Arondell

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.

Chapter 37 : Sides Specific quotes. "Roshone fell still, skewer held limply in his hand, brilliant green eyes narrowed, lips pursed tight. In the dark, those eyes almost seemed to glow." Page 545 "...don't know why Father insists on keeping everything so dreary around here all the time. Oil lamps in the hallways? Could he be any more provincial?" Page 547

While a relatively minor character I think Roshone could be an agent of Odium. The dinner scene with his eyes almost seeming to glow is suspicious. That and Roshone's son commenting about how his father uses oil lamps to light the hallways. A kind of sideways way of telling us that he doesn't use stormlight like many brightlords do. Why would he not use stormlight? Cost? I didn't get the impression that he was that poor. It just seems like a classic Mr. Sanderson way of slyly throwing a hint out there.

It Isn't particularly weird. At least it isn't any weirder then soulcasting any other inanimate object. I certainly don't see any particular reason why a body would be immune to soulcasting.

Actually one of the preview chapters explicitly shows the process. This doesn't seem to be the same thing.

Actually I have suspected something like this for some time. Tanavast states that Cultivation is better then him at seeing the future. I suspect many of the curses have subtle long term effects that go beyond the immediate and obvious short term effects. As a comparison I am reminded of the movie Paycheck. The protagonist is an engineer that will work on a job with the understanding that at the end his memory will be wiped and he will receive a huge payoff. After the mind wipe he discovered that he had, for some reason, passed on the huge payout(500 million dollars) and instead sent himself an envelope filled with a bunch of apparently useless items. A paper clip, stamps, etc... It turns out though that over the course of the film every one of those "useless" items becomes extremely useful at specific points. I suspect this is similar to the technique Cultivation is using in whatever her long term strategy is.

Arrogance is only a bad thing when it blinds you to the potential contributions of others. Which leads us back to Dalinar. A brilliant battle field general who is getting a direct information feed into his mind about the threat to Roshare. This probably gives him a better understanding then Taravangian of the full scope of the threat as well as the understanding for the need to unify...and Taravangian is trying to have him assassinated.

I think the idea is that any enemies that might attack territory he protects would be less likely to attack knowing they would face a well trained full shard bearer. Even if attacked having a full unopposed shardbearer would enhance the chances of ending a battle quickly in Amaram's favor. Given the description of the battles Kaladin participated in he could probably save as many or more lives if the soldiers under his control got better training. It was fairly apparent that whatever training regimen Amaram's troops used wasn't very good.

Actually what I'm hoping for is that in the upcoming interactions between Kaladin and Amaram is that Amaram will realize that he didn't have to murder his men in the first place. Assuming that Amaram has any semblance of honor I would think that the realization that he, unnecessarily, murdered and enslaved the men who saved his life would have significant negative emotional and psychological impact. Especially with the only living victim of his crime staring at him on a semi-regular basis. I think that could arguably be considered justice enough.(barely) I doubt Kaladin would agree though. On the other hand if he ends up not feeling any more remorse over this and is only concerned with trying to maintain the cover up then he is just an honorless bastard who deserves any ill fate that comes to him. In regards to the original topic there are enough reasonably perceptive people around them, including Dalinar, that I can't believe the tension between the two of them won't be noticed. Even if both Kaladin and Amaram refuse to explain it people will be digging into this which probably won't make Amaram any happier. Dalinar, Bridge Four, Navani, Renarin, maybe Adolin, are perceptive enough to likely pickup on the tension if both of them are present at the same time. Probably not Elhokar though. Even if Kaladin doesn't say anything I suspect Amaram's coverup will begin to fray around the edges and perhaps collapse completely.

I would not be surprised if he attracted an Odium oriented spren. Odium has obviously invested some magic into Roshare. I'm still mightily suspicious of that dinner scene when Roshone's eyes "almost seemed to glow."

It depends on what you define as an honorspren. Wyndle in the Lift interlude specifically refers to Cryptics and Honorspren(Capital H. Several other usages use the lower case. So is it a specific type or a category or both? Are Cryptics then a category or a specific type?

Shardblades need to have the holder consciously form a bond. Since Kaladin never touched the blade such a bond could not have occurred.

Parshendi in Stormform? Perhaps more then one? I'm not sure why an oathgate would look like a wall of destruction. On the other hand according to the Eshonai chapter multiple stormform Parshendi could possibly summon a storm. Assuming the protected status of Urithiru is true why would it fail now as opposed to anytime before?

Actually the 9/10 dead ratio is not accurate in relation to the effectiveness of the Knights Radiant. The only time we hear that ratio is in Dalinar's Nohodon vision which was before the Knights Radiant existed. Subsequent visions I felt implied that the rise of the Radiants helped quite a lot. As for the repeated desolations. We simply don't have enough information about the reason for them. Some sort of agreement appears to have been in place. Some details can be inferred but the precise conditions or reason for the agreement are great big question marks.

I in some measure I understand, Moogle, where your coming from with your feelings on the kind of person Dalinar is and what you feel he should be doing, "...so much as it is possible to understand someone with whom I disagree so completely." Indeed if this were any other world but Roshare I think your position would be stronger. Fortunately this is Roshare and on this world Honor can give you more then simple moral standing. On this world striving to behave with honor can actually give you magical power and a lot of it.(e.g. Kaladin) What your essentially arguing is that Dalianar should behave in a way that will virtually guarantee that not only will he not get access to those abilities but he will also not likely be willingly followed by those who do. You may feel that a leader striving to maintain honorable behavior is foolish and makes things needlessly harder but on Roshare if nowhere else I think it is more likely to get Dalinar the power he needs to face the final desolation. I don't think Tanavast's instruction to "Act with honor, and honor will aid you" was just an appeal to Dalinar's rectitude. I think it was advice on how to access the abilities and power that Honor's magic provides.

Well we also know that there are other spren out there looking and that some of them are also, at least in part, splinters of Honor.

An interesting perspective but Sadeas act still qualifies as the betrayal of an ally on the field of battle. Frankly if I truly thought that reasoning was true then no act could ever be a betrayal because the person you were acting against was really an enemy. I think it really comes down to trust. Dalinar trusted Sadeas and Sadeas used that trust to try to get Dalinar killed. That is what makes it a betrayal.

I got the feeling that Cryptics don't like direct lies. They seem to like deception caused by using true statements so that the truth is misinterpreted. At least that is the impression I took away about Pattern's comments on "True Lies."

Actually when Szeth is talking with Taravangian he accepts responsibility for his acts. "I am not absolved,"..."It is a common mistake stone-walkers make. Each life I take weighs me down, eating away at my soul." "To kill, to have no choice, but to bear the sins nonetheless. I am Truthless." Huh...It just occurred to me that this scene also indicated that as intelligent and knowledgeable as Taravangian is there are gaps in what he knows. He assumed that Szeth is absolved of the killings he does on his masters behalf. I would think that Taravangian gathered as much information about Szeth as possible before "recruiting" him and yet he missed this. It makes me wonder if their could be other things that he is doing based on false assumptions or faulty intelligence.

He could always write new characters we can grow to love. Alloy of Law didn't have most of the original characters but I thought Wayne, Wax, and Marasi were totally awesome in their own right.

Actually I a fully agree with this in and of itself. It is an important and critical part of his strategy. Hence not trivial or "needless". The code on restraint was supposed to apply to trivial things. No dueling for stupid stuff like "You bumped into me!" or a couple morons got drunk or for sport ranking. If a duel is part of a strategy you believe could affect the fate of the Alethi people, indeed the entire world, then I don't think the code on restraint would prohibit it. At least not in a sane world.

What specifically about the Alethi Codes of War do you not like? To me the look like very practical general principals on maintaining military discipline in time of war.

The only ability magical ability that Rock has demonstrated is his ability to see spren that others can't. He doesn't go on about it but he has mentioned it in passing when the issue came up in the first book. As for his keeping quiet about his martial abilities. When it really mattered like with shooting the arrows into the bridge he spoke up. I put it down to a personal issue that probably has something to do with his cultures birth order dictating profession tradition. Not really anything nefarious. He probably simply views it as his business and sees no need to discuss it with the rest of bridge four. He still contributes a useful skill that none of the other bridgemen are very good at.

I feel you are mixing the ideals of the Way of Kings with the Alethi Codes of War. You reject an objective determination on whether he is breaking the codes then choose ideals he thinks of that are, to me, obviously acquired from the book and insist that they are his interpretation of the codes when a more obvious and direct interpretation is available. This comes down to were just going to have to agree to disagree.

Actually from the coppermind wiki. Dalinar later mentally summed them up as these: “Never ask of your men a sacrifice you wouldn’t make yourself. Never make them fight in conditions you would refuse to fight in yourself. Never ask a man to perform an act you wouldn’t soil your own hands doing.” — Dalinar's interpretation of the codes[1] Now maybe you disagree with what the wiki says but that seems a more accurate representation of Dalinar's interpretation of the codes to me.