Bramble Thorn

Yeah, for Kaladin to be doing everything via honorblades he would need a growth surge (apparently honorblades cannot use stormlight to heal shardblade wounds; This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules is going on there...), the Skybreaker blade to fly, and the lightweaving surge to make the shardblade look like a shardspear/shardshield and make the frost spell out the windrunner sigil in glowing sapphire behind him. Bright side, this only needs two honorblades; the Truthwatcher has both lightweaving and growth. And it I was going to steal an Honorblade, I would wand one in both hands...

It fits, but it is predicated on the translations of two words being homonyms if each other in two different languages. That is, the Athelki word for reign needs to a a homonyn for rain, as well as the English words. Sill, it made me smile.

Stormfather is definitely insane. Best case senario is he took her and lied to Kaladin about her dying and said Kal could not heal her so he would give up. It Kal actually DID kill her, then swearing the third oath seemed necessary to bring her back to life. And the Stormfather was trying to stop that. So it would have then been less Kaladin killing her, and more the Stormfather trying to kill her to stop what was happening.

What I want to know is if Vasher could awaken his own Divine breath into a shardblade without dying? I assume conventional thought is if Divine breath leaves the body, the Returned dies. Maybe that only happens if the Divine Breath is consumed like it is when used to give divine healing. But on Roshar, you have a connection to investiture that is maintained spiritually without physical contact. Kaladin does not need to have Syl perched on her shoulder to surgebind. A bonded shardblade can be given to another and be used but still belongs to the Bondholder, and can be called back ten heartbeats later. So knowing something like that is possible, could Vasher use his Divine Breath to Awaken, and still be connected to it to maintain his Heightenings and his life? Could he solidify it into a shardblade he was still bonded to with the right command? Inquiring minds want to know! ALSO! In regards to investing a invested object, at the very least the power of Endowment can do so. When Breaths are given, not stored, or used to attempt to awaken, they always seem to transfer, even if the other side is unwilling. You may not be able to awaken a honorblade/shardblade, in a way that you could retrieve them, but if you used a command closer to the breath giving command than a awakening one, it should work. We know that there is some information stored in the breaths themselves, based on how WoB has said Divine Breath Healing works, where there is a bit of an Ideal contained in the breath itself. WoB is there is something in the "dead" shardblades that was broken and needed to be repaired when the Knights Radiant caused the Recreance. I see three possible ways to repair what was broken. 1. Hardest. The KR had a bond with their spren, So do modern shardbearers. I think it is the same bond, just broken by the KR, and that is why is takes a gem to establish and does not grant much. Also because modern shardholders to not actually offer anything to the bond at all. I think if you could identify the type of spren in the shard, and uncover the concepts behind all five of their oaths, and live a life by those oaths, possibly including saying them out loud, this would repair the damage caused by the previous bearers breaking them. Pros: no magic required. Cons: Living with all the downsides of being a KR, but none of the perks for an extended period. Also without a spren on your shoulder pointing you on the correct path. Finding the ideals you need to follow is hard without an existing five oath KR of the same order. 2. Moderate difficulty. Giving some amount of regular breaths to a "dead" shardblade to fill the gap caused by the broken oaths, either healing the damage completely, or mitigating it enough to allow them to begin to form a mutual bond there they can benefit from their human's "human-ness" and begin to heal themselves, which spren cannot do on their own. Pros: I think this is possible, and it could allow results much sooner and easier than in #1. As number one requires the equivalent of a 5 oath KR to heal the break, but this could begin healing by someone who was only capable of keeping the first oath currently. Cons: While WoB has said Breaths are very versatile, and much more is possible with them than is currently known, The specific command to do this is not known and would need to be researched. Breaths will also be permanently divested during research finding the command procedure, and to revive every dead blade, because you are giving them away as a effect to a living (but brain dead/thought locked) spren. They are alive enough not to be recoverable to you tried an awakening command, and are also investiture, which normally resists conflicting investiture. Which is why you have to use the properties of Endow breath to them to get around this, permanently giving them away. 3. Easiest Have a Returned expend their Divine Breath to instantly heal whatever damage the Recreance caused. Pros: The Divine Breath is a powerful splinter of Endowment, seemingly designed for this sort of thing. Using a Divine Breath defaults to perfectly healing the recipient. Cons: Only a Returned has a Divine Breath, and they are created on another world by a different shard. Choosing to do this kills the Returned. This is not actually giving away the investiture but using it so it returns to endowment, so there may be investiture vs investiture conflict. Since this is a specific specialized function of the divine breath, and is not detrimental to the recipient, I think it will work, but am not sure. edited for tags.

Why are we assuming there is no stormlight in Shadesmar? All living honorspren excepting Syl are. They are in communication with the Stormfather. So the Stormfather has a presence there. The Stormfather is a font of stormlight. Shadesmar is not a separate place so much as a separate layer of perception. Why can't the Stormfather leave stormlight in his wake there as well?

That is a worthy question for a WoB.

The whole Taln think Brandon is doing really bugs me. I can accept that any in world text or facts we are given might be someone being coy, or deceptive, or lying, or just plain wrong. But hen the omniscient third person narrator becomes unreliable, that it a problem. The heading names Brandon gives the chapters and interludes are real world constructs. The interlude chapters are named after the person who has the internal POV within them. And the interlude chapter with the madman's internal monologue is Taln's interlude. If that madman is in fact not Taln, this pisses me off. ... There is a recent Word of Brandon where someone asks who many parties there were in the Oathpact. He says 11 and names them, The 10 Heralds and Honor. Apparantly Odium did not so much agree to the Oathpact as have is directed against him, In that case it is not possible for violate the Oathpact any more than the Parshendi could violate the Vengeance Pact. Thwart it yes. Violate it no. ... I have no idea what this is in regards to.

From a Meta perspective, the point was to keep Eshonai the hell away from Sylphrena. Because honorspren at least have some Hate-O-Vision powers going on. Re the scene just before Szeth showed up in the palace to kill Dalinar. Eshonai by this point has GLOWING RED EYES and LIGHTNING ARCING FROM HER ARMS. This would likely mean SOMETHING about Eshonai would spark Syl memory. What might change the plan to go into the Shattered Plains, or reveal herself to Dalinar early.

Consensus is it is a Herald. Reread RShara's post #10 above. It spells out the reasoning for the speaker being Kalak. Edit: Also, welcome to the forums! Have a introductory Rep point!

A lighteyed assassin would definitely know about and use eyedrops. And remember, an assassin is supposed to kill quickly, cleanly, and silently. That is to say, the "client" is dead before they can summon a blade. Alodin killed Sadeas on impulse with no planning, and Sadeas still never even got a chance to summon his. An assassin works the same way, only they are way more prepared when they strike. I assumed the weeper got her blade during one of her jobs. She may have even purposefully killed someone to gain one. And her blade could be in the records. But no one knows she even has it, let alone has seen it. As far as the histories know its last recorded location was in the possession of Brightlord Whomever many years ago. Said Brightlord was found dead in his bed and the Blades whereabouts are currently unknown.

I lot of people seem to be arguing against it because they do not like the idea of it. That seems silly. One thing I like about Brandon is the way builds the rules of a magic system and then is actually willing to explore the implications of the interactions of those rules. It is a source of his awesomeness. Lift is the beneficiary of two "separate" magic systems. This does not mean she has the limitations of both, it means the only limitations she has are the limitations both have. The shardholders and major splinters can use their power much more freely. Using synergies to lessen limitations is not badwrongfun, it is getting closer to the way the magic is supposed to work. Rashek was not anything special. He could have been the genesis of a higher investiture Scadrial, but decided to go in another direction. He only got to call himself a demigod by reducing the feruchemical potential of the entire planet and killing a metric chull-ton of innocent people so there was no one else with the potential to be like him. Lift being able to metabolize stormlight, or even bootstrap perpetual stormlight does not make her OP, any more then Elokar's riches giving him effectively unlimited gems for stormlight makes him OP. She just has more breadth of range. But yes, I think she CAN make stormlight as needed and on demand if she works at it. "The amount of stormlight you get from eating a loaf of bread = amount of stormlight it takes to grow a loaf of bread" is just stupid, because those are separate processes, and ignores things like value added, and efficiency of extraction. If it worked like that the human species would not grow crops at all. When you eat food you no not turn very much of it into energy at all. (Unless you are eating antimatter.) You extract a little energy, and the rest goes down the poop hole. When you grow crops you do not create them from nothing, you add value to dirt, water, and trace elements to get them into a configuration that you can extract energy from. The energy you put into it and the energy you get out of it are not the same thing. Just like starting up a nuclear reactor uses some other startup power, and gives back more then was put in. Just FYI. Both Rashek and Lift are two magic system beneficiaries. Hoid is three system minimum (Yolen Lightweaver, Endowed Breaths, Preservation Allomancy) that we have seen "on screen" Any who knows how many others. There is a reason he is the most powerful non shard entity in the cosmere; the sheer breadth of his powers and the freedom of use he must have... For example, if there is a metal alloy you can burn to use as a stormlight substitute, and he has gotten a fabrial to use to soulcast that metal. Or a giant soulstamp that you press into a large gem that rewrites its history to "I just came from a highstorm on Roshar and was brought here by a worldhopper" Or any other combination... I think Wit has reached self sustaining critical mass to power many of his various magic systems long ago.

Nice thought process. I have previously posted that he is also somewhat culpable for Szeth's Murders, As per his conversation with Szeth they seem to worship/respect/give authority to the Heralds in Shinovar, and thus making him in a sense an "Officer of the court" who know about a miscarriage of Justice and who refused to make public his exculpatory evidence, and an accessory after the fact due to his willful misconduct. Maybe we can get together and try to talk him to death sometime. == This makes sense. Nalan seems not to worship the law so much as use it like a hammer on whatever agenda he has. I can see him using this as a Oceans 11 gambit to steal the Swords in the Stone from the Lady in the Lake Stone Shamans. Another possibility is Shinovar is protected from Highstorms. It could very well also be protected from the Everstorm. The Szeth/Nightblood combo could be a way to get some destructive weather into the country in the form a walking typhoon. A rep to the both of you!

You are making the assumption that Harkaylain is a squishy human and not an embodied piece of nature, AKA a spren, Personally, I do think KR should be long lived due to stormlight resetting their age to whatever age they think they should be. But that quote you gave is not necessarily evidence towards that end.

When I saw the title I thought it was about the "I am a stick" stick from when Shallah was trying to start a fire. Because that stick was awesome, and I really hope she kept that stick. But what hit me even more in WoR is the following passage. So I will leave a vote for the Wind Pleasure. May she be remembered fondly...

I like this theory. It may be true. It may be false. But even if false, it is something the KR might believe if it was coming from a Herald. And Nalan believing it is less insane than Szeth believing Kaladin with a shape shifting shardspear/shardshield, and GLOWING BLUE WINDRUNNER GLYPH is using a non-KR Honorblade wielder.

Regarding Men with bronze spearheads and primitive wraps versus Knights Radiant in shardplate, that is possible without the knights being newly established. Taln's POV gave the impression they had been around several desolation's. 1. This is at the end of a desolation. Things could have been better in the beginning, but all the "Magic Boom Stick" factories were obvious targets early in the war. This seems to be a favored tactic of Odiums forces. Destruction of an enemies Infrastructure is the gift that keeps on giving. Remember bronze was mentioned by Taln as their go to soulcasting element as it could be easily molded for mass production. Knowing the secret of steel technology and making enough steel swords / armor for everyone two very different things. 2. The Knights and Urithiru have kept the knowledge alive, but advanced knowledge is not universal. Either held by the Knights and not shared with some nations (I would not share any advanced military technologies with the asshats ruling Alethkar for example) or were shared but the receiving nation refused to implement them (Polio is coming back in the middle-east because the Taliban threatens/kills those who offer or receive Polio vaccine as an example.) 3. This is one of the Desolations where the last one knocked technology back to the stone age, even the KR, but the shards are not made by a technological process, but from the Nahel Bond. OR they are priceless relics from a time when they could be made. Just like current day Roshar.

Not really. The body can (and has IRL) form and contain quite large masses and polyps. I see a gemheart as similar. WoB is that gem size/mass determines how much stormlight it holds, and cut helps determine the rate of leakage. In this case "holding stormlight perfectly" might be a misnomer. There could very well (and most likely) be leakage, but the rate of leakage is much lower, on the order of days/weeks to empty instead of minutes like flesh has. If a human did get a gemheart, the slow seepage would be at a rate low enough it would duplicate Kaladin's practice of keeping a level of stormlight all the time. It would "hold stormlight perfectly" in that nothing the gemheart naturally radiates ever escapes the skin into the atmosphere; it gets used before then. And if the gemheart. is large enough to last between highstorms... All this is predicated on being able to fill a gem that is inside your body. Also not really answering the OP. I do not know if a Surgebinger can grow a gemheart. All I know, is if I were Kaladin, who had preliminary surgeon training, is that I would be wanting to have one installed anyway.

To be fair, how well the heralds know Braize is up for debate. They know centuries of torture there. Braize could actually have a very good theatre district they have never been to because of their prior engagements with hooks and whips and searing flesh and OH MY GOD PLEASE LET THE PAIN STOP! The real torture might me there is Cosmere version of "Much Ado About Nothing" that is so freaking amazing it has been in constant play at the Braizian Grand Palazzio for the last 10,000 years, and none of the Heralds were ever allowed to see it. Just Sayin.

Spoilered for length. TL;DR version is that Dalinars biases are causing him to interpret the visions incorrectly, and this is making Bad Things happen. Also Alodin killing Sadeas was a really good idea, And Kaladins Wangst could have been avoided if he had gone in a slightly different direction. Here is an excerpt...

The Idea that Wit left the blade to save Taln's life really strikes a chord with me. Says he is not just collecting power for powers sake. Amaram killed his own men in his lust for a shardblade for the greater good. And one of the Heralds he started the apocalypse to bring back is likely only around because a someone else decided to leave one around as a decoy to protect him during his madness. And now, just maybe, said Herald can discover Amarams true nature, and kill him. For the extra irony. *Fingers crossed*

I am going to need more information. Is this hypothetical major fictional character in a western? If so, what color hat are they wearing?

Ah, the Purelake. The water actively hides underground to avoid getting rained (or something) during the Highstorm. And then returns. And has magic fish. And people are all "Why would you want to visit the pure lake Dalinar, there is nothing there" Definitely nothing out of the ordinary. No shardpool there. No siree. Move along now.

I thought it said/implied that one of the abilities of stormform was immunity to the storms. Another reason Eshonai is walking it off.

It is Hoid. He is the only non Herald with an associated Archstone. His purpose seems to a Cosmere wide spanner in the works. So much so that the 17th shard sent goons to try and nullify him if they could, due to that non intervention pact. I don't see how you think Mraize and Hoid are the same because they are world hoppers; that is like saying Sadeas and Renarin are the same because they both had shardblades. Mraize is a trophy hunter. Hoid is something else. So he is collecting items of power. That happens offscreen. Onscreen, the uses his ability to "detect plot" to be at important events, where he changes the course of events. When Kaladin made the realization that "Elokar was Dalinas Tien" and redeemed himself as a Windrunner, he was thinking if the Fleet story Wit broke into prison to tell him. He told Shallan a story that kept her from giving up trying to make her brothers lives better in whatever way she could. So much so she remembered it and him years later. Taravangion was not seeing the future, he was calculating the trajectories of thinks in motion in the present to create a projection of the future. Hoid is practiced at eluding the 17shard and whatever all seeing eye Odiumis using. In keeping his nature hidden, he is also hiding from the likes of King T. as well. He is like Dark matter. Taravangion has not seen him directly, but can infer him because of the ways his projections diverge from actual occurrences.