Jaconis

Yeah, that's not where I was expecting his plot to go, but it's good. I was expecting more with him confronting Roshone, and trying to figure out what to do with him. This is better, as the Roshone plot would be a little too close to what he faced in WoR. Regardless, I'm very excited to learn more about Dalinar's past, and for the book in general!

In rereading WoK, looking for interesting mentions of cremlings, I found this. Chapter 22 Don't know the significance, except that I'm sure Hoid knows of the Sleepless.

As people have said, I'm not sure the loss of free will is a consequence, intentional or not, of the Nahel bond. The part of your theory I like more is the final bit, about being cursed. The fact that, for both Kaladin and Shallan, everything does get far worse for them after they begin bonding their spren is something I had noticed myself, but not put together or linked to anything. We even have reason to believe that Odium was influencing Shallan's father besides this theory. When Hoid visits her, he says something along the lines of, "the things [she fights] aren't completely natural." For Kaladin, Sadeas' POV seem to indicate some other influence, some inexplicable change in personality to be more bloodthirsty, almost an addiction to the Thrill. Between he and Amaram, someone around Kaladin was being influenced by Odium, maybe for just not as long as Shallan's father, and so not as noticeable.

I actually had a topic all typed up on this very thing, but decided I wasn't promoting any actual discussion, so I deleted it. I didn't think to speculate on the other orders, though. I too think flamespren make sense for the Dustbringers/Releasers. While logicspren do fit nicely with what we know of Elsecallers, and Jasnah in particular (in WoR prologue especially), I've actually begun thinking they may be associated with Skybreakers. I'm rereading WoK, and Shallan mentions early on that logicspren take the form of tiny stormclouds. Using more WildSpeculation to support this theory, I've long thought that Skybreakers will be able to use the Division surge to have some sort of lightning abilities, and with them flying using Gravity, stormclouds fit right in with them. Finally, while it's not perfect since laws can be illogical, I think there's an argument to be made that perfectly following the law is an exercise in logic, in the sense that you take all emotion out of the equation. All that said, I can see either order having them be their Minor spren. Interestingly enough, these two orders are connected with a line in the double eye graphic... I haven't that slightest clue what that means, if anything, as Windrunners and Lightweavers are connected as well, and they don't seem to have any spren connection, except that their Major spren don't like each other. I haven't the slightest clue what it could be for Truthwatchers. Willshapers and Stonewards - has there been any sort of reference to a metal or stone spren? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but those are the types of things I associate with the two, respectively.

Is it possible that he has some way of contacting Taln? This idea assumes that the theory that a Desolation in the past was triggered when the Heralds couldn't take the torture anymore. We know for sure that the man we know as Taln thinks he's the Herald of War, but may not be. If he's not, and the real Taln is still being tortured, and Ishar has a way of checking that, he may feel certain that an actual capital D Desolation is not occurring. Just as Nale suggests, Ishar thinks this is just a small contingent of listeners who found a voidform, and are no real threat. Perhaps when Nale confronts him (which is what I assume he went off to do), Ishar will see the truth?

I like this idea as well. Another concept I think Kaladin will need to come to grips with, either in Oathbringer or later, is that of protecting people but still allowing them to make their own choices, even if those choices put them in danger. He has made statements that he should have made Bridge 4 leave to protect them from fighting, but he'll learn that it's their decision and he can't make it for them. He can only do his best to protect them.

Oh I completely agree, and I'm not suggesting we use this method to come up with the Resonance for the Orders of which we have little to no knowledge. This is more just my internal rationalization for the resonance abilities we do know. It likely has zero basis for how they actually function. In particular, I can come up with no figurative interpretation of Lightweaver surges that get to Memory. As this is the one we know the best from WoB and the books, I think this pretty well and truly squashes this method of interpretation. That said, the conversation Shallan and Pattern have after she convinces the deserters to help the caravan seems to me that there is some figurative component to the powers, which is what got me thinking of them this way to begin with. The full quote: Emphasis mine. Again, this doesn't have anything to do with her Resonance ability, but certainly suggests there are more to the Surges than meets the eye. EDIT: And now that I am home and can look at your signature, I see you already started a thread on this very subject. I'll read that and continue the discussion there to not derail this anymore than I already have.

That was it! Thanks. So Elsecaller's isn't confirmed, and that's the one we don't have much basis for anyway. I still think the strength and number of squires makes sense for the Windrunner powers in the same way Connection makes sense for an Edgedancer, though I can make no other connection to it. The only other order I have any thoughts on are Truthwatchers. This assumes that Renarin is indeed one, but I can see how some form of foretelling exists for them. The progression of the world/surroundings/people is illuminated. We even have examples of this in other magics, like burning Atium, or for a non-god metal, burning Electrum.

It's possible. I should say that I'm on the side that they are there to help contain Odium, and are related to the heralds in some way, but Kriss has this to say about them. "A series of enormous gas giants crowd the outer reaches of the system, though nobody has been able to observe them directly, as their manifestation on Shadesmar is minor." If they don't have much "weight" in the cognitive, I'm not sure how great of a containment decice they would make...

Mind. Blown. I've been thinking about this, and what Kaladin's and Jasnah's resonance may be, and what exactly they would translate to in a Realmatic sense. For Kaladin, I believe it's been said that he has something to do with his ability to lead? To have such orderly ranks among the order? I can't look now, so please correct me if I'm wrong, or point to the WoB if you can. With gravitation and adhesion, I can see that he makes people Gravitate to him, and then are intensely loyal to him? Maybe I'm pulling at straws here. Regardless, I can't find any sort of magic that would help this. Maybe identity or connection again? For Jasnah, I believe I've seen a WoB saying that she has an unnaturally good sense of direction. For this, I have even less of an idea of its cause from a magic perspective. Thoughts?

Well, assuming the feverstone keep vision is the Recreance, like Dalinar guesses, the Stonewards definitely seem to have broken their oaths, again with the assumption that giving up the shards was the moment of oath breaking. I suppose that could all be a red herring, but it seems like pretty reasonable assumptions all around. I think, like was said before, the Skybreakers are the ones who didn't break their oaths. Several things hint at this: 1. Their patron herald is still alive and active. 2. We know of an existing, still active organization for which said patron is still recruiting. 3. Their oaths would likely suggest that law and rules go above all else, like compassion, logic, or empathy. In other words, even if it turns out that the Radiants' very existence somehow helps Odium, they would continue, because that's what the laws/rules say. They don't care about what's morally right; they care that the law is followed, whether that law is moral or immoral. 4. In the epilogue, Jasnah mentions that she learned much from the Highspren. I forget where I saw they were the spren of the skybreakers, or maybe I didn't see it anywhere and just assumed it. If they are, then that is further proof to me that the Skybreakers didn't break their oaths, as they would still have knowledge of that time given that there was no mass killing of those that had experienced a bond. Back to the original question, the ones I'm most interested in seeing, in no particular order (ha), are stonewards, willshapers, and dustbringers. That being said, I wasn't all that interested in Lightweavers before WoR came out, but then the parts where we learn the details and intricacies of that order are some of my favorite moments of the book. I now have confidence that I'll enjoy any and all information we learn on the way the orders operate, logistically, emotionally, magically, or in any other way.

Going back to the actual topic of this thread, something I didn't think of to support the feedback loop theory: When a muggle (non-Radiant) uses shardplate, they get the benefits of holding stormlight without the surgebinding, i.e. increased speed and strength. To me, this lends credence to the feedback loop theory in particular. The infused gems feed the plate (spren) who then feed it back to the wearer, providing them with the increased strength and speed shardplate is famous for. They wouldn't be able to surgebind, as that requires a spren bond to give you access to the surges to manipulate, but the investiture could still enhance the user, even without a bond. This doesnt help my theory (that living plate feeds the Radiant), as in theory the Radiant would act in place of the gems in living plate, but the feedback loop theory in general helps with the question of where the radiant gets the mass of stormlight needed for larger battles. Or rather, it would help them not waste any. Combined with the fact that Kaladin seems to have gotten an efficiency upgrade with each level up, a full Radiant could potentially need very little stormlight to be sustained for a long time.

I don't want to hijack this thread more than I already have, so this will be my last post on the matter. The air or ground behind the coin make no difference to Newton's Third Law. An allomancer exerts a force on the coin, that coin exerts an equal and opposite force on the allomancer. When an allomancer pushes on a coin with just enough force to move it, they wouldn't move. This is because the force required to move a small mass like the coin does not generate enough acceleration on a much larger mass like an allomancer to cause movement. This is true whether there is the ground or a building behind the coin, assuming the allomancer is still pushing with the same amount of force. What changes is the mass being pushed. With the force staying the same, the mass has increased significantly, so acceleration has become nothing. This is what's important, the same force is applied to the allomancer as before. This means that since that force wasn't enough to move him before, it's not enough to move him now. If the force pushing against coin and ground is enough to move the allomancer, unless the push changes in magnitude, he should move just pushing on the coin. This is how rocket ships work. The engines push downwards with an enormous continuous force, and the rocket sees an equal and opposite force upward. If you needed something to push against, a rocket would stop accelerating as soon as it left the ground, but it doesn't. It keeps going, and uses the same principle in space as well. Another example is firing a gun. You pull the trigger, gun powder ignites, explodes, and pushes on the bullet with a large burst of force. There is an equal and opposite force exerted on the gun, which is why you get recoil. The bullet is tiny, so it has a huge acceleration, but the gun has much more mass, and therefore accelerates significantly less. If the way the mistborn physics seem to be were real, there would be no recoil, no equal and opposite force, unless you were shooting against something massive like the ground.

Hmm. Thanks for that, though I'm pretty sure that's not what I was thinking of, as I originally saw this years and years ago, around WoK release. As is said there, the assumption needed to make the Third Law not be violated doesn't always hold true in the text, but enough to get it to work for his purposes.

Well, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If this magic is creating a force between the arrows to the shield, there is also a force pulling the shield towards the arrows. In your example with the earth, the gravitational force we feel pulling us down is mirrored on the earth, pulling it "up." As you said, that force is so small compared to the mass of the earth, and is countered by so many other objects of relatively similar mass all across its surface, in all directions, (on the scale of planets, a person and the Empire State Building are roughly the same, i.e. negligible), that the earth doesn't move. That said, my argument for why the shield wouldn't move is that the shield was attached to kaladins arm. Kaladin's mass + the shield's mass >>>> arrow's mass. He gets thrown back when they hit him, but now we're talking about energy and momentum, which the arrows have significant amounts of because of their velocity. This may be the reasoning, or this particular brand of the magic could be affecting Newton's Third Law such that there is no equal and opposite force, or it could just be something Brandon didn't think of, as it's one of the laws of physics that is not always easy to visualize. For instance, I saw a blog post awhile back by some physicist fan of Brandon's, criticizing Mistborn to say that if steelpushing generates enough force to throw someone in the air when they push on a coin on the ground, they should be thrown when they push on a coin in the air as well. The equal and opposite force is acting on them regardless. (The blog post, which I can't find now, went into far greater detail, so look for it if your interested or confused by my shoddy explanation). The only way to get the behavior we see in the books, which is that a mistborn drops a coin, starts pushing on it but doesn't start moving until the coin hits something, is if the mistborn suddenly starts pushing much much harder when the coin hits, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Yes exactly. He's clearly something more than human at that point. I had forgotten Voidbinding was something different than Voidbringer. That makes sense for what's happening. He may be, like, resisting the change? Like not saying the void-oaths to progress or something, which is why we don't see him ever actually Voidbind.

Dustbringers are brave and obedient, based on the table of divine attributes. That's all we have as far as I know, and may or may not be something to go by. So I'm not sure that hemalurgic spikes would necessarily allow you to become a Radiant, as much as it would allow access to surgebinding. Brandon's answers there lead me to believe that no spren from Honor or Cultivation would touch spike made spirit holes, but that Odium's spren would be happy to. This would make them...anti-Radiants?. Maybe Voidbringer is the right term there, but this process seems different from what Eshonai and the Parshendi did. As I type this, the situation that comes to mind that seems like better evidence than a dustbringer is that of Shallan's father. When his wife tries to kill his daughter, and his daughter defends herself and is forced to kill her own mother (and who knows what else was going on between his wife and the man...), that would certainly qualify as a traumatic, spirit web breaking event. And, more importantly, a very possible and likely emotion to feel there would be anger. He would be furious at his wife, who did all these horrible things, and forced this situation upon them all. This would have opened to door for an anger spren to bond, and create a proto-anti-Radiant. This also helps explain Wit's line to Shallan when he tells her that not everything she's fighting is natural.

I like the feedback loop idea. One thing about the glowing, in Dalinar's vision where he sees the thunderclast, the Radiant is wearing her plate, but it isn't glowing until she (presumably) starts to surgebind. This creates more questions to me? 1. Did the Radiant just suck in some light at that time? There's no mention of it by Dalinar, though he could just have not been able to see it for some reason (too bright out). Perhaps the plate holds it so it is available to be accessed? 2. Does the plate glow when stormlight is held or only when being used? There maybe something I missed in one flashback or another to answer this. 3. If the plate does glow from just holding stormlight, does it replace the skin glowing? If so, that would give credence to the feedback loop idea. Questions 1 in particular makes me wonder who is feeding who stormlight with the plate. My current theory, assuming the minor spren are plate, is that the spren actually feed stormlight to the Radiant, not the other way around. They are essentially pure investiture, and could therefore fuel surgebinding. Modern plate needs infused gems, but i like the idea that it's only needed to keep the dead spren alive, and investiture wasn't needed when the spren were still living. This may not be feasible, so pick it apart as you will, but I like the idea because it eliminates the need to carry around a bunch of infused spheres. I understand that they need some sort of power limit, but it also seems impractical to carry enough spheres for, say, a large scale battle. We've only seen Kaladin fight for an extended period twice using stormlight (battle at the tower and against szeth), and both times he had alternative outside sources to refuel.

Interesting..."I will stand when others fall." Sounds like a Stoneward ideal if I've ever heard one (which I haven't).

Speaking of Pattern, there's something else I was confused on. Chapter 88, page 1059Is Shallan saying she hates Pattern or her mother here? Pattern takes it to mean him, but she's looking at her mother's illusion. And she sort of denies Pattern's assumption that it's him she hates by saying she doesn't want revenge...or is that affirming it? A rational person I would think would hate the mother for how she handled knowledge of what her daughter was, but I can also understand blaming Pattern for creating the situation in the first place.

Lift notices Darkness moving faster than he should be able to and comes to the conclusion that he was "awesome" too, meaning infused with Stormlight in non-Liftese. Since we know the Heralds were only surgebinders because of the Honorblades, it is assumed (rightly, IMO) that Nalan has his Honorblade.

I agree. Somewhere in WoR (don't have book with me) it's mentioned that with each oath, the spren is brought more fully into the physical. I think Syl can't become Plate yet because she can't affect the physical world enough yet to be both Plate and Blade. I'm not sure how to explain the Plate not screaming for bonded people though. Perhaps as someone said above, it's because you don't bond Plate the same way you do a Blade, with no ability to summon and dismiss Plate. This just really makes me wonder what the hell could have caused the Recreance. If the bonded spren is really both the Plate and Blade, what could have possibly made the Knights knowingly trap their bonded spren, someone they've shared minds and emotions with, who can feel each other's pain. The only way I can see Kaladin doing that is if Syl agreed/asked for it, and even then I'm not sure he'd do it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this split. The male heralds are all in the top half of the image, female on the bottom. If your above is true, the male Heralds would all be more of Honor and the female more off Cultivation. That might make sense, given the genders of the shard holders, but it also seems too...neat.

Interesting. I have no insights as to the implications for how they could have been created, but very interesting.

Sure they do. He's said that he failed them, and his failures are huge part of Kaladin's broken soul.