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Thanks, Moogle. And great connection to the memory removal scene! I would not have seen that relationship on my own, but it really could fit together that way. In general, an end-negative magic system is "worse" because it is about removing and losing things rather than gaining power, but as you point out there are certain situations where that is exactly what is desired.

 

So theoretically if Hemalurgic acupuncture is possible, we could rethink an application of that magic system as primarily removal of something you want gone, with that trait potentially recycled as an added bonus (rather than theft in order to get something). In most cases removing part of your spiritweb/identity is not a good idea, but some potential situations where it might be:

• Traumatic events (e.g. the memory removal above, or severe PTSD like Dunny)
• Disabling emotions
• Controlling investiture by Odium (shoot voidbringers with a hemalurgic needle-gun to turn them good again )

The level of skill and ethical consideration would need to be extremely high to make this a useful tool and not a lobotomy. And obviously, greed being what it is, it would be very hard to guard against abuses of the system towards a Final Empire style usage. Still, I think there would be potential. (All of this being contingent on a rather wishful thought experiment.)

So I hope this isn't seen as necro-ing. I just came up with a theory almost identical to the OP, and did a search to make sure it was original before posting. Turns out, someone already thought of it. I'm posting both as an independent corroboration of the thought process, and also to add my own thoughts, since my interpretation is a little different.

 

Essentially, it makes sense to me that Feruchemical gold is able to knit together pieces of the spiritweb that have been disconnected but left in place. In the case of a shardwound, I think Feruchemical gold would be healing the connection, not regrowing a removed piece. In a hemalurgic application, that means that the torn edges of spiritweb can grow back together, making the spiking survivable, but that stolen traits would not be regrown.

 

Yes, the amount of health involved is substantial, so your average ferring may be hard pressed to heal themselves after spiking, but a twinborn compounder like Miles could do it without blinking. (Someone who casually blows himself up with dynamite just to untie a few knots probably has some health to spare.)

 

This is, of course, assuming that the necessary gold abilities are left in place. Importantly, we know that hemalurgy does not just steal the allomancy and feruchemy. Koloss are made through stealing strength or life force (I don't recall the word specifically). Though I am becoming a bit more skeptical of this application, I had initially thought that this theory would allow for sustainable hemalurgy. It seems possible to me that life force and strength, as things that are universal and needed daily, may be regenerable naturally, in the same way that your body makes more blood all the time as needed. If you don't die it is just a matter of time to fully recover from severe blood loss. (By way of extending the analogy, losing allomancy would be more like losing a kidney--also survivable in the right circumstances, but you don't grow a new kidney.)

So, if this part is true (and I admit it is the weakest point in the reasoning) then you could get an unlimited number of koloss-type spikes from a double gold twin born. This is particularly useful if the hemalurgy-powers-south-scadrial-tech theories are right.

 

I do like Darnam's thoughts on surgery through history. In particular, this idea:

I put to you that this is what hemalurgy as we've seen it is like; a brutal system that deals far, far more damage than it technically needs to, both in body and soul.

I think that hemalurgy has the potential to be performed properly, with neater incisions that take only and exactly what they have to, and follows up with spiritual sutures that hardly leave a scar. I see no reason to assume that this is the default setting.

It made me think of hemalurgic acupuncture. Maybe that will be a thing.

My guess is the kickoff for the WoR version of the Steelhunt.

The rules link is nicely prominent now. I noticed it yesterday and thought "Was that there before?" 

I did not know about the help articles, either. Those probably would have helped me find some features faster.

 

I am one of the many de-lurked by the Shardhunt, and I have to say that the process of doing the Shardhunt was a really great introduction to the various site features and abilities. I probably would not have explored several of those areas without being prompted, and it was much more fun than an orientation email. Obviously it can't be a mandatory initiation, but is there a way to emphasize the Shardhunt for members joining 17S in the future? When the steelhunt is essentially over, maybe the code on the final page could be replaced by other incentives, and the welcome email or post could point them to the start of that.

 

Just brainstorming: As far as incentives, maybe we could ask Team Brandon for an exclusive piece of content (pre-release chapter, concept art by Isaac, etc.) once every 6-12 months. Not enough to be burdensome but regularly enough to always have something new and exciting. The goal here is not so much to get stuff as to have a reward for our new and existing forum members.

Gotcha. Just another example of digging too deep for clues (a common problem on these forums) 

 

And don't worry about English errors--they in no way imply "dumb". I think the worldwide representation on 17S is one of the real strengths of the community. Props to you and to everyone who has the guts to do this in a second language. (I definitely wouldn't try to use my Spanish or Japanese to post to a fan site.)

I can't seem to get the videos to play. Any suggestions on how to use that site?

...referring to his bond with Sly. 

 

I find this misspelling of Syl's name to be entirely appropriate.

 

So, now I'm curious. There is another forum user (Natans) who routinely types Syl as "Sly." I had thought it was a misspelling, but what if it's a language variation in WoK translations? I'm pretty sure Natans is a Portuguese speaker.

@EvilKetchupCow, was "Sly" intentional or a typo? 

On an unrelated note, listeners feels wrong for the name of the Parshendi. I mean, I get why it should feel right - they all listen to their songs and all that, but I that sounds like a weird thing to do, define oneself as the subject of an action, rather than the object. If anything, I'd go with singers or maybe speakers, not listeners. Listeners feels more like there was a time when all they did was listen (and obey) - to their gods maybe.

 

I disagree. I don't think listener sounds passive or like "the subject of an action." They are listening to the rhythms of the world, to which they align their words, thoughts, actions, and possibly even form. These rhythms are inaudible to or ignored by other races. To me the name evokes a sense of harmony with nature and knowledge of the essence of things, similar to the ethos found in many Native American cultures.

 

 

Brandon read it once, so I would guess that he's using the right melody (to the extent that he sings it). No offense to Brandon, but I imagine that you might sing it a bit better.

Link (mp3, lullaby starts at ~4:30).

 

I've listened to some readings before, and this reminded me--I love Brandon's writing, but I'm glad I get to read it myself. His inflection and sentence emphasis is always completely different from my own. That kind of thing bothers my ear a lot more than the varying name pronunciations being discussed in this thread.

Hi I'm new!

I strongly suspect that the inevitable Kaladin/Szeth battle will end with Szeth being captured alive.

Welcome, Defiant!

The main reason I don't agree with the captured-alive scenario is that there are not many cells that will hold up to a shardblade.

There are ways around this (e.g. round-the-clock guard by two people in plate, or a specially designed cell that will collapse if cut, or maybe just immobilize his hands in a way that he couldn't grasp the blade if he ever did summon it), and maybe the Alethi have had occasion to think of such methods. Still, they don't seem the type to go in for non-lethal force, so I doubt restraining a shardbearer comes up very often.

I think it's simplest to assume Shen is dullform when he arrives at bridge 4, and therefore a listener spy.

For those who think he was in slaveform but discovered another form on his own, I suggest looking for descriptions of Shen's appearance or behavior and trying to find a shift after a highstorm. If such evidence exists, I would be much more willing to believe he is not a spy.

Thanks to all who contributed. I have made some formatting changes to Mysty's version, and the updated file is here.

I did two things:

• Added larger, clearer glyph symbols for the surges and orders.
• Changed the surge layout to get rid of the "primary" and "secondary" designations. Now the surges lie between the orders that share them.

Are there additional changes you'd like to see?

Edit: fixed the link

Shen is not a spy. If he were, being that parshendi can communicate across distance, then Eshonai would have known for a fact that the humans had surge binders and her friend would not have had to convince her of the fact. This means that their spies infiltrated the parshmen slave groups.

I'm not convinced. The evidence Jasnah cites for them communicating across distances is that they can all sing in time with each other no matter how far apart. But we know from Eshonai's POV that they are always attuning to one or another rhythm that they can "hear." It doesn't follow that they can actually communicate across distances, only that they all share a connection to something humans can't sense.

 

In (sort-of) support of this, think about the first time Kaladin wears the Parshendi bone armor. Most of the enemy archers shoot at him in outrage, but not all of them. I assume that if they were really passing information telepathically then all of the archers would have noticed and been distracted. Similarly, in the battle of the Tower, Kaladin fights through to a group of Parshendi who haven't taken the gems out of their beards yet. It could be that they underestimated him and hadn't bothered to do that, but to me it means that they hadn't gotten the (very important) message about a surgebinder using stormlight from your beard to kill you.

it is easier and probably cheaper to just soulcast the sphere around the gem

Hmm... In the past I've been dismissive of suggestions that the glass of the spheres is soulcast, partly because of the apparent high cost of soulcasting, and partly because of descriptions of flawed spheres (i.e. with air bubbles in them, which you would expect from inserting a cut gem into molten glass.) I also doubt that in Vorin kingdoms people would be comfortable with the ardentia controlling the currency (since they are the ones with soulcasters). Memories of the Hierocracy are pretty strong.

 

On the other hand, molding clay around a gem and then soulcasting it would be incredibly easy, especially since gems themselves are immune to soulcasting so you wouldn't have to worry about accidentally destroying your wealth. And in a routine process like that, it would be unsurprising to have blemishes like air bubbles introduced occasionally (provided of course that the air doesn't also get transformed). This clay system is much more plausible than the air-to-glass versions I've heard before. It accounts for the flattened bottoms of spheres, and gets around the need to hold the gem somehow while the soulcasting happens.

 

For now I'm going to continue to assume that it is really glassblowers making the spheres. That technology does not seem at all out of place on Roshar, especially since we've seen stained-glass windows, glass bottles, etc.

...not that it matters much for this discussion of gem sizes. Sorry if this sidetracks us.

Back on topic:

I guess the issue for realistically figuring a lower limit (beyond what's too small to cut/facet/weigh in the first place) is whether a dun chip could be determined as counterfeit or genuine

Does anyone know anything about pre-modern gem cutting? I would be curious to learn about the necessary tech/tools and the size limitations.

This is a bit out there, but it's my honest prediction:

First half of the fight is Kaladin POV, he does his best but Szeth gets around him and dispatches Dalinar. Sadness! Then, switch to Szeth POV for the twist! Apparently-innocent-spectator Shallan has fooled him with a lightweaving and Dalinar is really on the other side of the room. Szeth is about to fail, can't trust his eyes, and is running out of stormlight fast. More fighting, ending with Szeth's narrow escape.

Actually on topic:We haven't seen an old parshman, have we?

We have seen neither old or young parshmen.  The closest I could find to a child parsh was the young (teenage?) parshendi that Dalinar was fighting on the tower plateau.

I'm pretty confident that Dalinar was calling the femalen Parshendi "youths" because they were beardless and the idea of women fighting never occurred to him. Kaladin and Jasnah were both a bit more observant.

Great reasoning, Fingerstyle, and thank you for the size estimates. I particularly like the wineglass photo, at it gave me a good visual of what we're looking for. I agree that those appear to be upper-limit mark sized.

 

I had interpreted the loupe being used to look for counterfeits, but I didn't know that quartz melted too low to be inset. Is that true for all types of molten glass or just the formulation we use today? I know that the process for making glass a few hundred years ago was probably very different than ours now. I'll have to go look up glass blowing etc. now.

 

I definitely follow your logic all the way through, and agree to the valuation ratio limits you arrived at. I would add that the newly developed technology of a proximity-detecting-fabrial is likely to be a huge portion of the cost, as compared to the gemstone "battery" that powers it. The fact that Rysn is surprised by the fabrial's cost suggest that it is much more than she (a trader) would have assumed for the metal and gem it's made from. Using the figures above, that reduces the size inflation factor by whatever the actual-to-expected cost ratio is. That puts it well below 3, in my mind, and probably closer to 2.

 

EDIT: Also, welcome to the forums! Glad to have you here.

Much of the Shattered Plains had once been populated, but the largest city had been here at the center. So now the ruins of her people made their home in the ruins of a dead city.

I think that means multiple cities or at least towns near each other, but not a sprawling metropolis.

The recent preview chapters have confirmed that even chips contain cut gems, and that "gemstones are precisely weighed before being encased in glass." The context implies that all chips weigh the same.

So each denomination is a specific karat of gem, and all gems are cut and faceted before being put into spheres. I think we're getting closer.

Does no one else think that it can be read as there being 3 dead bodies in Shallans chapter "red carpet once white" 2 women (1 being her mother) and a man?

I read it as at least 3 bodies, probably more, but with only two gender-specified (i.e. the woman is her mother). She is being carried away by her father, and "in the room behind him, dark corpses stretched out on the floor." A few steps later, she is carried over the unbloodied woman in white (her mother). I can't tell if "the man who bled" is there next to Shallan's mother or if he is one of the corpses already mentioned.

 

• Huh. Why are the listeners' genders malen and femalen? What makes them different from male and female?
• Aaand here the genders are male and female. Maybe the previous addition of 'n' at the end of each is just some English quirk.

I just read it as an alternate plural ending

I agree with Morsk's post on the previous page--gender characteristics are suppressed or latent except in mateform, so other forms receive a different designation. I interpret it loosely as "male-ish and female-ish".

Oh! Probably been pointed out before, but the midnight essences were cut in half by shardblades. That means that whatever makes something "alive" doesn't apply to the Ten Deaths even when moving around, attacking Radiants, etc.

Its a sign! If it is a girl you should name her Syl. If it is a boy you should name him....well I don't know what my favorite Rosharan boy name is, better just have a girl ;-)

Best of luck with the little one and don't get any voidbringer nannies!

Hey, thanks! I forgot to put "Are you a potential Voidbringer" on our babysitter interview list. That was a close one.

It's a boy, so no luck on Syl. 

 

3. Watch the Olympics. Maybe.

Oh, I totally forgot about the Olympics being this month. Hopefully I can work those in.

I will:

Try to be productive at work (I have some lab experiments that really need to be wrapped up).

Get the baby room ready for our first child (due in 4 weeks, perilously close the the WoR due date)

Watch the new season of Sherlock.

Sleep as much as possible (more because of the baby than WoR).

My reaction to Amaram talking about how he got his Shards:

 

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?! You ungrateful little schmoozle, those aren't yours! *Fumes at computer screen*

 

My hate for Amaram has gone up exponentially. Please let Kaladin stick him on the ceiling! 

I'm seeing several people say things like this, but I reacted very differently. Amaram's words are what Pattern would call a true lie--he never says that he won them himself, and he is accurate in describing where they came from. They just never contradict the assumption that most everyone has about what happened.

What Amaram did was awful, but I'm actually rooting for him in the coming confrontation. Definitely redeemable.

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. 

There was a suggestion that Eshonai may have multiple viewpoints within an interlude set. If that happens twice, that makes 14.

Alternatively, we could just be getting extra from other POVs

Re: the OP of whether spheres as currency is a post-radiant development, Dalinar's Starfalls vision caught my attention. He observes that the light is from an oil lantern rather than stormlight, which strikes him as primitive. I can't recall a vision where he mentions spheres or gems except as part of a fabrial like Regrowth. He doesn't always comment on their absence either, though, so it's not difinitive. Does anyone have a quote from one of his visions where spheres were present? If not, that goes quite a ways toward supporting the theory of the OP in my mind.