Argent

Anything that pushes Stormlight ahead of schedule is good news.

OHMYGODWHATJUSTHAPPENED This thing up there? It was my reaction when I read the end of Szeth's sequence. For a brief moment I thought Nalan (and I was so totally right that it was him all along!) would give him a Voidblade or something, a Shardblade made from a voidspren, and I was all exciting that the crem was about to hit the fan... and then, just as I read that the blade was a little out of the scabbard, I knew. Just before I read about the black smoke coming out, I knew! And, boy, that did that blow my mind to smithereens. Yes, the last few chapters had been beyond amazing, but it was at this point that I had to put the book down and stare blankly in front of me for a minute. Now, this being out of the way... It makes sense, really. Nightblood doesn't feed on Breath specifically, it feeds on Investiture. It's been mentioned a few times (by Brandon) that you use Investiture from one Shard to power the magic of another, but it's very very difficult. Out of all the Investitures we've seen, Breath and Stormlight are most akin. So, of course, Nightblood would be able to feed of Light. The question is, how efficient will it be? We really need some SI units for measuring magic, discussions are starting to get bottlenecked by their lack...

Does he? As far as I can tell he went there, Splintered the Shards, and then left. I think what Brandon means there has to do with naturally occurring Splinters - Seons and Skaze. They are sentient, and they are older than Elantris, and from what we have seen they naturally follow their Shard's Intent (at least on the Seons' case). So it's possible that they are not man-made, but spawn into existence kind of on their own, because of the laws of magic / reality.

I knew I had to pick a later hour... I've stalked the man - on the Internet! - long enough to know he has seen his clock at 4 AM more than once or twice...

I think the part about how adding gems to the Shardblades allows people to bond with them is just a product of the Alethi not understanding how Shardblades work and what they are. The Radiants themselves didn't really need to bond with their Blades - since the Blades were really just their spren, with which they were already bonded. During the Recreance every Radiant who betrayed his or her oaths severed that bond. But people couldn't just pick up a Blade and bond with it because there was nothing to bond with - the spren were effectively dead. I firmly believe that the gems were necessary... fuel, but they were relevant only to people who wanted to bond with "dead" Blades. No, the Blade Dalinar used and dropped must have been one of the "dead" ones. Good catch though, I missed it (though that's normal for me before my first reread).

Because I just finished the book about an hour ago, and I don't know all the forum threads, I will just post it here. If nobody else has transferred it (to the Wiki?) in a couple of days, I will.

Considering how relatively late I finished Words of Radiance, I am surprised I can actually contribute to this thread! I agree with the core idea - that the Bondsmiths bind with... irregular spren. I like the idea, it makes sense, and I have further support for it. I say this because the first thing that came to mind when I read the premise was Rock's story about how the Horneaters came to live on their Peaks (see Chapter 46: Patriots for reference). Rock talks about how the Horneater tana'kai, their "king but more," went to the gods to plead for help - and acknowledges that to his people the spren are gods. The story references the god of the trees, the god of the waters, and the god of the mountains, Cultivation, Cusicesh, and the Stormfather. Now, I admit that the Stormfather, of all things, doesn't quite fit the pattern as mountains and highstorms are not exactly the same thing (and I originally though the story mentions a god of the winds, which had me all excited... turns out it doesn't), but I still think it fits. Lore changes over time. Hell, the Stormfather himself could have been the godspren* of the mountains (or land, or earth, or whatever), but once Honor was Splintered and he absorbed much of the Shard's power, his... focus could've shifted. He does readily and easily communicate with Dalinar essentially on the top of the world. Without needing a highstorm. * I am coining this term.

I don't know about that. My gut feeling is to agree, because it would make sense - it looks like the listeners' forms depend entirely on the spren they... bind with? trap? embrace? Whatever it is that they do with it. Do we know the spren for any of the "classic" Parshendi forms - war, nimble, work, mate? Work in particular strikes me as one that would require a spren, a Splinter, of Cultivation.

Right. Honorblades cannot be bound with, according to a WoB from one of the signings.

The Stormfather says as much, yes. I don't know for slight the difference is, but if the storms meet in different places I can see ALL of Roshar being Desolated in no more than a few years, depending on their frequencies. Urithiru should be safe, but how many people can it house?

Yes, I find this very likely.

I can totally imagine Peter checking on Brandon at 2 AM, making sure he is asleep. While Brandon is just pretending, waiting for Peter to leave, so he can open up his laptop under the covers and write books he is not supposed to be writing yet

Hello there. I am reader by day, reader by night. We can be cousins or something.

Guessing stuff correctly is secondary to just guessing stuff - just go take a look at the theory threads

You are familiar with Writing Excuses, I assume?

I am always excited to meet a time traveler - your kind is just so much fun! Would you mind sending me the second and third book from the Reckoners trilogy, because they are not out yet now in 2014? See, I have this flaw - I glance over people's posts, write a reply, then reread their posts and find out that I've missed an important part - such as that pesky "first books in" in your case. A good quip down the drawn. Drat!, as Shallan would say. I guess I have to welcome you the boring way then. Welcome!

Has anyone tried to interpret those fighting glyphs, by the way? I thought maybe they are how the Alethi men write the names of the different sword stances, but since I had to go back into the books and search for descriptions to match against the drawings, and I was not yet done with Words of Radiance, I thought I'd investigate later...

About 100 pages away from finishing the book, so I'll take a look at what's left and maybe do some good work over the weekend. There is so much new stuff in this book, something's bound to be left. The Orders, maybe? I should check if anyone called dibs...

Hmm, no, not an Ideal. Doesn't have the same tone to it. It could be a part of the ceremony (performed by men or spren) that turns a... whatever Kaladin and Shallan are into full Radiants.

Aw, I was hoping to look into this during the weekend. Ohwell. I was talking to a friend about the original translation of Navani's notebook and the Alethi script, and he brought up something I couldn't quite get an answer to - how does one go about translating something like this? In other words, how did you figure all this out?

I insist that those are minor details at the moment - we all do agree that we should try to limit spoilers as much as possible. Since we have neither received input from more forum members, nor have we ran the idea by Peter and Brandon, I find discussing such details a moot point. Which started with a random example I came up with in less than two minutes time.

See, @Nepene, I feel that is spoilery. Saying that the Almighty is Honor reveals that Vorinism is at least on the right track when it comes to choosing a deity - when something like the Thaylen Passions seems pretty far off, as far as we can tell. Though in Ruin's case I may be persuaded to agree that it might be too much - though not as much as you suggest; I (would) only say that he is mentioned in the book, not that pretty much the entire plot revolves around him. The Stormlight Archive mentions Cultivation, but so far we haven't seen her be a major player. Either way, this is all wording. It's the concept we need to discuss, not its implementation.

I am sure if having to speak a truth is really an Ideal for the Lightweavers. From I've seen, it looks like the Immortal Words are... mindsets. Kaladin couldn't just say "I will protect those who cannot protect themselves" - he had to both understand what the Ideal means (and in this case it's pretty obvious, but the First Ideal requires some thinking) and believe, live, the Words. He - or Shallan for that matter - is not trying to win a debate against his spren, he needs to feel the right way for the Ideal to work. Words of Radiance explores more of this, but I do not wish to discuss it here and now - in part because we are outside the proper forum, and in part because I still have another couple of hundred pages left and don't want to sound like a fool

That would be nice, I think. It's not a perfect solution, but it sounds much more like something we can coordinate with Team Sanderson - it's kind of a promotional campaign (and Brandon has mentioned the 17S, so it's not like she is ashamed of us or anything...), but it also kind of draws people further into the books. And I can't see a situation where Brandon is unhappy about his readers dwelling deeper into all the little things, Easter eggs almost, he has hidden throughout his work. It would work much more nicely with the questions too, especially if we manage to tie the pieces of trivia with the question we want an answer to. So one of the cards could, for example, be: Or something along those lines, of course. The information will have to be relatively spoiler-free (you will note, for example, that I don't describe the circumstances around each of those Shard's appearances in the books), and the question would have to relate to it pretty directly. It has to make sense to whoever is going to ask it.