Wind and Truth: Chapters 3 & 4

[Argent he/him]

Discussion/reaction thread for chapters 3 and 4. You can find this week's chapters here: https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-read-along-discussion-chapters-3-and-4/

[teknopathetic he/him]

So The Wind is an Old Magic God that was somewhat usurped in worship by the Stormfather? And Odium, in some way, was muting the abilities of The Wind until the vessel changed? 

Did The Wind at one point have a similar "portfolio" as the Stormfather? 

Edited August 12 by teknopathetic

[ZenBossanova]

Vessel change... meaning from Rayse to Taravangian, or is there another change this is referring to? 

[teknopathetic he/him]

54 minutes ago, ZenBossanova said:

Vessel change... meaning from Rayse to Taravangian, or is there another change this is referring to? 

It seems like Rayze was using one of his magical unembodied hands to muffle The Wind's voice. When Rayse died, no one was actively muffling her anymore. Taravangian didn't know anyone had been muffled and so The Wind was able to at least get her voice out. It is unclear if she is still shackled to a chair in some way, but she is at least able to call for help from this point on.  

Edited August 12 by teknopathetic

[Matt Snow he/him]

Gotta be honest, I'm gonna miss the "play the flute without playing the flute" line, I'd been chuckling about that since I first read it. I do like how this version of chapter 4 focuses more on Kaladin instead of vague instructions from Wit though.

[Diomedes]

I like this version way more than the last. I can`t exactly pinpoint it but the emotional impact was somehow heightened in a way that I really like. Plus all the new information about the wind and the tones of Roshar. 

How Wit is reading a romance novel in the beginning was also a cool touch. Is that supposed to forshadow an upcoming romance plot with Kaladin? One can only hope he is going to find some well deserved happiness.  

[CodeMnke she/her]

"A man had come, either to hurt Shallan or to separate her from Testament." (emphasis mine)
Admittedly Shallan is not the most reliable of narrators especially here.

This bugs me. Who or what could separate a person from their bond? Has anyone every considered (I am sure they must have) Ishar being the visitor? Lets even assume the Chanarach theory is correct. What friend might she have brought along to help her daughter?

[GudThymes he/him]

10 minutes ago, CodeMnke said:

"A man had come, either to hurt Shallan or to separate her from Testament." (emphasis mine)
Admittedly Shallan is not the most reliable of narrators especially here.

This bugs me. Who or what could separate a person from their bond? Has anyone every considered (I am sure they must have) Ishar being the visitor? Lets even assume the Chanarach theory is correct. What friend might she have brought along to help her daughter?

I assumed the visitor was Nale come to kill a nascent Radiant and that separate was a euphemism for kill.

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, CodeMnke said:

"A man had come, either to hurt Shallan or to separate her from Testament." (emphasis mine)
Admittedly Shallan is not the most reliable of narrators especially here.

This bugs me. Who or what could separate a person from their bond? Has anyone every considered (I am sure they must have) Ishar being the visitor? Lets even assume the Chanarach theory is correct. What friend might she have brought along to help her daughter?

Apparently it was a common practice for Skybreakers to try and recruit some of those new Radiants into Skybrekaers instead of killing them - like they did with Helaran. OB ch 40:

Quote

You should know that the Heralds are no longer to be seen as allies to man. Those that are not completely insane have been broken. Nale himself is ruthless, without pity or mercy. He has spent the last two decades—perhaps much longer—dealing with anyone close to bonding a spren. Sometimes he recruited these people, bonding them to highspren and making them Skybreakers. Others he eliminated. If the person had already bonded a spren, then Nale usually went in person to dispatch them. If not, he sent a minion.
[...]
Nale may also have learned, through means we do not understand, that a member of your house was close to bonding a spren. If this is true, they came to believe that Helaran was the one they wanted. They recruited him with displays of great power and Shards

You don't need anything fancy to break their bond - just trap a Radiant Spren in a gemstone. 

[CodeMnke she/her]

That would mean however that both Nale and Chanarach were killed that night. That seems unlikely since Nale has been travelling around trying to prevent a desolation at later points in the story. If he had been killed and returned he would know a desolation was already occurring and we know he was at the palace the night of gavaliars assassination. 

Now it could very well ahve not been Nale but another skybreaker. However if her mother was Chanarach that does not seem to make as much sense as Ishar.

Edited August 12 by CodeMnke

[RedBlue]

Quote

As a child, she’d bonded a spren, something her mother had… had not liked. A man had come, either to hurt Shallan or to separate her from Testament. Her father had fought him, and during their struggle Shallan’s mother had come at her with a knife. In self-defense, Shallan had killed her mother with an early manifestation of Testament as a Shardblade.

Here’s the paragraph in question, for reference.

I have a hard time believing that the man who came after Shallan was Nale, Ishar, or any of the other Heralds. Shallan’s father is a regular dude who shouldn’t be able to hold off a Herald in a fight.

(Yes, I realise child Shallan managed to kill her mother, but that was a fluke. Shallan had the element of surprise.)

Notably, Shallan did end up rejecting her bond with Testament, which is presumably why the Skybreakers left her alone after that. If Shallan knew at the time that she was in danger because these scary people didn’t like her spren bond, that could have had a big influence on her decision to break it off.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, CodeMnke said:

That would mean however that both Nale and Chanarach were killed that night. That seems unlikely since Nale has been travelling around trying to prevent a desolation at later points in the story. If he had been killed and returned he would know a desolation was already occurring and we know he was at the palace the night of gavaliars assassination. 

Now it could very well ahve not been Nale but another skybreaker. However if her mother was Chanarach that does not seem to make as much sense as Ishar.

No, it doesn't mean that. Usually doesn't mean always. As you pointed out, we know where Nale was at that time, he was unavailable to deal with Shallan, so another Skybreaker, which was previously close to Chana, tried to deal with Shallan. In Edgedancer novel we see Nale allowing his Skybreaker acolytes find and kill a Radiant present in the city on their own - it wasn't something unprecedented. And Mraize did specify it was a Skybreaker acolyte, which excludes every Herald (plus the Stormfather in the prologue said "a Herald died," not Heralds).

I don't see why Ishar makes sense - Ishar wasn't going around Roshar breaking bonds and killing Radiants. In fact, he was incapable of doing so before he reclaimed his Honorblade, which happened most likely within the one year period in between OB and RoW. Without his Honorblade, he has no Bondsmithing abilities as far as we are aware. Also around that time he was probably busy becoming the god-king of Tukar. 

OB ch 40:

Quote

Your mother had intimate contact with a Skybreaker acolyte, and you know the result of that relationship.

 

37 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

Notably, Shallan did end up rejecting her bond with Testament, which is presumably why the Skybreakers left her alone after that. If Shallan knew at the time that she was in danger because these scary people didn’t like her spren bond, that could have had a big influence on her decision to break it off.

Alternatively, Shallan remained under the radar of Skybreakers until Chana discovered she was a Radiant and she only informed her lover Skybreaker about it. They both immediately took an action without informing other Skybreakers and once they died, nobody was left who knew about Shallan.

Edited August 12 by alder24

[king of nowhere]

It was incredibly hilarious that hoid is reading the same romance novel as that ardent in the monastery in an interlude.

Weird minds think alike, and like the same novels

[Master Silver]

With regards to this topic, it seems to me like there are sveral spen like beings of the wind. We have this spren of the winds, now revealed. Sorta like the spren of Adonasium. We have the Stormfather. And we have Tanavast's cognitive shadow which has merged sorta with the Stormfather. Dalinar is currently bonded to the Stormfather. Kaladin is currently bonded to Syl. So, if Dalinar falls, does Kaladin bond both the wind and the Stormfather? Can he pass his bond with Syl to his little brother? 

Hoid might be able to guess at some futures. Kaladin has a pattern of surviving when others die.  It seems like Hoid is expecting everyone in the Tower to die. He warns Kaladin to stay away and that he cannot help Dalinar with this fight. And this leads me to guess at the fifth ideal. It is derived from what Hoid said is a virtue. "I will continue to protect others (the world), even when those I love are gone. I am Protection." 

[Eluvianii he/him]

Ok, I see the death flags now. Too many actually. Not even trying to hide them. Hell, he makes Wit straight up say "We're gonna die" just in case you don't notice. 

Here's hoping this is just his way of setting up a gotcha moment when everyone lives at the end. 

On the other hand he might be pulling a Takahata and telling us early to soften the blow. 

[coolsnow7]

On 8/12/2024 at 2:45 PM, Diomedes said:

I like this version way more than the last. I can`t exactly pinpoint it but the emotional impact was somehow heightened in a way that I really like. Plus all the new information about the wind and the tones of Roshar. 

How Wit is reading a romance novel in the beginning was also a cool touch. Is that supposed to forshadow an upcoming romance plot with Kaladin? One can only hope he is going to find some well deserved happiness.  

The writing - both here and the prologue - is just substantially better. Less use of punctuation and italics to make a point, crisp-er sentences, more information in less time. I’ll be honest that when I saw the first draft of the prologue I was worried the writing had fallen off a cliff.

[duladen he/him]

Quote

"The winds are of Honor" she said, laughing as if he'd said something ridiculous. "We are kindred blood."

"You don't have blood."

"And you don't have an imagination, it appears." She landed in the air before him and became a young woman. "Besides, there was another voice. Pure, with song like tapped crystal, distant yet demanding..." She smiled, and zipped away.

Oathbringer Chapter 6

I feel like it had been collectively accepted that Syl was referring to Tien here. Perhaps she was actually referring to the Wind?

The tapped crystal line also gives me vibes of spren trapped in gems. Is Mishram the Wind?

Also, the Wind regaining her voice when Odium's vessel changed - is this because of something that Rayse was actively doing and Taravangian has not continued? Or is it possibly an effect of the new vessel being Connected to Roshar and its tones?

Last thoughts, on the Old Gods of Roshar

• we have the Wind, mostly replaced by Stormfather
• we have the Nightwatcher, coopted by Cultivation
• would these gods include Ur? the being that Venli spoke to while discovering her stoneshaping abilities? Is Ur connected to or replaced by the Sibling?
• are some/all the Unmade previous Gods of Roshar?

I am beyond excited for this book...

[Aon Tia she/her]

The translation from Elia stele mentioned: 

Quote

well were they named Voidbringers, for their betrayal extended even to our gods: to spren, stone and wind.  

Clearly, @duladen you seem to be making a similar point.  

Spren : Nightwatcher, coopted and turned away from singers

Wind: replaced by Honor, muted by Odium

Where is stone god?  

It seems that The Wind was some earlier extremely powerful godspren that rulled Roshar. 

Wind was betrayed but how? Odium/Rayse muted her powers? 

So, how old is Stormfather? I used to think that he had always been on Roshar, but could that be untrue?

This SF says about the time of recreance. 

how old is SF? I thought he must have been here from the begining but now i doubt that

Oathbringer:

Quote

My memory of all this is strange. First, I was not fully awake. I was but the spren of a storm. Then I was like a child.

 

suggests to me that he was created much later, presumably by Honor. And SF worship grew and he gained more importance/power over the Wind. 

 

all very interesting stuff really!! 

also, there have been many mentions:

Quote

“I gave up my mind and joined your world, hiding among the windspren. We can barely see them on this side. Did you know that? Some spren live mostly in your realm. I suppose the wind is always there somewhere, so they don’t fade like passions do.”

Quote

They’re not common on this side,” the captain said. “They live on your side, almost completely. I … I’ve never seen them before. They’re beautiful.”

Both feels like the mention of The Wind. 

Also it is strange that their is a Stormfather but Stormspren are voidspren! 

There are Windspren and i always thought that they belonged to Stormfather, but it seems that they actually belong to The Wind, which appears to be some ancient godspren that was replaced by SF. 

Edited September 12 by Aon Tia