Malwish military operations.

I’m thinking less in terms of binding contracts and more in terms of what most kandra would feel good about doing. Given their history and the choices they have made as a group, supporting the Malwish Empire would be a very abrupt turnaround for them.

I doubt the Malwish have many kandra working for them, if any, as most kandra are aligned with Harmony and I can’t imagine Harmony being OK with the Malwish military’s actions.

Raising Aviars the traditional way had its risks, too. Patji was not a safe place, and the Aviar were not predator-proof or accident-proof. Especially as chicks, they’re much safer in a controlled environment. And I assume the Navigators are going to need coppercloud Aviar for the same reason the trappers did. But in general, I think the Eelakin are going to start selling some Aviar to vetted and approved foreigners before too long. They will soon have more than they need by a wide margin, and they could really use a valuable trade commodity.

The Eelakin taking control of Patji, and removing the natural plants and animals there, was pretty much inevitable if they were going to survive as a culture in a changing cosmere. And if they hadn’t done it, someone else would. The book leaves it an open question whether this change is a happy thing, a sad thing, or somewhere in the middle. Dusk himself is resistant at first, but comes around on it being positive progress, and the book ends with him feeling optimistic about the future and the new way of life. As for me, I think the taming of Patji is good overall. It’s true that a unique ecosystem has been lost, but it was more of a web of bioweapons than a natural ecosystem. It’s not much of a loss. And having a facility that produces Aviar efficiently is going to be a huge boon for the Eelakin going forward, as well as anyone to whom they might sell the surplus Aviar in the future.

Agreed — I doubt Starling’s parents are dead-dead. The narrative leaves it way too ambiguous for them to be dead-dead. I suspect that Frost and his family are going to be relevant characters in a future book or series, maybe Dragonsteel.

‘Politically unified’ means operating under the same government. I think it’s pretty clear that Malwish and Northern cultures remain very distinct with little mixing, which implies there are at least two functioning nations with their own independent governments on Scadrial by this point. I don’t think there is much evidence that the Malwish are dominant overall, just that they are making a power play for the main planet the plot is concerned with. Starling sometimes speaks as though Scadrial and the Malwish Empire are interchangeable, but she’s speaking colloquially in a context where Scadrian politics are not a forefront concern for her. But even if the Malwish were dominant in terms of projecting influence to the rest of the cosmere, that wouldn’t mean Scadrial is politically unified. The North could still exist and be independent under those circumstances.

Worth noting that Hemalurgy exposes the user to influence from Harmony (or whoever else is holding Ruin). Giving Sazed access to your soldiers is quite the risk if he’s not 100% on your side. And there may be legal and diplomatic barriers to deal with as well. If I were the North Scadrian government, I would have strict regulations concerning who is allowed to make and sell charged spikes, and who they’re allowed to sell to. Especially with the more easily weaponised Metallic Arts.

It appears they do effectively own Yolen and Silverlight. I suspect the reason they haven’t expanded beyond there (other than economic and cultural influence) is that dragons aren’t the only dangerous thing in the cosmere. They wouldn’t want to mess with a Shard, and prior to FTL, most accessible planets had a Shard in residence. There are also three Dawnshards they don’t control floating around. They may have done a quick risk assessment — is it worth taking control of some primitive backwater planet despite the danger of running into something really nasty? — and decided that isolationism was much safer and more comfortable. Also, limited numbers and complacency likely have a lot to do with it.

Possibly? Frost could have other siblings, so who knows. If Frost’s lawyer sister is Starling’s mother, something bad must have happened to her between books.

I have to assume that the Aviars gaining powers is contingent on the worms being alive inside them. If it were as simple as eating an invested animal and gaining abilities, we would see people and animals doing that in other contexts. Like with the skullsnake. It seems unlikely that the worms could survive inside a dog or cat, but it’s worth testing for the Eelakin. If I were them, I’d start by testing other birds, and then other reptiles, as closer relatives seem more likely to be capable of a similar symbiosis with the worm.

Unless the Shard is unable or unwilling to take sides.

Yes, because it can speed up the natural healing process so that you recover from would-have-been-fatal wounds before you die of them. That’s different from irreversible chemical damage to the lungs.

If I recall correctly, Feruchemical healing works by speeding up the natural healing process. It uses perception as a guideline to fix wounds back to how they’re ‘supposed’ to be, but if an injury or illness can’t be healed naturally, Feruchemy won’t be effective. In Dajer’s case, I think the problem is that the body can’t heal his kind of lung damage.

The only prior mention of Vax was in Secret History when Ruin dies and Ati drops briefly into Shadesmar: And that’s it. No further context. Since then, we’ve been trying to work out what this meant. Turns out, Vax is a place. Ed has ‘Vaxilian’ heritage, though he was born and raised in Silverlight. Chrysalis references ‘true Vaxilians’ as an example of a non-human mortal. From this, I infer that Vax is a planet inhabited by humans, and also a group of non-human sapients. As of Emberdark, people on Vax are capable of getting off-planet, and have been for at least a few decades (allowing Ed’s family time to migrate to Silverlight). As FTL is an established thing at this point, this doesn’t tell us whether or not Vax has a perpendicularity. This also doesn’t answer the question of what Ati was on about. Presumably, he mistook the Scadrian subastral for Vax? That would make Vax a very, very strange place. Or maybe Ati has some strong personal connection to Vax that made it come to the forefront of his mind?

The Malwish are a dominant force, not the dominant force. There are plenty of clues that North Scadrial is still very influential, like seeing their writing on tech, and the fact that Ed is a Pathian (a distinctly North Scadrian religion) despite not being Scadrian himself. My read on this is that nobody won the cold war. It’s still ongoing. Which is why the Malwish can’t take or purchase Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities from the Northerners for their own use, at least not at any kind of scale.

This revelation sounds like something that will come up in one of the main series, maybe Ghostbloods or Stormlight back half. That will help us pin down the timeline better.