11thorderknight

The mythology of Rosharans getting thrown out of the Tranquiline Halls sure sounds like a mass exodus.

This is exactly the point I've been trying to make. We know the Orders are different from one another, sometimes very much so. We know that Syl seems to not thing very highly of Cryptics, which are on the opposite end of the Radiant diagram from the Windrunners. We also know that the Skybreakers seem to be the most black-and-white of the orders. Guess who's their opposite on the diagram? I'll bet the Elsecallers and their spren have the most nuanced and situationally-specific view of what's honorable.

For purposes of clarity, let's separate Jasnah's overall actions that night into their various steps: 1. She walks through a seedy part of town with a recent spike in robberies/murders while conspicuously wearing expensive jewelry and appearing to be defenseless. 2. She Soulcasts the first assailant into fire. 3. She Soulcasts the remaining assailants into crystal and fire as they're either on the ground or fleeing. I will concede that actions 2 and 3 are quite different from one another, and deserve separate arguments. I did some reading on the origins of common law (which goes back at least 1000 years in medieval England), and my understanding is that, at a time when there were very few actual law enforcement officials, it was the norm for citizens to perform citizen's arrests of those they caught breaking the law. It was also quite legal for them to shoot a fleeing criminal in order to prevent their escape. This actually lasted for quite some time, well into the 19th and 20th centuries in some places (for instance, rural farm areas or the American "wild west"). My point in citing the Supreme Court case that made it illegal for police to shoot suspects that weren't likely to be dangerous was to point out how recent a development that actually is. I don't have any doubt that in medieval/renaissance times, using deadly force against a fleeing attempted-murderer would have been perfectly legal. I will also concede that you are correct in stating that, today, in most Western nations, it would be a much murkier scenario. Regarding action 2, I don't think anyone could argue that it wasn't legally justified. Let's pretend that, IRL, some dude comes at you with a baseball bat. Are you saying that, since you're likely to survive an assault with a bat, you're not justified in shooting that dude?

My guess would be that your aging slows in proportion to the amount of stormlight you're holding, as long as you're holding it. In theory, if you could hold in in perfectly (like maybe the ancient Radiants could?) you could stay ageless. Maybe??

Regarding the "excessive force" issue: that's something that's defined differently in every jurisdiction, but is usually determined on a case-by-case basis, often by a jury. However, in any jurisdiction in the US, you would be within your rights to use deadly force (aka a gun) against an assailant coming at you in close quarters with a knife. Regarding the issue of Jasnah Soulcasting the fleeing assailants: you are correct, that is generally considered illegal under modern US law. However, that is a relatively recent development, and at odds with historical common law. Up until the 1970s it was legal for law enforcement to shoot a suspect fleeing arrest, even if they were not considered dangerous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_v._Garner Even this case, which banned this practice, allows police to use deadly force against a fleeing suspect if they believe themselves or others to be in physical danger. Also keep in mind that every common-law jurisdiction, and many others, have the concept of "citizen's arrest", meaning that anyone, not just police, has the right to arrest someone they see committing a crime. Add these two together, and one could very well argue that Jasnah was legally justified in killing the fleeing muggers because by doing so she was preventing harm to their future victims. Once again...the point here is that Jasnah did something that is controversial, not something that is universally acknowledged to be wrong. A lot of people seem to be missing this point.

"Entrapment" or "enticement" is a very specific issue. You are correct, it could be argued that what Jasnah did constitutes entrapment, which is when a law enforcement official entices a criminal to commit a crime, then arrests them for that crime. However, entrapment is a complex legal issue, and in many instances is legitimately used by police to catch criminals. So the entrapment theory does not automatically put Jasnah out of bounds of IRL legal thinking.

Wrong. If someone comes at you with a knife, in any state, you're legally justified in emptying a clip into their head. The only difference between Florida (and a lot of other states with identical laws) and some others is whether you have to prove they were coming at you with the knife. Not that it matters really for this discussion, but I'm not a fan of inaccuracy. Incidentally (or not so incidentally, really...) when Shallan researches philosophy and law after that incident, she also finds that every school of thought justifies Jasnah's actions. So really, she's the one that's at odds with common thinking, at least on Roshar. Once again, I believe the purpose of this scene was to highlight that an honorable character like Jasnah can have a very different standard of honor than what a stereotypically "good" character should.

I think this was one of the clues that Brandon gives us, and Shallan, to let us figure out that Jasnah's soulcaster is fake. It's also a plot point - if Jasnah didn't call for a garnet, there would have been no reason for Shallan to spill her secret. It's stated explicitly in the books (I forget which one, I think WoK) that currency gemstones are made from the refuse of large gems that shatter during Soulcasting. If the small gems could be used in fabrials, then it wouldn't matter whether the large gems shattered - you'd just infuse the pile of gemstone fragments with stormlight and keep on going. No, the actual size/shape of the stone clearly matters to the fabrials (if not to surgebinders).

For what it's worth, I personally don't think of what Jasnah did as murder. And there's not a single legal system IRL that would consider it murder, either. She engaged in the perfectly legal activity of walking down a public street, and then defended herself from people clearly intent on killing her. (You could split hairs about the last two, who she transformed into smoke as they were running away, if you want to get really legalistic...) Most people on this forum tend to take Shallan's point of view on that night - that there's something ineffably icky about what Jasnah did. And I think that's Brandon's point. I would bet that he personally would not agree with what she did, but we know he takes great care in writing Jasnah's character, precisely because she's so different from himself. He didn't just throw that scene in there to make her look bad. He's using it to highlight the fact that there isn't really a single version of "honor" or "honorable". That's why there are ten different orders, not one, and that's why the ten don't always get along all that well. I'm sure Ivory didn't have a second thought about the whole thing, other than maybe thinking she didn't cover her tracks well enough (the crystal statue left behind wasn't very subtle).

Whether TLR was decapitated or not, Miles most definitely was shot in the head, and I would argue that is at least as damaging as blunt trauma. I guess it's not a huge deal, but it seems to be an inconsistency in the healing structure of the Cosmere that we've seen so far.

So this brings up a point that's been bugging me for a while, ever since the return-of-Szeth scene at the end of WoR. Nale tells him that ever a killing Shardblade wound can be healed by Regrowth, as long as the brain is still alive. I let slide the fact that Szeth's brain was unlikely to be alive after falling from 20,000 feet onto rocks (that would definitely count as a crushing blow). Maybe Nale flew up and caught him? Anyway, I let that go. But then I got to thinking of all the stories of TLR surviving decapitation, and the scene of Miles taking a bullet between the eyes and getting up a few seconds later, and even the (admittedly non-canon) scene floating around the interwebz of Hoid sitting on a beach, watching his own head wash ashore. All of those indicate that a deadly head injury is perfectly survivable. Now, we have Ivory's commentary of crushing head wounds. Even if the exact terminology is inaccurate, Brandon is clearly establishing a limit to stormlight's ability to heal head wounds. The question is, why, and how does this square with what we know of healing in the Cosmere at large?

I'm pretty sure it's simply that Szeth's stormlight healing is far less efficient than a true Surgebinder's, and therefore isn't capable of healing Shardblade wounds. (Or maybe it is? After all, it's not like Szeth has ever had one up until his duel with Kaladin at the end, so how would he know...) This is just one example of how his stormlight use is far less efficient than Kaladin's - he remarks that it will take him hours to heal the broken jaw that Gavilar gave him, while we see Kaladin, Shallan and Jasnah all heal near-instantaneously from deadly wounds.

I'm sure we'll all read and find out about the Heralds; there's so little information to go on here that even speculation is fruitless. As far as the Radiants though, I'm going to extrapolate from what we already know and say that, since they don't need to breathe while holding stormlight, they also don't age while holding stormlight. Which means that their extra longevity is directly proportional to the length of time they go around holding stormlight.

This has been a good thread - went in a lot of interesting directions. I'm going to revise my initial $5,000 estimate (of the price of one Breath) up to $10,000.

Lol, no worries!

Does anyone else find it interesting that he refers to Iyatil as his babsk? For one thing, it's a Thaylen word, and neither he nor Iyatil appear to be Thaylen (although the name Mraize does have that Thaylen not-enough-vowels thing going for it, but in that case, he's shaving his eyebrows pretty regularly). For another, it means that he's her apprentice, which is not at all what the relationship looks like from the outside. And yet, they don't try to hide it, so she's not really pulling a "man behind the curtain" act with him.

I think we're saying the same thing. Sure, Denth "lied" in the sense that he told Vivenna information that he, as one of the Five Scholars, knows to be untrue. But I don't recall him telling her anything that the average Joe on the street would know to be false, and certainly nothing that his "simple mercenary" persona ought to know to be false. Basically, whatever "lies" he told her were instances where the actual truth would blow his disguise (granted, not to Vivenna since she knows nothing, but you get my point).

That's true, the Shaod chooses people. As do the spren. But it's still the same basic idea - something that's effectively beyond human control grants a small number of people magical powers. What makes Awakening so cool is that literally anyone can do it with the right resources, the same way that literally anyone can learn any other skill. But just like any other skill, it takes practice, and some people will have more talent at it than others.

Jezerezeh's b@!!s, man, that's just disrespectful! :-)

We're told at some point that Aon Aon, the basic shape that's at the heart of every other Aon, is two lines and a dot, which are known to represent the shore, the mountains and some lake in Arelon. So, the Pool is not the dot. Also, the Elantris city-Aon does NOT create Elantrians. It simply magnifies the potency of their AonDor in the area around the city. Remember, Raoden got AonDor to work before he ever realized the truth about Elantris; it simply worked at its baseline power level.

That would be the least of it! I mean, think about it - would our society tolerate a race of ancient beings that can steal anyone's identity? They'd be pretty lucky to avoid a mass persecution. Maybe I'm projecting too much of the 21st century American point of view onto things, but I can definitely see kandra having to go off the grid once technology advances. That, or find a way to remain sentient without the Blessings.

The real question is - once X-rays are invented, will society go on a massive hunt for all the kandra?!

Coinshots were used as couriers back in the Final Empire days - remember the spikeways that Vin used? The only reason that they didn't have spikeways for Lurchers is that it's a lot more expensive to build tall metal poles than to stick a spike in the ground, but in a modern society, it would be a lot easier. Build an elevated rail type thing, and have the Lurchers swinging underneath while the Coinshots flew over top!

We know from Brandon that in the Cosmere, all healing would work on similar principles; therefore, there really shouldn't be much (if any) practical difference between Feruchemical gold, Regrowth, Stormlight healing, etc. The only ones that might be slightly different would be Sel-based effects, since they all seem to require a certain level of skill/knowledge/specificity. My point is that the fact that Hoid has access to ridiculous healing effects doesn't really tell us much about which magic system he gets it from, since they'll all have the same effects. Back to the original topic: we have Word of Brandon that Hoid uses Feruchemy to know where he has to be. But that's not an ability that's granted by any of the basic Feruchemical metals that we know of. So there's still something unexplained going on here. Also, how would he have gotten access to it? Aside from hemalurgy, we don't know of any way of becoming a Feruchemist. And he certainly seemed able to pop up wherever he needed to be even during the Mistborn series.

I may be mistaken, but I could swear that we were explicitly told in Way of Kings that losing her memory was the boon. Anyone out there with an electronic copy care to do a search?