CabbageHead

It does it automatically if you press the reply button on a particular post rather than the button at the bottom of the thread. Eg., when I clicked reply on your post the quote tag generated is quote name='Thucydides' timestamp='1316198074' post='15232'

I was wondering more along the lines of what else beside surface topology is inverted in Shadesmar compared to Roshar. In particular, I was thinking about the highstorms. This thread discusses the highstorms, and many have compared them to hurricanes. It was pointed out that the stormwall does not really act like the leading edge of a hurricane. Now, what I was wondering about, is whether the weather in Shadesmar is also inverted, and if the Highstorms are the reflection of the eye of a single world spanning storm passing overhead in Shadesmar?

I'm not sure that the system is entirely governed by symmetry. I think its more a case of slightly asymmetric elements in a symmetric pattern. Symmetry is beautiful and strived for in nature, but if it existed perfectly I don't think Adonalsium would have shattered in the first place.

There is ample evidence in them that the storms are not a recent thing. In the stormdream involving the midnight essence, Dalinar is described as being Granted, he does not see a storm directly, but he sees that people have built their dwellings in a manner familiar to him for avoiding storm damage, and the land is also descibed as being stone, evidence that storms are preventing the development of topsoil. The woman Taffa, wife of the person in whose place Dalinar experinced the past, also made direct reference to the storms: Taffa makes reference to stormwinds at least twice during the sequence, indicating the importance of storms in the culture she was from. We can reasonably infer from this that Highstorms existed then. On an unrelated matter, when re-reading this part of the book for this post, I found this line from Tanavast speaking through Taffa at the end of the scene to be very interesting in light of the fact it is part of a set of visions sent from the dead holder of the Honor shard to anyone capable of hearing it in the future: Is this the dead shardholder telling Dalinar that despite the fact he is dead, and the fact that the Shard may be splintered, the Intent of the Shard will be sufficient to let it aid those who espouse it's ideal, even bereft of a guiding intelligence?

I found the map of Shadesmar very interesting, that wasn't in the paperback version (they didn't have the hardback in my local bookstore, and Waterstones, the bookstore I used to always go to, has closed down their branches in Ireland). I'm going to be wondering now for a while the significance of Shadesmar having land where there is sea on Roshar, and vice versa.

That is what I was thinking, but more than that, I was was wondering if it is bribing inert spren with stormlight to do stuff.

Interesting. This made me think of something, so I dug it out. In the scene where Shallan soulcasts the goblet into blood, she hears the voice of something, presumably a spren associated with the goblet. Does this mean that spren of one kind can becore another kind? Or maybe, that there are spren that just exist as part of objects without really having a type? Kaladin's mother said That matches up with most of the spren that we see in the book: they nearly all involve some kind of activity. Rain, getting drunk, creating art, dying, rotting, burning, wind. Perhaps, if spren are the focus of magic on Roshar, it is the spren who are trapped and bored, longing to become active who are used as the focii?

A little second comment on the above: do we REALLY know that soulcasting is a subset of surgebinding? They could be overlapping domains. The name, surgebinding, tends to imply all we know of the abilities we know windwalkers may have had: abilities to bind, and exert forces, or surges, on objects. Soulcasting seems to be a bit different in many cases.

I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: You are right, insofar as we know. Just, do we really know what we know?

I have a sneaking suspicion her power comes from Cultivation, not Honor. I get that feeling from the way she loves sketching plants and animals, and her excitement at thinking up by herself the concept of symbiosis between different life forms. I know Honor gets all the big scenes, Dalinar's stormdreams, etc. but Cultivation seems at least as important in Roshar. People manage to cultivate food crops in a world without soil, where highstorms will rip up anything not nailed down and toss it around in the air every few days/weeks, where entire countries exist on barren rock. Thats some pretty impressive cultivation.

That does all ring true. However, there could always be a way for the Parshendi to be honourable but still be the voidbringers, through no real fault of their own. For example, what if the Parshendi were Honor's first attempt at creating people? A people living in harmony with each other through their mind link. Such a link would make it very easy for Odium to usurp control of them. Humans may have been made as a less perfect but less easily controlled version two. Not going to back that up in any way, just throwing around random thoughts.

I think a far more mundane explaination of gaz's absence is likely. He just doesn't seem the type to have any sort of connections to anything big. He's a petty bully in a low ranked position in an army of scumbags. There may however have been some foreshadowing of his fate in his conversation with Lamaril.... “Bridgemen exist for one purpose, Gaz. To protect the lives of more valuable men.” “Really? And here I thought their purpose was to carry bridges.” Lamaril gave him a sharp look. He leaned forward. “Don’t try me, Gaz. And don’t forget your place. Would you like to join them?” Gaz felt a spike of fear. Now that is something I could see causing all sorts of problems for Kaladin, finding out that the person his men hate most is now one of them.

Probably nothing to do with Amaram, other than that he was the marshal overseeing the lands of Sadeas, one of the most powerful and loyal of Elhokar's subjects. A good way to destabilise the King's rule would be to fracture his forces, and Sadeas would almost certainly have to return with a large portion of his armies if the guy he left in charge got killed.

Is there possibly a way that Elantrians can set up a sort of "mini-Elantris" when they go somewhere? After all, one of the major parts of the story line in the book was that Elantris itself was a massive Aon that allowed the Elantrians to use the Dor. Perhaps they have figured out how to set up similar Aons elsewhere?

You're probably right, I guess I'm taking too literaly the meaning of the word focus. Out of interest, where in the prologue was the example you gave above? I skimmed through it again and was unable to find it. The closest I could see was "Preparing for a Full Lashing, he raised his arm and commanded the Stormlight to pool there, causing the skin to burst alight with radiance. Then he flung his hand out toward the doorframe, spraying white luminescence across it like paint. He slammed the door just as the guards arrived."

I sort of got the idea that her aversion to the blades was due to their perversion from their original purpose. As well as that, there is something itching in my mind about the two dream sequences where we see Radiants; when Dalinar fights the midnight essence, the two knights' armour seems almost a part of them. It starts glowing more when they begin to use their power, and pieces of it appear and disappear at will, like the helmet when the knights wish to talk. In the other one, the Day of Recreance, the armour and blades seem to almost die a little when the knights cast them off. Those two things together make me think of shards being almost akin to the Parshendi carapace armour.

Hi all. I was browsing through the forums, and registered just to post on this topic. You all seem to have put a huge amount of thought into this particular topic, but looking at it I think there is a fairly simple answer. The one I came up with, which of course could be completely wrong, is that the focus for active surgebinding and soulcasting abilities, is touch. About the nature of a focus: I think Chaos nailed it when he said "I would revise my definition of focus to: a specific conduit which allows specific Realmatic interaction(s) to occur." The arguements about specificity, exclusivity, etc. are I think misleading. These are all to do with what you wish to achieve, not how the power is actually released. The examples of Aon Dor and awakening are bad ones I think, because in those the conduit is also involved in the configuration process. The awakening command is the focus not because it is used to describe what you want to do, it is the focus because it is how the breath is released. Aon Dor runes are configured differently depending on what you want to do, but the power is also released through the rune. In the case of magic in WoK, the active effects always seem to be achieved through physical touch. Kaladin and Szeth have to touch things they want to bind; Jasnah touches a man to turn him to crystal, she touches a stone to turn it into smoke. Her lightning bolt is a little problematic, but I guess you could say she was touching the air where it springs into being. Fabrials that have an active effect, like the pain reducing one, have to touch the person they are being used on. Any non-passive effect that I can remember off the top of my head seems to require physical contact. Any thoughts?