Cheese Ninja

A few points: @hoser Dalinar's vision of Nohadon is either just after, or near the end of a Desolation. Nohadon did meet the Heralds.I don't think a spren can be made to go against its nature by using observations of it, but it can be limited. We don't know at this point how wide ranging a Nahel spren's qualities can be. The only ones we've seen are the symbolheads (truthspren?) and Syl. It's not even completely clear if Shallan bonded with one particular truthspren or if the truthspren have a group existence. The spren speaks in first person, but Shallan still thinks of them as a group. Shallan is mostly likely in Shash's order. (Divine attributes: Creative/Honest) Her artwork (creation) attracted the spren, but in order to grow her Nahel bond she has to sacrifice truths about herself to her spren.There are major notable differences between Nahel bondspren and typical spren. Nahel spren are capable of much more complicated thoughts, and if they think it is in their best interests, they could make observations of themselves. Once those were recorded, they could become bound by them. Hmm, I just realized that Rock will probably be able to see the truthspren around Shallan and Elhokar... I wonder if interaction with spren was the ancestral responsibility of people capable of seeing spren. Who better to record the qualities of spren than someone who can see them even when they want to hide themselves? @dyring I think that's an oversimplification. All of the types of Surgebinders existed from the beginning, each fitting into one of the categories from the Ars Arcanum and capable of accessing two of the Surges from the inside book cover. Nahel bonds may be built on positive qualities, but there was no requirement that they be used for good, until Nohadon's writers forced them to be used in a beneficial manner. To use Syl as an example, I think that there were a number of observations recorded about her and what type of spren she was, then that she would fall under the Windrunner order. It's possible that she bound herself to the Windrunner order as well, and that's why she insisted that Kaladin say the Words before he made his bridge leap. He had to graduate to the Second Ideal before she could strengthen his abilities any further.

Yeah, I touched on that in the last paragraph. Those would be the "hidden texts" I only mentioned in the topic description, because I don't like adding more "hidden" things to a series that is already full of hidden Blades, Plates, masterminds, Heralds, and intentions. It doesn't seem like the Knights Radiants could have been fully bound to the Ideals without a great deal of time, energy, and difficulty recording the actions of Bondspren. We're always just told that Nohadon founded the Orders, but if I'm correct, it probably took far longer than just his lifetime for them to be fully implemented. I think the Way of Kings might be a little bit like the plates that Shai uses in the Emperor's Soul to tie together a bunch of different Essence Marks into a single stamp. What we've seen in the series isn't the true form of it, just the popularized version for people to read at home. The full text is probably more of a library, and ties each known Nahel spren to their individual Order.

Dalinar's vision where he sees Nohadon establishes a couple major things. 1. The bond between a person and a spren that grants Surgebinding abilities is called a Nahel bond, and honorspren are a subset of spren capable of forming Nahel bonds. It seems likely to me that Syl is this type of spren. 2. This scene predates Nohadon's establishment of the Knights Radiant, in fact, it is a major influence in his decision to form the Knights Radiant. He observes that Surgebinders, while powerful, are difficult to control, and that makes them dangerous to the world as a whole. And so how do you restrain and channel Surgebinders? By imposing certain rules on the spren. It sounds difficult, but it's actually really simple, if you look at the spren researcher Geranid's interlude. In the words of Terry Prachett's Discworld: "Because of quantum" Geranid takes simple measurements of flamespren (length, height, luminosity), once a spren's characteristic is recorded, it becomes fixed. Interestingly, this only remains in effect as long as the measurement isn't erased. Flamespren probably aren't capable of forming Nahel bonds, but what applies to them likely applies to some degree towards Bondspren. Prior to Nohadon's Way of Kings, there were no Ideals, so then why should these Ideals written in his book be important to Surgebinders? They certainly are important, we can observe that just by seeing what happens when Kaladin says the Second Ideal of the Windrunners. “I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.” He gains an immediate boost in vitality, and observes that afterwords, Stormlight works better for him. This was Nohadon's goal in the first place, he encourages Surgebinders to be better people by forcing them to observe the Ideals of their Orders, which are tied to the Divine Attributes of each particular bond. (Protecting/Leading for Windrunners) This in turn allows them greater power, perhaps even greater power than before the Ideals. The First Ideal is the same for all the Orders: "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination." The Second through Fifth Ideals were all unique for each Order. 4 x 10 = 40. Supposition: Each of those parables contains/represents an Ideal. When Geranid took a measurement, it only affected one flamespren, and random likely numbers couldn't be used, it had to be an actual measurement. This raises some questions. Are there, written somewhere on Roshar, observations that limit each individual Bondspren? Where would they be, and how many would there have to be for it to force all Surgebinders to behave in the manner of Knight Radiants? Or is the existence of a single copy of Way of Kings enough to limit all Nahel spren? The efficacy of broad, sweeping statements seems extremely unlikely from Geranid's interlude. Especially in a case such as this, where it isn't clear to Dalinar just from being read the book what the Ideals are or what they are doing. Thoughts/Criticisms?

Thank you. Here's the full quote, with everything besides the monologue removed. And the next ones. Tanavast really should have realized how confusing he was making this for whoever he showed it to. This does seem to point at prophecy being forbidden, but it is also horribly vague. Why is speaking of the future forbidden? Prophecy isn't forbidden to Ruin and Preservation, and Tanavast acknowledges that Cultivation is better at seeing the future than him. It might be that it's only forbidden in certain contexts. The last one as a spoiler since it is long and actually needs the descriptions left in to make some sense. Heh, those lights winking out in the sky represent the two Shards on Sel, don't they? Back on the main topic, even though I agree that Sunmaker changed and corrupted Vorinism, I don't want it to be as a result of Odium's influence. It bothers both the humanist in me that believes that the good or evil done by mankind is something solely decided by the the whims of mankind, and not godlike beings, and also the theme in the Stormlight Archive that most of the Roshar's failings come from the fact that they had no enemy to fight, and so fought each other instead.

I'm trying to find the source for that, since I've seen it repeated a few times on here. It's on the wiki too, but there's no source there either, so it could just be speculation that someone added. I find it strange that something with a physical form can be stored in a place where there are no physical forms, but there is something similar that happens with the Shardholder's bodies. The power of the Shard 'vaporizes' their body, but it doesn't actually destroy it, when a Shardholder dies, their body drops to the ground.

Some people seem to believe that they are stored in the Spiritual or Cognitive Realm, but I can't find confirmation anywhere. Back in November 2011 Brandon said it was RAFO that would be addressed in later books: http://brandonsanderson.com/article/93/Tweets-November-14-16-2011 I always thought they were summoned from a central location in the physical realm, but that's pure speculation.

Where was there anything in Dalinar's visions that indicated that predicting the future was forbidden? I know that when Adolin met with Kabash, Kabash said that Old Vorinism had made up all its prophecies and visions, but we can't be sure that what Kabash said is accurate and true if the Sunmaker really was corrupted. Tanavast himself tried to predict the future and pass his message on Dalinar, and possibly through the death visions. That doesn't fit New Vorinism's stance of "to predict the future is forbidden." I think that New Vorinism is just another example of religion being sculpted by the people in power in order to solidify their command.

Hmm? I think a Shallan/Adolin/Renarin love triangle is more likely than anything at all involving Kaladin and Shallan. I honestly don't want to see any major romantic things involving Kaladin for a few books, and those will probably involve women from his past. Szeth/Jasnah seems like it could be interesting as well. I don't think the Shin are nearly as sinister as you do, I'm not sure they even have many interesting secrets besides the ones concerning Szeth. As far as deaths go, I have no good guesses. Actually, Amaram sacrificing himself somehow sounds fun.

What if the numbers of Blade and Plate are fixed, but Knight Radiants could adapt these to themselves upon reaching the pinnacle of their training? Kaladin could still get a Shardspear like that. The Plate has already shown a lesser degree of adaption with its "one size fits all" ability. Either through their own power, or with the aid of their Nahel bondspren. Also, in Dalinar's flashback, the Knight Radiants appeared to have the ability to conjure up their helmets and dismiss them at will. There are aspects to Plate which aren't known modern day users on Roshar, there might also be something unknown about the Blades as well.

I'm going with a large cut gemstone, that's the only thing I can think of that would be filled with enough Stormlight still be seen through the cracks around the closed door of a safe, which tend to shut in a very secure manner without much in the way of gaps. As to why it is a 'monster'? I think it was part of the source of the conflict, and Shallan was the other part. But I can't come up with any halfway decent theories besides using (another) arranged marriage or it being used as payment for the Shardblade itself.

I don't think they had an endless supply of Blades and Plates or the ability to produce more, but that they were passed on. Even if the Blades weren't quite as rare back then, I think they were still too valuable and useful to bury with their users. Also, 10 generations would be more like 250 years, if we consider average age at childbirth to be 25, and it would usually be even lower for agrarian societies. I think hundreds of years could pass between Desolations, and the Knight Radiant Orders might not have been around for all of the Desolations, but they were around for more than just a few of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the Knights Radiants were around for thousands of years.

Actually, Aimians and Parshendi are humanoid, but I don't think they can interbreed with the humans. I guess you mean all the other Roshar ethnicities when you say that you consider all of them to be one race? I've always thought of the Shin as being a bit East Asian in their appearance, since Shin are described as being slighter and younger looking than the actually are, which is similar to how we think of many of the people from the Orient.

My personal theory is that some secret organizations gathered some of them up, and also that a Herald went around collecting them all. And that at some point that Herald will die and scatter a thousand Shardblades around. I'm not sure if that can be done for Plate as well, or if those were hidden away elsewhere. Your estimate of 560 is actually pretty low compared to most. If we consider that those two Orders weren't even fully represented and that there were 300 of them, and that every Radiant had a Shardblade and Plate most estimates put the numbers of Shardblades at over 1500. Dalinar knows of less than 100 Blades in existence.

No one was killed with a Soulcaster: I'm still not certain whether she killed someone by accident or foolishness, or simply did things that would cause killing to happen. MadRand's theory works, but I still don't like it. Now that we have these additional people involved, I feel like they would be a good source for the Shardblade. I don't think that anyone could have looked at Shallan and seen signs that she could become a Surgebinder/Natural Soulcaster. Jasnah spent weeks/months with her and didn't figure it out, and Jasnah should know better than most. I still think that other dead men could have been killed by a Shardblade, for the reasons I stated earlier. I think it's more likely they were killed with conventional weapons, but I'm not going to discount the other possibility. I believe that Malise may have been killed by any one of the people there: Shallan, Lord Davar, or the other men, and there really wasn't enough about her in either the first book or that short reading to tell us much about her. The only other thing was from Shallan's second letter to Jasnah, where she says her stepmother had no formal education.

Soulcasting the result of Transformation, and that is a "shared" surge. It might have different limitations and advantages between Shallan's and Jasnah's order though. Shallan noted that Jasnah could Soulcast an object without touching it directly, which Shallan thought was supposed to be impossible. It's not that unreasonable to think that Regrowth might be shared between two Orders as well. I do think some things are limited to one Order though. The Lashings are probably limited to Windrunners, and they seem to mainly be a manipulation of the "Gravity" surge with maybe a bit less of the "Atmospheric Pressure" in there as well.

This flashback takes place more recently than when Shallan was a child. The 'monster' inside the safe is probably a metaphor. Honorblades can be made to disappear just like Shardblades, and Shardblades can be made to stick around instead of disappearing if the user wills it. It's possible that an Honorblade can only be made to disappear if the Herald it is bound to wills it or dies, but at this point we can't say for sure. I still don't think it is an Honorblade. Neither Honorblade or Shardblade would explain why it is glowing. I have no good guess as to what is inside the safe, only arguments against it being things we've seen before.

He's been getting tortured in the afterlife the whole time. He's probably in even worse mental shape than the other Heralds. The relationship between the return of the Heralds and the coming of a Desolation isn't well understood by us at this point in the series, but I agree with the others who say that they are related. At least one person on here believes that it's simply a matter of the Herald holding out through their torture until they give up, and that triggers both their return and the Desolation, but I think it's probably a bit more complicated than that.

I'm technically double posting, but it's been over a month and I didn't even realize there was a reading of one of Shallan's flashbacks. Things of significance: Shallan has already started considering herself a murderer before she brought about her father's death. This happens (obviously) while her father is still alive. Shallan's stepmother Malise Gevelmar married her father shortly after her mother's death. This short reading informs us that Malise was killed by a Shardblade, and that this happened some time before Shallan's father's death. (Most likely sometime between days to weeks.) At least two other dead men, either killed by normal means or cut post-death with a Shardblade. (Some people have argued that there wouldn't be much blood if a corpse was slashed with a Shardblade due to lack of blood flow, I disagree. It doesn't matter if the heart's not beating if there's gravity and body is cut in half.) I got the impression that her father was a very cold man from WoK, but he seems very worried for Shallan and protective of her here, despite (or because of?) the extremely recent death of his wife. Questions: Did Shallan do all that killing herself? Or did she merely cause the situation to develop in such a manner that the killings occured. (More likely, in my opinion.) Did her stepmother die as an innocent bystander? Or was there some betrayal on Malise's part? A 'monster' glowing in the safe? Could it be the Shardblade? We aren't usually told anything about them glowing. But it definitely does have a monstrous aspect to it. The Soulcaster? Unlikely, the gems would glow, but I get the impression from the first book that they didn't know about the Soulcaster until after her father's death. The sphere that Szeth got in the prologue of WoK and hid somewhere in Jah Keved? Also unlikely, since it didn't glow too much, and "carefully hidden in Jah Keved" probably doesn't mean entrusted to some random Lighteye with ties to a nefarious secret society. Something new entirely? Well, there isn't any way to truly discount that idea... Does Shallan have the Shardblade now? Or does that only happen after her father dies? Disregard "fruit of her greatest sin" quote here, since she might consider any aspect of her involvement to be her "greatest sin" and there is the possibility that she acquired it before things had reached their ultimate conclusion. (Her father's death) Oddly enough, there was a "possibility of multiple deaths" that I was fond of when it came to explaining Shallan's past. It allows the Shardblade to have originated from outside House Davar, and so it could not be sold to pay off their debts without incurring considerable suspicion.

I haven't seen any theories that the beggar is Ishi, besides my tiny add-on to my slightly crazy theory that Thaidakar is Ishi/Ishar. A few of us like the idea of the beggar as a Herald, but we haven't got anything narrowing it down to any of the four male Heralds besides Taln. Also, I like the idea of Shalash meeting with another Herald while she was in town. Gah, that's messy. Did you actually look at the preponderance of evidence from the Baxil interlude that points to his boss being Shalash? She's not hiring people to destroy artwork of her, she's doing it herself, because she finds it cathartic. She doesn't actually want to kill herself, for fear that she'd return to place they suffer between Desolations, so she instead destroys herself in effigy. She's not the most balanced person at this point in her life, and the other Heralds are probably a bit screwy as well. I'll lay it out real quick, should just be able to copy/paste from an earlier thread: Herald=Kadasix, Jezrien=Prime Kadasix Shalash's statue is missing in Szeth's prologue. Baxil's interlude has double Shalash for the chapter heading. Only three chapters have double Shalash. Baxil has no idea what her ethnicity is, because she originated before the current ethnicities came about.

I didn't even know there was a reading for a Shallan flashback.

That sounds completely reasonable. They may have vanished without a trace, but I'm more prone to believe the same as you, that the Knights Radiants alive at the time simply faded into obscurity after abandoning their Plates and Blades.

Teft and his family had belonged to the Envisagers. I don't think that bloodlines are nearly as important in the Stormlight Archive as they are in Mistborn. The way to become a Surgebinder on Roshar seems to be to attract spren, form a Nahel bond with it/them, and then, depending on what type of spren was bonded (I think that determines which Order the Surgebinder is in.), use Stormlight to power their two particular Surges. It doesn't matter who your parents were. I do think it's possible that more of the Kholinars will become Surgebinders, but I think it will be due to environmental factors, and not hereditary factors. If spren that can form Nahel bonds are attracted to presence of pre-existing Surgebinder bonds, they may end up gathering around Kaladin, Jasnah, and Shallan, and then being attracted to individuals who meet their criteria. Since Dalinar follows the philosophies of the Way of Kings book, which is something of a manual for Knights Radiants, and encourages his troops to follow those precepts as well, that might be another part of forming Nahel bonds.

Except chapter eighteen's heading is double Battar (wise/careful), and if anything a Herald would have seen far worse in their lifetimes than Dalinar has, and not the other way around. There's been a fair bit of battles and deaths even well before the war with the Parshendi, so it's not surprising that a surgeon (Lirin) and a priest (Kadash) have seen the harsh realities of war. (The War of Alethi Unification, of which Dalinar is a veteran himself.) Kadash is also just repeating the Vorinism party line about prophecies and Radiants and such. The other interesting thing about the bearded beggar being a Herald, is that we already know Shalash was nearby not too long before that happened. She had destroyed her statue and either removed the evidence or it had been cleaned up by the palace staff, but it had yet to be replaced. I think that for the most part the Heralds went their separate ways, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes they find reasons to interact with one another. A treaty between the Parshendi and Alethkar might be reason enough, or whatever Dalinar triggered that prompted the Parshendi to send an assassin after him. If those actions had the possibility of leading to another Desolation, then that seems like something the Heralds would take notice of. For the prologue's heading we had double Jezrien, but that doesn't mean anything since Szeth was using Windunner abilities.

I know I said earlier that I didn't think any graphical representations would be at all accurate after 4500 years, and I also said that basing a theory on a beard was stupid. But if you look at Ishar/Ishi's picture in the chapter headings or on the inside covers, he's got a really long beard. If he does turn out to be both Ishar and Thaidakar, I'm going to laugh at myself so, so very much.

Oh no, I accidentally introduced an implausible concept to a thread about a magic filled fantasy series... Harriet and Brandon seem pretty clear at this point about the "no outrigger novels" thing. If I'm being entirely realistic, then it would have been tacky to see Bela come back with the Heroes of the Horn, I just didn't want her to die in the first place. I also liked the references to the fan theories and fan criticisms of the series.