Darkness

<p>Since shardblades are solid enough that Adolin can stand on the flat of his blade while wearing Shardplate, and Syl/Pattern (living spren) are touchable in blade-form (iirc even non-blade Pattern can be poked with a pencil and Kaladin can feel Syl lightly when she sits on him) why does Wyndle think it's so odd that Lift is able to touch him/climb on him?</p> <p>Edit: This plot thickens since Adolin's blade was originally an Edgedancer's blade, which should mean it was the same type of spren that Wyndle is, shouldn't it?</p>

Ooo! I wonder if anti-investiture stems from Adonalsium's enemy?

"Endowment - Five Endowment is a little easier. We have quite a few important instances of the number five. The Returned are at the fifth Heightening with a single Breath. There were Five Scholars, of which Vasher was one. Austrism promotes living your life according to the Five Visions, an important religious concept. Lightsong Returned five years prior to the events of Warbreaker. Vivenna receives about 500 Breaths from Lemex. There were 25 Returned Gods in the Court during the events of Warbreaker. The rebellion began five years ago. Lightsong deals in fives all the time - randomly grabbing five lemons, looking at five painting before giving up, getting points in that game he played that were in the five hundreds, or ended in five. In addition, there were five God Kings in the history of Hallandren, and approximately five hundred years since people began to Awaken. Nightblood is also five feet long. Fifths of color are considered harmonic perfection in Hallandren." Sorry, Nightblood is 5 feet long? Where is that from? I thought Nightblood was "heavier than a sword that length should be"... a normal 5 ft sword would be heavy enough! I love the theory by the way!

I love the Parshendi = original Knights Radiant theory! I was wondering how to consolidate the Shardplate and the fact that the listeners refer to the spren as having 'betrayed' them, and left to bond with the humans. I believe later on, Eshonai supposes that it's because the spren get more out of their bond with humans, because humans are more present in the physical realm, but listeners are more in the cognitive realm so spren don't get as much benefit. This backstory makes more sense if the original KRs were Parshendi. The next question for me is, how did the Shardplate pass from the Parshendi to the human KRs? Maybe Shardplate was simply modelled after Parshendi armour, since it does in fact take Stormlight to power, and is mostly immobile without power. It seems like the Parshendi would want to be able to move around in their body without having to continually expend Stormlight.

This makes me wonder about how much divine presence Susebron exhibits with his 50,000+ Breaths. Obviously, each Breath is a different portion of Endowment's power, with Divine Breaths being the strongest (most power/Breath and highest quality), followed most likely by the Royal line (Siri, Vivenna, etc), followed by the rabble Susebron not only has a Divine Breath (worth ~2000-3500 breaths), but also has a ridiculous stockpile. Before I get ahead of myself, when a person/Returned dies, or when... say Nightblood burns Breath... that Breath probably returns to Endowment (I would be interested to know if the people that the Returned heal gain a portion of the Divine Breath that is used to heal them. E.g. did Susebron permanently gain a portion of Lightsong's breath when he was healed?) and so I would imagine that with all those people n Nalthis being born/getting a Breath, returning/getting a Divine Breath, dying/releasing their Breath and so on, it seems like Endowment would have to have a pretty massive stockpile to never run out (as far as we know, every person that is born has a Breath). I wonder if Brandon would answer a question in regard to how many 'rabble Breath' Endowment has. A million? A billion? More? And how much Breath would it take for a person to be significantly influenced by Endowment's Intent? Is Susebron more benevolent than he would be without all his Breath (obviously he would be less benevolent because he'd be dead, but you get my point)? And were the 16 Shards originally of comparable strengths, or did some of the Shards have a larger portion of Adonalsium? I guess I should also consider how a typical Highstorm manages to fuel every single gemstone on Roshar, and still has investiture left to spare. If Honor and Endowment were of similar power levels, then I should probably just give up and say Endowment has an unlimited amount of Breath. Note: I almost deleted this post because it's pointless... but maybe somebody will actually enjoy thinking about this too.

That's what I thought. Wasn't there a line in Firefight that basically said straight out that he makes his dreams reality? I guess it's a good thing he doesn't have nightmares...

Congrats on the new book! And getting back in! Random question to the Cosmere: Does anyone go so far as to make their own annotations and notes in the books themselves as they read? Or is it more like me (separate word doc/journal with page #s for reference)?

Welcome to the forums! I'm sure you would have joined the site based on the sheer awesomeness of the Cosmere alone, but please humor me in pretending that my post actually inspired someone to become a sharder (just a little bit?) haha

Yep, man I loved that scholar. She reminded me of me... totally oblivious to the world haha. I'm thinking that measuring a Returned wouldn't work, you'd probably have to measure the Divine Breath instead... but all that might do is prevent the Returned from using the Breath to heal somebody. Also, I'm not sure if it would work on all forms of investiture, or even all spren. For all we know it only works on flamespren. But I would get a kick out of somebody going around secretly measuring all the shardblades and Radiant spren to prevent them from changing form or disappearing on command, etc. Actually, I've been thinking that the measuring works because of the cognitive influence that people have over the spren. Once the ardent sees the spren as being only one specific size, that spren is locked because the ardent's cognitive state is locked. The less precise the measurement, the less locked the spren is. I could see that as how shardbearers lock their blades in the physical realm when throwing them. The more solid their cognitive image of the blade staying is, the more likely the blade is to stay. That's why it takes some mental gymnastics to throw a blade. On that view, I would hypothesize that it does become easier to keep a blade physical once the initial hurdle of letting it go is done, because now you can actually see a solid blade that nobody is holding onto, so it's easier to keep the cognitive image of the blade because solid... because it is. Furthering that, the Returned change their form according to their 'cognitive opinion' of themselves. It seems to be a common theme. Szeth has to wait 10 heartbeats to summon the honorblade because that's what he expects, etc.

Should be about Nightblood. lol, kidding, I'm pulling Szeth too. Actually though, I may get both wishes. Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease unsheath Nightblood in an Everstorm and have him consume all the void energy/voidspren/unmade! #NightbloodSavesRoshar

exactly Dankworth. Wonderful chap... Ps. I love your name!

I just got a horrible premonition. But I hope I'm wrong! PS.

Something else to account for, Epics lose their powers when their weakness is exploited. Yes, that seems obvious to say, but it means we have to take into account that when Prof jumped on a forcefield and fled after being confronted by Megan, it's because he got scared, not because he was faced with his weakness.

Actually, it was a simile Edit: About weaknesses, I'm pretty sure the weakness would get stronger the closer the stimulus came to the root fear. So kool-aid would work, but generic fruit juice would probably be better.

haha, silly me. I always read it as "Dawn-slight", but that wouldn't make sense

Bahahah! We danced right around it! We were so close! Kudos to IceBaka, who picked up on the cremation post mortem. Just had to bring this back, I read Firefight yesterday

I guess our Brandon shard can't see perfectly into the future, then?

1. If Nalan thinks that surgebinding causes Desolations: Something to consider is that as far as we know, the Heralds have only been around on Roshar from the time right before a Desolation begins (when they break from torture) to the time right after the Desolation (when they all go back). Surgebinders historically show up around the same time, so Nalan/Nin could just be drawing a correlation (false or true, I don't actually know); thinking Surgebinding + broken Heralds --> Desolation, instead of the broken Heralds --> Desolation + Surgebinding. However, the only documented time Nalan has been on Roshar without a Desolation (after leaving his blade and walking off) is also when the Knights Radiant were active before the Recreance, then after that when there weren't any Surgebinders. It would be strange to twist his thoughts from 'Taln is keeping Desolations away' to 'no Surgebinding is keeping Desolations away' with Knights Radiant walking/flying around. Or maybe the Heralds' level of torture was actually connected to how much Surgebinding was going on, and Nalan is indirectly right? 2. The Recreance: all we have here are theories. I personally think there was a very good reason the Knights Radiant committed the completely barbarous act of killing their spren. The fact that -as far as I'm aware- every member of 2 full orders agreed to do it at the same time, tells me that there was some extremely convincing evidence (possibly falsified, but not likely) that it was completely necessary for the survival of humanity, and that for whatever reason, the spren condoned it (otherwise they'd have just puffed into the air and not stayed in sword-form); they sacrificed themselves. Following that, the reasonable assumption is that something about the Nahel bond was presumed to have a horrible collateral effect. For example - Nalan could have told them that the Heralds collectively suffered torture for every bit of Stormlight used for Surgebinding, and now Taln was bearing all of that torture, and was the only one keeping the Desolations at bay, so that after order was established, the Knights Radiant disbanded in order to give Taln a chance. If I may say, 4500 years seems an awfully long time... I have to wonder what made Taln able to endure so long? Was his torture lessened because there were fewer Surgebinders? Then he broke because Surgebinders were coming back and he couldn't handle the thought of more torture? That's all random speculation, but regardless of details, I do think that the spren sacrificed themselves for a good reason, and the Knights walked away for what they believed was to the benefit of Roshar. I don't accept that the Knights were somehow checkmated into breaking their ideals or the Nahel bond. First, Syl just left and reverted to a more mindless form when her bond with Kaladin was stressed. She became mindless and didn't associate herself with him as strongly. The Knights Radiant all still had their blades in hand, not floating around with the windspren. Second, the effects of Kaladin betraying the ideals were relatively immediate, he didn't choose when Syl should become more mindless. He didn't choose when Syl should die. The Knights Radiant chose the moment they put their blades down, and the glow ended as they walked away, implying that they were still empowered up until that moment.

I'd always assumed Eshonai should have become a Willshaper if things had gone well, bringing back a bond between spren and the listeners. She has a comet-like spren zipping around her head when she first enters storm form that I mentally associated with her being a proto-Willshaper. Also, it would be a great irony if Elhokar between a "Willshaper" of all things. Even the title willshaper is basically the reverse of who he is right now. He tries so hard to shape the wills of the Highprinces, but he's basically waving his arms at a highstorm for all the effect he has.

Yes, but that certain sword was meant to be in the story from the beginning, and Warbreaker's main purpose was to introduce it. That said, there may be some awkward hand-wavery ensuing from the 'magical other sword' for those who haven't read Warbreaker. I wonder if Szeth will connect up with a certain weaponsmaster that could be fun.

Why does the Stormfather call himself a Sliver in WoR instead of a Splinter?

Ambiguity

That's what I'm thinking too. Wit pretty much has to have a soul because otherwise the shardblade would physically shear through his body... although he could probably heal from that too. It would be interesting to know how he would heal from a shardblade going through his CNS though.