Ephemera

Anything else you care to tell us about your master, Sig? Pretty please?

I read this as Brandon's way of slowly introducing us to a plot piece that will become important later. After all, we have all read Lift's interlude and Rysn's interlude, but this chapter comes far earlier in the book. Since we are ahead of the game we recognize the Larkin for what it is, rather than "discovering" it in a reread. That being said, it could very well become important later Let Navani play with it.

“Shallan crawled onto her cot with the book she’d been given and the pouch of spheres. Part of her was eager to begin, but she was exhausted, her eyelids drooping. It really had gotten late. If she started the book now…Perhaps better to get a good night’s sleep” No Shallan! You’ve shown some genre-savvy so far, don’t lose it now! Just grab some coffee, do some calisthenics and read that book now, or you may not get the chance! … “She awoke to screams, shouts, and smoke.” *groan* Think that book will survive? Possibly disaster-redacted?

Thanks for the welcome, everyone! Good point that this could have been a "normal" city in Natanatan. And the unleashing/shattering could be a very convincing reason for the fall of Natanatan. I would be very surprised if these events were unrelated. But as you say, we don't have quite enough points to connect yet. But onto speculation, I wonder why this particular city? Assuming that this city could have been the capital, perhaps one of the Dawn Cities, why was this the only city affected? An excellent point about that quote being mistranslated. It is the most significant geographic information we have on Urithiru at the moment, and I tend to assume these snippets are solid information, but that is a very unsafe assumption with Brandon's works. It does make me wonder how much the translation issue may play out in what we--and the characters--assume from the information in tWoK. I drop the F-bomb when I shatter something the size of a plate. I can't imagine how many I'd drop if I were shatter those plains.

Something that caught my attention in Jasnah’s prologue, that I haven’t seen discussed yet, is one of Jasnah’s comments about the Parshendi Jasnah believes there is something, some ruins of importance, that the Parshendi have access to. I think it is safe to assume these are the ruins we see in Eshonai’s interlude, at the center of the Shattered Plains. So, what are these ruins? The obvious answer is that these ruins are Urithiru. But that may not be the only answer. In tWoK Jasnah is quite adamant that Urithiru is not on the Shattered Plains. It is possible that she is incorrect, but I find it unlikely that she would be so certain without reason. Jasnah’s notes refer to Urithiru being “Westward,” and it is hard to get less westward than the Shattered Plains. There has been specualtion that Urithiru is located in Shadesmar. The first WoR chapter provides some support for this, So, for the moment let’s assume that Jasnah is correct in tWoK and the ruins on the Shattered Plains are not Urithiru. What else could they be? At the Seattle signing in October I asked Brandon to indicate on my map in tWoK something that might be of interest to characters in the book, something that had been searched for. Above the Shattered Plains he wrote “Great Magic unleashed here.” I would guess that this unleashed magic is what caused the plains to shatter. But what was this event? 1. Perhaps some kind of physical manifestation of Honor being splintered. This would release the splinters, and could be the unleashed magic. 2. Magic on Roshar is very spren-dependent. And as Jasnah discusses in the first WoR chapter: Perhaps the Shattered Plains is a location where this “leakage” occurs… or perhaps it was a dam that burst. 3. If Urithiru was in Shadesmar, it may have had some physical correlate. We don’t yet know how relative location and distance works in Shadesmar, or how cities created in Shadesmar might manifest in the physical realm. Maybe Urithiru, and its assumed destruction, created some echo of ruins in the physical realm. I’m just throwing out a couple ideas, but I’d love to hear more. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from lurking around these forums it’s that 17sharders are boundlessly clever.