Aether

What did we end up agreeing on? Is he to seek you?

The Shattered Plains are located in the East of Roshar.

A Shardbow pulled by a Shardbearer could do it, but he would have do give the main arrow-shaft enough momentum to launch a hundred arrows with enough speed to pierce the target upon impact. I think it might be more effective just to let the Shardbearer loose upon the enemy directly.

Am I the only one who sees the slightly... provocative... possible uses of the TS surge?

Pizza. The romance

I doubt that, if only because the Essences or whatever they are called (Midnight, Thunderclasts) seems to be made from focus elements. Thunderclasts = rock and Midnight Essence = smoke. It might contain whatever makes them form, though.

and brought along

I am happy to see someone argue so eloquently in favour of a Jasnah/Kaladin pairing, which is my own favourite. And since this seems to have been your first forum on this forum as well, permit me to hereby welcome you into our ranks! +1

I would have assumed you'd already made one of this, considering how active you've been the last few weeks. Anyway, permit me to hereby officially welcome you to the 17th Shard!

Happy to help. Feel free to throw anything else you might have laying around, or even previously written.

I recently saw a WoB were he more or less directly said that Szeth cannot affect Plate because his use of Investiture is foreign to that of a Shardplate. A true Surgebinder would be able to wear it without having it interfere with his own lashings, and it is possible that he could use his powers on other Radiants as well.

Most of the Splinters we've seen and heard speaking in the Physical Realm have been bonded to someone to some extent: Seons bonds with their masters. When this bond was disrupted by the Reod, the Seons thus afflicted lost their sanity and their ability to communicate with others Honourspren seems to gain sentience through Nahel bonds with humans. Sylphrena speaks of her memory of her time before bonding with Syl as cloudy. Her thoughts and attention-span being as fleeting as normal Windspren, and her memory. ephemeral. After bonding Kaladin, she slowly regained her personality and her ability to think, as well as her personality. I'd say she was regaining her sentience. Some think that the Return really are dead, and that their sentience and apparent resurrection is just the effect of their Divine Breaths fusing with what is left of the original mind. They do not initially have any memory of their former life, and while they slowly regain their personality and some of their memory, this could be interpreted as the Divine Breath becoming more and more attuned to the original conscience. Now, with the release of the first chapters of Words of Radiance, it has become evident that there are sentient Spren around who haven't bonded with anyone. This might only be possible in the Cognitive Realm, though, as Lift's Interlude quite clearly suggests that Wyndle - even when meticulous precautions had been taken - lost much of his memory when transitioning his conscience from the Cognitive to the Physical Realm. It is entirely possible that if had he not bonded Lift, or if the bond was broken, he'd become like Syl unless he could return to Shadesmare. I am doing a lot of conjecture here, but it s clear that at least some splinters are dependent upon a bond with an external entity, and there are sufficient gaps of knowledge to make it possible for this to be limitation of Splinters mainly manifested in the Physical Realm only.

I like the idea that it refers to humans, but then who saved whose life? Honour is by all accounts dead. I still find your choice of words peculiar, as I do not see how the Heralds idea makes "just as much, if not more sense". But it's cool that you changed your mind upon reflection. Kudos to you for having an open mind! I would be hesitant to interpret "before" chronologically. "Behind" is quite clearly a spatial preposition; even in the context of a prophecy, it would not make sense to switch from a spatial one right over to a temporal one. Whether it is referring to the Parshendi or the Alethi Army is up for debate, but I am quite sure it is not meant to be understood thus. The the "I Told you so!" Thread is awesome! It is good to question "groupthink", but it can be just as bad to be in opposition of something, just because most people believe it, as supporting it can be.

That link is to a specific post in that Thread, and only the first half of it is relevant to this discussion. I think you are wrong though. In the WoB I referenced, Brandon is speaking of Szeth's Shardblade in the context of fighting against a Lightsaber. He had just suggested that a Lightsaber would probably win in a fight against a Shardbearer with a Shardblade, because "Shardblades were designed to fight something larger than another person". He then proceeds to express incertitude about the outcome of a fight between Szeth and a Jedi, the implication being that a Shardblade's enormous and clumsy shape would not be an issue in this case. Szeth's shardblade might be longer than an average sword, but it is clearly much smaller than the beasts the likes of Adolin and Dalinar swing around. Also, I disagree that "smaller" could imply "long and thin". In some cases, as with people, you might describe a person of great girth, but small stature, as "bigger" than a person of small girth and tall stature. The latter, despite his hight, is "smaller" than the former. For swords, on the other hand, the single most important characteristic for most situations is its length, and that is especially true for shardblades, whose weight - even without Shardplate - is negligible. A sword described as "smaller" than another one, would never not be "shorter". Szeth's shardblade is probably longer than most normal swords, but it is noticeably shorter than most other shardblades.

You seem to be a bit stuck on this Herald idea. Some of the quotes clearly are, sure, while others clearly are not if you ask me. Especially in this particular case, you seem to be stretching it a bit. I feel like you might be suffering at least a bit from confirmation bias.

There is no direct WoB on it as far as I am aware. I did, however, discover one while looking for others that almost makes me want to reconsider my position: This WoB makes me think that Nightblood is a lot more similar to a Splinter than I originally thought. I still maintain that I do believe he technically isn't one, because Nightblood was constructed from several pieces (a thousand to be exact) of lesser Investiture, rather than being a little but powerful chunk of a Shard. But then again, there things are poorly understood even by the more Cosmere-aware people, so I shall not insist too fiercely upon my interpretation.

No, at least not technically. He's somewhat of an oddball in the Cosmere.

We had a long discussion on this in another Thread. I think the general consensus was that the Explorer is referring to Eshonai, the Parshendi Shardbearer, as it matches her personality from her Interlude, and the title doesn't really smack of a Surgebinder anyway.

There are those, myself included, who believe that most Splinters (Seons, Honourspren, Divine Breaths) needs to bond or fuse with an external conciousness to gain sentience for themselves. Alone and at the start of her time with Kaladin, Syl was rather like a child with an ephemeral memory, yes. But if you read closely, you'll notice that the becomes more intelligent and discerning as the story progresses. While she still hasn't regained (and notice the choice of words) her full memory, she has attained her full personality by the end of the Way of Kings:

Ruin and Preservation

Any of them could have simply returned at a later time to reclaim it. I do not think you should write Jezrian and the others off as easily as that.

I just realised that I've read the Way of Kings way too many times . That actually sounds a bit naughty to me!

Letter to Devotion

I like this idea, but I think the Death Rattles pre-dates Gavilar's assassination (or Tearim's? ) by a bit. They are said to have started around the time when Gavilar was first exploring the Shattered Plains, which would presumably have been some time before the signing of the treaty with the Parshendi.

Too bad. I was amongst the most fervent propagators of "Death Chants". I like the sound of it better.