Seloun

Pattern appears to have distracted Abrobadar by moving around on the ground: It's not impossible that Pattern was somehow involved, but given how similar the screaming is to the description of the other Shardblades touched by Surgebinders, it seems unlikely it's a coincidence. As far as I can recall, the only other situation where a dead Shardblade is touched by both a Surgebinder and the person it's bound to is Renarin's blade, and only by the virtue that he qualifies as both. It seems reasonable to assume given the evidence for now that everyone touching a dead Shardblade in contact with a Surgebinder would hear the screaming.

"A dynamic character with an ability to survive certain death, and a questionable death scene leaving no corpse? Face it, we'll never see her again!" Eshonai actually being dead would be the bigger surprise. From a narrative standpoint it would make no sense, since her interludes raise more questions than they answer, and no one else is in a position to resolve them (except possibly Rlain to a lesser degree).

I'm not sure how it could be, though. The appearance is completely different, and neither dead Shardblades or Honorblades appear to have the capability to transform (exception: it looks like attaching the binding gem causes the hilt of a dead Shardblade to morph somewhat). At least, it looks like Szeth doesn't expect an Honorblade to transform given his strong reaction to Syl becoming a Shardspear. The only thing that seems to make sense is that Bordin is somehow involved. He's obviously not a Ghostblood or Son of Honor, but might be part of another organization? All we know about him so far as far as I can tell is that he's thought to be a sort-of spy for Dalinar.

Amaram seems to recognize the blade Dalinar has, and his PoV doesn't indicate any trickery on his side, so I don't think Amaram could have been involved. What we hear from Dalinar from Taln's PoV doesn't seem to indicate anything special there, either, and Dalinar at that point couldn't have known what an Honorblade is. It seems like the one Dalinar has was in fact delivered with Taln by Bordin. I'm somewhat skeptical about Taln just unsummoning his blade; he appears to be unconscious at the end of TWoK and his blade is clearly just lying next to him. There's two guards with Hoid too, who can recognize the shape of the blade (the Honorblade and Dalinar's shardblade look quite different if I interpret their description correctly). We don't know if Bordin was accompanied by anyone besides Hoid during his trip (though if not, that's pretty ballsy, transporting a crazy person and a shardblade basically by yourself). Regardless, it seems like the swap/replacement would have had to happened either extremely early, or Bordin is somehow involved. In order for the latter, Bordin needs to be able to recognize an Honorblade.

That's...pretty huge. Who else had an opportunity to make a swap? Hoid was there when Taln first showed up and during the wagon trip; wouldn't he have noticed a change in blades? If it happened after Hoid, then wouldn't the driver have noticed the change?

Predictions: - Wit will wear a wig while talking to Adolin. - Jasnah will end up with Kaladin for most of the book (this is mainly because there are too many PoV locations otherwise and it's still too early for Jasnah to interact a lot with Shallan) - Jasnah will end up with Szeth near the end of the book - Kaladin will have to deal with rioting darkeyes resenting him in Kholinar (in a reflection of his attitude from before) - might be where Tarah arc is resolved - Kaladin's Fourth Ideal will be about letting those capable put themselves in harms way to protect others (one of his major remaining hang-ups) - Shallan will find out about Kaladin killing Helaran early in the book (too much obfuscation in WoR and too many people know at this point) - Kaladin and Shallan will not interact for most of the book except indirectly (necessary to make previous point relevant) - Lift will become KR - Jez's Honorblade will be used by Dalinar, then Adolin, and later stolen (probably Ghostbloods, maybe with Shallan's help) - I don't think the Honorblade can really be left floating around - Part of Adolin's arc will be Honorblade addiction as Adolin thinks he needs to 'keep up' to be useful - Adolin will kill Amaram - There will be a falling out between Renarin and Adolin

AKA 'Luke Nounverber'. 'Stonewards' and 'Bondsmiths' potentially break both patterns, though, unless we take 'ward' and 'smith' as the verb.

As I was looking for this quotation, I noticed that Hoid asks something similar of Shallan during the flashback. Her response:

In the TWoK endsheet, every Order has a connection to their opposite and the two adjacent orders. However, 4 of the orders (Windrunners, Edgedancers, Lightweavers and Stonewards) have an 'extra' connection. Is this connection indicative of something special about those Orders?

Well, according to the epigraph of WoR describing Stonewards: which makes me think that their main 'attribute' is being strong-willed. They have a strong soldierly component, yes, but their main focus is 'never give up, never surrender'. That said, I'll concede Stonewards don't fit the pattern very strongly, at least given what's known about them so far.

The Stormfather refers to Dalinar as 'child of Honor' as well. It seemed pretty clear that, at least from the Stormfather's perspective, he's referring to humanity as the 'children of Honor'. Well, it's worth noting that Kaladin refers to Renarin in similar terms: It's possible Kaladin's wording is influenced by Zahel's (though this happens well after Zahel's comment) but I don't think it's odd for Zahel to refer to Dalinar in that fashion. It's noted by Shallan: So if you're familiar enough with what's going on in the camps to believe Dalinar is effectively king, it's not really that far fetched to refer to Dalinar as the most powerful human on - (the continent? the world?). I do agree however that Dalinar's wife will be important for some reason; conservation of detail pretty much demands it. It's worth noting that the only significant description of Dalinar's wife so far comes from Navani. At the very least, Adolin inherited his Shardplate from her family.

An interesting conclusion that might be drawn if we assume the wanderer is Hoid is that Super-T might not have been able to account for Hoid's actions, and that's why (or one reason why) the Diagram is drifting off-course. Kaladin becoming KR might have been a very low probability event if not for Hoid's intervention (Wandersail is what leads Kaladin to finally accept his responsibility, or at least accelerated it, and Kaladin certainly references Fleet during his Third Ideal Event). From Shallan's flashback and from her reaction to meeting Hoid in the present, it seems like Hoid's encounter with her made a strong impact, and may have influenced her development; the Diagram doesn't seem to have anticipated Shallan based on what we've seen from Mr. T's interlude.

This has been discussed a lot in Shallan's Relationship thread, but it seems pretty clear given the evidence that Kaladin/Shallan is the most likely immediate pairing (in the long run, of course, much can change). I find it unlikely that Helaran's death will play a huge role. The main issue is that it's not really a problem if Shallan can talk to Kaladin about it. Even when she believes Amaram is responsible (someone who she is actively wary of given the evidence he's trying to bring back to Voidbringers) the worse she can say is: She's not happy about it, of course, but all things considered she's not all that broken up about it, and can pretty easily rationalize what happened. If Kaladin (with his 'So intense' eyes) explains what happens to her in person, it's hard to imagine it being a big deal. In fact, during WoR, there's a lot of effort spent on obfuscating Kaladin's role; there's at least three good places where Shallan could have learned enough Helaran's death to have made the connection. It's clearly being saved for when Kaladin isn't around to defend himself (conveniently, he's flying off immediately at the end of WoR), and where other people (like say Mraize or even Gaz or Pattern, due to Honorspren - Cryptic thing) who don't like Kaladin or have some reason to have friction between KRs might put it in an unsavory light. It's hard to imagine Shallan won't find out about it very early in the next book. Lots of people know about the truth of Kaladin's accusation at this point, and as soon as she finds out why Dalinar booted Amaram, the connection will be obvious (the people who know enough at this point minimally include Dalinar, Navani, Renarin, and likely Adolin, as well as pretty much all of the bridgemen; there's likely many more beyond those). So the most likely scenario is that Shallan will learn early on (like right after Kaladin takes off) that Kaladin was the one who killed the Shardbearer that attacked Amaram. She'll get a distorted version of what Really Happened or what Probably Happened from people with a vested interested in driving a wedge between the two (there are quite a few candidates). Kaladin will be out of touch for most of the book, so she'll stew over it until near the end. They get back in touch, she makes a big deal of it (after a period of sullen anger that bewilders Kaladin, naturally), Kaladin goes 'This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules?', misunderstood tension gets resolved and relationship resumes course. Meanwhile, while Kaladin is out of comms, he'll likely resolve his past romantic issues with Laran and Tarah. The setup feels so obvious that I keep think that this might be trolling, with an unexpected subversion coming.

In WoK, during the 17th Shard interlude: Not completely conclusive, but 'Roamer' and 'Wanderer' are pretty close synonyms.

Well, the borders of the second diagram is shared with the Shademar map, much like the map of Roshar is shared with the KR/Surgebinding diagram (though in both cases the frame is upside down). If it's been confirmed somewhere the second diagram is related to Cultivation, it'd be interesting to know.

Personally I have a (probably irrational) suspicion about Navani: - She has a fascination with fabrials - She's anti-KR (until at least the end of WoR) - She's the only one who has full access to Dalinar's visions. Everyone else who hears about them can't write, and we know she modifies the visions at least to some extent (to remove the parts about Tanavast being dead, for example) - Her relationship with Dalinar is almost certainly assisted by Dalinar losing memory of his wife. Dalinar's loss of memory is probably not a throwaway detail, and currently this is probably the biggest impact his loss of memory has had I realize we've seen her PoV couple of times, making this pretty unlikely (if she's a villainous mastermind, it's clearly only part-time) but she does feel very off for some reason to me.

This is referring to the 'Front Endsheet' diagram that shows the relationship between the KR Orders and the surges. We know that: 1) The diagram represents the 10 orders (through the large glyphs), and that the order's heralds are in the boundaries radially associated with their sponsored order. The color of the Order glyph corresponds to the color associated with the Order and the gem associated with the Herald. 2) The Surges are represented by the smaller glyphs, and have an edge to two adjacent Surges as well as an edge to the two Orders that use that Surge. Observations: 1) All of the Orders have at least 3 edges connecting to other Orders. The Order graph exhibits point symmetry around the center. The 3 common set of Order edges are 2 edges to Orders sharing a Surge and 1 edge to the point-symmetric opposite Order. 2) 4 Orders have 4 edges instead of 3. These are the Windrunners, Edgedancers, Lightweavers and Stonewards. These 'extra' edges are plane-symmetric relative to the horizontal line (the axis parallel to the double-eye's long axis), i.e. Windrunners <=> Edgedancers, Lightweavers <=> Stonewards. 3) Note that this means all of the Orders have a connection across the horizontal axes; for the 4 Orders outside of the 'box' it's one of their adjacent-Order edges, while for Bondsmiths and Truthcallers it's their point-symmetry edge. 4) All of the Heralds above the line are male. All of the Heralds below the line are female (I also have a meta-theory on this relationship for the modern Radiant archetype character). Hypotheses: 1) The vertical axis is the Honor-Cultivation axis. The Orders closest to Honor are Stonewards and Windrunners, and the Surges closest to Honor are Adhesion and Tension. The Orders closest to Cultivation are Lightweavers and Edgedancers, and the Surges closest to Cultivation are Progression and Illumination. 2) The horizontal axis is the Cognitive-Physical axis. The Orders closest to the Cognitive are Willshapers and Elsecallers, and Transportation is the Surge closest to the Cognitive. The Orders closest to the Physical are Skybreakers and Releasers, and Division is the Surge closest to the Physical. 3) The Heralds are/were associated with Honor and Cultivation as appropriate based on their position on the chart. The genders are not coincidental but related to their Shard association. 4) The point-symmetry edge is indicative of the relationship of the associated Order's spren (e.g. Windrunner <=> Lightweaver). 5) There's some connection between the Orders horizontal symmetry edge still not explored. I'm assuming that this related picture might be the Voidbinding equivalent, but I'm not sure if there's been any information about that diagram (anyone know?).

While Adolin doesn't experience the Thrill during the final plateau assault, he seems to believe that Eshonai does: It's possible Adolin is wrong, or he's just using the term because it's what he's familiar with regarding any kind of battle frenzy. Alternatively, it might be that the stormspren (or their source) really are responsible for the Thrill. Venli must have been getting the spren from somewhere, after all. Something to consider is that in most cases, the spren don't cause what they're named for; instead, they're attracted by it. However, stormspren and/or whatever is causing the Thrill seems to break this relationship, since they appear to cause the emotion/phenomenon.

Mr. T's method might be a lower-risk option. Maybe his strategy is to be absolutely sure about saving a small number of people. This might be contrasted with a higher risk option that requires more people to make the 'right' choices. Alternatively, it might involve physically saving people without necessarily preserving e.g. their freedom. We can use the Parshendi/Voidbringers as a possible example: they appear to have allied with Odium to defend themselves against humanity, but ultimately lost their heritage and history. Or, as a less speculative example, note the Parshendi that assume dullform because it's a way to survive against the humans. Either way, just the raw number of people saved is probably not the only metric on how successful the method is.

Yeah, Kaladin is only capable of reading/writing glyphs, and not the women's script; there's probably quite a few references to this but one easy one is where he's holding the spanreed communication between Navani and Jasnah upside down: As a complete aside, it appears that Kaladin and Shallan were in the same slave wagon with Tvlakv: As far as I can tell we don't really find out what happens to the wagon. She leaves it behind when entering the camps for the first time, with the intent of getting her men to pick it up later if it's still there, but I don't think it gets referenced again. We might end up seeing the wagon later, though Gaz sands down the scratches, which may make identifying it difficult. Edit - added quote about upside down note

Er, Shallan has had to do the whole 'watch those (she) cared for die/suffer due to no fault of (her) own' thing. That's practically the defining feature of her flashback arc. Her flashbacks are spent trying to make up for the fact that her father takes out his anger on the staff and her siblings while leaving her alone (and later, explicitly punishing others when she disobeys him). It's spelled out almost literally in those terms: The evidence for an attraction between Shallan and Kaladin has been covered in (arguably painful) detail in this thread, but the ultimate passages are near the end of the book, as the armies are moving out for the final assault. These passages cover how, by the end of the book, Kaladin and Shallan view one another: Kaladin and Shallan are among the most clever individuals in the series. Not a lot of people, besides each other, can really keep up with them intellectually or in wit. There are a few other candidates, however... One of the people who can keep up intellectually with Shallan (and by transitivity, Kaladin) happens to be Jasnah. Jasnah is perhaps the most intelligent and educated individual in the series (barring 'legendary' individuals like the Heralds and super-Taravangian). Kaladin is probably the most intelligent and educated male individual in the series (with the same caveats). I think this was a much stronger possibility (in relative terms) pre-WoR, since we didn't have as much information about the depths of Shallan's character. I would imagine the relationship that would be more likely between Kaladin and Jasnah would be more like the relationship between Shallan and Jasnah (clever student, wise teacher).

Actually, the woman is probably a Releaser using the Abrasion surge; note that her colors appear to be a deep red. It does seem likely that several of the Orders can have squires, however. That said, I don't think it's every Order, since some Orders are identified by in-world WoR as being individualistic: Alternatively, it may be that all of the Orders are capable of it (it's inherent in Surgebinding) but some Orders are more prone to it.

Well, it's certainly shaping up to be the case that there's a 'main' Radiant (plotwise) for each Order. Again, this part is not really in reference to in-world mechanics, but from a meta perspective. There's certainly a strong correlation given what's known, barring Renarin. I actually do think Jasnah and Szeth are pretty compatible. They're among the most knowledgeable of the main protagonists. Yes, they have Gavilar's death as an issue between them, and it's hardly a trivial one, but it's the sort of thing which is readily mined for drama.

Well, the point isn't so much that there's a mechanic reason for the correlation (I'm not suggesting that all Windrunners are male, for example) but there may be another reason (i.e. reflection on the Heralds for plot purposes). The correlation between the current Radiant genders and the Heralds might just be coincidence (especially if there's nothing strange with Renarin). I'm discounting Ym because he's not likely to be 'the' Radiant of his order (since, well, he's probably dead). Given the PoVs, the number of books, and the epigraph about the ten swords, I'm assuming that there will be one primary Radiant per Order. This is more of a meta observation than a theory about the mechanics of how things work. The Heralds opposites always being opposite gender seems like a heck of a coincidence if there's no reason behind that, though. Not only that, but they're also ordered in sequence if you put the Orders in sequence (starting from Kalak to Nin => Male); it might be indicative of e.g. Honor vs. Cultivation's influence. It's also possible that it's really just coincidental or has no particular bearing on the plot; it's just a surprisingly strong correlation for something if it has no meaning behind it.

There seems to be some correlation between the gender of the Heralds and Radiants, and between the Heralds: (opposite pairs) Ish - Bondsmith - Male <=> Pali - Truthwatcher - Female Jez - Windrunner - Male <=> Ash - Lightweaver - Female Nin - Skybreaker - Male <=> Battah - Elsecaller - Female Chan-a-rach - Releaser - Female <=> Kalak - Willshaper - Male Vedel - Edgedancer - Female <=> Taln - Stoneward - Male So far (almost all) of the Radiants (or Radiant candidates) seem to correlate with the gender of their Herald: Dalinar - Ish - Male Kaladin - Jez - Male (Szeth) - Nin - Male (?? Eshonai ??) - Chan-a-rach - Female Lift - Vedel - Female (Renarin : doesn't fit the pattern) - Pali Shallan - Ash - Female Jasnah - Battah - Female (??) - Kalak (??) - Taln Renarin is the only one that doesn't seem to fit the pattern (as always, Renarin never fits in with everyone else...) This seems somewhat suspicious. I'm also assigning Eshonai as a Releaser partly because her (assumed) comet-like spren looks kind of 'dustbringer'-esque (whatever that may mean) and partly because it fits the pattern best. Also, if we subscribe to Shallan/Kaladin (diametric opposites), another combination that follows the pattern is Szeth/Jasnah (from a meta perspective, their ages line up pretty well; they also seem to have one of the more interesting potential pair dynamics).