Etedbert

Big spoilers for stonewalkers chapter 3

I’m not saying it isn’t unnecessary, just commenting on how closely together Retribution talks about making new Unmade and about using the SR Blackthorn as a general. Definitely felt like an implication, especially knowing Mishram has been referred to as a general of Odium in the past

We did see Syl herself accept Kal’s Herald oath. It’s possible with the death of the Stormfather / possibly the Nightwatcher and the coma of the sibling, along with the Oathpact 2.0 making radiant Spren the largest collection of Honor’s power outside the Heralds left, that individual spren themselves choose whether or not to accept oaths from their radiant, granting them even more agency with the bonds than before

To be fair, Hoid makes a point of reminding Dalinar towards the end of the book, he’s not omniscient. He has no way of knowing that the wind was making vague plans in case something happened. Renarin’s clearest vision of it was not long before he got pulled into the SR, and he didn’t talk to Hoid before that occurred. Nightforms as well as Death Rattles predicted it, but everyone thought those visions were already fulfilled with the appearance of the Everstorm. It was only after Retribution’s rise that we realize what the true Desolation and night of sorrows really meant. I really think Cultivation’s plan after realizing TOdium was still going all in on war, was to have Dalinar ascend as Honor and fight Odium. It would be the fastest way to end the cycle Roshar is stuck in, and let her leave or let her kill whoever remains from that duel, becoming Roshar’s sole god. I really thinkThe rise of Retribution certainly was not on her bucket list. Furthermore, even is she HAD seen it, she famously dislikes Hoid and definitely wouldn’t share her plans with him. The Iriali protector probably didn’t foresee exactly this happening, but I think it probably did foresee that the realmic travel issues would be ending soon. How it knows this, I have no clue. Probably something connected to why the Iriali are all wiggly woggly investiture people. TLDR; Hoid says no one foresaw this because he/his partners didn’t foresee this, and he never talked to the people who did.

There’s another line about Retribution planning to make new Unmade. My guess is the new Blackthorn will be one of them.

Taln losing his honorblade is supposed to be answered in the Cosmete RPG “Stonewalkers” Stormlight adventure module. We now know the end point of the blade, but the adventure will theoretically cover him losing it, and it’s journey to Shinovar

As Wind and Truth is around the corner, my boss at the bookstore I work at has warmed to my pitch of a Wind and Truth launch party! Very in tradition with things like midnight release parties, but we’d just open earlier in the morning (because no one wants to work till midnight on a Thursday, lmao) As my coworker and I brainstorm ideas for it, I figured I’d access the brain trust here and ask, if you had a local bookstore running a Wind and Truth launch party near you, what would you want from it? current ideas are: -large scale 3D print of Urithiru to use as a book display, based on Swinny’s fantastic 3D model here: https://www.printables.com/model/114895-urithiru-from-the-stormlight-archive -some sort of themed food, preferably something sweet (difficult, with all the savory/spicy dishes on Roshar) -A laptop set up for people to take the Radiant Order quiz a long shot idea that probably won’t happen, is me making epoxy resin Spheres to give away, but I’m still brainstorming how to best make them with the gemstone in the center.

I don’t know a good trade market sadly. But if you’re looking for a signed copy, it might be worth emailing some independent bookstores near you. Macmillan (Brandon’s publisher) reserved a certain amount of the signed copies for indie bookstores, and some might not have sold out of their pre-order signed copies yet. Best of luck!

I’ve been trying to find where we were told this, but I remember it being revealed during the RPG kickstarter that radiant plate does not have unique abilities based on the order. I will update here if I manage to find whoever said it. I think it’s more likely that Shallan’s weird experience with her plate is a result of her double bond/reforming her bond with Testament, rather than evidence of unique plate abilities for each order. (As cool as that would be). Shallan manipulating the shape of her plate is something any Radiant should be able to do, it’s an extrapolation of the way plate forms to fit whoever is wearing it. Janah probably did the same thing in RoW to make her flint and steel gloves to ignite soulcast oil on the battlefield. People wearing Shallan’s plate being unable to move is certainly odd, but it seems to be a way of helping her give mental commands to the plate. When she puts it on Red in chapter 16, she tries commanding the spren to form around him, but they’re confused until she grabs his arm to help them visualize where to go. She even struggled forming the plate around herself correctly the first time. I think this is maybe because of her split mind, rather than a unique feature of lightweaver plate. It’s not that her spren can’t form armor correctly, it’s that she has trouble commanding them to do so, possibly from her split, but equally possible is that it’s because of her imbricated spren bonds.

That whole book description reads like some bad Generative AI slough

Except in RoW, we saw him attempt to hijack the bond from Dalinar’s side, and he had to touch him to do so. Why would he need to make contact to form/hijack a bond in one instance, but in the other, forming/hijacking the bond from the SF’s side when talking to Gavilar, he could do so from across a continent? I could see an argument that says “Oh well he’s connected to the SF through the Oathpact (SF also being Tanavast’s cognitive shadow) and went through that connection to the SF, to alter the SF’s connection to Gavilar. This raises a question about Bondsmith’s abilities. Can they follow a chain of connections to then alter a different connection down the line from a distance? That would be bonkers. E.g. Dalinar is from Alethkar, and as such has a connection to it. Amaram (pre-death, lol) is also from Alethkar and has a connection to it. Amaram also has a connection to Kalak through the oaths made as sons of honor. Could Dalinar theoretically follow the connection of Dalinar->Alethkar->Amaram->Kalak, and then forge connections between himself and Kalak?? It certainly doesn’t seem like that level of spiritual jumping is in the purview of bondsmiths. The closest we see, is Dalinar connecting to people who are in a highstorm via his connection to the SF. But he still requires the people to be in a storm to jump that connection gap, and he’s not connecting himself to them, he’s asking the Stormfather to connect to them and pull them into the SR. Stormfaker asserts that Ishar is capable of jumping basically any gap he wants to form connections as he sees fit, and if that’s the case why wouldn’t he steal Dalinar’s bond to the SF from miles away?

My main issue with Stormfaker, is just that all those unusual things were easily explained as it being a rough draft. All the weird language was just because it hadn’t gone through the suite of editing yet. As soon as the finished prologue was released, it killed the theory for me. My other thought was that if Stormfaker was real, it wouldn’t have any real bearing on the plot. Ishar goes “Oh yeah btw I pretended to be the SF with Gavilar but then he died and I stopped doing that” ? What does that add or change for our characters? But if we find out the SF had a budding bond with Gavilar, and that his failure there led him to hide key details from Dalinar? That sets up much more interesting story beats. Stormfaker always just seemed like people reading too much into a rough draft, when taking at it’s stated truth would make a more interesting plot anyways

Nightwatcher is probably named as such, because they were created from the “essence” of the Night spren, by Cultivation. Night became the Nightwatcher, or at the very least, the Nightwatcher is a new conscience created from the same investiture. That’s why they can use the Old Magic to grant boons and curses.

Correct, but a lot of the language around that 5th Oath also discusses truth. Szeth’s spren: And when first telling Szeth about the 5th ideal in OB, Ki says “personification of law and truth” I feel like people focus too heavily on the Law part, and ignore the Truth half of it. To become an embodiment of law is to be able to determine the truth of any matter. In practice, I think we’ve seen this happen when Nale sides with the Singers. He moved beyond the scale of the law of the land, and determined the “truth” of what he viewed as the proper law, that of the singers over that of men. If you cannot determine that truth yourself, you are still held back by the written law, and the flaws within. If Szeth swears the fifth ideal, he has to move beyond his reliance on the decisions of others. It’s a clear path for his arc. He started as Truthless following the oathstone’s owner’s orders, then when he is revealed to not be truthless, he followed Nale and the Skybreakers to maintain structure and cope with his actions. Then he chooses to follow Dalinar. The first time he really chose anything, even if it was a choice to not make more choices. Going to Shinovar wasn’t even solely his choice, he put a caveat with the oath, “…so long as Dalinar Kholin agrees”. He’s slowly beginning to act with more personal agency, and killing Taravangian was the second major choice he made for himself. I think Szeth will need to take some action against the orders of Dalinar, and in choosing for himself what the Truth is, and what is truly lawful, he’ll achieve the 5th ideal. Lightweavers deal with personal truth. Being able to identify and reflect on themselves, and who they are. They engage in self-actualization rather than a discussion of external truth. We know far less about Truthwatchers, but from what we’ve been told, they seem to deal more in objective truth. Of what happened in given situations, and regarding the lies of others. They hold others accountable to the truth, and fight against abuses of power. Skybreakers then deal with legality, and the truth of ethical dilemmas. Lower ideal Skybreakers swear to a structured, pre-existing “truth” whether that be a person, or a legal code. A 5th ideal Skybreaker determines what the “truth” is themselves, beyond existing power structures. They all deal with similar motifs, but have different extrapolations of the same ideas. And given that we know Kaladin and Szeth are the titular “Knights of Wind and Truth” that’s why I think Szeth represents the Truth half of that pairing. I can pull the full quote of Ki talking about the 5th ideal and update it here later tonight^

I’ve taken the Truth half of Wind and Truth as reference to the Skybreaker 5th Oath. Where they embody “Truth”. I take it to mean that Szeth will swear the fifth ideal, and that Kaladin will either bond with, or serve as champion for the Wind in some regard. Making Kaladin and Szeth each a knight of Wind and Truth respectively.

I’m still pretty sure that it’s referring to Shadesmar and Roshar. I don’t have my copy of TSM on hand though, do you have the specific quote? I might just be remembering it poorly, lol

I’m pretty sure the obsidian is referring to the ground of Shadesmar in the cognitive realm, not to a unique planet in the physical realm.

Maybe they got grouped with the Honorspren, because each is the closest spren to their respective namesake Shard

I’m not 100% on this connection, but the discussion of The Night “leaving” made me think of the girl who looked up story, and how she stole the light and then followed the storms that brought light to the shadowed land. The girl came from a land of shadow (Night) then crossed the wall (Stone) and when she returned there came after her storms (Stormfather) which destroyed the wall (Stone) and cast away the shadow (Night). Maybe the story is representative of the creation of the godspren, and the decline of the old gods. The story structure roughly follows the timeline The Siblings gives. (Even if Jasnah complains of inconsistent veristitism). Stormfather is formed, then the Sibling is formed from Stone, and then Night leaves and Cultivation takes that essence, and creates the Nightwatcher. Story goes: Storm -> breaks wall -> light comes to the girl’s village. Godspeed creations: Stormfather -> Sibling -> Nightwatcher I assume that Night “leaving” regards some change in people’s perception, causing “Night” to lose their cognitive identity, and that lessened essence is what Cultivation used to make the Nightwatcher. This connects nicely to the another theory, that being that The Girl Who Looked Up, represents the first desolation when Humanity first left Shinovar, and when the spren changed sides. It could make sense that soon after that was when the Godspren were formed. The First Desolation was -6,080, right about 7,000 years ago, in-line with when the Stormfather says he was created. The Sibling’s 6,000 year age would place their creation around -5000, coincidentally in-line with the founding of the Knights Radiant and Urithiru. This gives a soft 1,700 year gap before the Last Desplation for the Nightwatcher to be created, probably leaning closer to the start of that gap of time. My main question now, as others pointed out, is what caused the Night to “leave”? Looking at it in reverse, what was different about the night pre-desolations that put it on par with Wind and Stone? a crackpot theory: there used to be some astrological feature in the Roshar system that caused long periods of darkness on Roshar, ala total eclipse. This feature caused the Dawnsingers to view these long periods of “Night” with the same awe as they did Stone or Wind. These sun-less times were fine for native biology, which could feed on Stormlight. When humanity settled in Shinovar however, a shard or shards (Cultivation likely) adjusted the system to remove these long eclipse periods. Ending the long periods of “Night” and slowly causing the collective thought regarding Night to wane, slowly resulting in their departure, particularly when the desolations began in earnest and the Fused, locked away on Braize regularly, became the only ones to properly remember the Night as it used to be pre-Ashyn-exodus.

During the Cosmere RPG Kickstarter, Johnny O’Neal revealed that Brandon said soulcasting at a distance is not exclusive to Elsecallers. (Update: he’s actually commenting that order specific abilities are in their “Bond” skill tree, and that Surge skill trees are identical for each order that can use it.) We see Reverse Lashings and “Physical Illusion” aka Substantiation are the unique abilities for Windrunner and Lightweaver respectively. We also see Distant Soulcasting as a skill on the Lightweaver Transformation tree in the preview material on Demiplane.The RPG is not 100% in line with canon, but it seems like it’s just a difficult skill to master, and our main POV character with Transformation has a bad habit of not using it. (Storming Shallan)

Sorry I’m confused if you mean diegetically, or metatextually. By “alien culture” do you mean Brandon’s exploration of a non-earth human culture? As in his exploration of Alethi, Veden, Azish, etc culture? Or do you mean the in-world study of Pardhendi culture we saw in WoK and WoR? If the former, in what way do you think we’ve stopped exploring those cultures? We see cultural differences and ways of thinking crop up constantly, primarily highlighted in the council scenes of OB and beyond. The difference is we’re now seeing these cultures react to devastation and war, rather than continuing to see how they existed in relative peacetime. If the latter, it makes sense that we haven’t explored Parshendi culture anymore, especially since until the end of RoW we were under the impression that Venli was the last of her kind, that impression being a cornerstone of Venli’s arc, which in-itself was our viewpoint to explore Fused culture. We’ll probably get to see more of the Parshendi culture in WaT, with Venli reunited with them. Im not sure I see it the same way as you regarding Brandon’s writing of ethical dilemmas and social dynamics. I think he’s just gotten better at conveying his intent as he’s developed as a writer. Going back to Elantris, you can see the threads of the ideas he wants to express (e.g. religious conflict), but his execution is certainly sloppy at times, and as a result the book reads much more ambiguous than I believe he intended. If Elantris had been written later in his career, I think it would have a much stronger stance on the issues it covers, not because his stance on those issues changed, but because he’s better at conveying his ideas than he used to be. This translates to Stormlight as well. I certainly don’t read it as though he’s trying to preach his opinions, I think he’s just become much more succinct in his writing of them as the series has gone on. I definitely see the criticism of that choice as valid, taking away the breadth of discussion that WoK had has hurt the later books, but it seems necessary in order to save on page count given the complex plotlines. It’s see it more as a criticism of editing than it is of the writing itself.

From Shallan’s conversation with the Oathgate Spren in OB, it definitely seems like the Oathgates were made by Honor binding Inkspren to the locations via some Oath. I haven’t looked for any WOBs, but iirc the oathgates work by shunting folks through the SR where space doesn’t matter, to a different location in the PR. given the post-recreance attitude of the Inkspren, it’s very unlikely anyone, even the bond smiths and especially not Janay, would be able to convince new Inkspren to form oathgates again. my tinfoil hat theory is that Elsecallers have an easier application of Transportstion in regards to realmatic travel, and and Willshaper’s will have an easier application of it allowing transportation more akin to the Nex-Im, teleporting around the PR. Basically with the help of a bondsmith, I think Jasnah might be able to temporarily move multiple people from Roshar to Shadesmar or vice versa, and that a bondsmith with a Willshaper would be able to teleport people more similarly to an Oathgate, eg across long distances within the PR. I can imagine a scene where Navani uses her connection to Urithiru to allow Venli to transport her and a small group from some location back to Urithiru.

I believe part of the weird feeling of the first few chapters of WaT (about chapters 1-13, all of the ones before the Interludes), is that they were clearly meant as falling action content in RoW, but were moved to WaT to save pages in RoW, and because Brandon wanted to end on the punch of the 10 day countdown. RoW is the first Stormlight book not to have a number of chapters after the last climax of concluding content. Chapters 1-13 were probably more like 5-6 chapters of content that Brandon then lengthened and added more to (the library scene, etc) to try and make the start of WaT a little more interesting to read because of the time we spend with the characters, even when nothing very plot important is happening. Especially off the end of RoW where people complained about how little time we spent with the characters not in life and death situations. I definitely agree that those first chapters feel different than the start of other Stormlight books, mostly because they just feel like the end of RoW, not the start of WaT. Now that we’re further into the plot, the writing has definitely returned to the tone of OB and RoW. I’m not sure what political agenda you’re seeing in the preview chapters. It’s really only dealt with the exact same ethical and social dilemmas that have been present since WoK (ie, class systems, the ethics of killing, gender roles, sexism, the position of religious institutions in society, the balance of power between political and religious institutions, etc etc). And WaT still hasn’t even dug into those issues as heavily as the other books have. It hasn’t had time to. The issue of “less world-building” mostly falls on the context of these first chapters. We’re seeing characters try and re-group before setting on their new missions. We no longer hear scribes discuss Azimir’s economics, because the economy is in tatters, and we already know that. The characters are mostly in places we’ve already explored at length, so the world-building is mostly through dialogue (like meeting a new Heavenly Ones leader and his commenting on Lightweaver abilities). I can almost assure you the world-building will be back to what you expect in the next couple chapters, as Kal and Szeth reach Shinovar (this already started in this week’s chapters) and especially when we get to venture into the Spiritual Realm. TLDR: Most of the issues people have, while warranted, are mostly just issues with the fact that the falling action of RoW and the beginning of WaT ended up stapled together at the start of WaT. And the other issues as others have pointed out above, are the nature of an expanding scope. When we have 12-15+ important characters, we don’t get to spend as much time listening to one of them.

In addition to the points people made above, I think it’s clear that the lack of division use is cultural. We see the Skybreakers and the Highspren have a much more codified path of ideals. Szeth is explicitly told that his spren does not think he is ready for division, despite approaching 4th ideal. And with Nale wanting to train him in it before he has free rein, it’s almost like a sort of licensure. Very fitting for the Highspren, and another unique representation among the radiant orders. I’m curious how much control the Highspren have over their radiant’s use of the surge however. It reminds me of in OB when Dalinar is having a panic attack in Vedenar and forcibly summons a piece of Honor’s perpendicularity against the Stormfather’s wishes. In an impassioned moment, could Szeth blow past whatever safeguards his Highspren has to use Division? Division certainly reminds me of the “homeland crumbles to dust” death rattle…

I’ve never been a big backer of the Adolin as Odium’s champion theory, but I can definitely see it as a bigger possibility now. The choice to use a skeleton crew for Azimir is clearly going to backfire and blow up in Dalinar’s face. My guess is possibly the inclusion of an unmade in the assault will turn the tide and let Singer forces overwhelm the defense. Maybe TOdium will offer to withdraw his troops immediately if Adolin agrees to serve as his champion against Dalinar? The tension between Dalinar and Adolin definitely seems to be pushing Adolin closer in line with Odium. If TOdium makes enough of a bloodbath at Azimir, and convinces Adolin that it’s Dalinar’s fault, I could see him turning against his father.