Eri

Mad_Scientist, you're a genius! It makes perfect sense. How did he escape from the army and get from Plains to civilisation - that's another question. I guess he joined some merchants or something similar.

Me: https://plus.google.com/112474257675445741075 ...I've just saved you one search.

It works! Cool!

No votes for Shallan yet? I like her most. Not as a person, probably... but as a character she's definitely my favourite, even with her dark and mysterious past. Maybe because she's the kind of character I usually play (stealing from fellow party members for important plot reasons... yes, I know it's a bad thing.) She's cool and I want to read more of her. Others... Kaladin is a little too perfect (I mean his morality), Dalinar is a bit boring as a person, and Szeth could use some integrity (or hawever you call that. Doing what you consider the right thing and not feeling bad with it). Anyway the book is great, and the characters are very good, despite those small things. And about Kaladin - my husband says it's a good thing in epic fantasy, to have so noble and moral protagonist... I guess I prefer gray fantasy, then. Jasnah is another character I like very much - but we've seen very little of her. I'm waiting for her POV chapters to come.

Keteks should be written about how the Way of Kings is awsome. My attempt on something I'd love to have on a t-shirt: This text / is an obscure reference / to the beauty of titles / in a book / which title beautifully references an obscure text And, of course, below it would be a text in small font, explaining, what book it means. Please correct my grammar if needed. The symmetry is a bit loose but since in a book it was like that ("birthplace" with "birth" etc.) it's probably ok. And I agree, Szeth is awsome, especially in this illustration here making a facepalm. (Yep, I know, he's just terribly sad. But it looks so much like a facepalm to me...)

I got this message too... but no mail.

Another thing I'd like to know: Will there be a lots of scenes with Shallan and Hoid (I mean both of them at once, talking with each other), pretty, pretty please..? Also, not a question, but from what we've already seen it sems to me that they'd make a great couple (despite the biiiiig age difference). And Shallan would make a great Hoid-in-training IMHO. Much better than Sizgil. (I guess you aren't going to ask this one anyway...)

I think the last one is for Saze, worshiped by them as the Hero, as ch2 seems to suggest. (Yes, he's probably also worshiped by the Path, I wonder if the people know that actually the Hero is the same person as Harmony...)

Thank you for posting, I'll have to watch it. So Jasnah's name definitely is from Polish (also Serbian, I think, and they even use that word as a name) "jasna" meaning "bright" (because it's pronounced exactly like that). Cool.

That's quite what I mean. ;-) We know the continent is +- 70deg in size, but we don't know how much is that in miles, because we don't know planet's size.

It isn't a full theory, I think, because it's very similar to "Shardic sentience". But there are some things that I didn't see proposed anywhere, so I decided to post my view on intelligence/sentience in the Cosmere. Sorry if it was said before. Hmm... not a full theory or hypothesis... so let's call it a lemma. (a lemma is basically a small hypothesis) Inspired by quotes from this topic. The lemma (it may be obvious from previous topics, but nobody said that): power generates sentience. By "power" I mean whatever Shards are made of. Some spiritual (in Realmatic terms) energy. Every human has some of that power or something inside him/her, which creates conciousness. That's why Drabs (or what was it called? People with no Breath) are still sentient. Other beings, even those that were once humans (like Kandra), don't. They need magic to be intelligent. It explains invested objects with large enough investments being sentient (Nightblood). It explains, why Clod is more intelligent than typical Lifeless (according to annotations, he has some extra Breaths from before Vasher killed him). Explains Seons - as splinters of Aona, being large enough to be smart. Spren - being smaller splinters - just chunks of Stormlight (or some energy filling all Roshar? That's possibly Stormlight, anyway), too small to be fully sapient. Syl, gaining more Stormlight from Kaladin or from their bond, getting intelligent. It explains Hemalurgy turning mistwraiths into Kandra. And sentience seeks more power, often. That's how I imagine spren. Born from a condensation of Stormlight above threshhold level, given simple animal-like mind by it, instinctively seeking more Stormlight to grow. The problem is that spren seem to need quite constant supply of Stormlight, so they probably use/lose it somhow. Hmm... a flow of power generating sentience? But that doesn't make sense with Clod. And I can't explain the weird thing with measuring them. This lemma may explain parshmen's (or whatever this word should be? Belonging to parshmen, I mean.) stupidity. If Parshandi are like the Koloss - made with Odium's power, cutting them somhow from Odium would make them animal-like. (I imagine it as some ugly process involving a shardblade and cutting through the Spiritual Realm - but severing a bond, not a person.) Or the Parshandi need Stormlight to remain sentient, maybe. And from the parshmen it was taken by "winners" of the "last" Desolation. At first I wrote about intelligence, too. But after writing it, I realized that "sentience" is probably a better word. Gaining more investment / breaths / other power doesn't make one smarter. More aware, maybe. But it doesn't increase the IQ. Questions to disprove / support it(a good hypothesis needs to be disprovable, after all): Were the old-school Lifeless (made with more Breaths) smarter than modern ones? (may not work, they could be Invested the same amount, and some Breaths just got wasted, because the method was imperfect) If an animal was given a hemalurgic spike, or Breaths, and if it worked (we don't know if animals can be invested), would it become intelligent? I can't think of anything more. What do you think? Does it make sense? Sorry for overflowing the forum recently, but I've waited with posting anything until I finished rereading of WoK, so now I'm posting all almost at once.

This is not a theory, rather a loose collection of random questions and observations, posted in hope that they may inspire someone to discover something. This post is inspired by Hoid's quote. He rarely says anything unimportant. Maybe I will post more things like that - not everything I want to say is big enough to deserve it's own topic. Eyes. Are the mirror of the soul --- in case of chasmfiends seem to be a mirror of the heart - having the same color as the gem. In humans their colors seem to mach the gemstones, too. They're either light or dark, never in between - Hoid is mentioned as strange having light eyes, but not very light. Binding with a Shardblade possibly makes them light - but for Szeth it works only while using it. Knights Radiant had very light, glowing eyes (possible origin of "light eyes=noble"?), but Talanel has dark brown. Eyes of a person killed with a Shardblade burn and turn black. Quite the opposite of glowing with light. Maybe because they're disconnected from the soul? And there are, obviously, two of them. Symmetrical. Which makes them kind of important. Hands. Two of them, also. Safehand and Freehand - why break the symmetry? It's supposed to be a good thing, after all. (And Lopen, also. And Gaz with eyes. Coincidence, probably...) 10 fingers... 5+5... 5+5 Heralds, sorted by their gender. On both diagrams a Herald's symbol is connected with it's opposite. Similar essences: breath and blood, smoke and liquid, fire and metal, crystal and stone, plants and animals (I admit, I tweaked the list, but just a little). Spheres. Why don't they just use the gems? Why put them in glass spheres, strangely similar to the ones in Shadesmar? What is the dark sphere that Took stole from the Nightwatcher, and gave Gavilar back in time... ok, not exactly like that. But Gavilar got it from somewhere (Jasnah? Shadesmar?) and Took got the idea from somewhere. Gems... gemhearts... Voidbringers were said to hold the Stormlight perfectly. Having gemheart would help with that. And the Parshendi seem to be biologically closer to Roshar's weird wildlife than to humans. Carpace, singing in multiple voices at once...

Nope, but this guy in a hood is obvious imho, I've noticed it during first reading. And later found out that he's (probably?) Nalan. Which didn't explain anything. I know we got a RAFO on what they all mean, I just wanted to ask about one of them. And not "what" but "why". I think this "what" I have guessed quite correct. Or part of it, at least. I have no idea what do the others mean except for one observation: whenever one of the Heralds (or Hoid) appears in a chapter (including Hoid being sought by Selians and Jez appearing as a face in the storm) we have his face in that chapter's heading (often with some other one). edit: Ninja'd. Thanks for your answers. Seth sounds nice. Sounds Hungarian ("sz" as "s"), I wonder if he's named after a word too. BS said 10 is important to the Cosmere (not only Roshar)? I must have missed that. I also prefer the cow version of parshmen, but I'm not sure if it's correct.

Thank you, you're very nice! Hypothesis and theory are words from Latin (or Greek, I'm not sure), we have theese words (I mean very similar) in Polish. So it doesn't prove anything, I'm afraid. ;-) I was going to insert some very Shallan-like commnet here, but I thought it may be better not to (unless you're ok with that?). Nice to meet you.

Oh, right you have night now. Weird things, timezones. OK, here they go: General: In Mistborn, all magic systems seem to have the same focus (metal). Is it so for every planet? Ie all magic used on Sel has the same or very similar focus etc.? Does every Shard (or planet) have a number attached to it? Preservation, or Scadrial as whole has 16 and Honor / Roshar has 10. Is it a heneral rule? If every Shard has a number - do these numbers range from 1 to 16, making Shards a numbered list? (This would be cool, because we could add Hoid as number 0... ) WoK (long and unsorted list): Does the Roshar year (defined by Weepings) have anything to do with planet orbiting the star (the astronomical year)? In those weird, random seasons - only temperature and weather changes, or does length of day change too? Is there a significant difference between black-red Parshendi and white-red ones (except their color)? Do parshen have kids (I find this hard to imagine), or they just spawn somehow? Do Parshendi have gemhearts (in the way as chasmfiends have them, not as Alethi highprinces --- I mean inside their bodies, not in their treasury )? Are spren less common/less active during the Weeping? Two questions that are sure to not get RAFO'ed : How do you pronounce Szeth's name? Is Jasnah's name taken from Polish or similar language ("jasna" means "bright (female)" in Polish, but the "j" is pronounced like English "y"), or just a coincidence? Probably RAFO, but why does Nalan's (I mean the guy in the hood, suppose it's Nalan) portrait in a chapter's heading mean "someone will suffer terribly in this chapter"? Why not Talanel - he's the betrayed one, after all? Is Jezren a Sliver? Did Gavilar get the mysterious sphere from Jasnah? Is the Deathbend River also named after an order of Knights Radiant? When did Szeth start learning to fight? (possibly wrong grammar / tense here, I'm not sure) This one is probably more a question to you (people on the forum understanding English better than me): does parsh-races "marbled skin" mean that they have red stripes on black, like marble; or more something like... well... a cow. Or a Dalmatian(sp?) dog... edit: How many Heralds + ex-Heralds have we seen in WoK (personally, not pictures, sculptures, anecdotes etc.)? And could you ask him about the symmetry in surge pictures - is it a purposeful or not? I just can't stop wandering. I don't know how to phrase it into one short question.

I think the problem isn't "why cannot he lash a Plate?" but "why (in his opinion, at least) couldn't he lash while using a Plate?"... Windrunners could. It's said that the lashing would interfere with the gemstones powering the Plate. Maybe it's because now Plates are different. About lashing the Plate I agree with your explanation. Is it allowed to add questions for you to ask in this topic, or there is a quota or something?

Thank you! It's the only one I use.

I think I'd like to try that. Please?

We don't know, however, how big the planet is.

Yes, short stories rocked. But he wrote some (non-Witcher) books after the Witcher saga, and each one was less interesting than the previous.

I've noticed a strange thing: The word "Soulcasters" is used here as "people who Soulcast on their own" (as I suppose everyone can Soulcast with a device, and I'm not sure if they were even invented yet). So, as we know, a subset of Surgebinders, right? Wrong. Because it doesn't make sense. If Soulcasters were a subset of Surgebinders, as Jasnah seems to think, Nohadon wouldn't say what he said. He'd say just "princes, kings, Surgebinders.". So... is it possible that Soulcasters were something else? Yes, it is possible. My hypothesis is that they were a different kind of magic users from Surgebinders (like Feruchemists are from Allomancers) - using a different magic system. They were particulary good, or efficent, with Transformation (I suppose that this magic system also used the 10 surges in some way), so later the transforming fabrials were named after them and therefore now people use the word "Soulcast" as "transform". Or maybe it was a different magic system, but not based on Surges. Maybe it was based on 10 Essences or something - and all Soulcasters could transform things. It makes even more sense this way. And I assume their magic was strongly tied to Shadesmar and required entering it. Observations supporting this hypothesis: There is a huge difference between what Kaladin and Szeth do and what Shallan does. She enters Shadesmar, talks with weird spren(?) and cognitive representations of objects. They just do things, quite instinctively. Illustrations. First color diagram shows Radiant powers, Heralds on border and map from times of Radiants. The second shows some strange glyphs (resembling heads of those creatures), Jasnah on border and map of Shadesmar. The word "Soulcast" looks (in my opinion) much cooler understood as "cast your soul (as in "cast a shadow" not "cast metal") to shadesmar" than "cast (as in "cast metal" - to shape) object's soul. And I wonder, how Voindbinding fits into that. Shadesmar is kinda void (ok, it's not. But it's all black and dark. )... and Shallan kinda binds it to her will, Jasnah even more. But Kabsal(?) says that Voindbinding was predicting the future. Of course, he may be wrong. What do you think about it? And if you think I'm wrong - how do you explain what Nohadon said?