IllNsickly

As has been said by many others, Mr. Sanderson is very good at not writing strictly Good vs Evil. There are always complex shades of grey in his stories. This is part of why I like his books so much.

Exactly what Calderis said. Buenos Dias.

I feel like this is DEAD wrong. Jasnah soulcast her bite of the bread because that is all she had contact with. The whole jar of jam was soulcast because there was no way for her to specify a particular portion. Given Jasnahs propensity for declining wards, I simply cannot belive that she would offer the one she did accept as fodder, in an attempt to catch an assasin. There is evidence, from Mraize's conversations, that she has killed other assassins. She had no need of Shallan to fill the 'Bait' role in order to catch another one. Absolutely not, Says I.

Don't know where it is, but I read a WoB that said Shallan has progressed the farthest in Oaths. On topic, however... I think the fight scene between Kaladin and Szeth at the end of WoR gives us a hint about Shardplate. Did you notice the behaviour of the Windspren during the fight? How they sort of swarmed around him? I think that is a precursor to Plate. Windspren being related to Honourspren helps me feel better about my theory.

Oooohhh... The excessive flippant casualness positively screams Mat.... In other news, I'm not exactly sure I am intelligent enough to follow most of the posts, theories and conjecture i see here. Very well presented essay.

So much this.

While I do not sympathize with or condone Amaram, I really don't consider him Despicable. he is doing what he thinks is right. Ialai has given him a position of power and influence, I don't see him taking advantage of that position for the sake of Romantic Interactions. Feels completely out of character for him.

Humans aren't native to Roshar. They 'Stole' Stomlight via Spren with the Nahael bond.

See, I'll read/listen to the same book 12 or 14 times anyway. So the serialization of the first few chapters is A-OK in my eyes. I am also one of the rare few who is perfectly fine with spoilers. I'll get the E-Book and inhale it in the first 3 or 4 days and then get the Audiobook so i can get all of the details that I missed. It's like Stephen King said. Audio is the perfect format for seeing the whole story, because it eliminates the tendency for your brain to gloss over parts of the story.

After the conversation with Navani where he says he thinks he asked the Nightwatcher to take away the PAIN, that is what She did. I think Navani's Painrial is the key. It is too coincidental.

On the Dustbringer. I haven't cracked the book to double check, but weren't the Dustbringers mentioned immediately preceding the "Alas, not all Spren are as discerning as Honorspren" Quote in Dalinar's Vision of Nohadon? If not... Pardon, I beg. I guess that I wouldn't be surprised to find that several Orders Radiant aside from the Skybreakers didn't follow the same lines and allegiances. And to find out that they had a more ambiguous nature. I don't doubt that she is Radiant. I am sure that something in The Diagram pointed Taravangian in almost the perfect direction to find a Proto with favorable moral tendencies. Where does she stand and how much influence does Taravangian have over her is what I am most curious about.

My mistake on the Tag. And you have me pegged. Most of the things I am likley to post are quite a stretch.

Also becasue this is the Cosmere and 16 is the most perfectly magical number here.

Cosmere, not Stormlight. I am in for the long haul. Additionally, I have the Mistborn Trilogy as one volume, The Alloy saga as one Volume. You can see where my perception is skewed.

I would like to add that The Retured were Enslaved as well. Regardless of their situation. There are entirely too many comments correlating Real World Social Justice to the the goings on in The Cosmere. Be patient, these issues will all be addressed In Story. RAFO. There are still 16 Volumes in this Saga.

Mistborn spoiler tags are no longer necessary, I believe. But amidst all of the discussion about the Parshmen and their severed Spirit Webs and subsequent Slaveform situation, I have a few Random and possibly horribly off base thoughts. We already know that the Koloss are a Hemalugic Construct. Their: Size, Strength, Rage and Battle Prowess were a direct result of TLR's knowledge and insight. Effectively a Race bred for the sole purpose of being enslaved. Through Human, specifically, we can see the Sentience trying to push itself to the front of his consciousness. There is some evidence that the Parshmen (Slaveform) are a direct result of knowledge surmised, even if incorrectly, after the last Desolation. I am rather a proponent of the 'Great Magic unleashed Here' = 'The Recreance'= 'the Severing of the majority of the Parsh* population from their Rhythms' theory. Someone felt they had a valid justification. It happened. At this point, we are still waiting to find out what that Justification was. In the case of Sadeas, specifically, Bridgemen were an expendable resource. Pay them just enough to drink themselves to sleep and send them out tomorrow. Of the 3 forms of Slavery, I think that this is the worst. This was done in full knowledge of the Humanity of the people in question. They were either Destitute and hoping for a chance to improve themselves, Victims of the Elite Societies scheming, or just plain unlucky. It can be argued easily that the Parshmen were utilized as Slaves because they were completely incapable of acting independently with incomplete Spiritwebs or direct instruction. The Alethi preserved the vast majority of the Parsh** population. Perhaps their methods weren't ideal, but here we see groups of scattered Parshmen capable of thought, insight, reasoning and ALIVE . And as a result terribly bitter. The Skaa were another Enslaved race, but Harmony and the Industrial Revolution on Scadrial has helped progress that situation well past Rosharian Social Justice. I guess my biggest point is that we can't equate the Cosmere to Our Universe. The correlations fall flat as soon as they are made. Pre-Industrial Scadrial is the beat Correlate we have, and that is at best 200 years behind Earthly Human History.

I am just happy that this isn't a Parshemen/Endi= Blanket bad guys. I would have lost all Faith in The Cosmere if it had been that cut and dried.

@treblkickd On Dalinar 'The Benevolent Tyrant' vs. 'Blackthorn.' I will argue that his progressing Redemption DOES give him some moral ground. We have seen him for 2 volumes of this Saga focusing all of his effort on what can be safely called Hororable actions and goals. We have seen 2 interludes of Blackthorn Dalinar and the difference is STARK. Look at Alethi Elite Society as a whole (Lighteyes) by their standard, EVERYONE is beneath them. Of the Alethi Elite, only Dalinar has made any effort to move beyond this. His ongoing Redemption absolutely qualifies him to spearhead the movement. He has a flagrantly violent past, he had an awakening moment and has been slowly refocusing on the world around him. I understand that it isn't the Ideal, Poetic, Prosaic, paradigm shift that we think should happen (Based on Human experiences over the last few hundred years) but you've got to keep in mind that Roshar's situation is effectively centuries behind ours. You cannot apply our ideals and the lessons that we have spent so long learning directly to the Alethi. This is 4000+ years of 'Our Way of Life' and this is the VERY first time that they have seen it challenged. Give Dalinar some time, more than a little leeway (he is just learning, after all) and let him make his mistakes so he can learn even more. It has to start somewhere.

Ialai is Fain. And therefore a red herring. Mraize is Demandared. And will only be peripheral until the very end of the story.

This is a subject I have a fair amount of interest in and one of the plot points in the story that I am excited to see explored. if ever we make a genuine first contact with another species, their Virology and Epidemiology are going to be of PARAMOUNT importance. Will our physiologies be be similar enough that diseases will be contagious? Both theirs and ours. Not the BIG TIME diseases. The minor ones, The Sniffles. The ones that people don't think about simply because they are so common. Those are going to be the really nasty buggers.

@Blacksmithki The letters are illNsickly. That is my point, though. As irritating and inconvenient as the Common Cold is for us, with thousands of generations of immune response to combat it, it is still a thorn in our side. Think about it from outside of Us. For Rosharians, having ZERO immune response, the virus has the potential to be DEVASTATING. Small Pox: Even in Europe was never a minor disease, but Europans had spent generations developing antibodies and their immune systems were familiar with it. Cases occured, but never on a pandemic level. When the Europeans brought Small Pox to the New World, they were bringing a completely foreign disease. The Native Population had ZERO immune response to it and it tore through them like wildfire. (I am intentionally not commenting of the specific history of that particular bit of disgustingness)

Double meaning seems unlikely, I read it more as a currency reference.

My pennies on the pile for the odd, barely comprehensible Shallan quip. I drink a fair amount and wake up hung over on a semi-regular basis. In that state, clever quips seldom come out right or make sense. The cleverness doesn't translate well through that particular fog. I think it fit nicely in that context.

@The Invested Beard I fix wires.

@Calderis That is the very WoB that I was thinking about. And I agree. A completely foreign mutagen suddenly introduced to any ecosystem has very frightening potential. I can't imagine The Plague of Sniffles being anything minor. Especially considering WoB 'Frightening'.