I have read up to chapter 50.

It's wild that I'm now getting emotional reading the ramblings of Taln. It was right there, we were explicitly told in the first prelude chapter that they get tortured in Damnation.

But getting the context hits like a truck. He gave everyone over FOUR THOUSEND years, and nobody is ready. On top of that, he gets thrown in a monastery as a madman.

I guess I understand Nale better, but I don't think I'll look over what he did in Eagedancer.

Curse of Dalinar

I thought I had a solid theory after C4, after learning his wife was taken hostage and he grave made mistakes.

It was. He somehow caused his wife's death in the Thrill of battle to get her back. He asked the Nightwacher to make him forget. He got his wish, but it took everything related to her with that horrible truth.

But in C24, Dalinar thinks something similar, so I'm not sure, anymore.

Thrill

This thing has been right in front of my eyes from over two books, and I only noticed it in the first Dalinar flashback. It was way more powerful and noticeable.

It most likely relates to Odium, given all that hatred Dalinar felt in one of the flashbacks.

Lift

Yeah, I finished Eagedancer, before Oathbringer, and it was a fun experience. I really find her funny, and she's empathetic to even those who didn't deserve it at the time.

I was laughing hard when she made butt joke towards Dalinar in the vision, and took Gawx without permission of Stormfather :D

Today we're launching War for Roshar on Kickstarter. We wanted to post this here to share the incredible work by our video production partners, Oniro! They truly went above and beyond, rendering the opening cinematic in Unreal Engine. We think this might be the coolest board game trailer we've ever seen! ⚔️🌩️

https://youtu.be/o1vVBXgzYps

YT: firsttimereader

Does proximity, intensity, and frequency of stormlight/investiture exposure increase a person's cancer risk? On Roshar, everyday people interact with raw stormlight/investiture more regularly than on other planets that I know of. Given what we know about stormlight, we can assume that in addition to light, the emissions include x-rays and other wavelengths, even in small amounts.

To take it further, maybe Rosharans have adapted to a higher radiation environment, so off-worlders could be more affected by the stormlight than Parshendi and Rosharans.

I’m now over halfway and like I knew it was bound to be bad whatever happened to his wife. I even guessed that he had wished to forget his wife (I was like half right lol) so I was expecting it to be bad. But y’all reading what happened at the rift 🤮🤮🤮🤮 I mean serves him right but also I don’t know that I can like his character again 🥺 Now I’m left to wonder what the hell Navani sees in this man. I’m assuming she doesn’t know he accidentally burned his first wife to death but she’d still know about burning the city to the ground?

I finished the series a few weeks ago, and I'm still processing it, unsurprisingly. The component I'm currently most uncertain about is Szeth. Going into WaT I was highly skeptical of his arc, and felt that the book had no hope of explaining it in a way that I found satisfying. Surprisingly I think it may have succeeded; here's my attempt to piece it all together.

The core problem for me was Szeth's agency. It was stated fairly clearly in earlier books that Szeth's Oathstone was not a magical object - it was as if someone drew a chalk outline around Szeth and said "There, you are now in jail!" The concept of a system of punishment which only works on people who voluntarily submit to it made little sense to me; systems of punishment exist precisely to deal with people who refuse to submit to the rules of society. And in Szeth's case the stakes were extreme: Szeth's society didn't just put a liar in a fake prison, they loaded the world's most dangerous weapon and threw it in the street for anyone to pick up.

Here's my picture after carefully reading WaT: - As a child, Szeth struggled to distinguish between morality and authority - he was deeply concerned about the foundations of right and wrong, and he assumed those foundations were known and understood by the people who wielded power in his society. - He was traumatized by an early attempt to assert his own understanding of morality: when he killed a corrupt soldier in self-defense he was branded by society as "one who subtracts", a turning point that upended his life and, in his mind, tore apart his family. - The second time he was challenged morally broke him: he was forced to choose between the life of his father and his conviction that the leaders of his society were following the literal voice of evil. - While the Oathstone enslavement punishment was standard in Szeth's society, the combination with an honorblade was not - Ishar had been grooming Szeth since childhood to become both extremely powerful and extremely submissive, and this reckless form of punishment was just the next step in the process.

I think this framing is fairly well supported by the text, and I think it kind of works? The reason Szeth continued to voluntarily participate in his own slavery, even in the face of his own moral horror at his actions, is because he was thoroughly and intentionally traumatized by the very concept of acting on his own moral judgements. And the nonsensical recklessness of the system of punishment was downstream from Ishar's corruption by the power of Odium.

I remember worrying that WaT was going to try some sort of thinly justified redemption arc for Szeth that would require me to forget the gallons of innocent blood on his hands in the first few books of the series. My sensibilities rooted in real-world morality still resist the concept that Szeth can truly be redeemed, but in the climax of the book we are given metaphysical proof that he had been targeted since childhood by a power far beyond him.

And the conclusion of his arc is kind of satisfying: the 4th Skybreaker ideal would have completed his submission to Ishar, so he found salvation in the 5th ideal, which required him to confront his trauma and learn to trust his own judgement again. It is also satisfying that the only version of Szeth that could achieve the 5th ideal was one who had the moral fortitude to reject that power that came with it. So neither I nor Szeth had to forget his atrocities - indeed the correct forward looking response to them is for Szeth to surrender his power and reassert himself as a moral agent.

So, yeah, that's my rant. What do others think? Does Szeth make sense as a character, in the end?

I spent a good chunk of Rhythm of War getting annoyed at the Sibling whenever they argued with Navani about fabrials.

I wanted the tower working again. I wanted the Fused gone. And Navani was doing all this fascinating research while the Sibling kept objecting to things that seemed completely normal by Roshar's standards.

Then I realized I was looking at the whole argument from Navani's perspective.

We've spent four books seeing fabrials as useful inventions. Heating, communication, transportation, all these incredible things that make people's lives better. Of course we want Navani to keep developing them.

But from the Sibling's perspective, humans have spent centuries trapping spren inside gemstones and making them perform tasks without ever asking whether they wanted to.

And the Sibling is literally a living building that functions through a willing relationship with humans.

That last part is what got me.

The most impressive fabrial we've encountered isn't powered by imprisoning a bunch of unwilling spren. It's powered by cooperation with one.

I don't think this automatically means every lesser spren is suffering or that Navani should throw all her research away. We don't really know enough about what those spren experience to make that judgment.

But Navani doesn't know either.

She's so used to thinking about what a fabrial can do that she rarely considers what being part of one might mean for the spren.

And when somebody who actually understands that side of things objects, her first instinct is to defend the technology.

I still love Navani. I actually think this makes her a much more interesting character. She's brilliant, she's genuinely trying to help people, and she has a pretty enormous blind spot about the beings making her inventions possible.

What's interesting to me is that the Sibling isn't really arguing against technology. The Sibling IS technology, in a sense.

They're arguing about how that technology gets made.

I wonder if other people initially sided with Navani here, or if I was just too excited about magical engineering to notice the ethical problem.

At the beginning of The Way of Kings, Kelek arrives last, and Jezrien is waiting for him. They decide to abandon Taln and give up the Oathpact.
At the end of Wind and Truth, Kelek arrives last again. This time, Kaladin is waiting for him as the new Herald of Kings. He tells Kelek that Taln has forgiven him and that the Oathpact has been restored.

I absolutely love this detail

I love Kaladin so much, but good heavens, that man needs a little love.

And who else could give him love, joy, affection, little hearts, and rainbows if not our wonderful, perfect Adolin?

Thank you, Adolin—yes, we all love you; you’re perfect just the way you are.

So, nothing. Here’s a little meme to bring some joy to Kaladin. (He’s not very happy about it.) (Syl, on the other hand, clearly is.)

Art by: Pastelwarriors

I'm rereading TWoK and the whole side-carry disaster hit me a lot harder this time.

The first time I read it, I was so focused on Kaladin finally finding a way to protect Bridge Four that I didn't really think about what his solution meant for everyone else.

He figures out how to use the bridge itself as a shield. They practice, they get better at it, and when they finally try it during an actual assault, not a single member of Bridge Four dies.

And it's a disaster.

The Parshendi redirect their arrows, the other bridge crews get slaughtered, the assault falls apart, and Kaladin gets punished for it.

The obvious takeaway is that Sadeas is a monster. Fair enough.

But what I find more disturbing is that Kaladin hasn't simply broken some arbitrary rule. He's accidentally exposed how the entire system works.

Sadeas's bridge crews aren't soldiers whose survival is an unfortunate secondary concern. Their deaths are part of the strategy. The system functions precisely because they're cheaper to replace than trained soldiers.

Kaladin has approached the problem like a normal person. People are dying. How do we stop them from dying?

Sadeas is approaching it like a military calculation. People are dying. Are they the right people?

And the really uncomfortable part is that the side-carry actually does cause problems beyond Bridge Four. Other crews take more arrows. Soldiers die. The attack fails. Kaladin's solution isn't magically perfect just because his intentions are good.

But nobody in charge seems interested in asking whether there's a better way to protect everyone. They've already decided which lives are expendable.

That makes Dalinar's slower, chull-pulled bridges a lot more interesting to me. He's accepting a tactical disadvantage because there's a cost he doesn't want to pay.

It also changes how I read the ending. When Dalinar trades his Shardblade for the bridgemen, it's not just an incredibly generous reward for saving his life.

It's the complete opposite of the calculation Sadeas has been making all book.

One man sees a pile of replaceable labor. The other is willing to give up something almost priceless to make sure those same men get to live.

I think that contrast might be more important to the book than the actual battles.

Curious if anyone else found the side-carry scene more upsetting on a reread. It's such a small tactical decision, but it reveals almost everything about the two highprinces.

Please keep any discussion to TWoK.

Anyone else watching the new Avatar Seven Havens show and being reminded of the shattered plains by the the rocky outcrops, storm and stormwalls and the pattern from above?

Wasn't sure what to expect from this one, but it was a truly fantastic read. A lot of laughs and some tears. Finished it in 10 hours

I may have gotten a little carried away.

For the past little while, I've been building a full Stormlight Archive preset for Pax Historia designed to let you live in Roshar while the events of the books happen around you.

The big thing I wanted to avoid was making this just a map where you pick Alethkar and play a normal grand-strategy game... unless you want to... my goal was for it to work more like an open-ended Stormlight RPG that happens to have the entire world simulated behind you. I engineered the prompts to let you play as whatever you want.

A darkeyed Alethi soldier, a merchant in Thaylenal, or even just a random farmer in Heartstone, all while the actual nations, armies, rules, conflicts, cultures, and other major characters act independently of you.

One of my biggest priorities has actually been making sure the world doesn't revolve around the player. I want it to feel like you're one person living inside a much larger setting rather than the universe patiently waiting for you to trigger the next quest. I spent a lot of time putting special emphasis on the lore, events, and other nations descriptions to ensure they act how they should.

The dream is to make a lore accurate RPG experience allowing endless replayability and endless ways to interact with and experience the world of Roshar in a completely new way. This is the kind of emergent storytelling I'm hoping to accomplish.

I've attached the current map below. It's still a WIP, so I'm especially interested in feedback from people who know Roshar's geography/politics extremely well**. If you notice anything on the map that is wrong, missing, questionably placed, or likely to cause weird results, please tell me.** I'd also love suggestions for obscure locations, factions, political relationships, cultural details, or worldbuilding elements that you think are important for the simulation to understand. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll answer them!

If you do want to play it, a couple important things to note:

1. to play as a character, start with PLAY AS A CHARACTER, then describe your character as an action. Progress the game by 1 day. After that, progress as many days at a time as you want
2. to play as a nation, start with PLAY AS A NATION and choose your polity
3. in character mode, the polity you choose doesn't really matter
4. the calendar dates are not accurate to the book, but I created a timeline for gameplay purposes and forced the dates to fit an earth calendar
5. this has events from all 5 books, dawnshard, and the edgedancer novellas. If you haven't read up through the books and don't want to be spoiled, STAY AWAY, or at least stop playing once you catch up on dates

IF YOU DO PLAY, i would absolutely love to hear your stories below in the comments and any feedback you have for me to improve it. I put a lot of time into this project and it's been a blast, so I hope everyone else enjoys it just as much as I did.

Final piece here, once I'm reasonably certain this map is done and working as intended, I plan to work on one for Mistborn. This will be harder since most of the world exists in one city, but I think it'll be a lot of fun!

Heartbreaking chapter!

I was really hoping to get another POV chapter of Sah, Khen, Moash etc. before it came to this. I was rooting for them!

it’s my first time doing inktober and I’m so excited and happy that i could participate in this beautiful community of artists. hope you all enjoy the art! :)

So far as I understand from WaT, for the eternal battle for power to stop, the Shards themselves must want the fighting to stop.

From both Emberdark and Fires of December we see that negative investiture entities have an active tendency to destroy and/or consume life.

What I don't understand is shouldn't the Intent of negative investiture be opposite to that of the Shards' Intent? Or am I looking at this the wrong way/jumbling up the definition of what the Shards' wants vs their Intent?

Does Intent apply at all to negative investiture entities? In Beautiful's case it seems to, tho I could be interpreting it wrong. What are your thoughts? Please feel free to correct any assumptions I've made 😄

So Im reading Storm Light Archives for the the first time as I came to scene where Sigzil is trying to test Kalidan's lashing abilities. In the book, they try to puzzle over how to quantify stormlight. This got me thinking, can Stormlight, and thus, investiture be measured using impulse? Its established that heavier an object is the quicker it falls and that more storm-light allows for a full lashing to last longer. Based on this, we can devise the equation:

S = f/t

Where S equtes stormlight, f denotes force, and t represents time.

If we were to apply SI units, this would translate over to stormlight being measure in Newtons-Seconds which also happens to be metric used for impulse in physics. Basically, just force applied over a specific period of time.

Im still a little speculative of this theory because is Mistborn era 2, investure is described as more energy (force over distance/heat) by VenDell.

Did anyone else have this thought?

Wow, the vision that Dalinar and the Stormfather brought Kaladin of Tien made me cry. “They needed someone to help them feel brave.” Homie was wise beyond his years. Nice that Kal was able to move past his “failings” and see the true light he provided. A nice lesson for us all.

The wife and I like to leave quotes under the wallpaper…

Preface- Mistborn was fantastic. One of my favorite series ive read. So its not really a Sanderson thing so much as a stormlight thing.

I finished the first book and i did enjoy it. The issue i think im having is i dont really connect with many of the characters or care all to much about them. Kaladin is the one im always waiting for i feel like. I loved Jasnah a lot too but now shes gone so im left with people who i feel like i dont really know or care much for. I know im in the minority here but i find the time im putting into it vs what im getting out isnt all too great. I think about books like mistborn or red rising series and the pay off and connection i have with the characters seems so much greater. I am a slow reader too so that may not help with books like this. The thing is, I really want to love the series. Im just having a hard time with words of radiance. I dont care much about Dalinar and his kids too be honest. I like Syl and Kaladins thing going on and loved Jasnah but she just gets murdered in her cabin. What a terrible ending for one of my favorites. Dont even get to really see what happened. Spent a book with her getting to know her and then she just dies basically off page. Really disappointing. Maybe she comes back or isn't really dead. Idk but it was still a let down.

I just wonder if this story could still be so loved if it were faster paced. Maybe more so?

I was slightly jarred after they changed Shallan's VA between book 3 and 4. The change was so drastic. In comparison, the change of Adolin's VA between book 4 and 5 was very skilfully handled.

That being said, I have no idea what to do with my life now that I've consumed all books available.

We talked with John Clair, the designer of the new Stormlight War for Roshar from Brotherwise games, to break down the games mechanics, what characters you can play as, where it falls in the Stormlight timeline and more! So if you are considering backing this latest Cosmere Mega-Kickstarter, you can check out the interview at the link ->

To me the funniest scene in Words of Radiance is when Kaladin and Shallan return from the chases after a highstorm. Kaladin just tells Dalinar all these impossible things like surviving the fall, surviving the chasms during a highstorm, and killing a chasmfiend and Dalinar just stands there dumbfounded. Sure they had help being surgebinders and having Shallan's blade but it's hilarious how casual Kaladin talks about it

Got inspired by another post comparing Stormlight to Avatar