BlackYeti

16 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

It probably is artificial, but what about a pre-existing white dwarf (possibly with planet) being captured into an orbit around the supergiant?

The L1 point between the stars isn't entirely stable, however, so Taldain's position would require some effort to maintain.

Fair point, that is basically the only way these types of stars could exist in a system together, however the probability is quite literally astronomically low.

Fist you need two systems to collide, and this is rare even when galaxies collide with each other given the vast distances between systems. Then one of the stars needs to be a blue-white supergiant, which are also rare. And then they need to end up in this precise orbital pattern.

In short, it's absurd.

1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Sirius is a white dwarf orbiting a blue giant. So this sort of binary system does exist in real life.

I'm afraid that this doesn't invalidate what I said above. A blue giant is not the same thing as a blue-white supergiant, they are completely different types of star, and as the name implies, supergiants are a lot larger than giants. Which is important because the larger a star gets, the shorter it's lifespan, and it doesn't scale down linearly.

What I said earlier was somewhat loose, so let me be a lot more precise. A white dwarf is essentially a dead star, there is no nuclear fusion taking place in it at all. This means that it's already lived through it's main sequence. When I said billions of years I was actually thinking of our own sun, which will become a white dwarf in about 5 billion years time, however for a large enough star it would instead be in the hundreds-of-millions. Given its size, a blue giant on the other hand has a maximum lifespan in the hundreds-of-millions of years. The two stars in the Sirius system are both around 250 million years old, so there is indeed no problem here.

Blue-white supergiants on the other hand have a maximum lifespan of 10 million years and it could be much shorter.

If it helps, here's an graphic to better show the ages, and if you want more detail on the Sirius system you could have a look at this.

Thanks for the clarification @PeterAhlstrom, that does make me feel better about this.

As for what the differences are I think @skaa, you might have hit the nail on the head. Maybe it also helped that Szeth was Invested when it happened.

The only other difference that I can think of is that the girl was impaled with an Honourblade rather than a regular Shardblade.

2 minutes ago, WeiryWriter said:

"The Sleepless" is actually the term Dysian Aimians use to refer to themselves, so I would say it is less a secret society and more a secretive species. Categorically all Sleepless would be Dysian Aimians then.

Thanks for the correction! And to think that I was actually feeling good at having spotted that it was a Dysian Aimian, and that it was linked to the back covers of the books, then I jump to a conclusion and get something majorly wrong like that.

That being said, I actually think I like this part more now. It feels much less contrived this way.

There's something else weird about the Taldain system now that I think about it.

In every other system the stars have 16 major stylised rays of light coming from them. In Taldain however, both stars only have 14 stylised rays coming from them. I've no idea why but there must be something significant about this.

2 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

...except for the smaller star in a farther orbit that consistently illuminates Darkside.  For that to work, it would have to be orbiting the main star with the same orbital period ("year length") as Taldain, but significantly further out so that the star's radiation doesn't roast everyone.  Problem is, Newton and Einstein both tell us that's impossible, as the period of a stable orbit around a constant gravitational source is directly proportionate to its distance from that gravitational source.

There's also the problem of the stars' ages. The white dwarf would have to be billions of years old, whilst the blue-white supergiant could be no more than millions of years old. However stars in binary systems form at the same time as each other, so they would have to be the same age as each other.

The way I see it this system would have to have been constructed artificially, this could not have come about naturally.

7 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Wow, you're right!

So that means Shadows must have taken place very early on in the chronology!

No. According to the FAQ on Brandon's website, Shadows takes place between Warbreaker and The Way of Kings.

Honestly I don't think that the Evil was caused by Ambition's conflict with Odium. The essay didn't claim that it was, in fact it was quite clear that Khriss had no idea what the Evil was. It only claimed that said conflict "Twisted both the people and the planet of Threnody." If I had to guess this is what caused the people of Threnody to start turning into shades upon death, which I think was already happening prior to the Evil.

I think this would have more to do with Wyndle being closely aligned with Cultivation, rather than a connection with Verdant.

Remember that when you see Wyndle you're seeing into Shadesmar, whereas with Verdant the vines are part of the Physical Realm.

12 minutes ago, Kanrei said:

In new version of WoR Szeth wasnt killed by Shardblade but wounded. He died from fall.
Wound from Shardblade can be healed with Stormlight after some time too -> Kaladin healing his arm.

In Edgedancer girl was killed by Shardblade (burned eyes etc).

So there are differences and Edgedancer do not contradict WoR.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that it contradicts the new version, it obviously doesn't as you pointed out.

What I'm saying is that it contradicts the rules that were given in the old version, and thus Brandon didn't just change what happened in the book but the underlying mechanics as well. He's previously said that he would write future books such that they would work with either version, but this doesn't seem to be the case any more.

If you remember from the original version of Words of Radiance, Kaladin rammed a Shardblade through Szeth’s chest, after which Nale found Szeth and healed him with a fabrial. However in Edgedancer Lift tries to heal a girl who had also had a Shardblade rammed through her chest, and it didn’t work. Wyndle then explains that since she was killed by Shardblade, she cannot be healed at all, unless she is healed right after it happened. Since Nale was obviously not with Szeth and Kaladin to heal him immediately, this appears to be a contradiction.

Therefore, either Nale has some way to remotely heal someone (of which we have no evidence), "right after" is being used very loosely, or when Brandon changed the scene to have Szeth fall to his death instead, he also changed the rules governing what can or can’t be healed.

If so, what other rules could have been changed at the same time? Is there some additional significance to the change in wording from fabrial to Surgebinding for instance? Moreover this would be a somewhat significant precedent that Brandon is setting, and I’m not sure what to make of it.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Edgedancer. On one hand it’s clearly been written for the fans, and as a fan I absolutely love it. On the other, more objective, hand it feels a bit lacking to me. This could of course be due to the natural tendency to compare it to the two Stormlight books that led into this one, and also to the Emperor’s Soul with which Edgedancer bookends Arcanum Unbounded. Since these stories are exceptional and sit amongst my favourites, feeling lacking in comparison isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The book, of course, features Lift as the main character which is a major plus. Does anyone anywhere dislike Lift?  Even Nightblood likes her, which I think makes her officially un-unlikable. To me she’s not at the same level as Jasnah (who’s one of my favourite fictional characters overall), but seeing as how much I enjoy reading about her, I’m not too disappointed that this didn’t turn out to be Jasnah’s unpublished novella which I had initially hoped it to be.

Regarding the secret societies of Roshar, we get a new one here: the Sleepless. This is on top of the Ghostbloods, the Sons of Honour, the Diagramists, the Skybreakers (whom it turns out actually are Skybreakers), the Envisagers, and the Seventeenth Shard! It sounds very much like this new lot are the people writing the blurbs for the Stormlight books; and are they all Dysian Aimians, or do they include the Siah as well? Either way, it seems that whenever a new character is introduced now, the question is not “does this person belong to a secret society?”, but rather “to which secret society does this person belong?” Okay, I may be exaggerating, but it is getting very crowded here nonetheless. It would indeed seem that the significant owl hoots in the night.

Naln’s final scene in the novella feels too short to me. I’ll grant you that it’s perfectly in keeping with his character (what little we know of it), but given the significance of what happened, it felt like it was missing something.

Also the way that, at the end of the story Lift ends up heading back to Azimir left it feeling more episodic: less like a complete work in its own right, but rather more like an interlude from one of the main books, albeit longer and on a much grander scale. Like we were being shown some cool new things about the world, and covering some plot points that would be needed for the next book, and on that level it succeeds completely. So overall I really liked it, it just wasn’t on quite the same level as the Emperor’s Soul.

So when will we be able to start talking about this? I've just finished reading Edgedancer and the essays, so I'm now pretty eager to start discussing this.

5 minutes ago, maxal said:

Yes but Adolin was on his Plateau, near a chasm where Eshonai had fallen when he spotted Szeth, wasn't he? How did he get from there to Dalinar's tent if not through the sky? I always thought he didn't lash him to the sky because he didn't intend to kill Adolin, just to put him out of combat and/or to send a message to Dalinar.

This scene has always been confusing to me.

His orders have always been to slaughter everyone in his way, and he never hesitated from following them to the letter previously. Why would he make an exception for Adolin?

As for how they got to that plateau? I suspect that only Brandon could answer that. We simply didn't see enough of their fight.

Just now, maxal said:

Is Szeth strong enough with Stormlight to throw a Plated man from the sky? 

He wasn't in the sky though, they were inside the tent: Dalinar noticed the tent shaking and shouting coming from inside just before it happened. Szeth wouldn't have had to have thrown him far in order to achieve that. If he had lashed him I would have expected it to have been into the sky like he did with Dalinar, doing so along the ground would never have been very effective with a man in plate.

48 minutes ago, maxal said:

I have a question about the lashing a person wearing Shardplate WoB... I have to admit right here I don't typically spend a great deal lot of time thinking or analyzing theories with respect to investiture and/or use of surgebinding so I might have missed great pans of it, but didn't Szeth actually lash Plated Adolin during their last encounter on the Plains? Brandon says right here it would be practically impossible, but didn't it happen during this scene? Can anyone shed some light on it: I am lost 

I've re-read the passage, and  I don't see anything to suggest that Szeth lashed Adolin at any point on the plains. I'm guessing that you're thinking of the part that said "Adolin crashed through the tent's fabric and skidded along the stones on his back", but that does sounds more like he was thrown to me.

7 hours ago, PallonianFire said:

I still think the Threnodites moved to Threnody through the CR after Odium splintered the Shard on whatever world they came from, and the Investiture they used for the big move is plugging up the CR now/making the Shades phenomenon happen. Can't wait for Khriss' intro in AU, since Brandon hinted that it'll give us some answers about that when I told him my theory.

Might I ask your reasoning for thinking this? When Brandon described the world, he specifically described the Homeland and Hell as being different continents and said that the people moved across the ocean from one to the other by ship, which makes me seriously doubt this.

1 hour ago, Adamir said:

• Would you consider sponsoring a bird of prey?

Not really something that I'd be interested in.

 

• If so, how much would you pay?

NA

 

• Have you ever seen an advertisement for an animal shelter?

Not that I recall. 

 

• If so, where did you see the advertisement in question?

NA

 

• Would you consider volunteering at an animal shelter?

No, It's too far outside of my field of interest.

 

• If there was an aviary nearby, how much would you pay for a falconry apprenticeship (if at all)?

I wouldn't.

I hope those answers are okay for your survey. Out of curiosity though, what do animal shelters have to do with ICT?

On 10/7/2016 at 4:26 AM, Silanda said:

This entire theory is brilliant and prompted me to register after lurking for basically ever (hi everyone!). With all this I think you also solved something that's bothered me for ages, namely-

Source

So Glys should show up with bizarro extra Truthwatcher symmetry, as opposed to looking like Pattern, who clearly has what you've identified as cognitive symmetry (shown here)? You guys are all crazy, I love this forum.

 

Hello and welcome. This is an excellent observation which I completely missed: I never thought to consider the symmetry of the spren themselves. This potentially provides the key to so much, thank you so much for sharing. Unfortunately I can only upvote your post once  but it deserves so many more than that! Now having spent a few days thinking about this, let me present my analysis of the spren's symmetry.

In the diagrams that we have of Pattern, he does indeed have rotational symmetry like the cognitive glyphs; unlike the glyphs however he is far more symmetrical. Whilst the glyphs only have order 2 rotational symmetry, in each drawing of Pattern he either has order 6 or order 8 rotational symmetry. Is it significant that these are all even numbers? And is there any meaning to this? I’m not sure, but let’s try comparing it to other Radiant spren.

Firstly let’s ignore the Truthwatchers and the Bondsmiths for the time being since they seem to be a special case with the connection to the Spiritual Realm. We are only looking for Physical or Cognitive symmetry at this point. Secondly let’s only consider how they appear when in the Physical Realm for now. From the eight remaining Orders, we have seen only three spren in addition to Pattern. Let’s start with Syl since we've seen her the most. Like Pattern she's frequently changing her shape, often appearing in forms such as a leaf, a ribbon, or a woman. All of these have reflectional symmetry in common with each other. Next Ivory is described as "a small figure made of inky blackness" when Shallan sees him. This indicates that Ivory is human shaped, and therefore has reflectional symmetry.

Now Wyndle on the other hand is a lot more complicated since it’s not clear whether Lift is seeing his Physical or Cognitive aspect (remember that she’s a lot more in the Cognitive Realm than most people). Wyndle seems to have reflectional symmetry since he manifests a face amongst his vines; however I really think at this point that this is his Cognitive aspect that we’re seeing, and thus not relevant. I suspect that Ym was also a proto-Edgedancer (the way he was asking for people’s stories seems to fall in line with what we know of the Edgedancers), and his spren, from what little we saw of it, seemed quite different to Wyndle. Also if we assume that this is the case then we can draw some far more interesting conclusions later on, in fact I can’t find much of anything interesting if we assume otherwise. There’s also another reason, but I’ll explain that in the next paragraph.

This gives us: Windrunners with Physical symmetry, Lightweavers with Cognitive symmetry, and Elsecallers with Physical symmetry. This is almost enough to predict the symmetry of each Order in the table if we assume that it’s symmetrical. The only thing that it rules out for certain is rotational symmetry, thus leaving reflectional symmetry. The question is which axis is it mirrored across? I’m assuming it’s the vertical axis for three reasons. Firstly it is in line with all reflectional symmetry that we’ve seen up until now. Secondly because when considering the lines between the Radiant glyphs, each line points towards an Order with different symmetry if we assume a vertical axis. Finally when we come to consider the Truthwatchers and the Bondsmiths they would break the symmetry if we have a horizontal axis. This means of course that Wyndle needs to have rotational symmetry whilst in the Physical Realm, hence my final reason for thinking that Lift is seeing his Cognitive aspect.

This gives us all eight orders: Windrunners, Stonewards, Dustbringers, and Elsecallers with Physical Symmetry, and Skybreakers, Willshapers, Edgedancers, and Lightweavers with Cognitive Symmetry. Now we can consider the Truthwatchers and the Bondsmiths. The Stormfather manifests as a giant head, which of course gives him reflectional symmetry, leaving the Truthwatchers with Spiritual symmetry. There is of course a problem with this: both of the orders connected to the Bondsmiths (the Stonewards and the Windrunners) have Physical symmetry like the Bondsmiths do. This violates our rule that the connections are between Orders with different symmetry. I don’t have an explanation for this. The best I could manage is that these two orders are special and thus different rules apply, but then why would that be the case? It could easily have been fixed if the Truthwatcher were above the Bondsmiths, but they’re not.

I’ve annotated a copy of the Physical Surgebinding chart in order to more clearly show just how these all match up.

What can we learn from this? What if the symmetry is in fact related to the Shard that the spren is closest related to? The Stormfather is Tanavast’s cognitive shadow, and Syl is an honourspren, so these two match up. Ivory’s alignment is unknown, so that doesn't help. But Pattern and Wyndle are closely related to Cultivation which again, matches with the symmetry.

This begs the question of what the Spiritual symmetry that I’m predicting that Glys will demonstrate indicates. Could it be that Glys is actually an Adonalsium spren? These two Orders are special then because Bondsmiths bond mega spren and Truthwatchers bond Adonalsium spren?

This would mean that Honour and Cultivation are each connected through the Radiant Orders to every Surge, with the exceptions of Pressure and Tension which are connected only to Honour, and Progression and Illumination which are connected to Cultivation and Adonalsium.

But if this is true, what then is going on with the symmetry in the Cognitive Realm. The Elsecaller spren seem to maintain their symmetry across Realms, appearing human shaped in both, yet the Cryptics also have a body in the Cognitive Realm, which implies reflectional symmetry (I’m betting that even the symbols that are their heads, also display this kind of symmetry here). And of course the Edgedancer spren also have different symmetry between Realms as described earlier.

I've no idea what's going on here. There are only two symmetrically correct possibilities here as far as I can see. Firstly, all Orders along the bottom of the chart could have Physical symmetry and all Orders along the top have Cognitive symmetry, thus preserving the vertical axis of reflectional symmetry. Alternatively all spren in the Cognitive Realm could have reflectional symmetry. But if the latter is true, then why is the Cognitive Realm associated with rotational symmetry? And if the former is true, why doesn't the symmetry mirror the symmetry in the Physical?

I honestly don't think we've seen enough of the Cognitive Realm to make sense of this yet, so I'm just going to leave this here. Annotating the Cognitive chart like I did the Physical chart above would be premature.

What do you all think? Am I crazy?

I think we need @If.you.die.I.go.stupid to explain exactly what they meant. They never said either Roshone or Laral, so whilst it might be a good guess, we can't really assume that that's who they were referring to.

15 minutes ago, maxal said:

Who the heck is Rosanne? Sorry I have to ask.

There's no character by this name in either The Way of Kings or Words of Radiance. I just did a search in my ebooks: 0 results.

25 minutes ago, Argent said:

Can you at least provide some examples of which glyphs you believe to be the Spiritual ones, as they are the most poorly supported ones? Maybe some of the Cognitive ones as well? The ones on the endsheet we can obviously see in this thread, I would just like to see more examples - and I can find them myself if you point me in the right direction.

I've had a quick look through the images in the books and I've found a single example of a glyph which displays the Spiritual symmetry:

(Sorry about the resolution, this was the best I could find.) It's taken from the Map of the Warcamps in The Way of Kings, the first page before chapter 18. The only possible connection (pun not intended) to the Spiritual Realm that I can see is in the epigraph on the next page which compares Ati to Rayse. However this feels somewhat weak and forced to me, at least without further examples (hint, hint, @1stBondsmith).

Also @Argent, I'm really glad to hear that you like this, not least because it was in part your own analysis of the chart here, that really got me thinking about this. Now you've really got me wondering what this evidence you can't talk about is, so please let us know once you are free to do so.

If I might make a couple of nitpicks to start off with.

1. The glyphpair on Elhokar’s cape is wrong. The crown and the tower that you've depicted are used by Dalinar, Elhokar instead uses the crown and the sword.

2. The chasmfiend’s mouth is wrong. It’s described in the book as being “full of barbed mandibles” (many rows of teeth in other words).

With that out of the way, let me just say: Wow. This is incredible. Having taken a course in 3D modelling & animation, I understand just how much work and effort must have gone into this and am a little bit in awe. If you don’t mind me asking, how big is the team that worked on this? And which software are you using; Blender, Maya, something else?

I’m really looking forward to seeing more of this. In fact it’s enough to make me want to try modelling some other Rosharan wildlife.

@1stBondsmith What an insightful comment. I didn't knnow what you said about the dual point symmetry (it certainly didn't come up in my mollecular symetry class), you taught me something here. I'll have to read up on this, and give it a think, but it sounds really promising.

And as for the the point on the Shardblades, I hadn't even considered that this might be due to Realmatic interactions . I'd assumed that the Stormfather wouldn't become one, simply because he was throwing a tantrum. This would make so much more sense though. I have a question however: what's your basis for assuming that Renarin also won't get a sprenblade? Is there already speculation to this effect that I've missed, or are you making the connection now based off of this?

Hmm, you've clearly put some thought into this, so I don't want to come across as too critical here. That being said, some of your statements have come out of nowhere to me.

Where did you hear that the Unmade were Slivers? I've never heard this before, a quick search turned up nothing on it, and it doesn't make much sense to me. The Unmade are known to be Splinters of Odium, which is a different thing entirely, and I'm not sure how they could be both. Is it possible that you mixed them up? As Splinters though, they are made of Odium's Investiture, and must have been made after Odium's arrival.

1 hour ago, 1stBondsmith said:

c. Is the Nightwatcher one of the Unmade, or do we assume she is because she is the mother of Midnight Essence? She is also called the mother of Wyndal's type of spren, is she not? Is the first statement really true or characters' perspective in story? This is a common misdirection by Brandon.

The Nightwatcher is not one of the Unmade: she is related to Cultivation in some way (there's speculation that she's a Splinter, but that's unconfirmed). Where did you hear that she's the mother of the Midnight Essence though? This is something else that I've never heard before. I've been assuming that Re-Shephir was the mother of the Midnight Essence due to her description in a death rattle as "the Midnight Mother"

1 hour ago, 1stBondsmith said:

--One of the Unmade turns and helps either the Parshendi or KR in the upcoming battles against Odium's forces.

The idea that one of the Unmade might have turned against Odium has been speculated on here.

1 hour ago, 1stBondsmith said:

--Why does "The Unmade" sound a lot like "Those who died but did not"? Is there an initiation to the state that the IRE are in that might relate to the Unmade. I strongly doubt it, but made mention of it here.

By the IRE I'm assuming that you're referring to (Secret History Spoilers)

Well I hope this hasn't come across too negative , I'm not trying to shut down discussion here after all.

7 hours ago, Yata said:

Yes but I really doubt it's the same case...Jashan took with her the backpack in the physical.... I don't think she may do something like that. Also if in Stormlight Archive someone else made a similar feat.

Nazh recovered the Jasnah's work from the ocean....But we don't know if He actually take the research with him in the Physical or simply copy it in a new and real book

I don't think that @nervousnerd's point is entirely without merit, although he's certainly missing a step. Unlike the character in the spoiler box, Jasnah is a Surgebinder with access to the Surge of Transportation, which we know can bring things into Shadesmar. Also we've seen that she is able to Soulcast whilst both in the Physical and in Shadesmar. If she were to find the cognitive aspect of a backpack, then I could conceive of her using Transportation to bring it fully into Shadesmar with her.