Pattern

My first idea reading about Ishar lying to Nale was: There is the traitor from the epigraphs of WoR. As my understanding is, the Oathpact had as a result - unknown wether intended or not - that Odium was bound to the Greater Rosharan system. He was always able to move in the system as soon as the Heralds in Damnation broke and were sent back to Roshar. This time, Taln breaks at the end of WoK and the voidspren come right after. Or the other way around, since Venli seems to be experimenting with Voidspren for longer than she admitted to Eshonai and Hoid has the impression that Taln is too late this time. So I don't think the appearance of Surgebinders leads to a desolation, but the appearance of Voidspren on Roshar. In the past, the Orders existed between desolations, so their existence didn't trigger the next desolation immediately. Don't forget, Odiums influence can be felt in the whole system. For example, the Unmade, splinters of Odium, are still on Roshar between desolations / after the last desolation: The Thrill already exists in Dalinar flashbacks (ok, thats not canon, yet) and is caused by Nergaoul, a Splinter of Odium. I understand this happens way before Gavilars' murder and the first appearance of Surgebinders (6 to 7 years before the start of the main timeline of WoK). Also, Szeth was made Truthless because he warned of an upcoming desolation - before he was given the Honorblade to kill with. Though it is still a bit unclear what is cause and what is implication, I tend to favour the appearance of Surgebinders being a reaction to an upcoming desolation. I side with genius Taravangian here: "The Desolation needs no usher. It can and it will sit where it wishes and the signs are obvious, that the spren anticipate it doing so soon." - WoR p.998- Ishar denying the fact that the desolation is already there can have many reasons. Mental instability might be one of those, and is supported by the fact that the other Heralds also seem to have mental issues: Taln is understandably traumatized by 4500 years of torture, so he cannot be compared to the other Heralds. But Shallash destroying art (or just pictures and statues of her?) and Nale killing for feeble reasons without any compassion are examples, that longevity far above the usual lifespan seems to play games with your mind (Heralds seem to have lived all the time, without time dilation effects and other stuff, as opposed to Worldhoppers). So perhaps Ishar doesn't want a desolation very very badly and so refuses to see the signs. I don't think that is the case: "One is almost certainly a traitor to the others." - WoR p.1027- The repeated reassurance that there are no new Voidbringers is manipulating Nalan to kill new developing Surgebinders, thus playing directly into the hands of Odium. It is too clever and directed to be the result of a mere denial of undesired facts. That scheme targets the only order of Radiants who didn't abandon their oaths. Also Ishars argument, that without the regulation of Honor, Surgebinders might usher a desolation, is not valid: Desolations also happened with Honors regulation, or better said, ALL desolations until now happened with Honor alive. Either way, the spren regulate as Splinters of Honor, they mainly still have the shards intent. Talenel holding up in Damnation is the reason for the long absence of desolations. Perhaps they can happen, as soon as the first Herald breaks, so strongwilled Talenel could hold them back way longer than the 10 Heralds together. (Question for Brandon: Did Ishar often break first in Damnation?). Ishar seems to have proposed the abandoning of the Oath Pact. The Oath Pact was what bound Odium to the Greater Roshar system, so the abandonment is in Odiums interest. That Talenel alone hold out much longer than all Heralds together would have been an undesired side effect. Most of this is speculation, of course, since the narrators could be unreliable. I am fairly convinced though, that Ishar is the mentioned traitor to the others. PS: I like contradicting myself. So what if my thoughts are wrong and Ishar was right all the time? Then we might have a candidate for the secret that destroyed the Knights Radiant: Deep Understanding of Surgebinding (possible only with all oaths) can lead to events that have a desolation as a consequence. So the Day of Recreance might have been an attempt to stop desolations forever. The question tough is, how much time lay between the Last Desolation and the Day of Recreance. If that is millennia, there is no reason to believe that the mere existence of Surgebinders causes a desolation. So, perhaps Honor was dying at the Day of Recreance and without him, the mere existence of Surgebinders would cause a desolation. That also doesn't fit together, since the Skybreakers didn't disband, they went into hiding. So there were still Surgebinders existing without causing a desolation while Honor was dead. So Ishar was probably not right: Why should Skybreakers be different from the other orders?

He wrote separate parts, did revision/2nd draft and then sent it to his editor. So with the end of part 5, Brandon can begin with 3rd draft.

1st: The shardfork made me laugh out loud! 2nd: Material of shard-stuff: Wyndle states the material has to be metal, so a bowstring made of metal (like metal guitar strings) might work or not. More I want to hint to a statement from Mistborn: Secret History: In analogy it is not so surprising that a condensed form of a spren (self-aware Splinters) are Connected to metals.

All that red reminds me a lot of voidspren in WoR. Taln's scar are stars /red dots of light. The Rip sounded more like an extended object/entity. Might Odium have taken a little trip to Scadrial, being stopped by Harmony at the time?

Having read "The Bands of Mourning" now, that question is answered. Obviously I gave Sazed too much credit in repairing Scadrial at the end of Era 1. Seems he didn't know about the people in the south at that time at all.

You mentioned people left at the south pole by the Lord Ruler.

To me, the Diagram seem like an intricate plan with contingencies to become king of everything. Unification seems somewhat similar to Dalinars aims. Having the Palanaeum in Kharbranth, Mr. T would have been able to aquire lots of information during his not so short life, which he processed during his day of brilliance. Nonetheless the Diagram does not predict the future. Mr T works proactively to make the events happen the Diagram "predicts". He started using Moelach(or Nergaoul?) via death rattles to gather more information, because the diagram became too imprecise. I am really excited about in which book of the series the Diagram runs wild. I expect it to happen like it happens with every weather forecast. 5 days might be ok, but 14 days...well I could also look into my coffee and predict something instead. And Jasnah is back - with information from Shadesmar. This is not to be ignored. Would be nice to know, where on Mr. T's intelligence chart Jasnah would be positioned...

I am not sure if you can rank the Radiants from the number of oaths they have spoken, since lightweavers only say the First Words, common to all orders. The third oath could have been the last for a windrunner. Actually, I don't have WoK at hand now to look it up. Though, Kaladin seems to be attracting more windspren in this fight, so he might end up bonding more than one spren.

I was wondering, whether Mr. T knows what his brilliant self has written there or not. Obviously his assistants just have written down the encoded passage. And the secret, could it just be "One is almost certaily a traitor to the others"?

About spren is gemstones: It is in WoK, Navanis Notebook. Since Harakeke translated it, here the link. So it is absolutely possible, that Gavilars sphere contains some spren. Whether its a specific voidspren or some other kind of evil spren (where is written, that the Unmade are voidish?) I don't know. The other thing is: Enslaved spren in gemstones are used in fabrials, so they have an outward effect, e.g. transform stormlight to heat in heater-fabrials. If there is a voidspren in Gavilar's sphere, does it also have an effect? Something like sucking away stormlight, like the animal in the Lift interlude....

There I was some hours at work and you've done it. Nice solution! We were so close on the first day, indeed. But nobody got the Idea of counting letters in pattern one. So that was a really new input. Thanks to all participating, though seeing it done when coming home hurts ;-) At least I can throw away my papers drawn patterns from the Code. Yes, and what is the secret??

Well, I am still disturbed about the fact that the code could be much easier broken, if it would have been given to us in Vorin numerals, the numerals probably used in the diagram. They would yield a unique parsing. So the hint "The key is in the book" does not neccessarily point to WoR, though it's probable. For all you new to the thread: Here is a summary of what has been done until page 15 of the thread. Now the thread is exploding and today I have no time for another summary. So if someone else wants to summarize from page 16 to 20, I would appreciae it a lot ;-)

My opinion to Khokh Linil: Both glyphs could have been identified correctly by Argent. Glyphs are symmetric. So what do you do, when you want to build one glyph from a glyphpair with to different glyphs? You move one glyph into the symmetry axis of the other. Preferably the first Glyph should be in the middle. If you read from left to right, you take the middle and go to right. If you prefer reading right to left (like arabic) you start again in the middle and go to left. Therefore you get the same word. Now I see, that the same works for Aladar glyph. Though I would read it AlaTar based on Thaylen symbols. But since there are probably vowel variations of consonants... So now back to Ch84 Code...I stray again. Ok, Code has been broken while I was absent. So now I can concentrate more on glyph stuff. BTW, while looking for hints for the code in WoK, I stumbled over the fact, that Shallan can speak, read and write Thaylen, but cannot read Selay. So perhaps there will be another language... Also in Shallan's application interview with Jasnah it got obvious that there are major, minor and topical glyphs - which can be written calligraphically - but you've already got that.

Format is different in hard copy. They will come you cannot stop their oaths: Knights Radiant will return. No possibility to stop every candidate from speaking the words look for those who survive when they should not : Kaladin (Fight against shardbearer, bridgeruns, highstorm, etc, etc), Shallan (shipwreck, ): Surgebinders survive when normal people would not. It's less the stuff in those epigraphs than missing things. Taravangian won't encode something he has written on other places in plaintext. At the moment I am trying some Vigenere chiffres with different keys. The greatest uncertainty however is still the parsing of the Code. Well, and the fact that we don't know what kind of encryption we have to deal with. Although...I don't think it's Vigenere. Most passwords would destroy the symmetry of the code. On the other hand, the symmetry could be an artifact of our imagination - we simply see ghosts after hours and hours of code-watching...

The glyphs on Elhokars sword are tiny. I hope Harakeke can do something with them. Edit: Yes he can ;-)

Well, Renarin writing all zeros is quite funny. If he used Vorin numerals, he just makes dots on the wall... Ok, I have tried do build patterns from the code. I used Vorin numerals to see if there evolves a symmetry. I cannot find one, it's definitely not a map of the Shatterd Plains. Perhaps someone else sees more...

Since I seem to be off-shift, I try a summary. 11182510111271249151210101114102151171121011121713 44831110715142541434109161491493412122541010125 1271015191011123412551152512157551112341011129151 21061534 2nd Ceiling Rotation, Pattern 15 is confirmed to be a code, the key is in the book. Translators will get an instruction to encode the translated text. Peter said „The code is solvable and you all have the information required.“ Ciphertext string consists of 154=2*7*11 numbers. Patterns (2x77, 11x14, 7x22 and transposed possible) There are no blanks and the parsing of the code is still unclear We do not know the encryption method. We have tried prefix codes and non-prefix splitting, attempting for substitution cipher. Some attempt to match it to other Diagram epigraphs was made by AhoyMatey, without much success. Krenn also did some matching to chapters counting words, based on a decomposition where a 10 followed by a 111 meant a line break. Appearance of „111“ or "10111" is suspicous. Frequency Analysis is consistent with the code being some kind of substitution cipher without smearing frequencies. Since Vorin numerals are now known, there would have been no problem parsing the code given in Vorin numerals, since for example „1“ „1“ would look different than „11“. Since every "0" is preceded by a "1", one could consider the code consisting of the numbers 1-10. This would not be enough to encrypt an alphabet in a bijective manner. 2 epigraphs from part 5 resulted from an interweaved message. The two obtained messages however differ in lenght, which could be due to translation from Taravangian's invented language to Alethi or English. This code could also be interweaved, so we would get two messages consisting of 77 digits each. Parsing is still a problem.. We do not know which alphabet has been coded to numbers. It could be Latin, Alethi, Thaylen (though less probable, since only known via Frostland map and possibly incomplete) or phonetical. Most probable still is an English text, since other epigraphs use letters (c,x,q), which don't exist in Alethibet. The key could be found anywhere in the book, but preferably in epigraphs concerning the Diagram or the fictional book „Words of Radiance“, Taravangian interlude, Ketek on Navani's notebook. Part 5 epigraphs: Words of Radiance epigraphs, sorted: In the epigraphs there is also Pattern 1, 2nd Ceiling Rotation given. This should be related to Pattern 15. It is still unclear, why those passages are called „pattern“. There have been suggestions to crack the code like Pattern did with Tyn's correspondence with the Ghostbloods. That was a dead end, since it was only an authentication method and only one example is given explicitly. The code contains palindromes, quite long ones. Too long to be random: 111825 -101112-71249-151-2-10-101114-10-2-151-17112-101112- 1713448311107-151-4254-14341-09-161-49-1-49-341-212-254-10101-2512710 -151-9-101112-34-12-5511-52512157-5511-12-34-101112-9-151- 21061534 Holy Vorin names are Palindromes as are the names of the Silver Kingdoms. Also, Keteks are palindromes consisting of words. Especially the not perfect symmetric middle of the long palindrome could be just a word in the middle of a Ketek. Glyphs are also symmetric and have been encoded to a symmetric number string. Harakeke has made enormous progress in decyphering glyphs. It has been noted, that „h“ can stand for every other letter (like in „Nohadon“). So could the 7 in his code. Palindromes would get longer doing this. Considering the details in the book (mirrored Alethi script on Shallan's drawing, shining through from the other side of paper), farfetched ideas shouldn't be abandoned without trying. The key to the code could also be found in Navani's Ketek Since Pattern's name is a string of numbers and he would need numbers to describe his state before bonding, the Code might have something to do with Cryptics. (Would be nice wordplay...encrypted epigraph containing information about the Cryptics) Epigraph from Ch.86 „One is almost certainly a traitor to the others“ led to the suggestion to remove the 1s from the code. Unclear, whether it was tried in substitution cracker or not. 16 unique palindromes in the code could be Cosmere significant. Codes could be related to calendar system – has to be tried explicitly. @ Satsuoni: Since you have to copy this to your first post, I will leave out your links concerning deciphering tools. Feel free to add them where you think they fit in best. Additions: - We compared the code to date format and found that the code doesn't seem to consist of dates - The dates in North Wall Coda, Windowsill region: paragraph 2 seem to be Highstorm dates - Parsing suggestions using palindromes: here - similar codes in another book and their cracking:here (I try to modify the c-programs there to fit to our problem -but have to refresh my c knowledge first if someone is fitter here's what I plan to do: Use a palindrome-respecting parsing | assign letters to numbers| try rot-x-program and vigenere program with WoR related keys (KnightsRadiant, Everstorm, whatever...))

The palindromes are our best structure until now - not meaning that it IS really relevant. We are still guessing and trying. That there has been no ketek from Mr.T until now doesn't say anything, since we only know very little from the Diagram. "Rotation" means probably, that Mr. T wrote around the ceiling. If I would have to write on a ceiling, I would start near the walls and work towards the middle of the room. "pattern" is still quite unclear. Perhaps creating a nice pattern from the text in pattern 1 would give us a hint to order the number string. That interweaving has been tried (bruteforce substitution, if I remember correctly). There have also been discussions about the different lenghts of both former interweaved messages. I believe they could result from translation from Mr-T-ish to Alethi to English. Or Brandon just didn't count letters... Concerning patterns: Here what I did to pattern 15 (1st try, will do more tomorrow)

Well, likely is a bit too optimistic. There really a lot of possibilities to parse the code. I still guess the best observation until now were the palindromes. They are too long to be just random. And Brandon confirmed that the key is in the book. damnation the thread gets too long. I look for quotes, could take a while... Palindromes could be. - Vorin proper names (Heralds, numbers, Silver Kingdoms, etc) - Ketek (symmetric poem), especially the long palindrome - glyphs - I guess another day or a few and Harakeke will give us full construction laws Still, there lingers the big question: Why is pattern 15 a number? I will try some stupid stuff tomorrow, more then ;-)

@thdl: I have sorted the epigraphs containing stuff from the fictional WoR from beginning to end. Luckily I have safed the fun.

Hmm, I think now all Thaylen symbols are a little bit jumbled - comes probably from deciphering glyphs, which contain every symbol in its Thaylen and its mirrored version. Only L, H, P/F and of course V/W are in the form in which they occur in Frostlands Map. Do you still have your hand written table? That was exactly the same as my handwritten table, which still lies on the stack of paper concerning chapter 84 code.... @ Trickonometry: Both symbols for S are quite distinct, there's probably more to that than just decoration.

L is also backwards I have flipped the Thaylen numbers, after Harakeke confirmed my suspicion.

I think I got the numbers (posted in Ch.84 Code thread) from Thaylen script. Once again Frostland map was informative when looking at details, instead of skipping them... The "south line" of the biggest compass rose ends on the bottom line on "°". From this point, 4 readable symbols are ordered symmetrically (perhaps naming degrees east and west from 0-Meridian). Therefore I would propose "°"=0 "-"=1 ">"=2 "->"=3 "x"=4 and so on. | on the right side denotes a "10", so °| is 10, -| 11, >| 12, and so on, || means 20 , so °||=20, -||=21, >||=22 and so on. This looks like a mixture of Roman numbers and decimal system. A pity we don't have more numbers, I don't think Thaylen 92 would be a >||||||||| Symbols have to be rotated I think, since thaylen script runs from top to bottom. Ok, here what I drew, could be that symbols have to be rotated by 180°.