11thorderknight

I think where Brandon is going with the Vorin gender roles is to take something that has a very rational basis in nature (i.e. gender roles based on biological realities and life on a harsh, inhospitable world at a relatively low level of technology) and show how human society and culture can take those things and extrapolate them to extremes that to us seem very bizarre, and how different cultures can end up in very different places based on the same biological facts. Again, it bears pointing out that similar things have happened in the real world. For instance, there are many indigenous cultures where it's perfectly normal for women to go about bare-chested in public, and then there are cultures where women wear burkas. I think the safehand concept is Brandon's way of saying "these things are all arbitrary". As for literacy, it serves to point out how very intelligent people can be illiterate (though I'd argue that the men's glyphs fulfill most of the functions of a written language). As for warfare - as has been pointed out, there are obviously reasons why men are soldiers and women aren't, at least in pre-gun societies. So I bet what we'll see is that the regular soldiers will be almost exclusively men, but that female Surgebinders will certainly learn to fight, and given the magnitude of Stormlight's enhancements, will be just as effective at it as the men. This is basically foreshadowed for Shallan, when she is disappointed at being told that most Radiants weren't professional warriors.

Not that this really answers the question, but I'm sure there will be a MAJOR wrinkle to the story - Jasnah is probably not wrong, but she's definitely not completely right.

I think it's expecting too much to relate the value of spheres to real-world gemstones. As has been mentioned, gems seem far, far more prevalent on Roshar; this is likely because they're a renewable resource, since the various greatshells all grow them inside as gemhearts. For another thing, we know the relative value of 5 of the ten gemstones, and those values are nothing like they would be on earth. 1 emerald = 2 sapphires = 5 rubies = 10 garnets = 50 diamonds. I think Peter has posted somewhere that the other 5 stones are also used for currency, and have value equal to the numbers above, but we just don't know which one goes where. The gems on Jasnah's soulcaster are described as thumbnail-sized as well, and even though they're described as very valuable, gems that size would be nearly unique on earth. For comparison, we know Elhokar pulled an emerald the size of his head out of the chasmfiend, while in reality, you could easily hold the Hope Diamond in the palm of your hand.

So, I remember the Shin farmer saying that Szeth is unique, but I don't remember any mention of the term Truthless in that scene. I could be wrong, but if I am, could someone please find the quote where Szeth's nature as Truthless (not just Szeth himself) is stated to be unique? Because otherwise, I'm gonna stand by my belief that anyone who can be traded around by an oathstone is Truthless in Shin society.

It's possible, but doesn't fit with what we know of the Surgebinding chart. If you think about it, none of the adjacent surges really have that much to do with each other (aside perhaps from Gravity and Pressure, and even that is a bit of a stretch). If I were a general with the 10 orders at my disposal, I'd never think to myself "send in my Windrunners for aerial support", I'd think, "send in the Gravity binders". For synergy, it would then make sense to have a mixed group of Windrunners and Skybreakers, since both could fly (which is the primary requirement for the mission) but each has something to offer than the other doesn't. Likewise, sending in healers (4 and 5) Dividers (2 and 3), Soulcasters (6 and 7) etc. I've always wondered why it was that Soulcasting seems to be the only named Surge (named in the sense of its practitioners being identified by the Surge name). Could be because the Soulcaster fabrials were the only ones that survived from ancient times, could be because Brandon originally meant it as a totally separate magic system and then retrofitted it in as a Surge. But it definitely makes sense for them all to be individually named. I mean, if you're out to dinner and someone drops dead of a heart attack, you don't go shouting for "an Edgedancer or a #5" you go shouting for "a Regrower".

From Szeth's own PoV scenes, I think that to be Truthless simply means to be sworn to an oathstone and to whoever happens to be carrying it. We don't have any other Shin PoVs, but we know from Rysn that they do have other warriors, all of whom are traded amongst the higher-ranking Shin by means of the stones. Therefore, to be Truthless in and of itself is not so unique (although Szeth's fanatical devotion to it may very well be). We are told at one point that "any man who picks up a weapon" becomes one. Please note, however, that this definition leaves a lot of wiggle room in a culture that has developed its own, very effective, school of bare-handed martial arts. It may be that anyone can, and is even encouraged, to learn Shin kung fu, and that it's only the use of a weapon that makes one Truthless. As to what got Szeth named Truthless in the first place, here are some thoughts. The Stone Shaman will "retrieve" his Blade upon his death. This implies some very important facts. For one thing, it means that the Stone Shaman know about the Blade and care enough about it to go retrieve it. It also means that they think it is not acceptable to simply tell Szeth to give it to them, therefore, they have to wait until he dies. Ominously, it means that the Stone Shaman believe themselves capable of knowing when Szeth dies and retrieving the Blade from whoever manages to kill him. I believe that picking up the Blade in the first place is what made Szeth Truthless. The real question is, where did he find it and what made him decide to pick it up? It's possible that he found it on some crazy adventure somewhere else in Roshar, but my theory is that it was in Shinovar all along, possibly with the rest of the Honorblades. Remember, Szeth not only has the Blade, he is very, very practiced at Windrunning, and crucially, he knows about the Lashings. Kaladin doesn't know about them despite having Syl and being a much stronger innate Surgebinder. This means that whatever led to Szeth bearing that Blade also led to him learning about the Windrunner powers and the original names for them. To me, this very strongly implies that the Shin elders are keepers of the Blades and the knowledge of surgebinding. Maybe they dont' use them, or maybe only certain people are allowed to use them and Szeth wasn't on the list. Now, what does this all have to do with his thoughts on the Voidbringers? Well, we know that he does NOT associate them with the Parshendi, since his PoV chapter never links these mythical villains to the people who were his employers that night. In that, he's like everyone else on Roshar. However, he is NOT like everyone else in thinking they are myths, since he obviously did something very momentous, like picking up his Blade, in response to a belief in their existence. So then, what did he find out about them? My theory - Szeth found out about Nahel spren returning, and believed that the new Surgebinders were the Voidbringers, or at least were on the path to becoming Voidbringers. He then picked up the Blade to fight one, and became Truthless when the Shamans didn't believe him. This would tie in very neatly with a certain Azish constable's thoughts on the matter. It would also make Jasnah's/Shallan's theory on the Parshendi incomplete at best, which I like - it's not in Brandon's style to give us the big reveal on the Voidbringers at the end of the first book :-)

That's pretty awesome. Kind of what I suspected, but pretty awesome. I have to say, a full feruchemist, with access to all the metals, is probably the coolest/most interesting magic-user we've seen so far in the Sandersverse.

If she does, she'll be calling herself "Jasnah the White" :-)

The great thing about Sanderson is that he doesn't do token characters. He's taken so much effort to make Jasnah a believable, authentic atheist, that I don't think he'd get sloppy and make her a token lesbian just for kicks. Hate to disappoint you guys, but there won't be any "pillow-friends" in the Stormlight Archive, lol.

You're making the assumption that integrating women into the military would happen in the context of existing gender roles. And you're right in a sense; obviously, our gender roles are what they are, and a change in our military would happen in that context. But thinking more broadly, if we had a unisex military for any length of time, our gender roles as a society would necessarily be different because of that. For instance, there are societies where women do serve in the military, even in the front lines (Israel comes to mind, there may be others). Instead of wondering how you'd arrange separate ditches for men and women to piss in, maybe the question is "how would gender roles be different if men and women were forced to share such close quarters and piss in the same ditch?"

First off.....I'll admit, I thought the original title of this thread was a joke. Sorry, no offense meant. Then I realized that, yeah, there was something odd going on with Gaz. I'll have to pay close attention on my upcoming re-read. Anyway. I just want to point out that I don't think there's any reason to assume that cryptics will be the exclusive spren of Lightweavers, any more than Honorspren will be the exclusive spren of Windrunners. And of all the orders that Gaz might conceivably fit into, creative/honest certainly doesn't come to mind first.

This. I think everyone assumes that Jasnah has some Deeply Buried Traumatic/Dramatic Secret in her past and are eagerly awaiting the reveal. What if we simply take her at face value? She has chosen to devote her life to scholarship and to her Veristitalian/heretical views. She knows that marriage would greatly impede her personal goals, and hence she avoids it. She knows that most if not all men, at least in her society, would not tolerate her views and curtail her freedom. She resents that she has to become an infamous social pariah in order to do what she wants to do with her life. Naturally, this has made her somewhat jaded. Her views are very much in line with many, many famous real-life figures. Also, I find it very sad that so many people seem to think "woman not interested in marriage = lesbian". And for the record, I'm a straight guy.

Remember: in the hospital rooms scene with Kabsal, Jasnah tries to Soulcast strawberry jam - a processed mush made from an exotic fruit she may very well have never tasted. Of course, it didn't work. But she thought that there was enough of a chance for it to work that she still tried it. The point is that her innate Soulcasting is obviously much less constrained than what the ardents are capable of using fabrials. As for making things out of thin air....I've often wondered about this. We know that the relative value of gemstones is based on their utility in Soulcasting, which is why emeralds are most valuable (to make food). However, sapphires are the next-most valuable, and they can be used to turn things into....air? I guess that could be useful to get rid of stuff you don't want, except whenever we see soulcasting used for that, things are transformed into smoke rather than air. So here's my theory - sapphires are useful/valuable, not in order to turn things into air, but in order to make things out of air. Remember, the density/mass of objects aren't affected by soulcasting, which is why turning a boulder into smoke created a big burst of pressure - this would likely have been must worse/stronger if the boulder had been changed into air rather than smoke, since pure air is much less dense. Anyway.....what if sapphires are necessary to concentrate air into sufficient density to make useful objects. It would be a two-step process: step 1, use sapphire to concentrate air into the shape of a building, or chair, or whatever.....step 2, use another gemstone to transform that air into whatever you actually want. That would certainly make sapphires valuable.

So far, we haven't ever seen surgebinders do their thing in the presence of another surgebinder. It's possible that all surgebinders can sense Stormlight in others if they're holding it. (like male channelers in Wheel of Time). One thing that's important to note is that Darkness CAN'T necessarily sense surgebinding capacity, only active surgebinding. It's only after he sees Lift use Regrowth that he knows she's a Edgedancer (he says "I'd wondered which of the two you would be"; he's seen her use Friction, so he knows she's either an Edgedancer or a Dustbringer, but doesn't know which one until she used either Growth or Division). Therefore, unless he can see Nahel spren (and he doesn't seem to be able to see Wyndle), he wouldn't know that Jasnah's a surgebinder just by seeing her in the hallway. Although, the sudden discovery of a high-level Soulcaster for the first time in centuries would certainly have tipped him off. He probably hasn't come after Jasnah yet because she's not high on his list, and on a meta level, because he's not the center of the story and Brandon doesn't want to focus on him yet.

Apologies, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that Dalinar was using a specific Surge, just using Stormlight for strength. I thought Surgebinding referred to the internal use of Stormlight common to all orders, as well as the external use that varies among them. As for the interference between Plate and Surgebinding, my belief is that, as Invested objects, Shardplate resists other Investiture. Therefore, it protects a Plate wearer from being directly Invested by hostile Investiture (i.e. Szeth couldn't Lash Gavilar to the ceiling if he wanted to). However, it also interferes with a Surgebinder's attempts to Invest themselves (i.e. if Szeth tried wearing Plate, he wouldn't be able to Lash himself, and might possibly even have difficulty inhaling Stormlight from outside sources). Obviously, however, the original Radiants had no problem using Plate while Surgebinding, and it's been made clear that there is a difference between the original Shards and their modern version. My belief is that the original Shards were keyed to their original owners; they were not meant to be passed down from person to person. Therefore, the original Spiritual Identity of the Plate was identical to that of the Radiant - the Plate was literally part of them, and therefore a Radiant's own Investiture was not hindered by their own Plate. Outside, hostile investiture would still have been resisted, however. So, modern-day Surgebinders like Szeth, Dalinar or Elhokar will still be limited by Plate, since the Plate they use or attempt to use is not truly "theirs". I'm sure at some point in the series, that will change. Either these guys will get their own, new, Shards upon mastering their respective Ideals, or they will somehow "reclaim" the modern Shards and bond with them properly. However, with respect to the hunting incident, I still believe that based on the rules Brandon has set up, it was impossible for anyone other than Elhokar to drain his gems during the hunt.

I think it's fairly established that Dalinar did some surgebinding in that scene. However, it still doesn't explain Elhokar's gems. We are very specifically told in Szeth's PoV in the prologue that he cannot drain Gavilar's gems while they are inside his Plate. It's only afterward, once the Plate is opened, that he can use them. It would be a HUGE continuity error on Brandon's part to have anyone other than Elhokar drain those gems. My personal theory is that Elhokar drained them himself by accident, without knowing it. We know he's seeing Cryptics, after all. Many people have argued with me on this, saying that to drain such large amounts of stormlight would have caused some obvious effect. I don't necessarily think so - Elhokar at this point is probably very bad at holding stormlight, and could easily "leak" a huge amount over time, even if he only holds a very small amount at any given moment. (For the nerds out there: deltaVolume = Flux x Time). There is, of course, one more explanation: the gems could have truly been tampered with. In many ways, that would be the most surprising outcome of all.

I don't remember the exact quote but I think there was something about not being able to remember his wife was actually the boon. we don't know what the curse is.

You're right, if you're in the military then you are a soldier. And of course, I'm sure that certain orders had specific roles based on their Surges - the Edgedancers and #5's would have been healers obviously, to use the easiest example - but I think some people have taken the concept to the extreme, proposing that certain orders basically didn't fight at all, or had no training. That's what I was arguing against.

I'm pretty sure they were all called Knights Radiant for a reason. Remember, these orders were primarily founded to protect humanity against Desolations. In Dalinar's latest vision we see a Dustbringer with Plate and Blade, and Darkness talks about the Edgedancers as "glorious" for their battlefield abilities. I believe there has been WoB that all Radiants had access to Shards, even if they personally didn't use them much. Now, some people have taken this to mean that only certain orders took part in fighting. I've spoken out strongly against this interpretation. Again, they were all called Knights for a reason. I'll concede that certain orders, by virtue of their divine attributes, may have attracted members who were more or less likely to devote themselves to the study of and preparation for war during peacetime, such as the Windrunners (protecting) and Dustbringers (brave). However, once the voidbringers showed up, humanity would have needed every 90 year old retired Knight they could find to dust off their Shards and get to the front lines.

Just as Honorspren probably have different subclasses that cause different surgebinding orders, Cryptics might have different classes as well. My theory is that Elhokar is going to be order 8, because he sees his spren in mirrors, and the essence of the 8th order is Foil (something that reflects or deflects).

Yes, it is most definitely the same guy.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but we don't know that "Cultivationspren" will be an in-world name. For all we know, the Cryptics are actually mostly of Cultivation.

I don't think it's going to be quite that scientific. Any substance with "high-energy" bonds (what one would call chemical potential energy) is capable of releasing that energy if the bonds are broken. It might be very stable, but ultimately, it will trend toward releasing that energy. Us simple folk call such objects "flammable", and wood is a great example. It's very stable and durable, but add enough energy to it, and the bonds start to break. And once they do, you start a cycle of the energy from some bonds going to break others and releasing more energy....lather, rinse, repeat. This process is called "fire". Note that, in real life, stone is not "flammable". You can shove it into the center of the earth and heat it until it melts, and it still remains stone, albeit in liquid form. It does not undergo any chemical change into simpler compounds and release heat in the process, as does wood. And that's a good thing, because otherwise our planet would have burned up a long time ago. The reason for this is that almost all stone is primarily composed of silicon dioxide crystals with various metals and salts tossed in, and silicon dioxide is about as low-energy a state for those two elements as you can get. My point with all this babbling is that there is no natural way to get stone to burn. Therefore, the "smoldering stones" caused by Division can't be just a byproduct of chemically splitting rocks, the way smoldering wood might be a byproduct of chemically splitting wood. The fire to make the stones smolder had to come from somewhere extrinsic to them.

So, IRL, the classification of gems by mineral composition is actually a relatively recent phenomenon. For one thing, it requires knowledge of....minerals. And microscopes. And refraction. None of which was available prior to a couple hundred years ago, at the earliest. So, how did the ancients classify stones? You guessed it! By color. What people a couple thousand years ago called a diamond wasn't always a diamond, but it was always a clear, hard, sparkly gemstone. Actually, diamonds are probably more unique than most gems, since they have a fairly specific refractory pattern. A ruby, to use another example, was a red gemstone, and many things that were historically called rubies were red garnets....as opposed to green garnets, which would have been called emeralds. Etc, etc. My guess is that Brandon took this further in creating Roshar, and decided that gems of a certain color would gather and store a certain spectrum of stormlight. It also sounds like the majority of gems on Roshar are organically created by greatshells, and therefore would be much larger and far more pure than what would be found in naturally-occuring stones. As for smokestone.....it might just be another name for obsidian, or grey quartz, or what have you. Neither of those sounds like a great name to use in a fantasy series, so he improvised.

My personal theory for a while has been that, for whatever reason (very likely related to Taln's upholding the Oathpact) the Shin continued to bond with spren but only to form Type 9 surgebinders (i.e. those who would have been Stonewards had they been Radiants). Of course, their religion forbids fighting, so their focus changed, and they are now the Stone Shamans. But they still can surgebind, and will fight when necessary. Remember, Szeth thinks they'd have no problem locating and retrieving his Blade if he dies. Them's fightin' words, there.