Djerf

Well to me the idea of mixing magic and science is nothing new and it feels quite logical to do so when applicable, the perpetual medieval setting needs to be justified and not the other way around. On the other hand I do come to the cosmere for magic and there is the possibility that, just like how I don't like some of Brandons characters, I won't like the way he turns the cosmere into science fantasy.

I posted a theory once way back, the wast majority of the post never made it to the board due to tenichal issues, one of the lines of reasoning that I think we're lost was about the attributes. The idea is that each nahel bond is represented by two mixtures of Honor and Cultivation, one that is mainly Honor and one that is mainly Cultivation. Matching the attributes to the double eye and walking clockwise the right hand side has orders with falling Honor and growing Cultivation, vice versa on the left hand side. On the top side you have orders where Honor is dominant and the bottom side where Cultivation is dominant. In This model honesty is a secondary attribute but is actually Honors attribute for lightweavers. Honor being the Almighty in Vorin Faith it makes sense for his attributes to become the Divine attributes regardless of what the demonized Raidiants consider primary/secondary.

@ LabRat But if your interpretation that they don't consider "Diamond White" a color is correct then Shallan isn't using any diamonds at all which seems a bit far fetched don't you think?

I put forth here that if the Heralds breaking is what triggers the Desolations then the following is likely to be true. "Mankind that dreads the Desolation has to make the choice to start it, while the enemy who craves the Desolation has to make the choice to end it" My guess is that said choice is either, one giving up or everyone 'dying'.

If we assume that galendo are on to something I have a correction. The Radiant powers appears to come from the Radiant-Spren bond, the Nahel bond, a symbiotic fusion of two sentient entitys on a spiritual level, akin to the bond between parent to child, sibling to sibling, lover to lover. The Idea that you would "lend" this bond to someone makes me uncomfortable. I do like the idea that Honorblades and potentially post Radiant Ideals are able to grant surgebinding to others. However we do have an established mechanism for kind of power granting between humans already in the Squire bond, and I believe that it will be more fruitful to consider how an amped up version of that would work.

Didn't Sanderson confirm that the Desolations start once the Heralds break in damnation? To me the Oathpact seams like a set of rules that all involved players had agreed to follow. The Oathpact regulates the amount, form and timing of the investiture any player can deploy, the most obvious way this works is that the Voidbringers (Odiumsprem) are only allowed during a Desolation. One aspect of the Oathpact is its relative symmetry that becomes most apparent when considering the Heralds and their counterpart the Unmade, I think that we can agree that the Unmade suffer under the same restrictions as the Voidbringers in that they can only be active during a Desolation. If my above statements are true would not the following make sense as well? Mankind that dreads the Desolation has to make the choice to start it, while the enemy who craves the Desolation has to make the choice to end it? Allowing for this model we have to ask ourselves what the symmetry, the counterbalance, is for Surgebinders during peacetime? That such symmetry existed is obvious for the following quote to make sense. (Emphasis added by me) Words of Radiance – Brandon Sanderson pg 112. Further I believe that it was within Odiums power to forbid peacetime Surgebinders when the Oathpact were made if he did not stand to gain anything on it. I think that we can safely assume that neither Voidbringers nor Unmade gained anything on this arrangement and this leaves Odium without any tools to influence Roshar directly, that we know of. The only other arena of relevance to this conflict that we know of is Damnation and the only point of conflict we know of there is the torture of the Heralds something that can only happen during peace. I propose that all investiture of mankind beyond baseline is mirrored and used to enhance the torture, causing the Heralds to suffer more and break sooner. The spren would have an understanding of this at least on some level and more importantly, being part of Honor and therefore part of the Oathpact they see no fault in it. The human part of the Nahel bond however WOULD find fault in this arrangement and would likely consider it a betrayal from the spren as well as a breach of the first oath. The Recreance fulfills three functions, first and least as a punishment of the spren who so easily caused the suffering of another and their betrayal, secondly it was a way to ensure that the spren would not just bind new knights, lastly it left Plate and Blade in the hands of mankind to use against an eventual return of the enemy without investing them. Edit: I somehow managed to post this long before I was finished so, edit to add.

Szeths dilemma is one that have is far common in religions with an absolute moral, he knows that what he does is wrong, he feels it. But at the end of the day, disobeying the orders given to him is a far worse evil than killing and walking on stone. Szeths actions are to his mind the lesser of two evils which is why he continues to suffer as he does. At the end of WoR Szeth simply exchanged one set of flawed external morals for another and I would be surprised to see him getting better while still serving under Nalan. Szeths way to redemption in my mind is one where he forsake any kind of religion and outside moral and do what he knows to be good. This could redeem him in the large scheme of things, if he can be redeemed in the eyes of the other characters we love is another question. I like Szeth and i think it would be awesome if Sanderson chose to show the way a persons religion can be evil if misinterpreted.

This idea came to me around the time for the steelhunt and it still makes sense, to me, so I've decided write it down and ”publish” it. Sadly the original document that I created back seems to have gone into hiding so I had to recreate the whole thing from scratch. The gist of it is that the powers an order of the Knight Radiants get are dependent upon the relative composition of the bonded spren and it assumes that the Nahel spren are a combination of both Cultivation © and Honor (H). The Spren A spren have two pieces of both H and C that are combined into two pieces that become the intent of the spren, it would go like this: 2H+2C---> ( HC+CH ), where H=/=H in size. Each spren now have two intents, one of Honor influenced by Cultivation and vice verse. It's worth noting that while both intents might be skewed toward Honor one of them will likely be more of Honor than the other. (There are special cases that I'm going to cover later on). These intents are closely aligned with the Divine attributes. The Divine Attributes If you look in the Ars Arcanum you will find a list with a lot of stuff and the divine attributes that is connected to each order or rather it's herald but that is the same difference. Looking at it we notice that the attributes progress from a high amount of Honor to a lower amount and then up again in a way that matches to the orders of Knights. So the divine attributes of the knights = the intents of the bonded spren. Now if total amount Honor > total amount Cultivation, the honorable intent will be the the larger piece (HC>CH) and thus it will be more defining. Knigths closer to Honor will have a primary attribute that is HC and a secondary that is CH, and of course vice verse =). This is how I classified the intents intents. (hidden for size) Now my original document had detailed discussions and arguments for why I gave each attribute the classification I did, since I was working it out for myself at the time trying to find the pattern. But I'm NOT going to recreate the entire thing! Did you notice that I did something funny at the orders 5 (Truthwatchers) and 10 (Bondsmiths)? That's right, the pattern changed! Don't worry, I'll get to that. Full speed ahead! The Powers Each Nahel bond gives access to two surges that overlap with it's neighbors, therefore it's not to far a lead to assume that the access to each surge comes from a distinct range of intent, take adhesion for example could be 90-99% Honor and the rest Cultivation or some such, the exact values isn't important. By being larger, the primary intent will grant more power and this translates to two powers from the surge it access. The Dubble Eye I'm gonna go ahead and use the Radiant Chart that Fifth made. Hidden for size If you look really really close you will see that both Truthwatcher and Bondsmiths are placed kinda funny in the chart, they are deviant. What we rely take away from this is that both orders are odd and different. Symetri The surges. Each surge grants a total of 3 powers. The orders . Each order have access to 3 powers. This is straight out symmetrical, yes, but it is boring and it doesn't take into consideration that two orders are not placed in the circle with the others, neither does it take into account how I classified the intents. If we disregard the two deviant orders for the time being, we get that both Illumination and Progression gives two powers while Tension and Adhesion gives one power each, so no matter how we twist this, the pattern will still break. From here we can take a few paths. We can give the orders 3 powers each and be done with it, this however will leave one surge with 4 powers and one with 2 powers and there's nothing in the chart that indicates that two surges are odd. I don't like it. We can give each surge 3 powers, leaving Bondsmiths with 4 powers and Truthwatchers with two, this is actually quite decent. However, looking at the chart once more we see that the surges Tension and Adhesion as well as Progression and Illumination are placed in a way that potentially breaks the pattern (paint a round shape thru the surges and it'll be a oval). We can give Truthwatchers 4 powers (giving those surges 4 powers each) and Bondsmiths 2 powers (giving those surges 2 powers each), breaking both patterns at the same time in places that are indicated in the chart. I'm leaning towards the third option, this however leaves us with one problem. Our Bondsmith, bonded to the stormfather, only have 2 powers one of which (Adhesion) is kinda underwhelming from what we've seen so far. I'm willing to believe that this will be offset by an awesome ” extra ability” kinda like Shallans Memory, because of that one epigraph that almost mentions it in WoR. For bonus points, draw a line from top to bottom on the chart, splitting the orders 5 and 10, and fold it on that line. The amount of power-lines between orders and surges remain the same, for example, Winderrunners and Stonewards are on the same spot and Cohesion and Gravity are on the same spot and each of those surges give two powers the their respective order. Symmetry! P.S I had to remake the whole thing when i noticed that these two tables don't match table one & two, it still fits but in another way, are one of them more or less canon?

From the Lift interlude. As I read this Wyndle is not fascinated by the fact that Lift can make her own Stormlight but by the fact that she can metabolize food directly into Stormlight. This implies that it's not unheard of humans generating Stormlight. I suggest that fully oath-ed KR are able to slowly generate Stormlight either by siphoning it through the Nahel bond or by a mechanism similar to what Lift is using. If this is true, the Shardplate might be connected to this ability. Let's assume that Shardplate is crystallized Stormlight, then the primary function of the plate would not be protection but as a storage for storm light, once the crystallized structure is formed the Knight could then supercharge it, so to speak, and this is the glow we have witnessed in Dalinar's visions.

When Syl died it was because Kaladin lied to himself saying that it was ok to kill the king despite knowing that it wasn't. Now Kaladin has an oath, a guideline, and as long as he keeps to his oath everything will be alright. Kaladin can lie to himself about everything between his prowess in bed, by the way of why he likes or dislikes people, to absolute morality and why he fails or succeeds in his undertakings. Shallan on the other hand can never lie to herself, which is something that almost everyone does. The lies we tell ourselfs are often small but help us get thru the day " I couldn't have done anything anyway" "I Don't have the time". Shallan can't tell herself that she's the hero in her story unless she really are the hero. I'd say that Shallan's path will be the harder one but also the most rewarding.

But still she has "helped men kill before" as she states in WoK p.626, unless she did it as a windspren she likely has been bonded before just not at the time of the betrayal.

However, the Diagram mentions the Parshendi by name. Gavilars visions prompted Mr T's visit to the Nightwatcher. Gavilar's personality changed in reaction to his visions and Elhokar mentions that Dalinar are beginning to sound like his father did towards the end. The hunt on which they first encountered the Parshendi was proposed by Dalinar as a reaction on Gavilar's changes. I'd say that the meting of the Parshendi occurred at the most two years prior to the assassination. If it's correct to assume that Mr T "created" instead of found Szeth the Diagram would have been written sometime between the founding of the Parshendi and the assassination. If we allow for the indirect travel that took Szeth across the continent and then add the time it took to decipher the Diagram and set up his fall from grace, I think we can safely say that the events had to be set in motion one year or more before Szeth's fateful appointment with Gavilar. Conclusion: The Diagram was written sometime between year -7 and -6*. * with year 0 being the day that Kaladin was enslaved. Edit: Saw this after I posted so I reread the section, and it seems that I'm way off in my estimates. =)

I'd say that those are the ones that attacked the scouting mission where Kaladin and Shallan fell into the chasm, the only ones that Eshonai didn't intend to turn where the ones that fled and there where no mentions off new forms at that point.

Jasnah's actions. First off, we have indication that she has strong personal feelings concerning that type of men. Secondly, she planned and went thru with an execution of four men. She could have acted differently, she could have gone alone and apprehended them or scarred them away. When she came back she could have been outraged and in that way given the king the political pull he needed to make an investigation into these crimes and perhaps into the eventual corruption that allowed the rapes/robberys/killings to proceed, this would have produced far more good. Instead she choose to kill defenseless men. Ammaram at least had good reasons to do what he did, Jasnah did it for her own personal pleasure.

21 isn't a magical age in most other places, and even less so in a medieval society set in another reality with magics gods and aliens, and I trust that Brandon is to much of a professional to end the SA with "And God Bless America". P.S I was going to write something entirely different but I couldn't get it to not sound offensive so I will just say, please dial back on the us-centrality =)

P.889 They are D-E-D dead. But, if the shardblades reacts different when touched by a radiant who is far enough on his path, perhaps they could re-gain life by bonding a full radiant of the correct order. I doubt it would be that easy but if the breaking of oaths is what killed them, the fulfillment of those very same oaths might have the opposite effect.

He betrays the first oath, journey before destination, but more than that, he forces power thru a faulty conduit. Imagine your self hanging over a cliff holding on for dear life to a old and weak rope that holds your weight but no more, if you just hang there and hope to be saved this rope will not break but if you try to climb up the added strain will snap it. Off topic, Investiture =/= intelligence, you need to look no further than Preservation in it's final days, the full power of a shard behind it but still dumber than dirt and getting dumber by the hour. The nature of the Nahel bond would be that the spren gets an increased physical presence and the human gets and increased spiritual presence. This quote lends credibility to this idea. One of the Parshendi song epigraphs. Their minds are closer to the cognitive realm than mens minds which are firmly situated in the physical realm.

Elohkar comes clean to Kaladin and begs to be taught how to be a good leader. Because after Patterns clue bat on how to resurrect dead spren it was obvious what Kaladin had to do in order to save Syl, but I really felt that Elohkar deserved to die, and him willing to learn and improve changed that. Shallan killing her father, it was so intimate. Reminds me of Will Smith killing his dog in I Am Legend. Any scene where Shallan and Kaladin show how good they fit together but specifically in the chams. this got me shipping them and I really hope that they get together because right now she's basically choosing Adolin based on looks and money not honesty, trust and understanding. Lift! And off course people doing awesome stuff in awesome ways.

As I read the book I got the feeling that the quote referred to one of the unmade and looking at the epigraphs Tarion compiled for us it becomes almost certain that the epigraphs refer to one of the unmade, look. It seems to me that the natural progression is that he once more spoke of the Unmade as this talk of betrayal does not pertains to the discussion on the nature of kingship. In anyway he wrote the diagram more than 500 day ago. And likely even longer ago. / spaces added by me This gives the feeling that mr T had a hand in creating Szeth. On another point, did he then also have a hand in the assassination of Gavilar?

Dalinar when he saved Elhokar during the hunt, this way he wouldn't have to attract spren despise his shardblade. I'm guessing that it was Renarin who was his master knight. What qualifies one to become a Squire Radiant, and in what way do they relate to the Knight Radiants?

On the healing thing. I believe that there are two major factors that the wielder influences. First is the view of self, if you see yourself as broken/damaged you can heal. Kaladin clearly sees his slave brands as healed and part of himself, while the Lopen does not consider his armless state as healed. The second factor is how you view the mechanics of supernatural healing, if you think/know/feel that something is impossible to heal the healing power will never get directed to that injury and thus it won't heal. Szeth tells us as he's been told, that stormlight can't heal shardblade wounds and yet we see Kaladin doing just that. Syl in the end told Kaladin that the difference between the Honorblade powers and the Nahelbond powers are quantitative rather the qualitative, "his car runs as fast as your does but his has worse gas millage". The Lopen, with the rest of bridge four, see Kaladin as but one small step below the Almighty and they have seen him do things that should be impossible more times than they can count, and so when the Lopen finally gets the power to infuse he firmly know that dismemberment is no problem for stormlight to fix. We do however see that the healing of a shardblade wound is not something that occurs naturally and automatic. When Kaladin makes an conscious effort, the stormlight heals him. I think we can take this fact in two basic ways, either Kaladin by applying his will forced the stormlight to take a non-existing route kinda like how the parshendi just leaps the chasms instead of using bridges. Or he overwrote the cognitive template of how stormlight healing works that have been set in to place by countless persons that "knew" that stormlight wouldn't heal that kind of damage, kinda like that road sign that says that you're not allowed to pass unless your destination is within the are but you pass anyway cuz it earns you like 5 minutes every morning on your way to work. I believe in the second alternative, or perhaps a mix of the two. In the end I don't think that you can define the different magic healing effects in terms of what they can do, after all as you approach shardic proportions of power nothing is impossible. Rather we should define it in terms of efficiency (speed of healing, ease of healing, affinity for different kinds of wounds (spiritual, cognitive, spiritual, physical, old and new), levels of relative and absolute investiture needed and investiture spent during the healing). Looking at the intents of the shards that are heavily invested in Roshar and Scadrial I'd say that stormlight are superior when healing spiritual and old wounds perhaps cognitive wounds seeing as cultivation seems to have a strong connection to the cognitive, and probably on par with Feruchemical gold when healing new and physical wounds.

Yes I'm in the Shallarin camp but I don't feel that lack of masculinity are in anyway related to Renarins character but rather he suffers from a "lack of sense of worth in himself" which is somewhat justified seeing as he are incapable of contributing in anyway that he are allowed to. I have a dear friend who suffers from emotionally triggered epilepsy and a brother who's a high functional autist , a combination of afflictions that i fell fit well on Renarin, and neither of those suffers from any lack of masculinity (imaged or real) but both suffers from feeling that they aren't good enough which is stupid since they both can chose a path where they won't be hindered and, in the case of my brother, really excel! Those that I've meet that lacked in masculinity never were the quite, thinking kids, no they were the loud trouble makers who tried to re compensate with a stereotypical boyish behavior, a behavior that often carried over into adulthood. This is how I would imagine it. Shallan will gravitate towards Renarin in the beginning because he reminds her of her brothers partly from the lack of self worth and partly from his internal pain and Renarin are pleasantly surprised that this new exciting girl prefers him over his perfect brother. As time progress Shallan will start to appreciate him for his keen mind and gentle soul, while Renarin will act as a guide for the new Alethi capital and it's society ( from which he will derive some self value, however small) and he will start to appreciate her for her quick wit and her acceptance of his problems. The next great step for the two will require a catalyst and so, enter Szeth, or another catastrophe. Shallan will be put in a situation where she will choose to reveal her shameful secret in order to protect herself and those around her. Shallans reveal will be the cataclysm that allow Renarin to eventually choose to forgo Vorin gender roles and forge his own path. This is the first ship I've ever taken any part of and see what you have done to me! Here I sit making things up out of thin air without even faux science to back my claims.

Eine bier, bitte, Grosse bier! Una cerveza, por favor. Cervesa grande! One beer for him and two for me, the biggest you've got! The point gets across. No matter how you measure it, the largest beer around are going to be big enough Edit: What did I write to make that smiley?

While most of the theorys here tend to be Realmatic as you say Feather I do think that it's more a product of what most of us understands (I for one never came further in my Swedish studies then how to identify a verb) and not a lack for interest and when the theoryzing had started I suspect that it just built its own momentum. I looked around in those links you provided and found out that I'm totally incapable of navigating tumblr, a fact that saddens me because what i did find there was awesome, it's just to bad that the ideas expressed out there isn't in the structured and formal way of this forum. One of the things that I did find was a counter argument against Shalarin that rang false to me and I want to take some time to show why. The argument was that Vorin society provides a way for men to pursue the female arts and therefor Renarin don't want to study fabrial science that bad. My first points concerns the Ardentia: Ardents are considered more or less sexless " A parshman wasn't much of a chaperone, but Kabsal was an ardent, which meant technically she didn't need one" WoK pg 524 " We shouldn't be talking like this Kabsal. You're an ardent.""A man can leave the ardentia, Shallan" Wok pg 618 during a flirty conversation between Shallan and Kabsal. Further ardents are property "....We're not a threat to anyone these days. We can't own property... Damnation, we're property ourselves. We dance to the whims of the citylords and warlords, afraid to tell them the thruth of their sins for fear of retribution. We're whitespines without tusks or claws, expected to sit at our master's feet and offer praise..." they are basically slaves. Secondly I want to offer insight into Renarins family: First we have Gavilar, the king, who personified the noble Calling of leading and lived a success tale. Then we have Dalinar, the Blackthorn, who are as accomplished as the king was if not more so and in the even more masculine arts of warfare and combat. Then we have Navani, the artifabrian, who lives the female virtues, at least publicly. Lastly we have Adolin , the brother, who is very much his fathers son, he lives the male ideals and excels. Thirdly we have Renarin himself who is a intelligent young man, no older then 20, and wants the same thing every young man wants, fame, popularity, acceptance and girls (or boys). Consider this and tell me, how could he join the ardentia? one needs to understand that the only reason that Dalinar consider the ardentia a viable option is a narrowmindness common with parents who only wants the best for their kids and so he want Renarin to do want he likes and don't consider the drawbacks partly because he don't understands that the problems exists ( he's too good to notice) and partly because of his selective blindness concerning Renarin. Renarin joining the ardentia to study fabrial science is like if Bill Gates son took up cleaning toilets becasue he likes it and he frankly isn't smart enough to do anything else, it would be outrageous, it would a scandal, not because it's bad to be a cleaner but because of who his father is, it would be better for him to do nothing. Someone might already have countered the argument but as I said. I couldn't navigate in there.

This Is Kind of sad, not the fact that the forum lacks the setting but that the problem exists, that there is no universally accepted format. It's a nightmare! No honestly I have nightmares of this, that we in hundreds of years still haven't agreed on the time format or the 'to be or not to be of the metric system' and the Celsius/Fahrenheit/Kelvin, the design of phone chargers or that most people still won't be able to do more then to order a beer in English (or Mandarin or whatever). I wake in the middle of the night all sweaty and shaking from this kind of dreams!