Daishi5

!!!! We only have a duplicate murder for Sadeas and the man who strangled his wife. What is different about the stabbing here that we don't have two stabbings close by that are identical?

Someone else kind of mentioned it, but I worry that Dalinar's curse is to forget his wife, not to forget Evi. That sounds like just the sort of evil wordsmithing twist that you tend to see in curses. (Hopefully its just the everstorm that cured him.)

Navani was actually experimenting with the Painrial on herself the first time we saw it.

It seems Shallan's path is going to be dark. Reading her flashbacks was hard in WoR, maybe it's going to be hard to read her current timeline chapters in OB.

Why is shardplate a secret? What dark secret are the spren hiding about plate? Is there a reason beyond frustrating us?

I don't want to find out that Dalinar has had some form of surgebinding potential his whole life. I basically don't want to find out that magic on Roshar is based on a group of special children being given the potential and everyone else is just some muggle who can never do magic. I like the idea of a magic system that any character can earn vs one they are just lucky enough to be eligible for.

We need a Fallout meme, "shipping wars, shipping wars never change."

My theory is that Desolations are not a fight against Odium's army, but everyone is fighting everyone, and Odium uses that chaos to drive the groups to commit greater and greater atrocities against one another, creating more hatred for each other. If I am right, Mr. T. is serving Odiums aims by destabilizing the world. For your question about is he right about Dalinar: He is wrong about the present Bondsmith Dalinar, this Dalinar has been very dedicated to bringing the people together without making them hate each other. He is correct about the Blackthorn Dalinar if he re-emerges. The old blackthorn might bring people together, but they would resent and hate him and each other for his methods. I don't expect that Dalinar's arc is going to have him backslide into the Blackthorn, so I think Mr. T. is wrong.

Not sure, we know windrunners get more and stronger squires, but I guess some could go without.

I want to see Kaladin or Bridge 4 training Gaz and company on how to be good bodyguards/squires for Shallan, since bridge 4 will be the only ones with experience being squires and the ability to use stormlight. I also just realized I want to see Dalinar get some squires, just to see who they will be.

I have to go look, but i think Shallan has been looking, but hasn't found any library yet. If you look at the urithiru size thread, the place is huge.

Shallan is deeply uncomfortable being deep in urithiru, and requests a room with a balcony because of it. She also seems to recognize patterns that could lead her to Dalinar's room. She also can't draw it. ( But that could be due to it's ridiculous size) I don't know if information is encoded there, but something is really weird about the place.

This is one area where I think we are missing too much critical information. The Listeners songs say that the Stormfather (who they call the Rider) is a traitor because he chose to protect humans instead of listeners, why, protect from what, and how? The listeners also view the spren as traitors for bonding humans, and one of their songs say they are broth while men are meat. How did this happen when the listeners and the spren are native to roshar but humans are not? What did Gavilar mean when he said they would be Radiant and Vibrant? Vibrant is a really odd word choice here, considering that the listeners call the closest form to the slave dull form. Vibrant really does not seem like a word to be related to Odium. Desolations of the past nearly wiped out civilization each time. Dalinar says that they show the people as primitive, Taln's speech seems to imply that he expected to come back to a human society at a stone age level lacking even bronze tools. Yet, Gavilar was a son of Honor who hoped to bring about a desolation, and also hoped to leave behind a strong kindom, how can he hope for both? Jasnah required years of study to figure out the Parshmen were voidbringers, can we assume that Gavilar made the Parshmen-voidbringer connection without ever being a good scholar? In the WoR, Jasnah points out that just having all the Parshmen walk away would cause a huge crisis for humanity as they lost a huge amount of their slave labor, Kaladin and Shallan reiterate that point. If Gavilar does not know they are voidbringers, and he has to know losing so many slaves would cause a crisis for his kingdom, how would this unite his people? On the other hand, how could Gavilar figure out the voidbringer connection, and how to reverse the enslavement of the parshmen, and that the parshendi were the key to bringing about the new storm? In the prologue he seems to know so much. The epigraphs seem to indicate that the bondsmith enslaved the voidbringers rather than destroy them. So it seems that the listeners had already been corrupted by Odium, was their enslavement also protection? Desolations are somehow based on the Heralds coming back, what would have happened if the Desolation started while the parshmen were still enslaved? Would Odium have been prevented from corrupting parshmen? Could he do it anyway? Did the Everstorm actually free the parshmen, they don't seem to speak with the rythms?

I originally thought that the everstorm broke whatever they used to enslave the Parshmen. But, you bring up an interesting point about their songs. When Eshonai goes out into the storm, she attunes rhythms and they all become the same thing when it is time for her to change. Maybe whatever was done to the Parshmen is still in effect, maybe they took away their ability to hear the music and the Parshmen still can't hear it. If that is true, then how the everstorm changed them, and how it gave them forms may still be a mystery.

Somewhere in there, the Parshmen felt betrayed when Spren bonded with humans.

Adolin was kind of being sexist in his own way even as he pushes past it.

Urithiru is really weird, why is Shallan unnerved being inside it to the point she needed a balcony?

Wacky theory, the spren is described as a ribbon of light. Syl is often described as a ribbon of light. I think the tent at the center has another proto radiant in it leading the Parshmen. There have to be several orders that would be on the Parshmen's side if they found out they were thinking people who had been enslaved. I don't think it is a Parshendi-Proto-Radiant because WoR epigraphs say the Spren can't get from Parshendi what they get from humans, and I really expect Eshonai to be the first Parshendi radiant. It could create really interesting conflict for Kaladin if another proto-radiant is leading them and insistent that the Parshmen deserve justice and restitution for what they have suffered. Kaladin torn between the justice of demanding to be recognized as free thinking people, vs the people's fear, the need for stability in the face of the crisis, and the fear that Odium could seize control of Parshendi at any time. How can Kaladin protect people who might become monsters against their own will?

The problem is, Brandon's really good foreshadowing is obvious in retrospect but hard to catch beforehand, like that comment I quoted in WoR about the Parshmen only needing to walk away to cause devastation. At the time, it just seemed like a comment to reinforce how bad things would be when the Parshmen became violent.

Math uh... finds a way.

OMG, I want a scene where Shallan and Adolin are in some form of meeting, they hold hands or make some other mostly innocent sweet gesture, followed by Pattern yelling NO MATING in the middle of the meeting.

No, our theories are arrived at through careful deliberation of all the facts and evidence without any bias or logical fallacies. We would never cling to a theory just because we liked it.

I think my earlier theory is right, the Parshmen are not voidbringers (at least not yet), the everstorm gave them back their souls, their ability to bond spren, or just broke whatever had been done to enslave them in the first place. I have another theory that desolations are wars between groups of people with Odium driving everyone to be worse in these wars, and maybe he follows up at the end with an evil army. One thing I caught rereading WoR: "The Parshmen wouldn't need to turn violent to throw us into chaos - though I'm certain that is what's coming- they could simply walk away. It would cause an economic crisis." I think this will pose huge economic problems for Kholinar, and it will cause Kaladin huge problems because he can't just kill innocent Parshendi. He didn't want to fight Parshendi in WoR because they were so honorable. At the same time, the worlds economy is going to be collapsing, which will cause wars. I predict this book will be about Kaladin protecting two mostly innocent sides from each other, when both sides have reasons to hate the other. One side thinks the other is ancient monsters, the other side knows they were enslaved. Edit: the quote from WoR is from page 111 kindle edition.

Divide by zero is my new favorite euphemism for mating.

In the way of Kings Navani asks Dalinar twice about ancient fabrials. He is sure that they are primitive and don't have fabrials. He says the plate and blade seem like they don't belong, as if the heralds really did hand them down to man. That makes it unlikely that they had the ability to produce only one very advanced fabrial type.