Devo

I just want to throw into the mix here that it is totally possible for ordinary people to become immortal on Nalthis, and WoB is pretty clear that different magics can acheive similar effects and that magic systems can and have crossed between worlds. I add that only to say that it's not hard to imagine that Nohadon (or anyone else either) could have been born an ordinary guy and become immortal at some point.

Everything except Kaladin, Szeth, and all their possessions. Are you seriously saying that Kaladin should have Basic Lashed Szeth down to the ground just so he could use a Full Lashing to stick him to the ground? Basically, we just have to disagree. Your idea of a climactic fight scene seems to necessarily include using every power available, and I think that just makes for really awkward fight scenes that break immersion. "I own the sky, therefore I will bring this fight to the ground and put you in time out. Full Lashing: check." Kaladin jumps back, but Szeth is stuck. Szeth pulls out his bow and fires at Kaladin. Kaladin reverse lashes the ground to misdirect the arrow. "Reverse Lashing: check. Ok now that's out of the way. We can go back to the real fight now."

This. I have nothing against Kaladin using whatever powers are useful in a given situation. This discussion has been specifically why he didn't use a Full Lashing in his final fight against Szeth and clearly the answer is because there was literally no way to use it because they were flying around with nothing to stick anyone to. I'd love to see Kaladin using Full Lashings in situations where it makes sense, although I think Full and Reverse are always going to be overshadowed by Basic, simply because the Basic Lashing is just a lot more versatile. Also, gemhearts show up every few days on the Shattered Plains, and they are all property of the king as of the beginning of the book. Elhokar could very well award the gemheart to Kaladin or Shallan, why bother? The Alethi clearly have access to tons of huge gems (as demonstrated by the fact that even in the middle of the weeping there were still enough to power the final fight, the oathgate (x4), and Kaladin's flight home. In the grand scope, one gemheart isn't very exciting. The Knights Radiant are in a position to requisition whatever they need whenever they need it. Will that specific gemheart come back? Maybe, but who cares? If Kaladin wants 10 gemhearts to carry with him to fight Voidbringers or Unmade or whatever else in the next book, just ask and they're his.

I don't see how a Full Lashing would serve any purpose whatsoever in the fight with Szeth. What use could it possibly have been? Kaladin probably didn't use it because he was too busy flying around stabbing with his brand new Syl-powered Omni-Weapon. "WHY DIDN'T HE FULLY USE EVERY POWER HE HAS?!". Because jamming power usage in to places that it doesn't fit is super lame and serves no purpose. No aspect of that fight could have been cooler or more effective by Kaladin sticking something together It probably would have felt totally useless and arbitrary and rational people would be saying, "Did he really have to use every possible version of his powers just for the sake of using them?" For those who still wish there was some use of Full Lashing (and Soulcasting) I've written you a fanfic version: With no time to draw, Shallan Soulcast from air. Kaladin grabbed the picture of a big, yellow smiley face and instictively knew what to do. He filled it with stormlight and stuck it to Szeth's shirt. Szeth was so happy he gave Kaladin his honorblade and said "With this, your power will be multiplied and your Full Lashings will last forever! You are the chosen one!". And that is where stickers come from.

Sure they don't swear oaths, but I think they spoke truths to progress to discrete levels the way that other orders spoke oaths to progress to discrete levels. Also we don't know for sure that the truths were personal to each lightweaver. They may have been but it's possible we've never actually seen Shallan speak a truth toward her progression and that the truths are also specific words.

What choice has Taln had in the matter? Presumably he has only recently returned from his 4500 years of torment, when has he even had a chance to give up? He may yet do it. Also, Kaladin was facing the feeling that no matter what he did, it didn't help. Taln has the assurance that what he is doing actually matters.

Thanks for the quote, Moogle. With that, I'd agree he was involved with the modern Skybreakers, which only adds to the reasons to think that both of Shallan's parents were Skybreakers in the past as well. Consider the following: Shallan's parents were Skybreakers. Shallan's mother wanted to kill Shallan because she was a Surgebinder, and she thought he would agree because they were part of the same cause. Shallan's father wasn't so committed to the Skybreaker cause and opposed her. Shallan's father killed her mother's associate. Shallan killed her mother with Pattern. Shallan's father took the blame for killing her mother and never told anyone what Shallan was because the Skybreakers would come after her. Helaran believed that his father killed his mother and joined the Skybreakers, possibly because he knew of his mother's association but didn't know the whole truth. In the future, Shallan may learn the nature of the group her mother was involved in and of the Skybreakers (or they may be the same per the theory above), this could lead to her feeling disillusioned with Helaran (which is good for the Shaladin shippers out there).

Hear hear. I threw up in my mouth a little when I saw that on the wiki.

Can someone point me to how we know the art vandal is Shalash? And specifically how we know she is destroying images of herself? I think in that interlude she is destroying a whole bunch of unrelated art, so destroying art in general makes as much sense as saying that she's specifically destroying images of herself.

Why do people think Helaran is a Skybreaker (genuine or in name only)? It seemed to me that he was a Ghostblood, since the Ghostbloods are trying to kill Amaram, and Amaram himself believed that Helaran was sent by the Ghostbloods. Is there some reason not to think that Helaran was a Ghostblood? Is there any reason to think he was a Skybreaker?

Just noticed this thread. I think it's going way the wrong way. The word to focus on is Adonalsium. He specifically asks Dalinar about it before saying the bit about mixed up sounds. Specifically one should expect to find other words made from parts of Adonalsium, because presumably Adonalsium is older than most words. I can't believe no one has pointed this out: Adonalsium Adolin asum Not a perfect anagram but the name "Adolin" is inside "Adonalsium". Don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but that's the very first thing i thought of and I was very surprised not to find it mentioned here. In fact, I think maybe Wit was testing to see if Dalinar intentionally named Adolin after Adonalsium to see if Dalinar knew more than he was letting on. Wit just blurts out "Adonalsium" out of the blue to gauge Dalinar's reaction, then asks Dalinar directly if the word means anything to him, then makes a comment that sometime gibberish words are unintentionally formed from the sounds of other words. It seems that he maybe noticed the coincidence that Adolin's name was made of sounds from Adonalsium and having verified that it was a coincidence and not intentional on Dalinar's part, makes an offhand comment about how it's funny that meaningless words (I'm including names here) can be made up of sounds from other words. He then talks about making a person like that and says to name such a person Gibberish/Gibletish after him. Which leads me to believe that Gibletish is not Hoid's real name (he says as much) but like Adolin from Adonalsium, it is made up of sounds from Hoid's real name. I'm actually feeling pretty confident about that. Edit: Just wanted to add that "Dalinar, be sure to name him Gibberish, after me" seems to support my theory that Hoid is referencing Dalinar (unintentionally) naming Adolin after Adonalsium.

My thoughts:

Shallan is definitely at least level 3. And she was even as a child. Pattern makes numerous references to the fact that when she was very young she was progressing as a Lightweaver and we eventually find out that her mother tried to kill her for it. She already had a shardblade and killed her mother with it because she had already progressed that far as a Knight Radiant. Throughout Words of Radiance she keeps thinking that she needs to learn how to use her powers and Pattern keeps saying she used to know how or that she's already done those things.

Dalinar cannot remember his late wife. We know that this is an effect of the Old Magic and most people seem to think it was his curse from the Old Magic. Is it possible that it was his boon, that he was specifically seeking to forget her (for reasons he can no longer remember)? If it's confirmed to be the curse, is there any solid info of theory of what his boon was? I suppose his visions could be either his boon or curse (depending on which the forgetting is).

Those quotes definitely show that Sanderson is publicly calling it pressure. However based on this: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Knights_Radiant which I would assume has the latest info, windrunners and skybreakers share gravity. It seems that "pressure" is shared with either stonewardens or (more likely imo) Bondsmiths, which would actually support the idea that it has a binding quality.

I still don't think this really holds water. For one, creating a localized vacuum with a stormlight seal is a pretty edge case for a Surge name atmospheric pressure. For another, in the Ars Arcanum bit quoted above the force is called adhesion and is said to be concerned with "binding objects together as if they were one". Atmospheric pressure is mentioned only tangentially as something related. The more logical conclusion is that the basic nature of the power is binding things (see above ranting about how much sense that would make) and that the connection to atmospheric pressure is where the weird side effect comes in. Or it's related on some other axis we can't even guess. I remain convinced that the primary nature of the Surge is adhesion/binding.

As to the vacuum thing, I'll say I don't think it makes total sense. Once the 2 things are touching, there isn't a vacuum between them. And the Ars Arcanum talks about the 2 things being bound together like they are 1 thing, which is actually a more profound connection that being sucked together by a vacuum. I'm not sure we've seen anyone besides Jasnah and Shallan soulcast, so who's to say it can't be done at range. The ardents are known to be untrustworthy and all recorded material as well. Which makes me think of yet another thing. Ruin could change written text. Just throwing that out there.

I'd further promote thinking of it as adhesion because that also makes clear it's connection to binding. There definitely a thematic connection between gravity, adhesion, binding, honorspren, being bound to the ground, binding things together, being bound to an oath, syl says that she is an honorspren which means she binds things. <- Stream of conscience. This actually made me think of something. Honor (the idea and the Shard) is clearly central to the knights radiant. Honorspren bind things. All knights radiant get their powers from a "bond" with a spren. Honor (the Shard) invests magic through binding. Binding is it's thing. It's natural that honorspren which share a name with Honor would reflect I'd bet my bottom dollar that although spren are not (or at least not all) inherently of Honor, the ability to receive power by Binding to a spren is from Honor. (Just as Preservation didn't invent metal or have any more claim to it than Ruin, but burning metal to obtain power was of Preservation). In fact there's something cosmere-level coming up in my mind. Both Ruin and Preservation were associated with metals. Both of them had bodies that were metals when solid. Both of their magics related to metals and they both were on Scadrial. Perhaps Cultivation and Honor have the same or a similar dichotomy. They are both associated with spren. I might call them the Father and Mother of sprenthough the terms may not be accurate in the usual sense. So maybe they both invest power through spren in different ways, Honor through Binding. That also brings me to wonder if certain spren might actually be part of Honor and Cultivation like Atium is part of Ruin. Could Honorspren be the Cognitive piece of Honor? I think I need to get BS's phone number so I can talk this over with him.

Okay I went back and read the Ars Arcanum. I figured out why I didn't see this before. It's because everywhere on the internet the second surge seems to be referred to as "atmospheric pressure" which doesn't really make sense for sticking things together. Here's the passage (bold emphasis mine): It seems to me that the surge should be called Adhesion and "atmospheric pressure" treated as an effect caused by Adhesion rather than calling the surge Atmospheric Pressure and treating things sticking together like an effect of pressure (which is deceptive since an outside force like pressure is not the cause of the bond). Which leads me to ask, why do fans call that surge pressure? Edit: Also, is there evidence of this? Do we know that soulcasting itself isn't capable of this? Shallan's beliefs about soulcasting are incredibly unreliable, and it's also easy to imagine that Jasnah is simply a very talented soulcaster.

Hello, this is my first post here and I've just started diving deep into Sanderson speculation but I wanted to raise the idea that's been kicking around my head as I've seen something multiple times recently: In many places (largely the Coppermind wiki) I have seen statements like the following: "The first Order of the Knights Radiant with the ability to bind Surges gravity and atmospheric pressure. The combination of these two Surges resulted in three separate powers which were known as the Three Lashings.[11]" Is there some confirmation that the combination of the surges is involved in the lashings? The citations on that statement don't support that directly. Physics tells me that changing the direction of gravity for something, making 2 things attracted to each other, and making everything more attracted to a certain object would all just be gravity. Despite that, it seems like most people are assuming that both surges work together to be the lashings. Counter-evidence 1: The other identified proto-Radiants (that's what I'm calling them) have very distinct manifestations of their 2 surges. These examples are from the WoR preview chapters on Tor so I'm putting them in spoiler tags: Counter-evidence 2: Shallan and Jasnah can both Soulcast and it seems very similar for both of them. This suggests that shared surges manifest the same for those who share them (though I won't rule out surges interacting). I think there is very strong evidence that although they may only realize 1 power at first (as some of the examples did), each order had 2 very distinct powers. Implications: Kaladin has another yet undiscovered power. Logically I would expect atmospheric pressure to affect the weather. It's easy to imagine it could create wind (hence windrunners). Kaladin's vision of riding the storm (and conversation with the Stormfather/Voice in the highstorm) could be related to windrunning. It seems like most orders are named after 1 of their powers and nothing Kaladin has actually done yet really relates to wind. Szeth (who has no spren) might have only 1 surge. Since his power doesn't come from the usual source maybe he isn't from an order and he doesn't have 2 surges. This would flow with the theory that Cultivation can grant surges but not as well just as Ruin and Preservation could imperfectly power their opposite's metallic art. Even if Szeth does have 2 surges the other one could be different from Kaladin's making him I think a Bondsmith. But I'm really not