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Wasn't exactly sure where to put this, if it belongs under a different discussion please move.

So the safety toggle could have just been off allowing Wayne to use the gun.  That tracks just fine, what got me though is the fact that vindication II is described as being fully aluminum, near the beginning of chapter 25, but it’s also not described as having the special safety.  So either it’s a slip up by Sanderson or there is no safety in vindication II, since being made of aluminum means you couldn’t push on the mechanism in the handle.

3 hours ago, rjl said:

In response to the nightblood speculation etc. We have an answer and it's NO. See attached quote from Michael Whelan's assistant

source: https://www.tor.com/2020/08/17/behold-the-cover-to-rhythm-of-war-the-fourth-book-in-brandon-sandersons-stormlight-archive/comment-page-2/#comment-878270

well that's super disappointing.

Interesting theory, but not enough concrete info to make a determination yet.

Big hole would be how did he prevent his passing to the spirit realm, did he have some way anchor himself to the Cog realm?  As far as I now you have to hold the power of a shard to do that, perhaps there is some other way to anchor Connection? I'm sure there is since cognitive shadows are a known thing.

this makes me wonder how many Scadrians are on Roshar working with groups in the back ground perhaps lending their allomantic knowledge to help design fabrials.  The ghostbloods are obviously realmatically and cosmere aware, have been to quite a few planets and have members from different planets.  There seems to be quite a bit happening behind the scenes on Roshar that we are completely unaware of, I would love to get a secret histories type book on Roshar.

33 minutes ago, Honorless said:

First Dreams is Kaza's ship, Wandersail is Rysn's ship that she was gifted by her Babsk

Wow, I totally forgot about that.  

45 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

The Wandersail could be closer to Aimia than other coalition ships. It could be commissioned via spanreed and the coalition delegates could be flown to meet up with Wandersail. Would explain why Lopen ends up on the ship.

The coalition could ask around to different ports to see what ships are available. Then have their people oathgate / fly to meet up with the ship that’s well positioned and willing. 

Wondersail? You mean First Dreams?  And Lopen?  He was on that ship?  damnation I need to re-read that interlude.

6 hours ago, Honorless said:

I have to say, I did not see that coming! I was expecting the prologue to take place on the deck of the Wandersail. It's nice to have confirmation that Yalb survived.

Shallan saw Yalb surviving in WoR somehow, I think it's Shallan's ability to form Connections with those she draws (capital-C Connection, as confirmed by Pattern in the Battle of Thaylen City) could be something that the Lightweavers share with the Truthwatchers, they are supposed to be able to see something.

Extracts from WoR, pasted from over on the Discord server:

 

So she has Connection with Yalb and the sailors which Explains her vision for that drawing.  When and where would she have made Connection with Shalash I wonder?

also, when reading the passage about her drawing of the woman with the chisel, I totally thought steel inquisitor, makes a lot more sense to be Shalash, but damnation how cool it be if instead of a chisel what she was seeing was a hemalurgic spike.

1 hour ago, Karger said:

So maybe Yalb reports this when they get back to port.  It comes to radiant attention that something odd is going on with that island.  They want to check the oathgate there anyway so they send an expedition.

For sure!  There is a tasty link to this in the latest RoW chapter release...

36 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

 

You may not agree with my opinion, but we don't have enough to go off of at this point. We've had one new piece of information showing his abuse, and for now it's enough to condemn him as an abuser. However, given the magic of this universe we all love, he is still redeemable. But only through magic.

Hope I'm not coming off as contentious, I haven't read every post on the topic but I didn't notice anyone trying to completely dismiss the abuse in the other thread (I obviously could have missed it).  overall I agree with your sentiment here, we don't have enough info yet and I think that is the reason people are speculating so much on the topic.

2 hours ago, GudThymes said:

These two have no correlation in reality. Sure, sometimes Abusers are also terrible people outside of the abusive relationship, more frequently they're not. Abusers are the super friendly husband who comes at night and has too much to drink so he beats his family. They're the awesome bakesale mom who comes home and is emotionally abusive to her husband. They're that super fun friend who goes home to his boyfriend and controls everything in their life. They're the girl who is so jealous of every other girl in her man's life that he doesn't have any other female friends because of her.

Abuse isn't that clean. It's not as simple as the big bad drug dealing gang banger that comes home and hits his girl. That's not reality, and that's the problem. 

Now, if we want to look for a magical explanation of his abuse sure, but I HIGHLY doubt there is one at this time. Let's look at some other examples of issues in this book for a baseline. Shallan has a dissociative identity disorder (WoB's say it's non-magical), Kaladin suffers from Major Depressive Disorder (somewhat magical, but majority is real depression), Tien was likely autistic (I haven't seen definitive proof from Brandon either way, please correct me if I'm wrong). Sure Gavilar could have had a magical reason for why he was abusive, but don't go looking for one in the shadows, if one shows itself then we can reassess.  

You're right, thank you. There are definitely some people who wouldn't recognize this as abuse. I would encourage them to learn more about abuse and the signs of it. But if they don't have the knowledge on the subject they should trust others who have done the research, or know from experience. 

Can I just say how cool it is to get an epic fantasy series of this scale so full of such interesting dynamic and REAL characters?  To such a degree that it sparks conversations like this.  

I don't think anyone is defending, dismissing or not recognizing the actions of abuse.  Its more of a question of why and how.  Why is Gavilar being abusive?  and How did Gavilar get to this point?  From what we can see here he's a conqueror who became power drunk and discovered a path to becoming a god (possibly?), he was a complete megalomaniac at the time of his death.  But up to this point we saw Gavilar as the softer side to Dalinar's Black Thorn days, the reasonable one who restrained him and moved them away from war and killing and onto creating a kingdom with a stable society.  Now we get this, its kind of a shock to the system so naturally we have questions, we wanna know why and how he got to this point and what signs did we potentially miss that pointed to this type of person.

I think he may have been on good path or at least one of redemption for the war monger he had been, but then discovered something that sent him back to the edge and then over it.  I think that something was a path to godhood but I also wonder if he was further being manipulated by odium or one of the unmade, hell it could have been more than just manipulation some of his mental capacity may have even been compromised (we have seen what effect the unmade can have on a person, take Aesudan for example).   

It's human nature to ask questions and want to understand the deeper meaning of things, exploring these nuances does not mean we are dismissing the act of abuse, the very act of trying to figure out the why and how is acknowledgment of its existence in the first place. 

11 hours ago, GudThymes said:

I think the issue here is that people reading this section aren't recognizing Gavilar's abuse as abuse. I made a detailed thread on my analysis here (I don't know how to tag another post, so it's just a hyperlink), and I'm sure I missed stuff. That to me is the issue, we can discuss his rationale and reasoning absolutely, but we first need to recognize the abuse.

I don't think anyone here is defending, dismissing or not recognizing the actions of abuse.  Its more of a question of why and how.  Why is Gavilar being abusive?  and How did Gavilar get to this point?  From what we can see here he's a conqueror who became power drunk and discovered a path to becoming a god (possibly?), he was a complete megalomaniac at the time of his death.  But up to this point we saw Gavilar as the softer side to Dalinar's Black Thorn days, the reasonable one who restrained him and moved them away from war and killing and onto creating a kingdom with a stable society.  Now we get this, its kind of a shock to the system so naturally we have questions, we wanna know why and how he got to this point and what signs did we potentially miss that pointed to this type of person.

I think he may have been on good path or at least one of redemption for the war monger he had been, but then discovered something that sent him back to the edge and then over it.  I think that something was a path to godhood but I also wonder if he was further being manipulated by odium or one of the unmade, hell it could have been more than just manipulation some of his mental capacity may have even been compromised (we have seen what effect the unmade can have on a person, take Aesudan for example).   

It's human nature to ask questions and want to understand the deeper meaning of things, exploring these nuances does not mean we are dismissing the act of abuse, the very act of trying to figure out the why and how is acknowledgment of its existence in the first place. 

I’ve read the Stormlight archive the whole way through 4 times now, I love it every time.  I’ve never enjoyed a book series so thoroughly.

Been reading Sanderson for 10 years now, I still remember the day I found https://coppermind.net and discovered it’s all connected, still gives me chills to think about. My sanderfan buddies and I spent days pouring over that wiki discovering a whole new universe. So excited for this next book!

at any rate my buddy made this meme and I had to share it.

4 hours ago, Elegy said:

I guess that sort of confirms what we have been theorizing for quite some time. Thinking of it as some kind of extended sequel to the Kaza interlude makes me pretty excited!

That said, the title does sound a bit flat to me, especially when compared to the other Stormlight titles. It's cool for what it implies, but I don't think it sounds particularly good.

you are truly airsick if the title does not excite you!

16 minutes ago, GoWibble said:

So I took this to mean that the Bondsmith Herald discovered the Nahel bond. Also, how did a Bondsmith create the Heralds at all?

I think it was Ishar who figured it out, but Honor had to make it happen.  But I am not sure if those details are true lore or in-story lore that could be off.

45 minutes ago, R J said:

I think they're just happy to be fulfilling their purpose

I think the same.  also the blades are higher spren which means they have sentience that gives them an identity, I suspect the pain comes from the pull of human thought of what they are working against their own identity.

Quote

The difference, she supposed, was attitude. She could sense contentment, not pain, from the Plate.

I thought this was quite interesting.  My read into it, thinking of Connection and Identity, is that plate being made of a lesser spren is quite happy being plate; however, higher spren having more complex emotions and full sentience feel pain at the prospect of only being thought of as a tool for killing.  So their own identity is at odds with what the human is trying to project onto them and it brings them pain.

Quote

She remembered coming to Urithiru with him once...and the tower had been bright with lights... A strange kind of light...

This combined with the way they keep referring to Urithiru as being "dead and alive" or "sleeping or awake" gives weight to the city itself being the 3rd sibling and perhaps offering a different kind of light.  Why else would Syl call it a "strange kind of light" suggesting it wasn't regular stormlight. 

Quote

A Bondsmith bound other Surges and brought humans to Roshar, fleeing their dying world. A Bondsmith created—or at least discovered—the Nahel bond: the ability of spren and humans to join together into something better. You Connect things, Dalinar. Realms. Ideas. People.

I am also very curious to see what Dalinar can do with his Connection powers.  This interlude seems to suggest that he can bond surges to people, maybe he can create a super radiant, a stormlight equivalent of a mistborn, someone who has access to all the surges at once. 

3 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

Maybe, but something is up. Why THAT child? Did Hoid save them? Why? Also Hold needed to deposit his breathe somewhere in order to bond a Cryptic,  but why did he leave the Awakened doll with THAT child? Kid seems really suspicious to me. 

I don’t disagree that the child interaction was suspicious ( I’ve read the epilogue like 3 times now).  However, just to clarify when Hoid finally pulled the girl away he describes seeing the remains of a person burried by rubble in the alley way, that was probably the girls mother....

“The girl hugged the patchwork creation, and he picked her up, turning away from the broken building—and the bones of a leg sticking from the rubble just inside.”

Absolutely broke my heart when I noticed that on a re-read.

I had a feeling that was the case.

Too bad, Kramer's renditions of Sanderson's novels are the absolute best I would really have loved to have listened to his version of Lightsong.

Sorry to bump such an old thread but I am REALLY interested in obtaining the Michael Kramer version of this book, i want to re-listen to it before Oathbringer but i would much rather not listen to the old narrator.  the link above takes me to a 404 page not found, is this audio book no longer available?

I agree with most of this, I've quietly suspected since my first reading the WoK that "Unite them" probably included the Listeners after WoR and these chapters with Kaladin I'm convinced.

Im not sure I agree that the Recreance was the result of the Knights responding to the breaking of the Listeners.  That doesn't make sense to me, lets respond to one atrocity by committing another in the mass murder of all our spren and the abandonment of our oaths?  That just doesnt Jive well, there has to be more to it than that.

On 10/8/2017 at 10:18 AM, Vissy said:

What I'd be more interested in is how the Listeners hear / feel the rhythms. It seems obvious to me that Listeners and Alethi (+ other "humans") have different hearing ranges. Does the Listener humming sound like music to themselves?

I have been wondering the same lately.  And I'm beginning to think the rhythms they hear are from the cognitive realm.  I think WoR mentions that the Listeners are more connected to the cognitive realm than humans, maybe that is where the rhythms come from, like a certain wavelength coming from the cognitive realm that only they can hear.