Bramble Thorn

I think "punishment" is the wrong word. Better would be price. You ask for the Nightwatcher to use her power on you for a purpose of yours. She does, and is then allowed to use her power on you for a purpose of hers. It does not have to be a curse, and does not have to be proportional/related to what you ask. That one day experienced by Taravangion allowed him to see the actions he needed to take to make changes several years into the future. to try and set up a multi stage butterfly effect. Likely the Nightwatcher has similar ability, full time, and the see the repercussions of actions, and some inkling of how making someone see upside down, or speak backwards, will or won't change subsequent events. They may even be the same thing. In Taravangion's case there may not even be a curse component to separate from what was given to him. He did not ask to be smart enough so he could figure a way out of this mess, or make any other assumptions, which may have been wrong and hindered him. He basically trusted the genie. If there was more than one way to give him the capacity to save the world, and one of those worked for the Nightwatcher, she may have saved time and effort by giving him that and calling it a day.

It looks like you are right, and Dalinar did not try to verify if Amaram was righteous until after Kaladin was imprisoned. Taln's interlude was in the Interludes between parts two and three. Dalinars "sickness" is first mentioned in chapter 60 "Veil Walks" way later in part four. Dalinar stated he did not set the trap until the blade was bonded. Implication from Amaram being made head of Dalinar's New Knights Radiant is he did a perfunctory investigation the first time Kaladin mentioned it, and found nothing. I say perfunctory because Sadeas (likely through his wife's spy network) was able to uncover the truth. Also, he did not even tell Kaladin the results of his investigation until he had made Amaram a "radiant" and Kaladin confronted him. If Kaladin had not made the very public proclamation, I doubt Dalinar would not have really tried to find out the truth until it was to late and he experienced Amarams true nature somehow.

I have been on this forum told there is a WoB that in the past, Odium was not heavily invested on Roshar, but currently he is, and that it would be difficult to withdraw that investiture. Source Anyone? Presumably, he was not invested when he Shattered Devotion and Domination on Sel, but has become so since, and cannot leave, or would be severely weakened in a Shard vs. Shard conflict elsewhere in the Cosmere if he left the Greater Roshar Solar System. So the entire Solar System is the "prison" where he could get to Hoid, who is in the prison with him, albeit just visiting. The author of the Response is Wrong, and probably also an Idiot. Because non-intervention basically equates to the status quo, and status quo is set to release Odium into the wider Cosmere. My reasoning follows... The Heralds were good men and women, for a long long time. But now, they are broken. Dangerously broken, broken in a way that serves Odium and weakens the defenders of Roshar. Some of them have a plan to keep the Desolations from returning, which involves keeping surgebinders from returning. But their plan, I do not think it works the way they think it works. A Metaphor: The Desolation is a recurring game between to teams, Team Roshar, and Team Odium. Their "solution" to the Desolations is an unspoken gentleman's agreement that when a Desolation is scheduled to occur Team Odium will not show up... and in exchange someone on Team Roshar gets their legs broken. And as long as the bone breakings continue, Odium stays in the bleachers watching the opposition shoot itself in the foot. This continues until the entire roster of team Roshar has broken arms and legs, as well most of those likely to be called up to play. That happened a while ago. Most of the Damage the Heralds could have done to hinder Team Roshars chances of victory, Odium has allowed them to do. So while Odium might get a chuckle about silver-cheek murdering a surgebinder for being the unknowing accomplice to a murder 40 years ago, it is not going to stop him from bring the entirety of Team Odium to the field where all they are facing is a bunch of broken armed, broken legged fools who he thinks have no chance of winning, and finishing the Heralds work. Non intervention lets Odium Win. And I think winning lets Odium Shatter Cultivation and/or withdraw his investiture from Roshar (probably with unpleasant consequences for Roshar) and sets him free into the wider Cosmere.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/4761-stormlight-investiture-invested-oaths-also-surgebinding-type-zero/ are where my thoughts on the subject is in the first post. The only difference is instead of saying "stormlight is not investiture" I should be saying "stormlight is investiture,but that word, I do not think it means what you think it means" When a Feruchemist stores stuff in a metalmind the stuff in a metalmind is also called investiture. Basicially, I think Stormlight is investiture in the same way that strength stored in pewter is investiture, where the strength is NOT the power of creation being used up (to be regenerated later), but created by a natural process (your body) and shardic power is only being used in that something is allowing the strength of your body to be stored in the metal. I think that assuming investiture means "the energy or stuff that makes up Shards of Adonalsium" is lazy thinking. I think stormlight is related to the Cognitive realm, and natural processes there, not the highstorm. This is because Lift can metabolize stormlight from food, because she exists partly on the cognitive. This is due to a blessing/curse of the nightwatcher, whose gifts/costs all seem to have a cognitive aspect thus far. All this leads to stormlight being NOT the raw power of Adonalsium, but something natural to the cognitive, and any "power of creation" used is limited to allowing it to be stored in gems, used by surgebinders, brought into the physical realm and exist there. And even then the highstorms may be more based on natural prcesses than shardic power. Not enough is known yet.

We (human beings; no offence meant to any spambots reading) have a tendency to like things simple, rather than accurate. This can lead us to take a set of examples and over generalize them into "laws" even when we know those laws break down around the edges. Remember, this conversation is about Kaladins assertion that “If I toss something upward, it comes back down.” is an application of a natural law. Consider that when Syl calls it "an agreement among friends" she is not referring to the agreement among spren, but among mankind? After all, Kaladin seems to see what he does with surge binding as breaking/skirting the laws of nature rather than a part of it, which sounds like a habit Syl wants to break. After all, unlike Earth a Windrunner can add effective thrust to a quantity of volume without also having to add expensive solid state fuel that add more mass to the equation. Enough lashings on something, and it would be high enough in the atmosphere when the stormlight ran out the lessened gravity would not be able to overcome inertia, and it could keep going forever. He could be having all sorts of fun with this, learning the most efficient stormlight to distance mortar trajectories with giant boulders, and trying to send Brightlords into low orbit before their corpses burnt up upon re-entery. But he is all caught up on notions of "not being evil" and "not violating the laws of nature" when that is just lazy thinking.

Citations Follow. So. This is basically a math discrepancy. Even it was (much) less than 100 Desolations, there must have been a lot of them, enough that choosing 100 Desolations as a nice round number didn't raise any eyebrows when the histories were written afterward. These can last decades, are comprehensively destructive, and take centuries to recover from. As an implication, there are centuries between Desolations. If not, there would never be a recovery, instead of a centuries long one. The Heralds are not there to help the rebuilding, as they have to go to Damnation between Desolations. Being conservative, if there were 50 Desolations, with 100 years (a century as opposed to centuries) between them, that is 5,000 years in Damnation at a minimum. The time they have been tortured is "Centuries, PERHAPS Millennia of torture" If the torture had been going on from the beginning, there would have been no uncertainty. it would have been "uncounted Millennium of torture" So the Torture seems to have only started in the last 5-12 Desolations. And I think the reason why is the due to the Knights Radiant, and how effective they were during the Desolations, and picking up the pieces afterwards. Before the KR, it went like this: The Heralds come to the world, announce the Desolation, and have a little time to kick everyone's asses in gear. Then the Voidbringers weigh in. They try to destroy everything. You, and your little dog too! The are beaten back at great cost. Desolation over, so the Heralds leave. Mankind is left to pick up the pieces by themselves. They know the Voidbringers will be back, but not in the lifetimes of themselves, or their children's or grandchildren's lifetimes. (I.e. not in any current incumbents term of office) Also, before the Voidbringers were defeated, in addition to getting you and your dog, they got the Westminster kennel club, and all the dog care books they could find, in hopes of getting the next ten generations of dogs by proxy. Odium seemed to be playing a numbers game. All those Desolations, he only needed to win ONE. And if people were not diligent about rebuilding civilization and preparing, they would start the next Desolation at a disadvantage. From there, Odiums gains would start to snowball. The came the something that was never part of the plan, the Knights Radiant. Now there had always been Surge Binders, but they ran the gamut of human experience. Some kept their head on their shoulders; some had their head up their chull. And as power has a tendency to corrupt, there were probably more of the latter. But thanks to the Oaths Radiant, the ones who were able to get their act together were not just qualitatively a better class of people, they were quantitatively more powerful than your garden variety douchebag. It was a dark day in the annals of human dickery. So basically, in addition to the 10 Heralds, you have hundreds of Mini Heralds, both in power and personality, will not go away when the battles are done. Even if you had 90% casualties, there are still dozens upon dozens left after the Desolation, to serve as a seed to civilization. And gentlemen, they can rebuild it! Stronger. Better. What took centuries to rebuild now takes decades. The nations that face the next Desolation have caught up to where they were, and begun to go beyond it. Odium's old path to victory is no longer viable. If the number of total Desolations allowed by the Oathpact is limited, he may even be looking at the possibility of total defeat. So, time for some Epic Rules Lawyering... (Personally, I like another persons theory here, that the Heralds had a home base and respawn point in the Tranquiline Halls, which was not covered in the Oathpact, except for them retiring there between Desolations. When he shifted tactics he invaded it and started spawn camping, because it was not covered in the rules. Thus the Tranquiline Halls became Damnation)

Odium seem to be playing a long game. The way I think it went down was this: First the Heralds, because they were are seemingly immortal, and well informed of the way of things. Just because they abandoned the honorblades does not mean Odium was done with them; it just means Odium was more subtle in messing them up, to where their actions serve his purposes more often than not. Then dismantling the Knights Radiant and suppression of Surgebinders, then the dismantling of accurate history and redefinition of such things as Honor, all to set up the field to divide and conquer, not only unprepared, but with various "trained errors" inherent in the system Not that this is necessarily a master plan. More like Rosher was actually pretty well put together, with multiple interlocking defenses that supported each other, such that the at the end, before the Heralds broke, the system for holding off the desolation's able to continue indefinitely. Which is why there has been such a gap between the Last Desolation and the True Desolation, to give Odium (and entropy) time to wear everything down. No ten Heralds, no Knights Radiant, no silver Kingdoms, no Nahel bonds, no visions, no help from cultivation, no spren, and institutional dishonor to block any bonding with honor spren. Also "voidbringers are myths," the "Thrill" of the lighteyes, the KR are the bad guys, etc and so on. Either this guy as been busy, or all the stupid from the Wheel of Time got up to 88mph and crossed dimensions.

I am going to have to call you out here. To use a metaphor, suppose you are against the idea of prepubescent children being molested and raped; most people are. A god comes to you and offers to make a deal with you; every day you spend with him in hell is a day that no child molestation occurs on Earth. So you spend several centuries in hell having tea parties, and collating tax returns, and watching late-night religious infomercials, whatever. Not ideal, but bearable. Then something changes and the god you made the deal with opens the Viva la Vivisection Day Spa and Resort and has you booked there for the next three eternities. After approximately a millennium of this you have recalculated the cost benefit analysis of the bargain. This does not mean you are now pro-child rape. You are probably STILL anti-child rape; you are just slightly more anti-getting tortured to death every day for the next several centuries. --- They did not decide to "get out of the game" they decided the torture had to stop. Also note that they helped stop the Last Desolation BEFORE surrendering their swords to get out of the torture. So I get the impression a world where the Desolation continued/succeeded is not a place they want to be. So if one of the Heralds had a way to help thwart Odium that did NOT require consecutive centuries of torture, I do not see then saying no just because they had let of their Honorblades. Please note that "Wielder of the Honorblade, Upholder of the Oathpact, Odium's Torture Butt-Monkey" and "Stormfather" are different jobs, with different job requirements. Refusal to perform one job does not imply refusal of the other. (edited for spelling/typos/punctuation)

I want to reread The Way of Kings before the release of Words of Radiance, and would like a compiled Ars Arcana to have to reference separate during this. One this has what the forum consensus of the Heralds in relation to the ten essences, and their archway pictures, so I can reference it before I read each chapter. Also the relations of the KR orders, and their glyphs, surges and their glyphs, and their glowy colors, all in relation to the 10 essences and the soulcasting and divine qualities. All in one place / easy to read format, So I can look for all the correspondences as I reread. Does something like this exist anywhere?

This "Internal" vs "External" seems to be people incorrectly trying to apply a quirk of the Mistborn Ars Arcana magic rules to the Surgebinding System. The "Surface Tension" surge affects physical phenomena. You know, molecules and rust. Literally. You can probably use the surge to make a turd the focus for a banana peel joke, and as stormlight powered ex-lax to relieve constipation. Because the floor is physically there, and so is the meat bag your consciousness currently calls home. Trying do decide if Lift is "Awesomeing" her skin or the floor because you think she cannot do both is you making a very unsupported assumption.

From the Lift interlude, the spren there believes Cultivation does not interact with humans much since the demise of Tanavast, having abandoned them. While looking at Shin Kak Nish would give you useful insight into Cultivation, I would not say the same about modern Shinovar. Much like modern modern Vorinism and the culture of the Alethi, is less a window into Tanavast, and more an indicator of Sunmaker Shenanigans and general Odiousness going on. From Szeths internal thought on his punishment, voidbringers, and honor, I suspect Shinovar got a similar treatment.

Hello. People in this thread have been assuming that the mass of a unit of currency is proportional to its worth in chips. This is for example a mark is approximately 5 times the size as a chip, and a broam about 20 times the size/mass as a chip. I do not think that is the case. I think as in real life larger sizes are rarer, and the value goes up faster than the size does. Part of this is how gemstones are used up in fabrials, where over using a gemstone can crack it. I assume the cracked gemstone can we refaceted into two or more (smaller) gemstones, with assorted leftover chips, marks, and possibly broams. If currency value was strictly mass based, very little value would be actually lost, just coin changing to smaller denominations. I think a chip is any piece of gemstone that will still hold stormlight, as small as a chip can get, up to about a twice that size, when the gem cutter would try and divide it into two chips. Unless twice the size of a chip is the size of a mark, of course. Probably not able to be worked into facets due to small size, but likely to have "facets" anyway due to place shearing when struck. (I am imagining how trash pieces struck off of obsidian have at least one smooth surface.Also; I know nothing about gem cutting.) A mark would be less than 5 times the size of a chip, probably just over twice the size of a chip (enough that it could be worked into two or more chips that each hold stormlight.) Anything large enough to cut into two marks would be a broam. Broams are more workable both because of their size, and because they are the largest standard denomination. So if you are using it as currency, unless it was large enough to become two broams, any mass above accepted broam size is "wasted," and would used train apprentice and journeyman gem smiths in faceting before potentially damaging a actual gemstone, where a bad cut could destroy its usefulness in a fabrial. Aside from larger gems being rarer as a reason for worth not being 1:1 proportional to size, another reason is surgebinders like Kaladin, who can power his superpowers quite well from pocket change. I think one reason is because (for example) in changing a diamond broam for 50 diamond chips, even though the broam is larger than any larger chip, there is more gemstone materiel in all the chips added together. Also if Kaladin got a hold of a diamond gemstone (which is worth dozens of diamond broams/ a couple thousand or so diamond chips) as efficient as he is in stormlight usage, if it actually held 2000 or so diamond chips worth of stormlight, that would be a LOT of energy, more than I think he would ever use between highstorms. And such gems ARE used in shardplate, and do not last long at all. I do not think they are that inefficient. I think gems are used in shardplate instead of broams because they give more energy. Just not that much more. Warfare is a matter of inches after all, and every bit matters.

This would be a bad idea. The ability to make Soulcaster fabrials is currently thought to be lost. Shallan was able to compare her fathers and Jasnah's soulcasters at the same time, and found them identical to visual inspection. So any craftswoman making such parts would have been given enough information that it would be reasonable to assume they might deduce it was parts for a fabrial. Also, her mother is a Artifibrian. So if craftswomen are being hired to make soulcaster parts in secret, and then the a prominent member if the Kholin household turns up with a undocumented Soulcaster that works, people might get the wrong idea. An idea worse that Jasnah being outed as a surgebinder. A found soulcaster in the possession of the Kings sister is not worth the diplomatic hassle, let alone a war. Evidence implying that the Kholin house has rediscovered the secret of soulcasters, and is keeping it a secret for themselves, That is worth going to war over, from everyone who wants that power for themselves. Think of how essential soulcasters are in the current campaign.against the parshendi. I think she either soulcast it herself from a description and/or illustration she researched, or brought her mother into the conspiracy.

This is what I think. Considering our one first hand experience with visions, their message and who it was from, calling all visions of the future voidbinding looks like a deliberate attempt to poison the well. The fact that the Heirocracy tried something similar to what Dalinar is being asked to do, because of visions from the Almighty, makes it a near certainty to me that the visions are not a recent phenomenon. They are either ongoing, or Cyclical. Either the Hierocracy meant well in the beginning, and some asshat politicos in charge of the Hierocracy hijacked it, or they just lost, and the winner justified it in the history books. Or both. Either way, I think the visions were real, and were Dalinars visions.

Stolen from another post I just made... Lift's spren says its native home is on the cognitive plane. Also Lift can create stormlight from food because the Nightwatcher made her exist partially on the cognitive plane. Incidentely this means Stormlight likely DOES NOT equal investiture, unless you argue that the energy stored in fat cells on the physical realm is investiture. It is either a power source from the cognitive, and bled into the physical that can power the investiture (i.e. surge bindings) and/or it it a metaphysic key, The same way the metal mistborn' burn to use allomancy is not investiture or a power source. ... It seems to me stormlight is not actually investiture at all. The ability to utilize it on the physical plane may be something investiture can grant, but stormlight itself is just good old fashioned make-Redbull-look-like-decaffeinated-tea energy, There seems to be a problem of here lately of calling everything investiture, when it is not. The way it seems to me is first, there is the Shards, then there are Slivers, then Investment and invested objects, then phenomena caused by a Shards/Slivers interaction with everything else. Way back Brandon mentioned how all his magic was either end positive, neutral, or negative, with only the end positive result needing power added from the shard itself. Everyone seems to have been assuming that surgebinding was a end positive result, with the stormlight the equivalent of the mists of preservation, where you were drawing in the power of creation to surgebind. With Lift "Metabolizing" food (and her own body fat, it seems) into stormlight, this seems not to be the case. Now, storm light could still be a key metal on Scradrial that opens a gate to the power of creation, instead of powering it itself, it seems to have a power of its own, unrelated to the surges. Which makes me think that for most people, surgebinging is a net neutral, using the stormlight energy only, just like using it to give endurance/speed up healing/etc. In fact, I wonder if the base Nahel-bond has any investment with a shard necessary at all. Consider this (totally not really) hypothetical situation. Someone has a Lerasium bead. Solidified Preservation Investiture. Black Gold. Texas Tea. They were not created by Preservation/Ruin and have NO residual Preservation investment in them at all, however minute. They swallow the bead and burn it. The preservation invested in the bead is used up, but will regenerate at the Well of Ascension over the course of a millennium. The new mistborn, does he necessarily have any Preservation invested in him, or just a (really strong) link with the power of creation Preservation holds, caused by his interaction with Preservation changing his SDNA? I am mentioning this because someone had mentioned Odium temporarily increasing his investiture during desolations to power voidbinding. This was debunked for other reasons, but no one called out this part of the theory as problematic. But personally, I do not see Odiums system as being powered by Odiums slice of the power of creation. I see that as being hoisted off on either the user, or victims of the user. Ala "Send someone to the great beyond, get an info dump from the great beyond." Just Saying. I think the Knights Radiant DID have actual investment from honor, and that is why they were so powerful, and why Kaladin is more powerful than Szeth. Or more specifically, I think the RADIANT OATHS were invested with The power of Honor (either by Tanavast himself, or Natahan via the Dawn Shards) Because things seem to be happening on more than one plane, and with all these things pointing to the cognitive as important, I see cognitive objects as valid targets for investiture as physical ones. Also, The Radiant oaths still have power after the splintering of Honor, a problem of they were being invested on an individual basis. Plus, as V said, "Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof." By investing the idea and not the person, there may be insulation against that investment being corrupted. If a invested person gets twisted, you get something like the heralds. But if a KR goes against a particular oath, he can do longer draw on the investment in that oath, but it is there waiting to be sworn by, by the next person to really believe in it... Thoughts?

About the lack of Spren in Shin, I am not so sure. In the quite we have, Szeths comments on their disrespect of stone (walking all over it), and stormlight (using it for such mundane purposes as a everyday torch substitute), AND spren (how everyone just ignores them when surrounded by them) I think they have access to both stormlight and spren in Shinovar, and they have significance there, likely because they are so rare*. And are probably of religious/spiritual import, and feature in ceremonies performed by the Stone Shamans. From the Steelhunt The stormlight I theorize the shamans use for their ceremonies could allow spren to be seen during them. * There could be rare places near the boarder in Shinovar where the storms might get through partially due to a break in the mountains. Or they could just send up people into the mountaintops before the storms get broken up to charge gems. (Which they do not use for trading, and may also be sacred)

My guess is they soulcast the stock feed glass. Since each soulcast has a small chance to crack the powering gem, probably quite a bit at a time. The glass blower gets it just hot enough to melt, and with a manipulating rod, encases a gem fragment inside like amber. They make a bead, and lets it free fall through the air into a barrel of water. Also guessing this the something the glass blowers have plenty of experience with. Also that legally, this is not legally a problem. as the gems are the wealth, and not representative of something else, and the glass is protection.

from http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/4646-moash-a-lighteyes-son-theory/ I think we DO know better. Specifically (most Alethi weilded) shardblades make lighteyes out of their bearers and immediate progeny from then on after acquiring the shard blade. More on that later. From a WoB, we also know that shenanigans from some sort of investiture or magic system, our universes physics apply. While this does not assure Alethi genetics are identical to ours, it does mean that any genetic rules of trait inheritance are ones that a (theoretical all-knowing and with proper equipment) genetic engineer would be able to reproduce here. That is, I assume base Alethi inheritance follow rules, and those rules are deducible.in world. I think this would by obfuscated by the shardblades. Also, and this is a total guess, but Historically lighteyed people were rare, and the swords did not work the way they do now. At least one of the Heralds has brown eyes... === What I am saying is the "light eyes phenomenon" may work mostly like they think it does because when this iteration of humanity was created, there is no reason it was necessarily created with the genes for blue/green/yellow/purple/ to begin with. So they would be very rare because they would only originally occur from world hoppers with those genes, mutants, or some other deliberate or freak event. When Kaladin said if he took the shard blade he would become Lighteyes, and his children would be born Lighteyes, there was no qualification concerning who the mother was. I think darkeyes + darkeyes w/shardblade + "bow chicka wow wow" = lighteyes I think there are hints to this in the book, namely where Kaladin was light eyes while inhaling stormlight. And Jasnah's statement that the old texts said voidbringers could hold stormlight perfectly. Also there seems to be a "surge type zero" because instead of spending stormlight to power one of the ten surges, it can be spent to enhance already extant abilities, like your ability to heal, or your endurance, and probably more. If fact, it may be a general power source. Also WoB statements that Odium was invested much more heavily in Roshar now than before, and another WoB that Kaladin was now immune to the Thrill. My theory is that as part of that investiture, since the Recreance all Children born to Shardbearers have some small amount of Investment from Odium. Like all Humans on Scadrial have a small minuscule amount of Preservation And Ruin. This allows them to hold enough stormlight to color their eyes, and power the Thrill in battle. This could also explain why Odium would do to the trouble of destroying the world after he won, like Dalinar saw in his visions. I mean he did not destroy the world of Elantris. But he was never heavily invested there. Brandon did say it would be difficult to reclaim that investiture... I do not know if Odium needs the presence of Corrupted Shardeblades to invest in this theory, or if he could invest almost anyone, but chooses this path to maximize class divisions, and disdain for the darkeyes, and between dahn and nahn. I mean it takes less effort to corrupt the ruling class, and have them be asshats to everyone else, than to corrupt the entire world. I think many more more people over the millennium have had the Tanavast info dump than Dalinar and the nameless darkeyes, but Odium set them up to fail, what with the "foretelling is a voidbinding art" and most of the ruling class ineligible to receive the visions due to being brought up to respect and emulate dishonorable behavior. Fair warning, It has been some time since I read the book, and could be hallucinating my references. Sorry.