Argent

Technically, it's possible that Kaladin just didn't notice anything because prisons are not terribly colorful. I am not quite grasping at straws yet, but I admit there are flaws with the idea.

Hmm. I wonder if this is new information or just the old "Shadesmar reflects the places in the physical realm where there are cognitive aspects (matter, in other words), so its geography will mostly match that of the physical realm, at least on the broader scale."

Figured that might have been the case. Edit the title perhaps?

That's kind of what I was implying there with "the Shard that never was" - they consider themselves, for all intents and purposes, a Shard. Power, influence, intent, the whole package. A distributed Shard, if you will

If you are referring to the letter from Dragon to Hoid (regarding Odium being invested), I believe the author meant to write "Odium is invested in Greater Roshar, so he can't go to the other Shardworlds and Splinter their Shards like he did with Aona / Devotion and Skai / Dominion" - or something to that effect.

I could see bad things happening if she figures out how to weaponize Shardblades - and I hope Brandon either explores the idea, or shoots it down with some explanation about how Shardblades interfere with fabrials or something. Because even if you can't bind the Blade's gem itself, you could create a... scabbard of sorts, except for the hilt instead of the blade, secure it to the Shardblade and then twine that with its twin which you get to move from a safe distance. Maybe it won't work for big battles, but I could see it being useful in smaller ones, or for taking down single targets.

That's what I was suggesting, yes.

True. But spren this large are not exactly common, and I am not sure if a single city's population believing that some random spren was their protector would be enough to transform this spren into Cusicesh the Protector. Because this is the only scenario I can think of where Cusi is not a godspren, but is this massive. This, of course, assumes that spren size is a function of people's beliefs and ideas - which is reasonable, I think (considering that spren are living ideas; so the more people believe the idea strongly, the more powerful the spren - which could translate to size), but not guaranteed.

Perhaps - it's not a very strong argument, but it's one I would've made myself too. I've nothing concrete to counter it with, other than to say that maybe the only time he had the Breaths was during the epilogue.

Fair enough, Shallash seems likely, but I am not giving up the Jasnah idea, considering that her vision comes right after she sees Yalb.

That has to do with his own backstory, I believe.

It looks like the Stormfather is not too keen on dying either, and is taking steps to prevent or at least mitigate the damage in case Dalinar betrays him / his oaths. Which, assuming he has this level of control or power, seems possible. Syl was severely hurt because her bond with Kaladin was a deep one - she had been providing him with the ability to Surgebind and he had been giving her... humanity, for the lack of a better term - for a long time. They symbiotic relationship was in an advanced stage. If the Stormfather holds back, doesn't give Dalinar much ability to Surgebind (and doesn't leech off much humanity), then severing the bond shouldn't hurt him nearly as much as it did Syl.

Good info on Adonalsium, and potentially interesting on the Seventeenth Shard. The name is obviously intentional (we know there are 16 Shards, so let's one-up that). But it's probably more meaningful than just +1. What's the implication of the number 17? The Shard that never was? The Shard they wish for? Was Adonalsium originally split into 17 Shards, but one was Splintered immediately after? Something else?

We should really either flag this entire thread for Words of Radiance spoilers or move it to the respective subforum. Practically every post has been filled with it, and the WoR content is important enough that it's practically pointless to discuss this without the knowledge it offers.

Please, either put this in a [ code ] block, or drop it in PasteBin and provide a link.

Woah, when did that happen? Her vision about a woman standing over a body as stiff as stone? I always figured that was actually Jasnah who, for one reason or another, Soulcast somebody into stone. Also, will somebody finally tell me why everyone thinks Lopen is a Windrunner squire? We've seen no spren, no attributes, no powers - nothing to link him to any order.

It's always the quiet ones, Feather Also... Mrallan? Shaize? Heh, Shaize.

It has to be more specific than that though. Nalan had to apparently search hard to find Ym's crime. Which could be a relative term, maybe it usually takes him a few seconds to "read a soul" but Ym took him a few minutes or something. Still, I believe it has to be more specific.

Kaladin and Dalinar work best for me. Adolin is also pretty solid, but something about his hair puts me off. He's definitely got the pretty face going on, but I can't remember whether his hair is supposed to be soft and curly or kind of spiky. It's possible that I am influenced by other fanart here though. Navani's hair is also what throws me off about her. It looks like she has a wild tress or something on her front left side, and this looks strange on her. But I think the "stately mature beauty" is there. Shallan... after seeing the endpages drawing, I can't really imagine her otherwise. She is not going to work for me, ever... =\

This is really not a productive discussion, guys...

Bah, I am a sucker for special effects. Kaladin speaking the Second Ideal of the Windrunners, bursting with light, reuniting with Syl (gods below, I was really scared for her!), frosting up the walls, and leaving the afterimage of the Windrunners glyph on the ground. Many many other scenes made me happy, but this was the one that made my hands shake and knees wobble.

Hmm, I always figured that either: Hoid hides his Breaths when around many peopleor The people of Nalthis are much more sensitive to the color enhancement bubbles around powerful Awakeners, because they expect to see them. Nothing on Roshar produces the same effect, so it's very likely that people will either not notice the change at all, or will attribute it to tiredness, trick of the light, or something else along those lines. If you lived in a place where people could, at will, add or subtract about a centimeter (that's a little less than half an inch, imperials!) of hair length, you'd get used to noticing when they do it. But to an outsider, the change in hair length would likely be attributed to... viewing angle, or some tresses falling loose, or something like that.

I believe this has to do with Shardplates' property to passively absorb Stormlight from their immediate environment. When Kaladin was running around with Adolin's (?) helm strapped to his arm, he noted his Stormlight was running out much more quickly than usual. He then glanced at the helm and saw it eating Kaladin's Light to (automatically) repair itself. Imagine if you had a full Plate on. You'd probably only be able to Surgebind if the Plate was in flawless condition.

For reference, here are all of the Diagram epigraphs from Book 5 (written in a monospace font), organized by source: [Words of Radiance] Book 5 Epigraphs As a set of fresh eyes joining the puzzle-solving endeavor, I have a few things to say: Being given both Pattern 1 and Pattern 15 from the Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation makes it a hint in my eyes. The fact that those are the only two that are patterns (as opposed to paragraphs) makes it also a hint. This is one of the two sources that are referred to as "book of ..." - the other being Book of the 2nd Desk Drawer. There are three paragraphs from the Book of the 2nd Desk Drawer, and at least the first two are thematically related; I posit that so is the third one. From this, I will work under the assumption that the two patterns from the Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation are also thematically related. The Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation is one of three sources with more than one epigraph attributed to them - the other being the aforementioned Book of the 2nd Desk Drawer and then Floorboard 17. This source is the only one with "rotation" in its name. There could be something here, but I don't see it. I was hoping that with some rotation we'll get a fully symmetric string, but I can't see any permutation where this works. I think the way we are supposed to approach this is to start at pattern 1 and see what needs to be done to it to turn it into a string of numbers similar to pattern 15. One is obviously a letter-to-number substitution. Another is likely the removal of spaces, and maybe capital letters. We are missing at least one step, of course, but I would probably try to think this way. I am ready to discard the other epigraphs, except for maaaybe Floorboard 17; so splitting Pattern 15 could be another step we can take in decoding this. I doubt we'll need to come up with 15 steps, but if I wanted to encode something, this is the kind of path I would take - I would come up with a list of steps I want to go through during the encoding, and then provide hints for each one, or at least most of them in places where they wouldn't be obvious, but would be logical.

It's possible. We don't usually see the Shards' names go down in history, but Roshar is more cosmere-aware than the other Shardworlds, so it's possible that Cultivation's name has become a part of some cultures' lore. I will tentatively agree, and maybe see if I can get an answer from Brandon.