Argent

Hmm. It still sounds physical to me, but I can see the other side. Even better, I'll laugh at more of you when I am proven right! But I like the idea that the Radiants found out that the Heralds had ditched them. I don't think this would be enough to make them betray their Ideals (because, do keep in mind, they had to pay a personal cost for the Recreance too - and people don't really do the whole self-sacrifice thing for selfish reasons), but I would be interested in finding out how they reacted to this little piece of information. If it got to them in the first place.

Khriss sounds even more draconic!

If you are somehow out of the loop, here's the epigraph for Words of Radiance Chapter 84: The One Who Saves: NOTE: IF YOU CAN'T OPEN THE SPOILER TAGS, QUOTE THIS POST AND READ WHAT'S INSIDE Epigraph (Encrypted): We had a whole thread about decoding this, and stuff was on fire, but now we know what it means. Read on at your own peril! Epigraph (Decrypted): So. A few things of note: "Hold the secret" suggests a physical object. Yes, it could be a metaphor for "Learn the secret," but I believe this is not the case. This "secret" broke the original Knights Radiant. This implies knowledge, information. So far, I am inclined to believe that there is a physical object that represents the piece of information because of which the Ordens initiated the Recreance. The second sentence implies that this "secret" can still be acquired. My first thought? Gavilar's voidsphere. I don't have much in the way of reasoning, but it's like a nuke on the mantle. So let's say the sphere is actually an old artifact, one that the Radiants either created or found. Created would be my guess. I used to think that the sphere holds one of the Unmade, but could even one of them subvert the entire organization of the Radiants? Maybe the voidsphere is much more powerful than even that and holds a Splinter of Odium? I need to think about this some more...

@zebobes, K is 171. And on that note, this was a fun little puzzle to crack. Would be nice if we don't have to wait another 4 hours for the next installment I am happy I convinced myself that the clue was in the previous epigraph, because both are from the same source. I was (mostly) right in claiming that you get to Pattern 15 by doing some things to Pattern 1. All in all, good stuff. Now let's go to a different thread and talk about what this means!

SO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT Good to know. This is probably what's happening when you, for example, measure the size of a flamespren. Also good to know! It makes sense, but having a WoB on it is always nice. Yea, because we were going to beat Brandon in his own game... That's interesting. We are definitely seeing more of those two, and it makes me happy. This makes sense, but it came as a surprise to me - the compounding part, that is. This seems to imply that a full Knight Radiant is actually more powerful than a Herald, as long the Radiant sticks to his or her Ideals. Kaladin is only halfway through the journey, but his Light efficiency is much higher than Szeth's. I wonder if the Heralds are more like the Forsaken from The Wheel of Time - not that much more powerful than your above-the-average magic user, but really scary because of all the knowledge and experience they have. Has to be the Old Magic. This feels important. Also, if Crys is correct spelling of that person's name, that's such a draconic name! He is now my top candidate for being the recipient of Hoid's letter from The Way of Kings. I read this as "the Parshendi are currently Invested by both Cultivation and Odium." I mentioned this somewhere, but I'll say it again - my theory is that the Parshendi were the natural result of Rosharan evolution, a primitive spicies of humanoids, very similar to what we now call slaveform (or perhaps dullform). The Honor and Cultivation showed up on the scene, and Honor created his own species of humans, copying and maybe modifying the ones from Yolen - very much like all the other Shards; Cultivation, on the other hand, staying true to her Shard's nature, nurtured and cultivated the proto-Parshendi (parshmen, really), and gave them the ability to bond with spren and change forms - much like the rest of the Rosharan fauna seems to do. Odium then hijacked those from her by sending voidspren for the Parshendi to bond with - and voala, Voidbringers! Invested by both Cultivation and Odium now, but neither one originally. Current working theory: the Nightwatcher is either a spren or humanoid (my previous comment leads me to believe that it's possible for the Nightwatcher to have been a parsh-person) who acts as a proxy for Cultuvation, holding most of her power, being a long-term Sliver. DAJHSDHSALKDJADHADHADJADHJAHSDHADHAJDHAD WHAT!? All those ominous epigraphs are now going through my head. 'cause there's a lot of them. All I can think of right now is "Three of the sixteen rules, but now the Broken One reigns." And it doesn't sound good. Something about Voidbringers being able to hold Stormlight perfectly, like (better than?) gemstones, and humans being leaky vessels? I wonder why humans are bad at holding Stormlight in...

This discussion is already similar enough, let's reuse threads.

Finally a real clue! I suspected this for a long time, but a confirmation feels wonderful. @PunSpren, those could actually be sentences. I imagine tha Taravangian, feeling frantic, was not concerned with sentence structure and explaining his thoughts much - so what we see in those two paragraphs is closer to his train of thought than any real sentence you would hear in a conversation. So it would be more like "Set off. Obvious! Realization like apracity." Now, time to go look into that pesky Pattern 1...

Aha! But my previous post was also a (poor) joke, so we are at en passe!

See, my problem with that is that solving the riddle is supposed to give some new and worthwhile information (paraphrasing Peter's words), not a translation of an already readable paragraph. Maybe your method will lead you somewhere, but I personally doubt it =\

Years like 2025 look so sci-fi to me, much the same way the phrase "10 years ago" makes me think of the 90s...

I read the end as "classic geek tragedy" and was all like dashjdhasjdh-WHAT? Then I reread it... I can't take a stab at this though. I've thought about it, and it really bothers me that I can't decide how to quantify him, but I have no idea. He did do the hero thing when Shallan killed her mother, taking the blame. And then he went down the path paved by that good intention. I guess I could call him a hero, but a weak and broken one - he did the right thing, but the consequence of that action really wore him down. Seems to be a mild theme in the books too - doing something good and then having the effect of your deed mess you up in response. I am looking at you, Kaladin.

I saw something about Vev maybe being Dova (the head nurse?) in Taravangian's secret Death Rattle milking factory. But nothing on Battar or Chach.

The one thing to keep in mind, however, is that Plate also seems to have changed it. Shardplate in modern days absorbs any Stormlight from its surroundings if it has been damaged - and that includes the Shardbearer if he or she is a Surgebinder. So if Kaladin were to don a modern Shardplate, infuse himself with Stormlight, and then take a few strong blows to the armor, the Plate would start draining him of his Light. Though I should mention, it's also possible that there is a trick to making the Plate not eat your own Light. Maybe the armor hasn't changed, but because the Radiant lore was lost for such a long time, the current Surgebinders just don't know how to control it well enough to prevent loss of Light or to (un)summon the helm.

If quality of art was a reason good enough to ship, I the Kaladin+horse ship would've sailed days ago...

When I - we, really - say that "X will get a book," it means that character X will be the flashback character of that book. Kaladin in The Way of Kings and Shallan in Words of Radiance.

Blaming the weapon, especially since it's sentient, is very easy in this situation. I assumed she was addressing Pattern, but it could go either way.

It's not explicit whether "the Diagram" can refer to its followers as well as the actual collection of knowledge. It could be read both ways in places.

Thread titles, yes, we should be careful to word them in a way that's descriptive enough for people who have read the book, but vague enough for those who haven't.

Several of us thought to go that route. Except, how would you go about it?

Yea, I randomly found it yesterday too. If Shallan's father had similar singing voice, I am not surprised her childhood was so traumatic

I wonder if the plaintext edit boxes issue is specific to something outside of Chrome. I am on my laptop right now, and everything seems to work as it should (except for the page turning into a gajillion escape characters when I reply sometimes, but that's fixable with a refresh). This: http://i.imgur.com/vFVKMHX.png

Oh, cool. You can upload the recording to either SoundCloud (if it's just audio) or YouTube (if it also has video). Now, assuming that wording of the first two answers is exact, this would actually imply that the Parshendi are Invested by both Odium and Cultivation right now. Odium is pretty obvious, his Investiture is probably leftover from the first time he took over them (and continued doing so throughout Desolations?). Cultivation on the other hand, is a mild surprise to me. Perhaps the Parshendi were originally a species permanently stuck in dullform, and because of Cultivation's Investiture in them were able to bond with spren and change into more specialized and advanced forms? Then Odium got mad jelly about this and decided to take over the Parshendi by shoving voidspren down their throats? Also, there is definitely something going on with Cultivation today. She is not functioning normally, like Endowment for example. Either she has dumped a ton of her power into the Nightwatcher, or she is the Nightwatcher but is kind of broken by Honor's death, or some other scenario that prevents her from being the Shard she originally was.

This has been bugging me for a few days as well. That in spoiler tags in the Words of Radiance subforum.

I always pinned it down on personality, so to speak. Jasnah's spren Ivory, for example, is extremely shy of other people - much more than Syl is. Syl will appear to Kaladin by default, but if he asks her, she will become visible to others as well (refer to, for example, the knobweed gathering scene from The Way of Kings). Pattern just seems to be a bit of an exhibitionist in this regard...

In one of the recent signings he said his goal was late 2015. But it's possible that because of reasons it will be moved to spring 2016.