Daishi5

The stone shamans coming for the blade could get really interesting.  They condemned Szeth because they think the KR can't return.  If they face just Kaladin, they could just assume he has the blade.  But, when Dalinar/Shallan/Renarin comes out to help him, the Stone Shaman's could be facing a huge crisis of faith.

I'd chalk that up to selective narration on Brandon's part. Recall that Shallan hears the screams when she touches his blade only a short time after this.

I think it might be the first hints that Adolin could be on the right path.  Sadeas could go either way, depending on what the right path is for Adolin.  

*SCREAMS LOUDLY ABOUT RENARIN KHOLIN FOREVER*

 

People who do not appreciate Renarin get served, essay-style. Don't even mess with me on Renarin. Those who do forfeit their soul, well-being, and any protection against the depths of my protective machinations•

I did not like Renarin in WOR please don't hit me  Mostly because we can see that he had some major character growth and was going through a lot of things, but we have to infer almost all of it.  We know it happened, but we didn't get to see it.  

 

Edit:  I did love the scene when Renarin went out into the arena when none of the other shardbearers was willing to help.  The king and Amaram had their chance here and they were too scared.

 My second guess but the song thing didn't match with Taravigian to me.

I thought he was talking about listening to the songs as a reference to the bells of the city.  

I think we could see a few things.  

 

A.  Roshone has Kaladin's parents imprisoned or otherwise actively being persecuted.  - I highly doubt this will happen, they would be free and safe 10 minutes after Kaladin arrives. If Roshone was persecuting them, it would be an easy second oath issue of protecting the weak.

B.  Roshone has killed them.  -  More likely, but I still doubt it.  Kaladin has already accepted that he needs to protect everyone, and it would just be the Moash story repeated.

C.  His parents are still ostracized and suffering, but not actively persecuted.  -  This seems more likely, his parents are suffering, and they could be emotionally broken, but there is no real enemy attacking them.  Kaladin can't protect them from people not liking them, and if their son turns out to be one of those Radiants, they could suffer even further ostracism.  

I just remembered something.  Originally, they couldn't bond shardblades.  They found they could attach gems, or fabrials and then they could bind them.  If it wasn't for the fact that Dalinar hears screams from his blade after he bonds with the Stormfather, I would suspect he actually had an Honorblade.  The fact that the Stormfather used the same word for his blade as Mr. T did, still makes me suspect it (but I think I am just paranoid about it).  

 

Location 15656 of the Kindle Edition, they talk about how after the recreance, they discovered they could bond with blades by adding gemstones.  The bond was something added to shardblades, it is not an actual inherent property of the blade.

I just noticed something as I was going back through the book.  Adolin seems to summon his shardblade without waiting ten heartbeats when he fights Eshonai.   He drops his sword, get hit by Eshonai, blocks her sword with his arm, smiles, then

 

He raised his hands, the shardblade forming from mist as he swung upwards and deflected her attack in a sweeping parry.

 Then, after Szeth shows up, there is no more mention of him summoning his blade.  He gets thrown into Dalinar's tent, then he has to get his plate off, and then he is ready to fight.  There isn't really any clue that his blade is instant, it just isn't mentioned at all.  

I liked Shallan in this book, but I dread one thing in her coming chapters.  If she continues to work with the Ghostbloods, when she meets up with Jasnah, I want her to tell Jasnah ASAP.  I don't want to go through a whole set of her working with Jasnah while also sneaking around with the people that tried to kill her.

I thought the woman taking a chisel to a stone woman was Shallash destroying a statue, rather than relating to Jasnah.  

How did she bond with Pattern before killing her mother, and her father's descent into cruelty?  I thought a person needed to be broken somehow to form a bond?  Her mother and father's murder would both be great chances for her to "break" and thus be able to bind a spren. But, this makes it seem like cause came after the effect?  This probably needs its own topic.

I wonder why none of Dal's visions from tWoK had KR using that tactic?

We didn't really see them fight in the tWoK.  They only really fought with the creatures made of smoke.  

Yay, I was kind of right.  It is interesting that only some orders had "squires" though.  

 

Edit:  For the other squires, I seem to recall that some members of bridge 4 were surviving and healing from pretty nasty wounds.  

I loved the book, but I seem to have missed something.  How did Shallan get the shardblade to kill her mother?  In the WoK her blade was 10 hearbeats away, and it seems to me that she has revived pattern with her "truths" and the first ideal.  But, if that were true, how did she get her hands on a blade in the first place?

I thought Lopen saw Kaladin fly, and he is saying that once he figures out how to do it as well, then he will glow, fly and kings will give him their daughters.

My theory is that a Herald had to be involved in Szeth getting an Honorblade.  He seems to be way too skilled in lashings, and knowledgeable about lashings to have just picked it up on his own, especially knowing the names of the lashings.  

 

My theory is that someone, probably a Herald, bound him to the blade in someway, and thus also bound him to be tortured like a Herald. He is forced to carry the blade and do whatever his owner's tell him to do because it will invariably force him to commit atrocities.  This person also probably trained Szeth, which explains Szeth's skill and knowledge, so that Szeth will be more successful.  Szeth thinks to himself that it is better to be tortured than to cease to exist, and he also thinks that Mr. T is wrong about his responsibility, Szeth bears the sin of all the crimes he has committed.  

 

If I am right, it might also answer why Szeth can summon his blade if it is an honorblade.

First thought after reading this, "oh no."  Second thought: "Feather may have a heart attack."

Yes, Honorblades are different in that they disappear when the holder dies and stay around so long as he is alive.

 

Random thought.  Szeth is supposed to kill a lot of people when he takes out Dalinar.  (Assuming he has an Honorblade), Just imagine him killing the true owner of his Honorblade part of the way through his assassination attempt.  I know it won't happen, but it has a Wile E Coyote level of humor when his Blade disappears in the middle of the fight and he can't re-summon it.  

I think that if darkness was not involved, he only would have stayed out if he believed someone else would stop Gavilar.

This theory makes some sense. The most solid part is that Szeth, the Parshendi, and Darkness are all connected.

However, what would be Elhokar's motive to kill his own father? He doesn't seem very eager to rule. And by Occam's Razor, it makes more sense for him to be afraid of what we know, i.e. the spren and the murder of his father.

Also, what does Jasnah have to do with any of it? And what does "I also think he was probably the way the Parshendi found out" mean? Found out about what?

I am not sure he intended to kill his father, more sure that he was involved. I wouldn't be surprised if darkness tricked him. However Jasnah's assassination plot raises suspicions.

I think he told the parshendi that his father wanted to bring back surgebinding.

This theory basically takes a lot of different things and ties them all into one plot.

1. The men talking Elohkar.

A. We strongly suspect one of them is a herald.

B. We also believe he is trying to kill surgebinders, and stop surgebinding from returning.

C. They talk about someone having their lords own blade. (may be related to 2A and 2B)

2. Szeth the Assasin.

A. He somehow surgebinds without a spren.

B. He has a unique shardblade that may be an Honorblade, (possibly clearing up 2A)

C. His previous owner only recently let him go, but shows no sign of knowing about his abilities.

D. The Parshendi somehow know he is a perfect tool for killing the king who has both blade and plate despite only having him for a short time.

3. Jasnah

A. Was considering assassinating someone

B. Instead she orders Elhokar's wife to be watched.

C. There has been an assumption that Elhokar's wife was the target she decided not to assassinate, but Jasnah never actually says who she was considering killing, and while Liss offered to kill the wife, she never saw the actual order.

4. The Parshendi

A. We don't know how they came to know about Gavilar's plan to bring back their dark gods, but I assume it was after the treaty was signed and before or during the feast.

B. The Parshendi seem to believe that an Honorblade can allow someone to surgebind without being an actual surgebinder. (some evidence for tying 2A and 2B together.)

C. The Parshendi do not have written records, but somehow know how Honorblades work.

D. The Parshendi are terrified that the Alethi may have an actual surgebinder in their ranks.

5. Gavilar

A. He wants his brother to find the most important words a man can say. (We assume these are the oaths of the KR, or closely related to their return.)

B. Darkness thinks surgebinding will bring desolations back, the Parshendi think Gavilar will bring their dark gods back.

C. Gavilar put his plate back on after leaving the feast with his bodyguard wearing his plate. (It seems far fetched that Gavilar was not in his plate, but it could be possible.)

6. Elhokar

A. Is afraid of assassins, very afraid.

B. Seems to be seeing spren.

C. Had a lot of gems crack during the chasmfiend fight.

I think Elhokar somehow set the entire plot in motion to have Gavilar killed. I think he knew why Darkness was involved (surgebinding), and I think he realizes he may be starting to do it, which is why he is so scared of assassins. I also think he was probably the way the Parshendi found out. The Parshendi probably learned about Honorblades from Darkness.

I am not sure whether or not this would indicate that he intended to have his father killed, but I think that Jasnah may have suspected such a thing.

What does everyone else think?

Edit: I forgot the most important thing, lie spren are attracted by patricide, so the second ideal of "I murdered my father" is still a good theory.

The evidence that Szeth has an honorblade is not actually that strong.  However, there are several strange things going on with Szeth.  His blade does unique things, such as temporarily changing his eye color.  He can surgebind without a spren.  He thinks that when he dies he is going to be tortured.  WOR spoiler

 

If Szeth has an Honorblade, then we can just take all of the strange things about Szeth and answer them by saying "his Honorblade did it."  WOR Spoiler

 

In Short, the Honorblade theory takes several confusing problems and answers them all, but leaves us with only one new issue to figure out, where did he get it?

We might get some hints from the Way of Kings parables that Dalinar had read to him.  

The issue is that just seeing a spren is measuring it. The two ardents who discovered the weird effect measured it and nothing happened as well. What mattered was writing it down. I can see some vague similarities to quantum entanglement and decoherence here, but I think it is odd to say that the spren act in a manner similar to QM. You can't set up a spren system like this famous experimental setup so far as we know. (For those who have never seen it before, the lightbulb from A produces photons, but the photons never reach the detector at G. If photons were like particles, we would expect half the photons to arrive at G and half to arrive at F, but they all arrive at F. Welcome to quantum mechanics!)

 

It could be due to the nature of sentience in the Cosmere that seeing something and remembering it is not sufficient, but I'd prefer to not have to go down in that direction. Something about writing it down locks the spren in place, as if the mere act of writing it down defines the spren. What you believe influences reality in the Cosmere. I suppose it just takes writing something down to 'convince' yourself that the spren is the thing you wrote down. I would predict that Shallan taking a Memory of a spren or else drawing a spren should similarly lock it down based on this musing, but we know that doesn't happen with the Cryptics. Perhaps it's because Shallan expects the spren to keep moving and hasn't convinced herself that the act of drawing locks a spren in place? Sounds like science requires a lot of mental gymnastics in the Cosmere. Reproducing experiments is probably a nightmare...

 

Reading your post made me think of something.  Would writing them down be a form of contract, or maybe binding them?  For that matter, why is magic called surgebinding, what and how are they binding a surge?

I agree.  The only way I can see this with Szeth is if Honorblades/Heralds only have access to one Surge each.

 

Maybe Szeth has an honorblade, but was taught by someone who only knew how to use one of the surges the Honorblade gave him access to?

I thought it went the other way around, as Kaladin learned more ideals and his bond strengthened Syl gained more of her memories.  I remember that Syl told Kaladin that they could end the bond, but she would lose her memories and go back to the way she was.  I just assumed that if severing the bond would reduce her mental capacity, the bond itself must be in some way necessary for her increasing mental capacity.