Eki

Yeah, it would be more interesting if they did something else. But they must have done something, right? (Also I spoilered your last bit since this is the Stormlight subforum. Not exactly a big thing, but better safe than sorry I guess)

Yeah, but in Dalinar's vision of the Recreance, Honor says that the ones Dalinar sees are just the first ones. I don't think the Recreance happened all at once, or that 100% of the Knights decided to break their oaths. But the quote does imply that it was the exact people who betrayed the oaths who were attacked - I remembered it as being more like "they assaulted Urithiru" or something. Which I now realize wouldn't even be possible, because the city is mostly inaccessible without a surgebinder. Pattern didn't die completely after Shallan started lying to herself (which presumably is the same as breaking oaths for other orders), so I don't think being able to become a shardblade is the definite border for getting stuck in blade form.

The modern "Skybreakers" might just be Nale's band, who are unlikely to have any bonds with actual spren (since Nale wants to stop that exact thing from happening). It's unclear if those Skybreakers have any direct ties to the old ones, except through Nale himself. I got the feeling that Nale set the organization up recently, but I might be wrong. I think they did die out, yeah. Their "legacy" might be the Shin (or just Stone Shamans), it might be these modern Skybreakers, or it might be something else. Or nothing. But I think they must have done something important. Maybe they hid a cache of shards somewhere, or something.

We know this isn't true, because a Knight dying without giving up their oaths doesn't kill a spren, and the spren can re-bond someone else. It is heavily implied that Syl has done that before. I think the reason it would be easier for the original knight to revive their own spren is because the bond isn't completely broken. Or at least because it's easier to re-forge a bond that has already existed before (which would explain why Kaladin and Syl could restrengthen their bond so quickly at the end of WoR).

Magic systems are generally a result of the interaction between a planet and the Invested powers there, so Honor probably didn't set up the system with ten surges. It may just have been a natural result of him and Cultivation Investing there. Some of the other things he did set up though, but maybe only because of how many surges there are in the first place. And since Roshar seems to have been created by Adonalsium, the five hundred day year could very much be a part of the planet's "identity", so to speak. It certainly does feel artificial, anyway.

1. I'd guess it varies depending on how strong the bond is, and how much the oaths are betrayed. There's probably no one answer. 2. That might be true, but it's possible that once a spren is stuck in blade form, it's just as dead as any other, regardless of how strong the bond was before. 3. I think one of the epigraphs say that many Knights were killed by angry non-Radiants - it's unclear if those were killed before or after betraying their oaths. But I think this question applies to ALL Radiants, regardless of if they were fully trained or not. The Knights didn't just give up their oaths - they also killed their closest friend.

@Jondesu , that's not the part of the EC I criticized (or even mentioned, though I guess it could be another reason why the margin in the EC was so different from the popular vote), and it has little to do with first past the post. The (main) issue is that for example, if candidate A gets 45% of votes in a state, B gets 44%, and the rest go to third parties, candidate A will get 100% of the EC seats for that state. I realize why it would be a good idea to give smaller states more voting power (and I am part of at least one organisation that uses a similar system), even though I have a few issues with how the US does it. But again, that's not what my post was about at all.

I finally started avoiding spoilers a while back (which as I thought hasn't worked very well, but hey). But I'M SO EXCITED AAAAH Too bad we're getting it on the 23rd here Anyway, I'm gonna avoid this thread, until I've gotten the game myself.

You could interpret it as "Their type of spren was understood to be specific". I guess. Edit: Also a possibility: the writer of the book didn't actually know. Spren like the Rider of the Storms would be unlikely to show themselves very often, and probably don't hold conversations with their Knight in public. But I guess we'll see next year.

I think we have answers to these questions. Lift's ability seems to be unique to her in particular. It's a bit unclear what would happen if she had gained access to some other power though. (Or indeed if it did anything special before she was bonded.) And her ability has been described as "metabolizing sugar into Investiture", which is different from how metals work, since they are just keys. In Lift's case, it seems like sugar doesn't act like a key, but as an actual energy source. Kind of an answer, but maybe not exactly what you mean: It has to be end-positive, unless you count the wearing down of a Breath against the energy gained. But that energy isn't really lost, if I understand Breaths right. It just returns to Endowment. This was RAFO'd last year, but it might be worth asking again now that we have more books.

Five also exists in other places, like the length of a week. Of course, that might just be so they can have ten weeks a month and ten months a year, but still.

I saw that. Not for the presidential elections though, right? But everything else?

To add to this, both major parties use a system called "first past the post", meaning that the candidate who receives the most votes, even if they don't get a majority, win. I think the Republicans have FPTP within every state as well, meaning if you get the most votes within a state, you get 100% of the votes in that state. It's terrible. The Republicans had so many candidates that all the more reasonable votes got diluted across them. I'm not sure if Trump ever got a majority in any state during the preliminaries. I doubt many people had Trump as their second choice, so if the Republicans had used a more sensible system like single transferable votes (where you rank all the choices, and if your top candidate is in last place, they get eliminated and your vote transfered to the next in line), I doubt Trump would have gotten very far. The US has FPTP for every individual state in the actual elections as well. That's why Trump got so many more seats than Clinton in the Electoral College, while still narrowly losing the popular vote. It's also why the concept of "swing states" are a thing: only states where both candidates have a chance of winning really matter for the election results. This is one of the reasons why voting participation is so low in the US, and why so many feel disenfranchised. Unfortinately, the people in power benefit from the current system, because it likely got them elected in the first place. tl;dr First past the post is a terrible system and the US is in dire need of reform. If the US used ranked voting, there would have been no need for Bernie Sanders to drop out. People wouldn't be afraid to vote for a third party, because if the party lost, their vote would just be transferred to their second favorite. Candidates wouldn't have to pander to the more extreme people in their party, in order to secure the internal vote. First past the post is designed for a pre-computer age. There is no good reason to keep it.

I dunno... That they are "remnants of a dead shard" we already knew - splinters are pieces of shards, and this particular one is dead. And I don't think we know how old Elantrians are (as in, the ancient Elantrians, from before the area was populated again). That they originated around the time of the splintering of the two shards doesn't mean someone didn't create them. But if they were created (by natural processes or any other way) before Elantris was repopulated, that would explain why there is no information about how to create them, assuming the libraries were empty when the city was found again. Interesting point though: The Aons inside a Seon aren't the "real" Aons anymore, since they (presumably) lack the chasm line. So maybe the actual symbol inside doesn't really matter, or only mattered initially.

Skaze have other symbols at their core, so at least Aons aren't the only ones. (Though Skaze are aligned with Dominion, of course.) I think Seons are synthetic, created by Elantrians. I'm not sure if there's any real evidence of that, but... I got that feeling. Maybe I did read something about it somewhere. So yeah, if they are, that would explain why they have Aons at their cores, since they would have been created by Aon users. It could potentially be possible to "hack" another type of Seon using the same underlying principles with another area's magic. Maybe. As to what makes Arelon special... no idea. But it doesn't seem to be the only special place on the planet.

Do we know Aimians are native?

She spoke a lot with Lightsong, and at the end with Susebron. Other people also spoke in the presence of Susebron, with no comment or special thought from Siri. I also looked back at the last chapter of the book, when Vasher reveals his Divine Breath. Vivenna notices that his voice is more "regal", but nothing else, before or after the change. I'd say that's more an effect of him thinking of himself as a god. Especially since they were all well within Susebron's Aura already.

Different authors have different processes, but Brandon has had alpha readers since before he was even published, I'm pretty sure.

It does seem reasonable, but there's no indication in the book that it's happening. In particular, Siri would have noticed, right?

Could be, that's why I wrote "not necessarily". My guess is he doesn't need it, but who knows.

Often, but maybe not always. For some magic systems, you seem to need "cracks" in your soul that the Investiture can seep into, in a way. But it's unclear what these cracks can be. Traumatic experiences and emotional distress certainly, and physical violence possibly (though physical violence often leads to emotional scars as well). But (Cosmere spoilers)

They are very interesting connections, but I think dualist religions with sibling deities are pretty common on Earth. So there might not be anything deeper there. Then again, it is Brandon, so...

Brandon has elaborated on Rosharan races here. The tl;dr on how Alethi are described is that they themselves don't care much about skin color, as they focus more on the eyes and hair. But there are differences.

I'm pretty sure that's only because she crossed over to the physical realm. The ones who stayed in the Cognitive seem to have kept their memories. That's what Pattern said about himself, anyway.

The Final Empire Annotations, chapter 36: So as other people have already suggested, it seems like it's not necessarily magical. He's just met a lot of liars.