Bramble Thorn

Not there, but with the Bridgemen in Sadeas camp, yes. There seems to be a point where you are instinctively inhaling minute quantities of stormlight, before you can consciously inhale stormlight. Remember the metaphor comparing being filled with stormlight like wine in a wineskin? I think minute stormlight is like the last few drops of wine, that are not going to get out the the container no matter how much you shake it. It stays there until it evaporates. I think what was happening to Kaladin in Amarams Army, was happening to Bridge four after they looked to Kaladin as an inspiration and Kal started listening to Syl. What you are saying does not make sense. The size of the order does not matter. Kaladin is currently a order of one. He has squires. the majority of Radiant's were not martial orders according to a quote in WoR. All (save Dalinar currently) can make a shardblade. I see squires as an ability just like shardblades. Some might utilize it more than others based on their circumstances, but to some degree, nearly every Radiant can do it.

I see the ability to empower squires as more universal to surgebinders as a whole. Just as the Nahel bond gives the Radiants their powers, there is a connection between the Radiant Knight and their followers that empowers the squires. It is not from any of the individual surges, but is implicit in how the surges are granted. This ability might also be inherent to the Heralds. Because they are the ones all this is patterened off of, and because they needed it more, For a long time it was just the Heralds without and Radiant support. Against Thunderclasts and who knows what else. Now, spren can be made up of more than one shard. Just like foresight is stronger in Cultivation then Honor, The anointing of squires might be stronger with Honor. So those spren that are more of Honor might have potiential to support more squires, or require a lesser connection between Radiant and follower to become squires than those more of Cultivation. So where Kaladin can have an oversized company or a small army as squires, Shallan might only have a squad or a platoon.

I see it as less the orders and more the person. Many Elsecallers might make good use of squires. The reason Jasnh does not have any is not because of her order, it is because she is a bit of an antisocial snob. Her being dead for most of the book was good for Shallan I think. Shallan made an ally of a Highprince Jasnah had dismissed because he was not refined enough, and she did not like that. So I see Shallan having squires and Gaz and her guards. The question is, does the link between Radiant and squire offer other abilities? I doubt it allows the squires to surge bind, but could shallan use lightweaving on a squire of hers at range like she can with Pattern?

Actually, this has contrary to text in TWoK. What you mention is a recipe for Gibletish Juice

I trust Dalinar to know what a vision feels like. He has a lot of experience with processing external input. So a vision, but not apparently from the Stormfather. I am guessing Shallan began the bonding process as a child, and her mother saw the effects of that somehow. The bond was progressed enough for Pattern to take blade form, and that took Kaladin a while. She could have seen instinctive illusions, the result of nascent soulcasting, dun spheres, faint glowing. There is a lot to pick up on if you are knowledgeable and looking for signs. Other unanswered questions. 1. Did the Stormfather exist a separate entity prior to tanavasts death? 2. He is the "spen of the almighty" i.e. "I AM THE MEMORY MEN CREATE FOR HIM, NOW THAT HE IS GONE." Could some of his super dickery be because the personality of the almighty is being overwritten by current perceptions of the almighty, which are rather pragmatic and self-serving? 3. What are the agendas of the Ghord Bloods? 4. What is going on with the physiological changes in the fabrial soulcasters? 5. What information did Jasnah learn from the spren in shadesmar? 6. What exactly is shardplate? 7. What are the specifics of Nightblood's functionality on Roshar? 8. The Everstorm is "New" The historical record of Parshendi Songs is Old and contains a description of the storm form, its powers, and associated spren.

Easier to just reforge the shattered shards on Sel and make friends with whoever holds them, WoB is that it is possible to "hack" the system so you could even use sel magic on another planet. Sort of like Hemalurgy was Ruin/Harmonies magic system, so Ati/Sazed automagically knows how anything possible with it can be accomplished. After 1000 years of experiments, TLR never found any more ways to use Hemalurgy than the bits ruin gave to him to make the Inquisition, blessings, and kloss. It was just to complex. There are many more geographical focal points on the planet, and the glyphs, just no mortal knows what they are.

I was trying to find an existing aesop Wit was referencing when I first read it also. I have head the tortoice and the hare, the turtle and the scorpion, lion the mouse. But no rabbit and chick. Welcome to the forums anyway. Have another rep.

He knows about the everstorm. The clash between the everstorm and the highstorm is what was throwing the tops of plateaus into the sky at Szeth and Kaladin when they were fighting. He was there waiting for just the right moment to resurrect Szeth. You know that denial thing Szeth had going on, Nalan either has that in spades if he is thinking that a Desolation is not happening here and now, or is just a straight up liar about his motives. Because I do not see how killing surgebinders continents away from the shattered plains was stopping the everstorm.

Shallans recruiting officer in the Ghostbloods mentioned her family "Why did your father join us? Why did your brother seek out the Skybreakers?" And when Darkness/Nalan revives Szeth, he offered training as a Skybreaker, However, because Nalan is about as unradiant as you can get, this probably does not necessarily mean a Nahel Bond with a highspren. More likely it means this particular branch of sociopaths call the name of their group Skybreakers. Because the Fallen Herald that leads them was the patron of the actual Skybreakers long long ago. Just like he kept the title of Herald when he left Tanavast's service. Remember, very few people who you would consider evil call themselves evil. Sort of like how Robespierre called his particular Murder Club The Committee of Public Safety.

17th Sharders, I have cracked the secret of Shardplate, Wait for it..... SPRENSQUIRES! Yup. We know Kaladin is so awesome Bridge for can regrow limbs and inhale stormlight just because they are buddies with him. But they have no Nahel bond to break. We know Kaladin is not the only one in the bond; Syl is also. We know all modern fabrials have a (non sentient) spren in the focal gemstone. We know Syl is closely related to windspren. We know about that weird fabrial metal in the oathgate. Take that oathgate fabrial stuff. Stuff it with windspren Syl has made friends with. Now it can absorb stormlight. But they have no bond that can be broken to kill them; they are just squires. So when the Recreance happens and their honor spren "dies" they are still in the fabrial armor, but this does not seem to hurt them, they are just no longer sprensquires, and the armor is no longer all glowey. No stuck screaming at the moment of death forever, so no Hate from the Bond spren. Problem solved. I am awesome. Reputation please? EDIT: As more proof of how awesome and right I am, Syl thinks how terribly unfair it is that spren cannot attract spren. This is obviously her memory returning to her, and also foreshadowing.

Just FYI, Shallan does know that Kaladin gave the death blow to her brother. She was there when Kaladin made his accusation against Amaram in front of god and everyone else, She then asked him in the chasm if he was telling the truth, and he told her yes. Circumstances being what they were, along with her pov parts after that, I do not think she blames Kaladin for what happened, only Amaram who her brother was apparently trying to kill.

Yeah, if the Heralds are reestablished, either with Old or New members, they need to be Heralds with BOTH Nahel bond and Honorblade. That way they can take a spren of their associated order, and swap blades. Double the surges, double the fun. Also, Shardblades are seemingly indestructible, but Shardplate is not, let alone the fabrial half-shards. One really good reason for Kaladin to keep an honorblade is so he can have a indestructible Honorblade in one hand, and a indestructible sprenshield in the other.

Others may disagree, but this is the way I read the grammar, with all the Bondsmiths sharing the same spren, shown in the last chapter as the Stormfather. Trying to greatly increase the number of Smiths would require the Stormfather sustaining more Nahel Bonds, conceivably endangering the Stormfather and/or the Highstorms. Remember however, that this is an unreliable text written at least 200 years after the Radiants vanished, possibly translated from another language

Way back when voidbringers may have had a specific technical meaning, possibly the Parshmen "Forms of Power" that utilize spren derived from Odium. And what it used to mean a few thousand years ago does not matter jack rust. Today, In current day Roshar, it seems to be an umbrella term for any and all forces of the Almighties Archememy. Aka Bad Things That Want To Kill You. And that definition works for me. But my point was not that any zombies that might pop up should be called voidbringers. My point was that the Original Poster was on to something and it would not be unreasonable to, you know, be on the lookout for flesh golems. The Rosharians that this little bit of folklore came from dig out the stone to make latrines, but burn their low class dead, and transform the bodies of high class ones. They could dig out burial cairns, but do not. It could be because burning flesh smells better than burning poop, or it could be a sound bit of tactical advice whose origin has been lost to time. I am saying this now, so that if there is another pitched battle between Odiums forces and the Rosharian Defense League where the Rosharian dead guy's get up and start playing for the other team because they forgot to police the dead bodies, I can say something awesome like "I totally saw the foreshadowing for this" rather than something lame like "That Army of the Risen Dead over there aren't actually voidbringers"

Stone = Thunderclasts Smoke = Midnight essence Flesh = something. They may technically be called something else besides voidbringers, but this is getting to the point of pedantry. There are ten Unmade. There are Ten Essences. Flesh is both a Body Focus, and a Soulcasting property, which seems to be more then just for soulcasting. Sounds legit to me...

Swallow a infused gem, and burn it and/or the light it radiates.. Hopefully any gem, but if not maybe those gems that are basically a form of Aluminum with impurities. Or also just become a Surgebinder.

Definitely Possible. Dalinar was able to inhale Stormlight first try merely from Kaladin's and Shallan's off hand descriptions. If the "Skybreakers" or the Sons of Honor or Ghost bloods have access to the proper body of knowledge, they could eliminate a lot of trial and error. Tanavast thinks one of the Heralds might be a traitor. Also, I see less "Perversion of Justice" and more "Batshit Insane" I do not see many of his Justifications as even within the Letter of the Law at all. He killed Ym for being the Unknowing Accomplice to a Murder another 40 years ago. He himself is more guilty then that, because he knew for a fact that The legal foundation to Sveth being declared Truthless was invalid. Thus the Legal requirement to Szeth to obey the edicts of the Stone Shamans re the Oathstone holder is also invalid. He then proclaimed himself as one of the gods of his religion and his people. This means he personalty has the authority implicit in being worshipped to overrule the stone shamans, or invalidate their authority. He could have done this at any time. He chose not to. He is a willing accomplice to every Death Szeth perpetrated once he became aware of Szsths circumstances and chose not to act. Any retribution levied against the Stone Shamans should lawfully be levied against him as well. But I do not think the law really matters to him anymore, not really. For the same reason she does not just eat it and wait until she has been poisoned to soulcast it to an inert substance: 1. Depend on how fast it works, it could render her unable to draw in stormlight before she notices the poison and knows she needs to take in stormlight. 2. She does not know how fast/strong/deadly any poison might be until she has already ingested it. Also in regards to stormlight healing... 1. Stormlight could almost certainly heal the damage poison causes, but she might need to keep stormlight in her system in her system until all the poison has reacted and burned off. 2. Depending on the strength of the poison, she might need to hold enough be visibly glowing to heal herself faster than it damages her.

How are Breaths "renewable?" Each person is born with exactly one breath. If they give it away, it does not grow back. If it is destroyed by Nightblood or a Returned, it does not return. Which is why it so not normally consumed, save for those two things, but moved from person to object and hopefully back again. Am I missing something?

Who says they are not long living/ageless? Until age actually hits you, the young seem to think they will live forever. Growing older is not something many people have to think about, just what happens. So if you see yourself as 20, or just don't accept that you have to be old and decrepit, stormlight should heal physical aging, repairing decayed telemeres or whatever. You should not need to keep holding stormlight constantly to not age; I think if you regularly hold stormlight, it can heal your aging to the age you think you should be faster than your body can age you. And for those who think they should be getting older, send them to a shrink until they get over it Veteran Surgebinders may only die from external forces (many during a Desolation) or when they have lived so long they are tired of living and (sub)consciously allow themselves to stop renewing their youth...

I think Slater130's theory is that when the first Surgebinders were bonded, they were had the power of a full Knight Radiant who had sworn the full sequence of Ideals. And not all them were worthy of that power, and some chose poorly in how they used it. And some spren chose to bond with people who should never have been given such power ("not all were as discerning as Honor spren") This came about between Desolations, when the Heralds were absent. So when the Desolation finally came one or two centuries later, It went really badly. Nohadon said it was one of the worst Desolations to date. Not necessarily because Odiums forces became more powerful (although this is when I think he enslaved the Parshendi into Voidbringers), but because some of those new Surgebinders were busy trying to become king of the hill, or some other agenda, instead of stopping the Apocalypse. Conflicts between opposed surgebinders may have been letting the world burn faster. The Herald saw this and laid down an ultimatum. I don't know if he could have killed every surgebinder that refused, but even the fact that he made the threat would make a big difference, like an Archangel coming down from on high to personally slap you upside the head. Nohadon's solution to that was the oaths, so power was tiered to the responsibility you had shown. Nahel bond but no oaths and you can inhale Stormlight only. As Lopen can attest, that alone is a lot. When you actually understand the other Ideals and agree to be bound by them, you get the actual surges, and become increasingly powerful and efficient using them. Accept more responsibility, get more power. The death of the spren may be an unfortunate side effect of doing things this way, or may be intentional. I think the bonded spren has to agree for the upgrade to occur. I also think the consequences for the oaths being broken grow more severe as more are sworn and accepted. No Oaths sworn, no penalty. Breaking after the universal boilerplate oath, probably low cost to the spren as well. The Reason Sly survived Kaladin breaking the oath bond, was he was not a Knight Radiant yet. Those at the recreance were all Knights Radiant who had sworn at least 3 oaths. Basically, a way to avoid a moral hazard when the spren choose to bond. So they bear the consequences of offering great power to those who misuse it, and not just those poor mortals in the physical realm. Edit: Or at least that is my theory, if not Slaters.

Devils Advocate here. The Stormfather tried to kill Dalinar, Kaladin, Shallan, and the entire army of thousands around them. All of whom were innocent, and were in fact following Tanavasts Visions. Visions he sent because the Almighty required it of him. This is pretty much really, really, dishonorable. Now, being both spren and a splinter of Honor, he is by definition an Honor spren. He was able to do this in spite of that, and doing it did not kill him. So yeah, I can see how it might be possible you spren to farm broken people to bond with, despite being honor spren. Remember, one of the Words of Radiance epigraphs implied that the oath system may be an artificial construct, instated so that one of the Heralds would not start killing all the surge binders... Now some of this is almost certainly wrong, as current consensus is surge binders came before knights radiant, who were founded after the Heralds had returned to Damnation following a Desolation. But the consequences for dishonorable action (death of the spren) may be consequence of the Nahel Bond as an artificial construct, and only when the human does it.

The sounds your mouth makes when you speak one of the Radiant Ideals are not set in stone, because Kaladin is not speaking them in Dawn Chant. Kaladin speaks Alethi. The Alethian language did not exist when the Knights Radiant and their Ideals came to be. When Syl refuses to tell Kaladin what the other oaths are, she is not trolling him. The power is not in the words. The words are bubkis. Nohadon found them in a crackerjack box. the power is in YOU Lonestar Kaladin, in YOU!... The words will not necessarily help to understand their meaning. When Kaladin was convinced it would be better for the kingdom if Elokar died, she told him point blank that what they were doing was wrong. Telling him the exact configuration of the oath he ended up speaking (“I will protect even those I hate, so long as it is right.”) would not have helped, because he was not convinced it was right. I think what your intent is when you speak the oath matters. And that is what needs to be specific. A forumite received another Ideal from Brandon. "I will stand" http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6390-brandon-gave-me-an-unpublished-kr-ideal/ Which is incomplete. So is Dalinars "I will unite instead of divide." It does not matter. If the speakers intent matches the Ideal, the words are accepted. P.S. Alex Trebek says the Judges Stormfather would also have considered "I will build up, and not tear down" and acceptable oath from Dalinar.

Actually, that makes more sense than what I said. Lets go with this.

Yup. So he used one of the Fabrials first seen in one of Dalinars visions in TWoK, that offers regrowth. The Heralds may not have natural surgebinding, but do have that "ancient lost technology" thing going for them. Remember, before the establishment of the KR, they were the keepers of the flame of knowledge as one of their tasks when preparing against a desolation.

from another thread this is tangentially related to and split from. HOWEVER: There WAS an assumption made. He asked for two things, “Capacity to stop what was coming. The capacity to save humankind.” Assuming that those are the same thing. What if they are not? The Heralds and others have been in the "Stop what was coming" business for over four thousand years. Personally, I do not think in the long run they were doing mankind any favors in the "save humankind" department... What if his Intelligence and Compassion are inverse to each other because he asked for two mutually exclusive things? Intelligence to stop one, and Compassion to save the other? The capacity for both, but the necessity to make a choice? P.S. Not to proud to ask for upvotes if you think I am on to something...