Shadow Guardian

You are totally right. I knew that, but I don't know why I made the mistake when I posted. Probably because my mind was bouncing every which way right after finishing. Though my point about them having started a war still stands

I think we're able to speak a little more openly now that the book has been release? But I'm spoilering this just in case, since this thread started well before the release:

My only complaint is that I want more and I want more now, lol I was super bummed about Prof getting caught by Regalia's trap, but I still have hope for him, though ultimately I think it's going to end up with David having to put him down, just because of the conversation they had early on about it being a mercy, much like putting down a rabid dog. Though Brandon has been known to deceive us before, the foreshadowing implications there are pretty strong. I'm curious about David too, throughout a lot of Steelheart I felt that maybe he was something of an epic-in-the-making because things things didn't always seem to add up, in addition to his ability to inspire people like Sparks said. Seeing how Calamity grants powers though, it kills a lot of my old theory/suspicion, but I do have the same question. Did he outright reject the power and get nothing? Or did something change in him, giving him yet unseen powers that aren't actually giving the typical moral decay that we see with other epics. The other thing that I think is extremely curious is David's almost innate ability to pick up on how to use other epic powers. We saw in Steelheart that he quickly became one of the best in the team with the tensors, and in Firefight, he picked up the spyril, another epic power exceptionally quickly. Can we theorize, now that we know that Calamity itself is an epic, that the ultimate end-goal is going to be to search out a way to kill the first and foremost epic of them all? I think Prof is going to be a huge part of the next book, but ultimately, bringing him down, or bringing back his sanity, whichever it ends up being is still going to be just a battle in the greater scheme of things, and as they mentioned several times, killing Steelheart, and now Regalia and Obliteration, they've started a war, and they've committed to winning the larger war, not just individual battles with singular epics. Now to wait for the book Calamity There's not nearly enough posts here yet to spend hours reading discussion to try to sate my thirst for more.

Firefight Spoilers:

Realistically, I don't think any adaptation could easily do the Stormlight Archive proper justice, for plenty of reasons that people have listed. Not to say it's impossible by any stretch, but I would consider it unlikely in the current landscape of things. Depending on how things progress in the film landscape in the next however many years it is before there is an end in sight to the series, the possibility of an adaptation I think may change, but until such and end is even in sight, I wouldn't even begin to trust Hollywood to not make a butchery of it. If pressed, I think an anime series has the most potential of any cinematic adaptation, probably as a series per book, but I certainly don't have any expectations of it ever actually happening. I think a lot of books/series would have there best cinematic adaptation (if any) as an anime series, but I can't even think of any situations where I've seen that be a thing. I think a game adaptation of some sort might be the most possible adaptation with some merit, though it would have to focus far more on narrative, and be a lot less gameplay, a recipe which tends to garner mixed reviews in the games market. Something like a visual novel maybe, but those have a very small market, and most other game presentations lack the ability for the required narrative detail for something with the scope of the Stormlight Archive. In short, I don't really like the idea or see any possibility of any SA adaptations happening, except maybe in the distant future, but that's a very big maybe. And any medium, be it film, tv series, anime, game, or something else, would require a LOT of work to even approach being able to properly portray the awesomeness that is The Stormlight Archive.

I'm inclined to agree with _Elena here. Despite Dalinar being the power behind the throne, he's mentioned on multiple occasions that he absolutely does not want to covet his brother's throne. I think it's more likely that there will come a point where Elhokar will have to grow into a proper leader. I think that Kaladin's growing as leader will mirror or be alongside this. It wouldn't surprise me if Kaladin perhaps grows as a leader to further his own progression as a Knight Radiant, and then he may go back to Elhokar and take him up on his request that he (Kaladin) teach him (Elhokar) to be a better leader. I don't think that "teach" is necessarily the appropriate term, but I think that he could very well help Elhokar grow as part of his own growth.

We call it the "voidbinding" chart more because we don't have anything else to call it. We don't know what system it's actually for, only that it, as mentioned, corresponds very closely to the surgebinding chart, and all of the surges are cut and have half of them flipped on this chart in relation to the surgebinding chart. (Well, not perfectly, but pretty close to.) Edit: I suppose I could also mention that I talked about it briefly with Isaac at the midnight release, and he mentioned that even he didn't know what it was supposed to be called.

Actually, he states that he can have 5th heightening anytime he wants, it just requires certain sacrifices that he isn't willing to make. My understanding was that he can repress that breath, and does so at all times, meaning that while he still carries that divine breath, he doesn't not keep any of it's effects (except probably being ageless, but that may just be inherent to being returned, and may not require him to have his divine breath "in effect" as it would be).

He's of at least 2nd Heightening, though to be honest, given how long he's been around, it would not surprise me if he's of the 5th heightening, making him ageless.

I'd say there's definitely a good chance she's still with us. More than anything else, because of the contention with that small part inside of her that's still her and wants to fight back against what she's become with storm form. While I can't say I would be surprised if she's actually dead, I still feel that she has a part to play, and let's be honest, we didn't see a corpse, and that's always a red flag for character survival.

While I don't have any solid theories on what would've broken Shallan prior to her killing her mother (I can only assume that, given her family history, it's very possible that some of the foundations that led to it were laid pretty early on), I would like to point out that even Kaladin's book didn't reveal 'everything' about his past, mainly the mysterious "Tarah" that gets name-dropped towards the end of TWoK. While I would agree that WoR didn't reveal nearly as much about Shallan as TWoK did about Kaladin, I think it's appropriate to have a few things held back to be interwoven into the narrative later. Even though each book has a focus flashback character, it doesn't mean we can't have other character flashbacks slipped in when it fits best with the situation.

Here is the thread with each one labeled, and the orders are also up to date on the coppermind page on surgebinding Other threads are hit and miss. I've updated the filenames where applicable on my vectors thread, but there's a ton of charts floating around, some up to date, some not, lol.

They are personal to each individual. At the midnight release, I actually asked Brandon to personalize my copy of WoR with the 2nd ideal of the Lightweavers, if it was revealed in the book, and he told me that the Lightweaver ideals were truths unique to each individual, and they did things a bit differently from the rest of the orders.

Rayse is heavily implied to have a personality very in line with Odium, so unlike Ati, who's personality was warped by the holding Ruin, Rayse's personality already fit, making him far more dangerous. Quote from The Letter: " Ati was once a kind and generous man, and you saw what became of him. Rayse, on the other hand, was among the most loathsome, crafty, and dangerous individuals I had ever met. He holds the most frightening and terrible of all the Shards. Ponder on that for a time, you old reptile, and tell me if your insistence on nonintervention holds firm. Because I assure you, Rayse will not be similarly inhibited. One need only look at the aftermath of his brief visit to Sel to see proof of what I say. In case you have turned a blind eye to that disaster, know thatAona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered. Presumably to prevent anyone from rising up to challenge Rayse. " My inclination is also that The Ancient of Stones is Taln, and somehow preventing the impending desolation rested on his will for the past 4.5K years. What strikes me as odd is that prior to this 4.5 year break, we have no real indications of what held back the desolations, if anything. If we assume nothing has changed, then the logical conclusion would be, as several people have mentioned, that it came when the weakest or perhaps a few of the weakest of the heralds broke under the torture. However, I'm inclined to think that there was something different this time. In the prelude, Jezrien mentions "There is a chance we might end the cycle of Desolations." And if my memory serves, there has been WoB that there was something different that time, due to a question about how that battle had been one of the worst. What changed, or what is different, I couldn't say, but I think it's not unreasonable to believe that whatever secret Mr. T holds is may be the knowledge of 'what' is different and how that relates to why the Knights Radiant had to abandon their oaths. We have several other indicators that this Desolation is somehow different from the previous ones, so I think it's very possible that whatever changed is the part that we're missing in explaining the recreance, among other things.

Given Zahel's constant complaints about language, I'm guessing that it is in part because of however the languages translate. We see it all in English, but that doesn't mean the languages correspond to one another.

It's probably listed as "Releasers" because of this epigraph: "And when they were spoken of by the common folk, the Releasers claimed to be misjudged because of the dreadful nature of their power; and when they dealt with others, always were they firm in their claim that other epithets, notably “Dustbringers,” often heard in the common speech, were unacceptable substitutions, in particular for their similarity to the word “Voidbringers.” They did also exercise anger in great prejudice regarding it, though to many who speak, there was little difference between these two assemblies. —From Words of Radiance, chapter 17, page 11" Edit: Ninja'd

Edit (2020): My original post had a ton of links here, but DropBox killed them all off several years ago. I've re-written the OP, and all of the misc. stuff I had linked here is up there now.

Here's the current progress on the Voidbinding chart if anybody is curious. I expect to be done within the next few days, hopefully by the end of the weekend at the latest. Afterwards I'll probably dabble with a few other things and then move on to the HoA and AoL symbols. Edit 1: Chart is done, files are all available from the first dropbox link. I'll properly update with actual links and stuff within the next 24 hours, once I've gotten some proper sleep.

Heh, exact opposite for me. I've gotten fairly proficient with Illustrator, but I'm pretty useless with photoshop, except for a bit of minor cleaning and leveling.

D: You beat me to it once again, lol. *pout* j/k I only just saw these, since I haven't been around since Thursday, and I think "great vector material," and then I scrolled further down the page, and "oh." I'll probably dabble with them a bit and re-trace them once I'm done with the voidbinding chart though (I'm about halfway through with that), since I noticed you don't seem to have included the path data with the SVG's?

Heh, glad they are liked. Since it seems to be favored, I've started working on the Voidbinding chart, which will probably take me a week or so, depending on how much free time I have. Cool. That's pretty useful to know. I'm redrawing the void surges for the chart (the ones on the Coppermind are at least semi-auto-traced, and I'm rather OCD ), and that'll include the orders. I assume the alethi characters your'e referencing are these, and the Hero of Ages symbols as shown here? I think I can do both of those pretty easily as well once I finish the voidbinding chart.

2020 Edit/update: I know this post has been dead, particularly after DropBox broke all of the links a few years back (hopefully they don't do so again...), but now with Rhythm of War coming out, I figured I'd finally update/rewrite this, since I have a few new(ish) things to share that I've added over the years, and I figured I should make this whole post easier to navigate. As I said in my original post more than 6 years ago.... (it's been a long time....), I've made vectors of the surgebinding chart and others. Mainly because I like tracing things in Illustrator (when time permits), and I usually take those vectors and try to make what I hope are some cool desktop wallpapers. And every now and then I remember to try to share them around. All real credit should go to Isaac Stewart for creating all of the original glyphs. I've simply taken those designs and tried to make some cool results. DropBox - This is just my entire Sanderson folder for anyone who wants to dig around. The Wallpapers are exactly that, the Assets and Misc. includes various high-res .png and .svg vector file exports of the glyphs/symbols/etc. that I have vectored, and used to create the aforementioned wallpapers. If you want to take any of these and use them to make more cool artwork, please feel free to do so. Just keep in mind that the original artwork and designs all still belong to Dragonsteel Entertainment. Wallpapers - All of the Sanderson-related wallpapers that I have created over the years. Starting with the surgebinding chart back from before Words of Radiance came out to a few newer ones using the new space age Stormlight Archive symbol. Some are more creative than others, and some are very basic. I'll post some previews below, but use this link to download any of them in their original export quality. Surgebinding Chart: Voidbinding Chart: (credit to llwvyn for what became WP2, and for general feedback on most of these as they've been created): Honorblades: Stormlight Archive Logo(s)/Double eye: Cosmere Symbol/Bridge 4: More to come eventually/maybe. I've learned not to make commitments that I'm bad about keeping.

Kind of like a certain pirate who's jolly roger is my avatar? While baThis post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules, given the typical style of fighting with a shard blade, I think dual-wielding them in a fight would be silly, let alone trying to be a santoryu user. If somebody did manage to obtain 2+ honor blades though, my thought is that they would very possibly never have to actually wield either of them. As Szeth proves, his windrunner powers don't go away when his blade isn't summoned, and someone with access to 3+ surges could extremely dangerous well before a weapon ever enters the equation.

I took 3 days off of work so I can go to the midnight release and then sit down and read the book all the way through at my leisure. Though it will probably end up being non-stop from start to finish. Nonetheless, no skipping, just because I want to read everything straight through, and even if I re-read the excerpts from TOR while I'm waiting/at the signing, I'll still get interrupted because of having to drive home for an hour after picking up the book before I can start reading in earnest.

I have the Hardcover pre-ordered to pick up at the midnight signing. I'll probably get the audiobook at a later date, since I like the audiobooks for re-reads, and at some point, if there's a sale on the ebook version, I'll pick that up for easy searching of information on my phone.