Cheese Ninja

I'm not going to place Shallan anywhere besides 6th unless we learn differently in the book or someone makes a very, very convincing argument otherwise. I could accept Jasnah being 7th instead of 5th though. I'm just really hung up on the 5th Order's "Learned" Divine Attribute. Jasnah is a preeminent scholar on Roshar, after all, and learning more and more seems like a good way for her to strengthen her Nahel bond. Just/Confident seem like qualities that are way too easy to apply to people, almost like in horoscopes, where you could apply the statements to practically anyone. So, if one of Jasnah's Surges is Soulcasting, do you think the other allows for ranged Soulcasting by her lightning bolts? Next books is Shallan's, so we'll probably see her 2nd Surge and what it allows her to do.

I always thought learned/giving fit Jasnah better than just/confident, mainly for the "learned" bit. Don't the Herald picture chapter headings make more sense as well with Jasnah in 5 and Shallan in 6?

I also think that Szeth is getting abilities from his sword, but I don't think it's an Honorblade. I'm pretty sure that those were just the Herald's blades we saw in the Prelude, I suppose Szeth could have ended up with one, but I prefer to think that they're still hidden away somewhere. Szeth isn't really out of his physical prime, and he has a lot more experience using Stormlight and the Lashings than Kaladin does. Kaladin is definitely the one best suited towards fighting him, I'd prefer a one on one fight towards everyone ganging up on Szeth. I'd also like to see Szeth joining another Order later on in the series. Some of the bridgemen do have a lot more backstory that make them good candidates for becoming bigger players. (ex: Moash wants to kill someone, Sigzil was Hoid's apprentice, Rock learned how to use a bow for some reason despite not being a warrior or hunter for his people, Teft's family half-worshipped the Knights Radiant)

I double-checked, you're correct, the glass part is the same size across all denominations. I thought they'd be different to make them easier to distinguish from each other. Edit: Actually the exact wording was "The glass part of most spheres was the same size; the size of the gemstone at the center determined the denomination." The 'most' makes me wonder if there are special instances we aren't aware of.

I remembered really hating the Tanat abbreviations when I was looking at this thread:

I got the impression that none were particularly large, but that the spheres do increase in size from chip to mark to broam. There are scenes where character are holding several in their hands. Most of their volume is the glass surrounding the tiny bit of gem on the inside. Keep in mind that they're all spheres though, not just the broams. (They're also flattened on one side, so they can be placed on a flat surface without rolling all over the place.) I'm glad that we've finally been informed about the number of marks to a broam, that was really bothering me. The currency system still bothers me a because of how tightly packed together all the denominations are, still after just now looking at the old British currency system on wikipedia, things could be much, much worse. And since I only see 3 of the known 4 slang coinage terms mentioned here: clear=diamond blood=garnet fire=ruby sky=sapphire I get the impression that the other gemstones are used as currency as well, but maybe they're just less popular? A bit like the US $2 bill or $1 coins.

Oh, the Blades and Plate have definitely been hidden away over the years, but there's no way for us to know who did it at this point. If one of the Heralds felt like it, he or she could have been going around claiming Shardblades for the last few hundred or thousand since the Recreance. Would be funny to see that character die. It sounds odd, but just imagine the rain of Shardblades. Plate on the other hand would actually have to be hidden... Or would it? The Knights Radiants in Dalinar's earlier visions made their helmets appear and disappear at will. More likely the Blades and Plate have been claimed by various factions and hidden away over the years, but a concerted effort would be extremely noteworthy in its own right. The three most valuable things in Roshar are Blades, Plates, and Soulcasters. The motivation behind hiding those bits of wealth hasn't been made clear so far. I can understand why any Heralds who picked them up would hide them, because they are extremely dangerous, but I don't know why these other conspiratorial organizations do so. By the way, I think the Parshendi are supplied their Shardblades by whichever Herald(s) are backing them. But I think that they only have a small fraction of the missing sets, which as name_here pointed out, easily surpass a thousand in totality.

I'm also not entirely sure how much her photo-like artwork associates Creativity, but it does attract creationspren, which I think should count for something.

I really think Creative/Honest suits Shallan better. Her artwork ties in very well with Creative, and her method of strengthening her Nahel bond is by telling personal truths to the symbolhead spren. I think that the 1st and 2nd Divine Attributes are the aspects most important to the Nahel bond. And I believe that Jasnah and Shallan still have to be in bordering Orders, Shash and Palah work very well for that.

Actually we don't have any proof that the Ghostbloods have the missing Blades and Plate, but there certainly are much more of them in existence than believed by the majority of characters in the series. I wouldn't be surprised if they did have at least some of them, in fact, this theory pretty much depends on it. But if Shallan and her brother were right, the Ghostbloods were working towards making her father a Veden High Prince, so I don't think they would have had support from the already established Veden princedoms. Honestly, we don't have a nearly enough information about the political situations in Roshar to make informed decisions. Between Taravangian's assassinations of leaders and the Ghostbloods covert activities, (including the attempted murder of the King of Alethkar's older sister) there's a quite a lot going on behind the scenes.

Note the bolding.I thought he couldn't get through George R.R. Martin's books since the sex scenes and generally bad things that happen to the characters made him too uncomfortable? (Odd, since he stated that he reads SMBC, but there's no attachment to the characters in a webcomic series that has no ongoing characters.) This is also the first time I've him mention the possibility that Kaladin and Dalinar might not survive most of the series. Maybe the regions just contain gateways to the other planets? If so, maybe each world has its own set of gateways, and not all of the planets are directly accessible from one planet's Shadesmar.

I've been a fan of Steris since the sample chapters, and even back then I came to the same conclusion Wax did about Marasi. In some ways, Marasi is too much like Lessie. Add that to Wayne's commentary about people constantly changing, especially if they move somewhere else, and I think that Wax himself has changed too much for another Lessie. I only wish Steris had gotten some more screentime. She needs the occasional opportunity to have some fun.

It might just have been because I read Terry Pratchett's Snuff last week, but did Wax remind anyone else of Vimes in a few places? Fun book, but it went by almost too quickly.

Where did Szeth mention when he became Truthless? I can't seem to remember that bit. Oh, and the spreadsheet was put together by Harakeke, the archeologist who translated the Alethi script from the Navani's notebook pages. Major props to Harakeke.

Aimia is where Axies the collector is from. Also the last place where you could find greatshells with gemhearts of a useful size until those were hunted into extinction before the chasmfiends of the Shattered Plains were discovered. I think, I should double check those two things.

Roshar years are 500 days with 20 hr days and hours that are 1-2 minutes shorter than ours. So a Roshar year is only supposed to be ~1.1 Earth years, still a valid point.

Oh, the extended version is the one I read on timewastersguide. I was a bit confused about the knack thing as well, is there a 3rd unlisted one, or should we consider hearing punctuation and spelling as two different ones? Theory: Skip is wrong about smelling delicious to dragons as a separate knack though. The dragons have to eat humans for their magic potential/ability, it's why animals won't satisfy them. Consider human magical ability to be for dragons as Vitamin C is for humans, it can't be synthesized by the body, but it's still necessary for survival. So basically, Skip has a lot of magic in him, whether it's an undiscovered or undeveloped ability, or whether the magic system in the world in heavily based off of speech, I'm not sure. Would be interesting to read more of this if Brandon feels like writing more of it.

Out of curiousity, any idea how long this is taking place after Elantris? Are the Elantrians such as Galladon effectively immortal? I've never been particularly clear about the chronological order between different books of the cosmere. I think I remember reading that Alloy of Law actually takes place before Stormlight Archive, but that all the other books happened in the Cosmere in the order they were published. But I don't think I've seen anywhere the span of years between Elantris and Mistborn, Mistborn and Warbreaker, and Warbreaker and Stormlight Archive. From the reddit interview, Brandon said that Hoid is far older than a human could normally be, but that he hasn't actually experience all the years he has lived through. Something about a time dilation trick I believe. I wonder if that's another possible application of Shadesmar, besides traveling between Cosmere planets. Also, weren't those of you who read Dragonsteel saying in the other Hoid Letter thread that you have a pretty a good guess who the letter was written to?

I don't think we can be sure that the Almighty was even dead back before the Hierocracy. Other than that, I agree with Thor's timeline. Just because Tanavast didn't offer Dalinar any visions after the Recreance (with the exception of the prophetic vision) doesn't mean he died shortly afterward.

Which is why I'm a fan of adding a 2nd person who died that night. page 582 .epub She didn't specify that it was her father there. We could have that person be the original possessor of the shardblade, possibly killed by her father, and then Shallan could use the Shardblade to kill her father. This also might explain why they couldn't just sell the Shardblade to settle their debts. But overall it gives us more questions than it answers, so it's a pretty flawed idea.

I also prefer seeing Shallan's past fleshed out before Dalinar's. I can't even get people to agree that she used her shardblade to kill her father, so I'd like to be proven right or wrong(preferably right) and have all the mystery involved in his death resolved. Also, I'd like to get more information about Helaran, since I'm pretty sure that the Shardbearer Kaladin killed. Helaran was the one closest to her father, and the only one who imposed him outright. We know almost nothing about the Ghostbloods, and we could learn some more in her flashback chapters as well, even if she doesn't catch the greater meanings of those scenes. Quick recap of what we know about Shallan's past: Helaran went missing and was declared dead by their father a year ago. She has a Memory of a body face down in a pool of blood. (Requires either multiple shardblade slashes or a more mundane weapon) Nan Balat was beaten badly, his leg injury was from the night their father died. The Soulcaster was sheared in multiple places, discovered in an interior breast pocket of their father's coat, likely indicative of a shardblade slash. ("Shear" has only been used been used for shardblades so far.) She considers the shardblade the fruit of her sin. Selling the shardblade did not seem to an option for resolving the family's finances. Shallan took charge after the death of their father. The mystery of what boon Dalinar got from the Nightwatcher doesn't seem ripe enough. After one more book, then it'll start eating at me. There's a lot we could learn from seeing his past in viewpoint chapters, maybe even about the greater mysteries of the series, but they haven't been shaped enough for me to even anticipate them yet. Romances: I see a very small chance of the girl from Kaladin's childhood being a romantic interest for him, but at this point there's too much to overcome. She's married, for one (or engaged?, I can't remember). Still a fan of Shallan/Renarin/Adolin love triangle. Dalinar/Navani has already been spelled out for us. If I had to pick someone for Jasnah, I'd just go with some random member of Kaladin's bridge crew, like Rock. And relationship Jasnah gets into will be so unexpected that I can only guess while using most unlikely characters to pair up with her. Hmm, Rock/Jasnah could be fun.

I'm reading that the exact opposite way. Being Truthless is his punishment, and his punishment declares that they don't exist. I'm pretty sure this line will be a lot easier to understand once we know the back story that led from him being a respected member of Shin society to becoming Truthless. Clearly, he felt that his honor required him to take whatever action (perhaps murder?) led to his punishment, so the real question here is "Why does Szeth believe Voidbringers exist?" Not every man who picks up a weapon becomes Truthless, Szeth is a big step below normal Shin warriors. It would be funny if he's being punished for killing a Thunderclast. Since they're the stone product of Voidbringers, and it would be difficult for him to prove that he wasn't slashing at holy rocks for no good reason after it was dead. I don't think we'll be seeing Szeth's backstory until after Dalinar's and Shallan's, probably because it would give away too much too early.

Can you use Divine Breaths for Awakening? I'm a bit confused by some of the things Brandon said in the annotations. Mainly that the sequel would explain how Returned could have children, that those children would be Returned as well, and that if things had gone badly in Warbreaker, Yesteel would have created more swords like Nightblood and those would have been used against Hallandren. Nightblood required someone with at Ninth Heightening (20,000 breaths) and used 1000 breaths. If a Divine Breath is worth 2000 Breaths, could a Returned start a Returned baby mill, get them old enough to pass on their Breath, take those Divine Breaths, and use them in place of normal Breaths? Sounds like a lot of work, but less work than making most of your city into drabs to make some highly dangerous swords.

Good work you two, you've convinced me that Iron Feruchemy is a huge mess that shouldn't work at all. It's clear at least that it doesn't directly affect gravity's influence. That strength increase from Iron tapping was a lot easier for me to accept before I had to start thinking about it. There's too much evidence for me to believe it isn't happening. As to why Iron-filling makes Wax a bit faster on his feet, maybe it's not so much for speed as manuverability? Could it be that he'd run at about the same speed either way, but turning/dodging/climbing/jumping is much easier?

The 1st mention of the Nahel bond isn't clear, but the 2nd mention seems to include all Surgebinding as the result of a Nahel bond. Still, I think there are massive differences between the Nahel bonds of different orders. At first glance it seems to be strengthened by contributing the Primary/Secondary Divine Attributes of each order. Jasnah and Shallan have Nahel bonds as well. Shallan's is with the truthspren, which fits well with the Honest bit of Creative/Honest. If Jasnah is Palah and Palah's attributes are Learned/Giving, then I suppose she has to sacrifice or give things (not necessarily physical objects, a feeling, a memory, some Community Service could serve) away to strengthen her Nahel bond. Szeth, as we're always reminded, gets his Windrunner abilities a different way.