Terra of Roshar

Wasn't this a conversation between Loki and Odin?  .. what  wait.. where am I ?...  (gibbers and goes a bit more insane from the glimpses..)

It's good to know I wasn't the only one who thought this. 

More seriously, though, my second thought was that it was a Herald, but now I'm thinking Syl makes the most sense.

That glyph hat is pretty much the best thing ever.

'Torture sublime' makes it sound like the person likes the torture (sadism?). I imagine Szeth will come to like his station in life and become a little bit insane after all the stuff he's been through. I highly doubt Taln would have a thought like that. I think it would be a good death-rattle or epigraph.

 

Or perhaps it is Szeth just being rather eloquent. The quote seems like the second half of a thought. What's the first part? What is it 'of'?

 

Also: Szeth regularly speaks with an elevated vocabulary. He's a scholar. Throughout TWoK he mentions that he has been trying to speak in a less refined fashion. He may have given up on that.

I imagine Taln would be a little off, too, after being abandoned by his friends to 4500 years of torture. I read the "torture sublime" bit as a sort of coping mechanism, trying to downplay how awful the torture was by focusing on its purpose: "for life it meant." Although, that's not really very journey before destination, now, is it? Did the Heralds follow the Ideals? It seems like they should, but I don't know...

Edit: spelling

Could be Szeth. Szeth follows his master's orders so he will not cease to exist and so that he will exist in agony ("torture sublime, for life it meant"). Szeth hears screams ("of screams his own that nobody heard").

 

Could also be Taln or another Herald, or maybe an Unmade, or a death-rattle...

I guess. But the diction sounds a little over-formal for Szeth to me. "torture sublime, for life it meant" sounds like a sentiment Szeth would agree with, but I don't feel like he would use that phrasing to express it. It sounds more like the style of the death rattles to me, or maybe Taln, because we don't really know what his internal monologue sounds like yet.

Of fires that burned and yet they were gone. Of heat he could feel when others felt not. Of screams his own that nobody heard. Of torture sublime, for life it meant.

Sound like a death-quote to me. Or maybe from Taln's POV? Or some other Herald? 

She felt and heard the storm approach. The ground shook, the air roared. Bits of leaves swept across her in a chill gust, like scouts before an oncoming army that charged behind, the howling wind its battle cry.

 

Shallan POV? No matter whose, what is she doing out in a highstorm? Unless it's Syl... That could be great.

I really, really hope Renarin is actually reading, not just glyphs. 

Nothing I have seen has said how many times, but it could have just been Kaladin using the same sphere several times subconsciously. I have no idea. 

 

Yeah, I guess that could be the case. It just seems to me like we would have seen more instances of people only using part of the stormlight in a gem if that was the case. But, like you said, we don't really know. Maybe WOR will clear things up.

(as correctly pointed out, gems recharge only once during the storm) 

 

Is there WOB confirming this? Because I had always assumed that gems could be infused with stormlight several times in a single highstorm from this:

Memories of deathspren were blended with relived parts of his life-- and both mixed with strange, sudden shocks of strength-- icy cold, but refreshing.

WOK hardback, p. 568 (emphasis Brandon's)

This is from the first chapter after Kaladin wakes up after the highstorm, and he's thinking back on the experience. I assumed when I first read it that it meant the sphere was recharged several times during the highstorm. Is there some reason to believe otherwise?

My intention is to read the excerpts again when I get the actual book, but I'm not sure I have enough self-control not to skip to chapter 7... and I'm likely to accidentally see bits near the end trying to look at the Ars Arcanum. 

He has three glyphs on his forehead, the shash glyph and a glyphpair. I forget whose glyphpair, but it's probably either Amaram's (as the one who branded him) or Sadeas's (as the highprince over Amaram and Kaladin). 

Yeah, it wasn't until after the first set of interludes that we got a chapter without double Herald icons in TWoK (well, technically one was double Wit, but still).

There's also the fact that surgebinding or Nahel bonds could be hastening the return of the Desolations, as Darkness believes. And someone on the Honorblades grant surgebinding thread (I forget who, sorry) suggested that the Heralds could have some innate powers, and the Honorblade only gives them marginally stronger surgebinding abilities than they would have without it. 

...And I got some very strange looks in the coffeeshop for this.

 

It's okay, Feather. I was reading the chapters in class, and it must have looked like I was having a seizure at the end of chapter 12. 

Also, speaking of the end of chapter 12,  someone needs to give Kaladin a hug. 

Wait, 14 interludes? how many sections are there? if there are 5 like in TWoK, we'll have different numbers of interludes between each two sections, but surely there can't be eight, not to mention that then there would only be two per interlude-set. 

The "soul-shattering" thing comes from the back cover, which is posted on Brandon's website.

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit.  Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves.  They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures.

 

We don't know what traumas the characters you listed had specifically, but the general idea comes from this quote and is supported by the similarity to Snapping from Mistborn. And a lot of people think Jasnah had some horrible experience that shaped her views on marriage and influenced her decision to kill those thieves in WOK. This is Shallan's narration after Jasnah explains her actions:

 

There was something in her voice, an edge Shallan had never heard before. 

 

What was done to you? Shallan wondered with horror. And who did it?

SylxKaladin is where it's at!

 

My ship seems so much less crack now. 

On a more serious note, I agree that Dalinar and Amaram's friendship is not going to help with Kaladin's trust issues. Just when it looked like things were going our way... hopefully he talks to Dalinar before Amaram gets there.

No, the interludes will presumably be between "books," like in WOK (so three sets of three interludes, wih Eshonai as the repeated POV like Szeth was then).

For [Dalinar] suspected his own hand had written those words.

 

WOR Chapter 8

Dalinar agrees that it was probably him.

Actually, we do have evidence that Dalinar isn't the only one recieving the visions (or at least that's how I've always interpreted it):

"That chanting, that singing, those rasping voices!"

 

--Kaktach 1173, 16 seconds pre-death. A middle aged porter. Reported seeing strange dreams during highstorms during the last two years.

(WOK paperback p. 1126)

Edited for spelling

I'm pretty sure death of the shardholder doesn't mean that the Shard is splintered. In the letter from the epigraphs in WoK, it says "Aona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered." Why would the author specify that the Shards had been splintered if that was an inherent part of what happens when the holder is killed? 

Also, on the subject of whether the Shattered Plains were shattered when Honor was splintered and there not being similar destruction on Sel, could the Chasm that messed up the magic in Elantris have been caused by Devotion or Dominion's shattering? Sorry this is kind of late, but I thought it had been overlooked.