Arondell

So far we haven't been given any info on what led up to Szeth being declared truthless. Well...To be a bit more specific we don't know what information Szeth had access to that led him to the conclusion that the Knights Radiant and the Voidbringers were returning which in turn caused him to be declared truthless.. I believe the next book is supposed to give us that information since it is Szeth's flashback book.

Since all the other curses seem to have been brain related it doesn't seem that all that implausible to me. Known curses. 1. Av's father seeing everything upside down. 2. Av's brother has no feeling in hands. 3. Dalinar forgetting everything about his wife. I see not being able to count above ten as the same kind of thing. That and the issue being waved in our faces when the subject of Lift's age is brought up. In every other way Lift seems fairly clever and intelligent given her lack of education and street upbringing. Her apparent inability to count above ten kind of sticks out.

I just figured her curse was related to counting. More specifically I'm guessing she can't count above ten because that is as high as she can count with her hands. The other thieves thought she was older based on her physical appearance.

Sylphrena implied that she was wandering around the physical realm for a while before she found Kaladin. She knew she was looking for him specifically but didn't know who he was. I wonder if that was due to the Stormfather interfering.

I kind of wonder if there is an order of priority to the ideals. In any case since the topic was the second ideal I was looking at the question in that context. Roshone is a man who, unlike Elhokar, willfully oppresses the town he has authority over. Deliberately making the town his own little pocket of damnation. Until I hear a word of Brandon or an in story example otherwise I'm going with the second ideal would not require a windrunner from protecting such a man.

I think the issue in Elhokar's particular case is that Kaladin is aware he wants to be a good king and hasn't been able to do it so far. As is pointed out Elhokar is sincere in his efforts he just fails much of the time anyway. Huh...Kind of reminds me of Kaladin's early days as a slave when I say it like that. Lets contrast that to Roshone. A man who just doesn't care about Hearthstone and in fact malevolently makes an effort to oppress and crush the will of the people in the town and Kaladin's family in particular. Would a windrunner be compelled to protect a man like Roshone? I would suspect not.

The last scene with Sadeas in the book I thought was rather odd.

Well...Kaladin's flashbacks strongly hint that surgebinders exhibit certain traits and aptitudes long before the nahel bond actually takes effect. It is hard to tell with Shallan since Pattern found and bonded to her at a fairly young age and we don't get any pre-Pattern scenes in Shallan's flashbacks. Renarin also seems to have traits that could be argued fit with the very limited description of the Truthwatchers.(Particularly the not telling others what they know aspect.) It seems possible that Dalinar had some sort of spiritual aptitude at a young age before the nahel bond could have been active. We'll probably have to wait until Dalinar's book until we can get to any solid conclusions.

The gems by the description were in an "enclosed latticework" at least implying they couldn't be easily removed. On top of that if she loaned the blade out it would still have to be many hundreds of miles away to bring people in from the other side. I had the impression from Syl back in Way of Kings that that much distance was potentially harmful to the nahel bond. Edit : Also back when the gates were built the Knights Radiant were actually a fairly large body of people. It wouldn't surprise me if they had the equivalent of "oathgate duty" or something. After all to serve the people is one of the general virtues that has been expressed in The Way of Kings. Particularly in what was the headquarters of the entire organization.

As I was re-reading the scene where Dalinar is standing atop the city/tower of Urithiru and is looking down at the ten oathgates. I had a mental hickup at this line. It takes a radiant to operate the gate. Both to infuse the spheres and to provide the shardblade. As we see though both Kaladin and Shallan were apparently waiting for Dalinar to finish his conversation with the Stormfather one floor down. The conversation didn't appear to last more then a few minutes at most. So who was operating the gate?

Its been over four years since Kaladin left Hearthstone to join the military. Was there a specific date on when Roshone & Laral actually wed? Edit : Assuming they actually got married.

Its been something like 4-5 years. Assuming the marriage actually occurred it seems at least even odds she has had at least one child.

Off topic but I can't resist. "In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire." -Monster Hunter Vendetta

To clarify the day Taravangian wrote the diagram his intellect was far greater then any other day. His Diagram day seems to be one that made even his genius days seem like drooling idiocy by comparison. So yes on that singular day his intellect truly was supreme. He is highly unlikely to have another like it in his lifetime. His days of mere genius intellect though are marred by him also effectively being a sociopath without the compensation of the god like intellect.

Odium in disguise perhaps?

I can't think of any law that would make it illegal to sell them early. On the other hand from my expereince with the local B&N there appears to be a contractual restriction/penalty. For most books I don't think publishers or stores would care but this one is obviously a big deal to them.

When I inquired at my local B&N the floor staff looked at their inventory screen and promptly informed me that it is a "hard" street date with a $10,000 violation fee per book. I sort of got the feeling I would have to pry any books they had from their cold dead hands before the release date. I thanked them for checking and kept browsing.

I was watching various versions of "Let it Go" on YouTube and came across this interesting one. Apparently the poster got the idea of putting the songs lyrics through several different machine language translations before translating back into English and singing the result. It actually came out better then I would have thought. She had a fairly good singing voice as well. http://tinyurl.com/kfxeqyw

According to Sigzel even Parshmen workers are known for becoming passionate about people touching their dead. They also have a specific protocol/rite/routine for how to handle the dead. That makes me think that they are not really immortal and have some form of reproduction or that they started off with a very large population that has slowly dwindled over a couple thousand years due to accidents. In the second case though then each Parshman worker would be a very valuable and in some ways irreplaceable commodity. Would Hashel have been willing to place Shen with bridge four under those circumstances? Even as an experiment?

At the moment that seems entirely speculative. At the very least I don't see any obvious evidence that supports it.

I suspect it is some form of Odium based investiture. I can't really see Roshone ending up as a member of the Knights Radiant. He practically exudes disdain, malice, and bitterness and seems to take pleasure in making everyone else's life worse. In any case at the moment it is still just a strong suspicion.

There are a couple other things we could infer from the conflict between Preservation and Ruin. It appears that shardholders cannot directly read a persons thoughts. It also appears that a shardholder cannot directly control someone without some kind of external modification. e.g. A hemalurgic spike. Also the holder of preservation wasn't inherently prevented from destroying. Vin proved that conclusively. It is just after enough time passes the shard imprints its intent on the holder making them psychologically incapable of certain things.