Luke.spence

Hmmm now I'm rethinking all my Recreance beliefs/theories to see how they line up with this. Edit: great, now I can't open spoiler tags for like the third time this week

Me and Aleksiel have argued the "kinda a hero" side fairly extensively on GR, and I posted my thoughts on this, in the Shallan thread. I actually liked her father as a character more than I liked Shallan (not that I disliked Shallan). He was a very intriguing character. I knew what had happened way before the end though, because I had a hunch and I watched for clues that it was correct, so during all the flashbacks, I was already sympathizing with the father.

Wow, that's awesome.

If he is, I'll have what he's having.

I wasn't saying that it was a self-less decision. They still made the choice out of fear. Plus, they couldn't be sure beforehand that Taln (being one of the stronger Heralds) would be the one to die. They made the choice right after that battle, completely out of fear, not truly pre-meditated. It just worked out well for them.

Maybe Odium killed Honor for the "breach of contract" from the Heralds. I'm sure Odium isn't the kind to let the 9 just walk away, no questions asked, limiting Odium to 0 Desolations for 4,500 years.

Ok, so we can take from that, that the time between Desolations was based on how long the Heralds could withstand their torture on Rayse. Maybe part of the reason for the 9 other Heralds walking away was that at least some of them were weaker than Taln. Maybe once the first Herald broke, that was the end of the torture, and Taln was one of the strongest. By leaving him alone to withstand the torture, it bought humanity more time than if all the weaker Heralds were being tortured as well.

Yeah, when the KR forsook their oaths, it might have killed off/banished the Voidspren at the same time, effectively freeing the Parshendi.

Ok, so building on your theory, here's what I think: I think the Heralds Oathpact is the key here. We know that when they weren't on Roshar preparing for a Desolation, they were being tortured (most likely on Rayse). Why would that happen? Also, why had Voidspren not appeared to the Parshendi before now? I think the Oathpact made Odium only bring as much force to bear as the Heralds had available. In turn, when the desolation was over, the Heralds would turn themselves over for torture at Odium's hand. Torturing mankind's hero seems like something that Odium would enjoy. I think the limiting factor here was the Nahel bond. Odium could only send as many voidspren to bond Parshendi as there were human Nahel bonds. The larger the KR force got, the larger the force of Voidbringers as well, therefore worse and worse desolations. The KR figured this out sooner or later, and decided that saving the world from desolations was worth the price of killing off their spren (who knows, maybe the spren helped convince them). The biggest problem is that the KR were still around after the Heralds left. I can't figure out how that works in.

But how are surgebinding and the desolations connected? Why would Odium call off the hounds just because the KR left and betrayed their oaths? Also, would the Parshendi still have changed to stormform if surgebinding hadn't returned (assuming that the war against them was still pursued)? If so, then that would mean that surgebinding isn't connected to the desolations. Personally, I think the two are connected, I just can't figure out the connections.

I kinda like this concept. Maybe due to various orders' oaths conflicting, the KR became involved in a partially political civil war and the only way the spren could stop it would be to convince their KR to kill them, thus taking the power of surges away from mankind. The Skybreakers for some reason didn't like this idea.

That's what leads me to believe that Syl wasn't truly dead in the way that the old KRs' spren were dead. I'm pretty sure Kaladin wouldn't have been able to hear her conversation with the Stormfather, and that she wouldn't have been able to have that conversation in the first place if she was really as dead as the spren of old.

I feel a sense of deja vu with this topic lol. Here is my take on Shallan (mainly through the interactions with her father in her flashbacks). This was copied off one of my GR comments since this best explains my feelings. Shallan's father: His wife, who we are assuming he loved, was killed while trying to oust his beloved daughter. Killed. By. His. Daughter. The single largest representation of innocence and beauty that the father knows, killed the woman he loves. And what does he do? He subtlety takes the blame for it knowing that it will doom their house most likely. He loses his own son, the only one not broken, to a second secret society (the theories suggest that Shallan's mother was originally part of the Ghostbloods against her father's wishes). He loses his son because he chose to protect his daughter. He carries the burden of his wife's death so far, that even his own children despise him. His house hurdles towards financial, and emotional ruin and he desperately grasps for straws to keep them all together. He fails. He reaches out to the only people powerful enough to save them-the Ghostbloods. In the end, he became what people expected him to become, a broken murderer. A man who killed his second wife even though he had nothing to do with the first wife's death. But he had been a murderer in his peers eyes, in his peoples' eyes, in his childrens' eyes for too long. He became what they made him to be. What he had to be for his daughter. And Shallan killed him for it. /rant Anyways, that's my take on her. I still like her character, and I don't begrudge her of some of her choices or actions. That's just how everything looked to me.

All mine have already been mentioned, but I'll say them again. Amaram revealed as the head of the re-established KRs - I had to walk that one off hardcore. I actually got on here right after that (even though I'd promised myself I'd avoid this place until I was done) so that I could cool down. Kal challenging Amaram and then emo prison Kal. Syl being dead. I KNEW she had to come back, but I was hurting nonetheless. If Syl had been gone forever, WoR would have went flying out my second story window.

I'm fairly sure that the Parshendi can still choose not to change into Voidbringers. The only problem is, the Parshmen are in Slaveform, which means that they probably won't have the mental capacity to stop the change. So, any remaining Parshendi are probably safe from change, but all the Parshmen are toast.

Good point. I agree with this.

I wasn't talking about "kill" as in dead forever, I meant it in the loss of cognitive ability that Pattern seems to suggest. Syl was still "alive", I don't think Kaladin actually killed her to begin with in the way that the recreance killed the other spren.

I don't think Syl was actually killed. He wasn't a full KR yet I don't think, so she still retained her mind, even though he broke the early oaths. At this point though, he'd kill her if he broke them again. Also, are we assuming that a KR killed in the line of duty releases their spren instead of killing it? If so, then is that spren then available to bond with another person? Stormfather is kinda an example, but I'm assuming Honor didn't play by the same rules exactly.

So, is Urithiru everyone's home base now? It seemed weird how everyone near the shattered plains came through, and they were content to leave most of the rest of Alethkar (and the world for that matter) to the Voidbringers. I know there were issues with the other Oathgates, but to just check out and run to Urithiru seemed to be against Dalinar's character. Are they going to use that as a strike base for the newly re-established Knights Radiance? The whole thing kinda ruined the end a little bit to me. I didn't think they'd stay there. Is it safe from the Voidbringers? What about Highstorms or the Everstorm? Thoughts?

Yeah, it's a more subtle one, but it's widely held that he's Vasher. I knew he was someone special, but didn't realize who until I read these forums.

That was my issue as well. I couldn't remember if their color was ever mentioned.

Could the stones be an Atium bud? I know they're at least partially crystal (I think, I'd have to go back and re-read about them).

On the point of live spren versus dead spren, if they could change to any weapon, why are all the known shardblades in the shape of a sword? Was that just the most common weapon? You'd think at least one KR would have broken their oath with their spen in a different shape.

Darn it, I thought I was the first one to propose that the Shardbearer that Kaladin killed was Shallan's brother Oh well, I was right anyways.

This was my exact reaction lol. Oh what a great bounty of manly tears to be had that day. But seriously, I had no idea how much I missed Syl until that moment. Syl defying Stormfather for Kaladin made the book for me.