happyman

Given that Jasnah has come to exactly this conclusion, it's entirely possible. This is the least nonsensical theory on the subject I have seen so far. Claiming that the Parshmen are not Voidbringers seems unlikely, despite all the times I've seen it. Jasnah's research just seems too solid to deny it outright.

I'm not prepared to espouse this yet, but I think you've definitely hit upon an aspect of the truth, which is that Gaz is an agent for somebody else. This could possibly explain the blackmail, definitely explains his disappearance, and probably explains his survival of his wound. As for Taragavinian's attitude toward Dalinar---I suspect he has the measure of Dalinar better than Dalinar himself does. He may be the target of assassination attempts from the other Highprinces, but there is also no doubt that he is a powerful symbol to the Alethi, the brother of one king and uncle to another king, a powerful warrior in his own right. He may have had some odd ideas recently, but from regular warriors, this may actually command a certain amount of respect as well. He certainly got Kaladin's respect. I think he has a better chance of uniting the Alethi than he gives himself, and Taragavinian knows this. Even if his first attempt fails, he is trying---who knows where it will go from here, especially if the king eventually falls in line behind him? No, I am inclined to believe that Taragavinian is basing his idea off of perfectly good and up-to-date intelligence, and even if it is a little out of date, I believe he is right in the long run. We'll see.

I hate to put it this way, but I'm certain you've made things more complicated that they really are. I can't help but remembering Chaos' theories about Hemularugy in this context. The real system was way more elegant than anything we came up with. I've always thought it was telling that no Allomantic/Feruchemical/Hemalurgic power allows you to read either minds or emotions, although some powers allow you to affect both. I thought it was inherent to the system. If Harmony can do it differently, I, personally, would attribute it to the combined power of both shards being inherently more balanced than any more cognitive-realm interactions. But maybe that's just me.

I'm pretty sure by the time of "Way of Kings," Honor would be completely unable to violate his Shard's intent in any meaningful way. Way of Kings happens after Hero of Ages, after all, and Ruin's original personality was well and truly gone by the time of Hero of Ages, and apparently had been for all of known history. Running over innocent people just because they are on the other side seems radically unlikely for Honor. It does, however, match what the people on Roshar do all the time.

I agree with this. And how cool would it be to see an established character come back as a Returned, then have to use their powers? We'd get a much better insight into what Returned can and can't do. Given what Brandon said is going to happen in Nightblood, I'm thinking this just might be the case. Incidentally, given that in the Annotations, Brandon keeps telling us why each of the Returned, Returned, I'm wondering what will happen when we learn about Warbreaker's past. That's gonna be one heck of a reveal. Of course, I've also wondered the same thing about Denth, etc.

I also believe that Aona and Skai are long dead, and like others, I believe it mostly because the Reod was most analogous to a machine failing. That is, Elantris was created as a machine to fuel Elantrian's power by drawing it from the land. The earthquake happened, and upset this "machine," breaking things in odd ways until it was fixed. Purely a technical issue, the kind of thing that happens when hardware in a computer starts to break down due to simple entropy. There's no evidence of malice in the failure, no technical reason to believe that it was anything other than an earthquake, no attempts to stop the system from working again. There is also no evidence of anything trying to stop the catastrophe. In fact, it sounds exactly like what I would expect in a world where the gods were long dead, but their automatic systems were still in place and running, but without maintenance.

This. In fact, you could say that the apocalypse began when Preservation sacrificed himself to imprison Ruin, became really obvious for 1024 years after the Lord Ruler's ascensions, got into full steam when Ruin was released, and only ended with Sazed's ascension.

My guess is that Ichor Alcohol decreases the "overhead" of reanimating the body in the first place. Remember, before Ichor Alcohol, it took 50 breaths to create a lifeless. 50! Also remember Vasher's little lecture: how close the object is to a living form determines how much breath it takes to awaken, but not what it can do once it's been awoken. Thus if corpses would fall apart less quickly with Ichor alcohol, it takes less breath to awaken them, and once they've been Awoken, the properties may be very similar to the previous kind.

The Breath used in creating Lifeless also preserves the body, as evidenced by Brandon's statement that Lifeless even have the ability to heal somewhat. I don't think they decay like corpses. The damage that destroys them is the normal wear and tear of life; living humans also experience that to some extent. Interestingly, in the most recent annotation, Brandon said that Jewels is taking Clod to Yesteel to see if he can do anything for him. Given what Vivenna saw, it'll be interesting to see what comes of that.

That---seems to fit the bill nicely. The separation into the three realms certainly could explain that oddity. On the other hand, I would definitely put the Feruchemical ability to store memory in the Cognitive realm, not Spiritual.

Look at it this way: It's a good theory. It's not your fault you got to the internet just a little too late. This also applies to Hemalurgy. In order to get power from Hemalurgy, you have to be willing to kill somebody. In other words, you have to be closer to Ruin. Dang. This basic idea is yielding a lot of fruit.

We've discussed this to death. My belief is that the Parshendi are Voidbringers (the hints in the book are quite solid when considered together), but that we don't understand enough about what that means for it to mean anything to us.

I agree with these arguments by Chaos. It seems much more parsimonious to assume that the power of creation is split into the Shards, with both the Shardholders and the humans dipping into them based off their intent.

I dunno. That's for normal Awakened objects. It's pretty clear Nightblood is well and truly different from normal Awakened objects in a lot of ways. It has a pretty significant Cognitive aspect of its own that goes beyond what was put into it.

Didn't the person talking to Dalinar identify himself as "The one you call the Almighty?" It would make sense that Vorinism attributed more to the Almighty than he's actually capable of (or than he actually claimed for himself) and folded the attributes of other gods they had heard of into him, but from Dalinar's last vision, I get the feeling there is a direct continuity between the Shardholder who held Honor and the Almighty as he is worshiped in modern Vorinism.

[sarcasm]What, you mean the fact that when she's a small pile of bones and greatshells rule Roshar, that he'll still look like he's 75? That little age difference?[/sarcasm]

Perhaps. But it is interesting to note that the theory that the Dor is in the cognitive realm, rather than being the cognitive realm, would agree strongly with Brandon's statement that you wouldn't want to go to Shadesmar on Sel. It would probably fry you like you were in a microwave, assuming the Dor is something extra that's only in Shadesmar around Sel.

This is a bit of a rant, but why would you only make weapons from this kind of awakening? OK, OK, human knowledge always seems to be used for weapons first, better technology and life second. So historically, that's the most likely use. I guess I'm just speculating about where it would go once people decided that they needed or wanted to use that kind of awakening for something else? What if the command used was "Do my taxes every year?"

In this discussion, why hasn't anybody brought up Kaladin's experience of the Highstorms when he was riding it? I don't have WoK with me, but I definitely feel like he experienced it as a big cloak covering the continent traveling from East to West, getting weaker as he travelled west. This is probably the best description we have of the actual Highstorms considered as a whole; I seriously doubt Kaladin was hallucinating any of it. If this description is accurate, describing the Highstorms as anything besides 100% supernatural seems unlikely, to say the least.

I second this idea. Just what I thought, as well! If that's the case, we've met all of the main viewpoint characters, though clearly we can't get much from Shalash until after a few other things have been cleared up.

Since at least half of the topic is how the people on Roshar define North and South, it isn't really off topic. Also, it's a whole loss less speculative than the glyphs, so we can say things that are more substantive. I believe that the fact that magnetic fields point roughly along the poles of rotation is not a coincidence (bulk magnetism comes from moving charge, and points perpendicular to the motion of the charge; our magnetic field comes from conducting materials rotating within the Earth; hence the correlation), but it's not how astronomers define the terms simply because other planets don't have to have magnetic cores at all. What this means, though, is that the definition of magnetic north and magnetic south have been separated from the definition of the directions North and the directions South. Without compasses, nobody defines directions in terms of magnet poles (and what do the terms really mean, fundamentally, anyway?), and so I doubt anybody on Roshar does. Directions first, magnetic pole names second.

This is a good example of the modern definition of North and South. You need real astronomy to decide which pole is North and which is South in our modern methodology. (Astronomers have standardized it, BTW, so they can unambiguously name North and South pole on other planets. It depends on which direction the planet is spinning as observed from over the axis of rotation of each pole.) Of course, this modern convention is simply a standardization of previous conventions which were much less well informed. As I stated, Translation Convention is the easiest way to straighten it all out as long as Rosharian's have the same general cardinal directions (which is OK, because the sun presumably rises in the Eastish).

For the direction names, I think I would have to stick with "translation convention" unless otherwise noted in the books or by Brandon. I.e. the folks don't speak English, so you have to translate the directions somehow. Different cultures in different times and places have had different directions and conceptions of directions (our modern conventions are far from unique or self-evident). Thus South is probably defined in a way that distracts from the story as little as possible, most likely by simply using our modern astronomical definitions for the "translation" and not worrying about the cultural basis unless it pops up as important.

It's an interesting idea, but it just makes my point. A hurricane that size would not, repeat not, be natural, or even close to it, especially over land. Natural hurricanes are driven by heat transport which can only be created and sustained over water. It is impossible for a hurricane to form over a continent. Also, the eye of a hurricane is at most about 230 miles in diameter (according to Wikipedia). I have a hard time imagining that Roshar is less than 230 miles across. Even accounting for a different gravity, I doubt that the basic mechanics would change much. No, Highstorms are like nothing we are familiar with. They are comparable with Hurricanes mostly in strength and a few superficial similarities, but I don't see a natural origin as plausible.

I agree with the sentiment in principle. It seems like the kind of thing Brandon would like to do. The real problem is that absolutely freaking nothing in real life behaves like Highstorms in any kind of detail. Hurricanes are only the broadest of fits, and that's in terms of power; very little else (structure, timing, etc) matches.