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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_stormlight_archive.jpg]]
2%%
3->''"The sun approaches the horizon. The Everstorm comes. The True Desolation. The Night of Sorrows."''
4
5''The Stormlight Archive'' is an EpicFantasy series of ten planned novels, written by Creator/BrandonSanderson. It is part of Literature/TheCosmere, along with ''Franchise/{{Mistborn}}'', ''Literature/{{Elantris}}'', and ''Literature/{{Warbreaker}}''. The series is set on the world of Roshar, which experiences BizarreSeasons and HostileWeather -- the seasons change every few weeks, and appear in random order, while the hurricane-like "highstorms" hit every few days. The only exception to this is the annual "Weeping"; four weeks of constant, dreary rain (sometimes with a highstorm in the middle, sometimes without) that marks the beginning of a new year. These odd pressures have shaped Roshar's indigenous wildlife and human civilizations both.
6
7In the distant past, mankind repeatedly warred with the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demonic]] Voidbringers. Championed by the mighty [[BadassArmy Knights Radiant]], armed and armoured with [[AbsurdCuttingPower Shardblades]] and [[PoweredArmor Shardplate]], humanity managed to hold their own and prevail against all odds... only to be apparently [[FaceHeelTurn betrayed]] by the Knights Radiant, who cast aside their armaments and vanished. The amazing weapons and armor remained behind, to be claimed by whoever can manage to acquire them.
8
92 millenia later, the nation of Alethkar, having just signed a peace treaty with the Parshendi people, are [[FalseFriend abruptly betrayed]] when the Parshendi send an [[ProfessionalKiller assassin]] wearing white to kill their king. In retaliation, the Alethi declare war and invade the Shattered Plains to begin a [[DuringTheWar long and arduous military campaign]].
10
11The story follows several viewpoint characters, including [[TheHero Kaladin]], a BrokenAce with ChronicHeroSyndrome who trained as [[TheMedic a surgeon]] but [[ChildSoldiers joined the army]] instead; [[OldSoldier Dalinar Kholin]], a [[WarriorPrince Highprince]] and [[FourStarBadass war general]] trying to [[TheFettered follow the old codes of chivalry]]; Shallan Davar, a BrokenBird [[BlueBlood noblewoman]] who is trying to save her [[ImpoverishedPatrician destitute house]]; and Szeth, a man whose honor requires him to be an ExtremeDoormat for others, who we first meet as he is sent to murder the Alethi king.
12
13Novels in the series:
14[[index]]
15* ''Literature/{{The Way of Kings|2010}}'' (released August 2010)
16* ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' (released March 2014)
17** ''Literature/{{Edgedancer}}'' (novella, released November 2016)
18* ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' (released November 2017)
19** ''Literature/{{Dawnshard}}'' (novella, released November 2020)
20* ''Literature/RhythmOfWar'' (released November 2020)
21* ''Wind and Truth'' (November 2024)
22* Books 6 through 10 (TBA)
23
24[[/index]]
25
26----
27!!This series as a whole provides examples of:
28
29[[foldercontrol]]
30[[folder:A-C]]
31* AbsurdCuttingPower: Shardblades cut through ''any'' nonliving matter like it is made of paper (except [[AntiMagic aluminum]], in which case the Blade acts like a normal weapon). They pass straight through living flesh as well, severing the soul of whatever part they touch. The only things they can't cut through are other Shardblades, Shardplate, or "half-shard" fabrials. This is because [[spoiler:Shardblades are actually spren, or the corpses of spren, bonded to Radiants.]] Dalinar theorizes that the real reason for the Blades was to fight Voidbringer monsters like thunderclasts, which were too big and durable for conventional weapons to harm.
32* AbusivePrecursors: The Knights Radiant, or at least everybody thinks so. Turns out [[spoiler: this also applied to ''their'' Precursors, who were so bad they accidentally destroyed their home world. The Knights Radiant's apparent betrayal was an attempt to avert a second apocalypse, but between the resulting chaos and the machinations of Odium, their reasons for it were lost to history.]]
33* AChildShallLeadThem: After the Assassin in White kills the Emperor of Azir ''and'' the Emperor who replaces him, the viziers start to get concerned about appointing a new Emperor who might also be swiftly murdered. Courtesy of some surgebinding on Lift's part, a middle school kid becomes the new Emperor during ''Words of Radiance.'' He's still in command during ''Oathbringer,'' and Dalinar comments that he's too young to even be a spearman.
34* ActuallyAGoodIdea: Highprince Dalinar is on the verge of an ignoble retirement because he's plagued by recurring spiritual visions and fears that he's losing his mind. His son suggests transcribing and researching his ravings. He's a bit stunned at the simplicity of the solution, all the more so when they're found to include accurate, long-lost historic information that proves they have a supernatural source.
35* AnAesop: The series features the First Ideal, the oath that all the heroic [[ThePaladin Radiants]] swear: "Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination." It's pretty much a means of telling the reader explicitly what values the story is meant to enshrine, although each Order of Radiants may interpret the words slightly differently.
36** [[MartialPacifist Life before death]]: The Radiant values and protects life, always. If they kill, it is only because there is no other choice.
37** [[ComesGreatResponsibility Strength before weakness]]: The Radiant uses their strength to protect and serve the weak, not to rule over them. All people are weak sometimes, so respect the weakness of others.
38** [[ItsTheJourneyThatCounts Journey before destination]]: The Ends Don't Justify The Means. What is truly important is not the goal that you strive towards, but what you will or won't do to reach it. The wrong thing done for the right reason is still the wrong thing done. Also, do not let yourself be so blinded by your goals that you don't see more immediate concerns.
39* AfterTheEnd:
40** The culture of all the characters ''believes'' this is the kind of world they live in. To some degree they're right, but the first book is one long hint that things will get worse.
41** [[spoiler: ''Oathbringer'' reveals that Roshar is actually the second planet humans have lived on. Their first planet, Ashyn, had its surface rendered uninhabitable by Surgebinding, though some people still live in flying cities.]]
42* AlienBlood: Parshendi have orange blood that smells like mold. It's described identically to the blood of [[BigCreepyCrawlies chasmfiends]], though if there is any connection it hasn't been explained yet. [[spoiler:Although ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' establishes that the Parshendi are native to Roshar and have [[BizarreAlienBiology gemhearts]] like the chasmfiends do.]]
43* AlienInvasion: Played straight and eventually inverted. The Desolations are the result of Voidbringers attempting to invade and conquer Roshar. ''Oathbringer'' reveals that [[spoiler: the first beings called "Voidbringers" were ''humans,'' coming to Roshar as refugees from a world they'd accidentally destroyed, who eventually spread from the land they were given to become the dominant species on Roshar.]] The Desolations the reader is familiar with were largely attempts at revenge for this.
44* AlienSky: Roshar has three moons. The first, Salas, is small and casts a violet light; the second, Nomon, is large and has blue-white light; and the third, Mishim, is small and has green light.
45* AllAnimalsAreDogs: [[CallASmeerpARabbit Axehounds]] are basically lobster dogs.
46* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Deconstructed, starting in ''Oathbringer''. The conflict pits humans and spren on the side of Honor versus Singers and Fused on the side of Odium. It ''sounds'' like a classic case. Except an entire Order of Knights Radiant side with Odium. Spren refuse to bond humans and remain neutral, leaving two more Orders restricted to a single member. Then Singers start becoming Radiant. Some human nations side with Odium.
47** Before too long, even [[spoiler: Fused]] are renouncing their side. The end result is that the war is made up of individuals with different ideals and priorities, not a simple humans versus singers conflict.
48* AmbiguouslyBrown: According to WordOfGod, most of the Rosharan ethnicities would fall under this trope to some degree in our world, as they combine features in a way that no current ethnicities do.
49** The Shin are repeatedly stated to have unusually round eyes, implying that canted eyes more reminiscent of real-world East Asians are the norm on Roshar.
50** A few people are identified as this in-story. This is [[spoiler: usually a sign of being a worldhopper who doesn't belong to any ethnic group on Roshar.]]
51* AnimeHair: Mixing Alethi blood, Horneater blood, and/or Iriali blood can result in the child getting a mix of black, red and/or blond hair respectively. As in, each strand would be a different color. A child of all three races could conceivably look like [[Franchise/YuGiOh Yugi Moto]]. It's one of several signs that Rosharan humans aren't ''quite'' the same as Earth humans on a genetic level.
52* ApocalypseHow:
53** The Desolations were repeated examples of Planetary/Societal Collapse and borderline Planetary/Species Extinction. The normal casualty figures are around 90% of the human race, and it's apparently a toss-up as to whether humanity can struggle back up to ''Bronze Age'' tech or Iron Age tech by the time the ''next'' Desolation comes along. The current Desolation has been delayed far longer than most, giving humanity time to get much further up the tech tree than the normal.
54** ''Oathbringer'' notes that one of the biggest problems with the Desolations was [[spoiler: the Heralds' resolve]] being gradually ground down over time. Large spans of time passed between the early Desolations, but that period of rebuilding became shorter and shorter over time. The time between the ultimate and penultimate Desolations was less than a year, which is why the situation was so desperate.
55** [[spoiler: The destruction of the surface of humanity's old planet, Ashyn, was an even greater example. While the planet wasn't rendered ''completely'' uninhabitable, the only survivors who didn't flee to Roshar are forced to live in magical flying cities.]]
56* AppliedPhlebotinum: Stormlight.
57* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: Squires can only become a full Knight Radiant by bonding a Spren of their order's type. This makes recruitment for some orders very difficult, as the Spren they bond are either very rare or opposed to bonding with humans. This is most pronounced with the Bondsmiths, for whom only [[spoiler: three]] Spren exist to bond with: [[spoiler: the Stormfather, the Nightwatcher, and the Sibling]].
58* ArcNumber:
59** Ten is associated with the Almighty (aka Honor) in Vorinism, the religion of the Alethi and other Vorin nations. There are 10 Heralds, 10 orders of radiants, 10 surges, 10 Alethi highprinces and so on. Conversely, nine appears to be the number of Odium (nine Unmade, for example), especially in the form of ten things with one missing or corrupted. This is in line with some (although not all) of the shards having their own numbers.
60* ArcVillain:
61** Sadeas, [[HeroAntagonist Eshonai]] and [[spoiler: Taravangian]] are the three main antagonists of the first two books' story arc that revolves around the War of Reckoning in the Shattered Plains. Although [[spoiler: Taravangian]] plays more of a TheManBehindTheMan role to [[TheHeavy Szeth]].
62** [[spoiler: Kabsal]] turns out to be this for Shallan's story arc in Kharbranth, while [[spoiler: Tyn]] is the same for her journey through the Frostlands.
63** Re-Shephir for ''Oathbringer'''s first Part, almost bordering on FillerVillain since her defeat isn't of much immediate consequence.
64** Raboniel, one of the most highly ranked members of the Fused, is the main antagonist of ''Rhythm of War'', with the Pursuer acting as her [[TheDragon dragon]].
65** Nale is the main antagonist of ''Edgedancer''.
66** [[spoiler: Nikli]] is this for ''Dawnshard''.
67* ArcWords:
68** "Find the most important words a man can say," as well as a few other quotes from ''[[FictionalDocument The Way of Kings]]''.
69** "The sun approaches the horizon. The Everstorm comes. The True Desolation. The Night of Sorrows."
70** "Unite them."
71** "What is the most important step a man can take?"
72* AristocratsAreEvil: Kaladin believes this due to his almost entirely negative experiences with the lighteyes. Thanks to FantasticRacism and a DeadlyDecadentCourt (at least in Alethkar), he's about 95% correct.
73* ArmorAndMagicDontMix: Szeth can't wear Shardplate because it would prevent him from using his Lashings, which both utilize [[{{Mana}} Stormlight]]. It turns out that this is because [[spoiler: Szeth's power comes directly from his blade, which is an Honorblade]]. The [[MagicKnight Knights Radiant]] did not have this problem, as [[spoiler: their powers came directly from their spren]].
74* ArmorIsUseless: Depends. Regular armor is presented as greatly increasing survivability against mundane weapons, but is completely useless against Shardbearers (who either wield magic swords that can cut anything, or hundred-pound warhammers). Shardplate provides massive amounts of protection from mundane weapons, and can even block blows from other Shardbearers, although pieces will eventually break from a few repeated hits.
75* ArtifactOfAttraction: Shardblades and Shardplates technically don't qualify, since the attraction isn't supernaturally induced, but they're so incredibly valuable the difference is academic.
76* ArtifactOfDoom:
77** Shardblades, possibly. Syl mentions that she doesn't like Shardblades, and that [[spoiler:Dalinar]] is a better man for giving one up. [[spoiler: Syl, an honorspren, is specifically attracted to Kaladin]] because of his noble and honorable behavior, among which is turning down one of the blades.
78** Shardblades, at least, are explained in the second book: [[spoiler:they are the physical form of spren bonded to the old Knights Radiant, and after the Knights broke their oaths they died, leaving the corpses behind]].
79* AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: Becoming a Shardbearer automatically makes someone a lighteyes of the fourth dahn, making them in the upper half of the upper class. Additionally, bonding a Shardblade, holding an Honorblade, or invoking Radiant powers will temporarily lighten the wielder's eyes. [[spoiler:Reaching the Third Ideal of any Radiant Order (which allows the Radiant to summon their spren as a weapon) will lighten their eyes, if temporarily.]]
80* AuthorityGrantsAsskicking: If a Shardbearer wins an extra set of Shards, he can gift them to anyone he wants-- usually an equally noble family member, who will thereby become a badass.
81* BadassCreed: The Knights Radiant have oaths (called Ideals, also known as the Immortal Words) that represent their bonds to their [[BondCreature spren]], and grant them their powers. In many cases the wording may vary subtly or significantly between individuals, in relation to their personal struggles, as long as the central message remains the same.
82** The first is the same for every Order:
83--->[[MartialPacifist Life before death]], [[ComesGreatResponsibility strength before weakness]], [[ItsTheJourneyThatCounts journey before destination]].
84** The Ideals of the Windrunners:
85--->'''Second Ideal:''' [[spoiler: "[[WeHelpTheHelpless I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.]]"]]\
86'''Third Ideal (as spoken by [[spoiler:Kaladin Stormblessed]]):''' [[spoiler: "[[SaveTheVillain I will protect even those I hate]] [[NeutralGood so long as it is right]]."]]
87--->'''Third Ideal (as spoken by [[spoiler:Teft]]):''' [[spoiler:"[[HeroicSelfDeprecation I will protect even those I hate, even if the one I hate most is myself."]]]]
88--->'''Third Ideal (as spoken by [[spoiler:the Lopen]]):''' [[spoiler: paraphrased as [[InnocentlyInsensitive "I will protect people]] [[JerkassRealization even from myself."]]]]
89--->'''Fourth Ideal (as spoken by [[spoiler:Kaladin Stormblessed]]):''' [[spoiler:"I accept that there will be those I cannot protect."]]
90** The Ideals of the Skybreakers:
91--->'''Second Ideal, general form: [[spoiler: [[ByTheBookCop I will put the law before all else.]]]]\
92'''Second Ideal (as spoken by [[spoiler:Szeth-son-son-Vallano]]): [[spoiler: "[[JusticeWillPrevail I swear to seek justice, to let it guide me]], until I find a more perfect Ideal.]]
93** The Third and Fourth Ideals of the Skybreakers (respectively, Dedication and [[OrphanedEtymology Crusade]]) are specific to each individual Skybreaker, but involve committing first to a greater truth or outside source of guidance and then to the completion of a personal quest.
94** The Ideals of the Edgedancers (both as spoken by [[spoiler:Lift]]):
95--->'''Second Ideal:''' [[spoiler:I will remember those who have been forgotten.]]\
96'''Third Ideal:''' [[spoiler:I will listen to [[BeneathNotice those who have been ignored]].]]
97** The Lightweavers have no Ideals other than the first. Instead each Lightweaver must acknowledge [[DarkSecret Truths]] about themselves in order to advance.
98** The Ideals of the Willshapers (as spoken by [[spoiler:Venli]]):
99--->'''Second Ideal:''' "[[SlaveLiberation I will seek freedom for those in bondage.]]"
100** The Ideals of the Stonewards:
101--->'''Second Ideal''': "[[TheReliableOne I will be there when I am needed.]]"
102--->'''Third Ideal (unconfirmed; not attributed to any specific order, yet fits the Stoneward Ideal):''' "[[{{Determinator}} I will stand when others fall.]]"
103** The Ideals of the Bondsmiths (both as spoken by [[spoiler:Dalinar Kholin]]):
104--->'''Second Ideal:''' [[spoiler: I will unite instead of divide. [[TheLeader I will bring men together.]]]]\
105'''Third Ideal:''' [[spoiler: "[[TheAtoner I will take responsibility for what I have done.]] [[TaughtByExperience If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.]]"]]
106* BadassFamily: The Kholins. So far, we have: the [[PosthumousCharacter former]] king Gavilar, a highly skilled warrior, general, and politician who united ten warring princedoms; his widow Navani, a [[GadgeteerGenius genius]] [[WrenchWench inventor]]; his daughter Jasnah, a genius scholar and [[spoiler:[[MagicKnight Knight Radiant]]]]; his brother Dalinar, also a gifted warrior, general, and [[spoiler:[[MagicKnight Radiant]]]]; Dalinar's younger son Renarin, a [[HandicappedBadass crippled]] [[spoiler:[[MagicKnight Knight Radiant]]]], who while a terrible fighter has many other skills; and Dalinar's older son Adolin, possibly the best [[BadassNormal non-powered]] warrior in the world. And then there's Adolin's fiancée Shallan, who is also [[spoiler:a Radiant]].
107* BarehandedBladeBlock: Known as a "lastclap": a technique used to defend against a Shardblade attack swung from overhead. The performer brings both their hands together with open palms to catch the Blade. Noted as extremely tricky to pull off the timing, and only workable because Shardblades tend be swung with less force than ordinary weapons due their [[AbsurdlySharpBlade Absurdly Sharp nature]].
108* BattleCouple: The Parshendi fight in "war pairs," as an extension of using what amounts to husband-and-wife teams [[note]]it's a little more complicated, since Parshendi are asexual except when they want to reproduce, for which purpose they form "mate pairs," but the same malen and femalen tend to stick together as a pair and change purpose together throughout their lives - thus, a war pair are not sexual partners, but they likely either have been in the past or will be in the future[[/note]] for just about all purposes. Possibly also an appearance in one of Dalinar's visions; we see two Radiants working in tandem -- one male, one female.
109* BerserkButton: The Parshendi/Parshmen have a race-wide BerserkButton when it comes to others touching/moving their dead. [[spoiler:Kaladin figures out a way to exploit this.]]
110* BetrayalByInaction:
111** In the ancient backstory, humanity's greatest defenders, the Knights Radiant, abandoned their [[PoweredArmor Shardplate]] and [[AbsurdlySharpBlade Shardblades]] en masse and walked away in an event called the Recreance. This sparked a still-ongoing war over the abandoned and now much less powerful Shards[[spoiler:, and effectively killed the spren who powered their gear and abilities and who were bonded to the Radiants by the strength of the Knights' oaths.]]
112** In ''[[Literature/TheWayOfKings2010 The Way of Kings]]'', [[spoiler: Highprince Sadeas]] betrays Dalinar by having his army retreat halfway though a battle and take their bridges with them, stranding Dalinar's army on a plateau with a swarm of Parshendi reinforcements on the way.
113* BeyondTheImpossible: Urithiru's location is so remote and inaccessible as to be unreachable by any but a Knight Radiant wielding a shardblade or the surge of gravitation. However, in the in-universe book, ''The Way of Kings'', Nohadon says that he walked from the far end of Roshar to the city. Dalinar at first believes this was a metaphorical journey but, no, it's revealed that Nohadon actually walked to Urithiru.
114* {{BFS}}: Most Shardblades. Dalinar's and Adolin's are mentioned as being six feet long, and this is fairly common among Shardblades. It turns out that there's a reason for the blades to be so big: they were intended to fight large battles against great numbers of foes, as well as massive beasts made of stone that were hard to kill with conventional weapons. [[spoiler: The Blades themselves can actually change shape, but when the Knights Radiant broke their oaths they largely abandoned the Blades in their massive configurations, killing their spren and locking them in that shape]].
115* BigBad:
116** [[GodOfEvil Odium]], the god of hatred [[spoiler: and possibly other emotions as well]], though he doesn't appear in person until the third book.
117** [[spoiler: Taravangian manages to kill Rayse at the end of ''Rhythm of War'' and steal the Shard Odium for himself]].
118* BigCreepyCrawlies: Most large animal life on Roshar counts. But the biggest and creepiest of the crawlies are called Greatshells, and exemplified by the chasmfiends of the shattered plains. They look like crayfish, [[LightningBruiser have dozens of legs, are extremely fast, and are the size of a bus.]]
119* BioluminescenceIsCool: Lifespren give this effect, though it's not biological per se. Especially healthy living things, particularly plants, attract spren that look like glowing green motes of light.
120* BizarreAlienBiology:
121** Roshar is apparently a land without soil (the constant highstorms blow away any earth; the exception is Shinovar, on the far west of the continent, where high mountains to the east protect them from the force of highstorms already weakened by the time they arrive), has random seasonal changes every few weeks, has a gravity level of 0.7, and is scoured by hurricane-force storms on a near-weekly basis. Adaptations include grass that retreats into holes in the rock when threatened. Very few animals other than the humanoid races seem to even be ''mammals'' (there are minks and horses), with beasts of burden and domesticated pets being mostly crustacean, reptilian or insectile. The low gravity also allows for the massive crustacean greatshells to exist without being crushed under their own weight. Additionally, Greatshells are implied to gain sustenance from the [[{{Mana}} stormlight]] that comes in on the Highstorms, using their massive internal gemstones to store it.
122** Plants are very tough and tend to grow in clefts of rock or behind ridges, or have some form of sensory apparatus that let them detect water and sense movement nearby so they can extend or retract parts of their bodies. Early on, Kaladin notes that farming is very different, as instead of plowing fields a farmer instead spreads a sap mixed with seeds across rocky hillsides, and then waits for polyps to grow that are filled with powdery grain. The only real work needed to maintain the crop is "worming," which involves making sure worm-like parasites don't tunnel into the polyp and eat all the grain.
123** The Parshendi race has shades of this. We know their bones are red, their skin is marbled multi-colored, their blood is orange and smells moldy, and they grow their armor as part of their bodies. It turns out that they're actually shapeshifters, and originally were capable of assuming hundreds of different forms, though many of those forms were as [[spoiler: Voidbringers]]. And it's even implied in their legends that they may ''literally'' be aliens, though the stories are unclear.[[spoiler: They're not. Those stories describe their abandoning Odium and fleeing to Eastern Roshar. The actual aliens are the ''humans.'']]
124** Most species native to Roshar have gemhearts, natural organs made of precious gemstones. Chasmfiends, chulls, and Parshendi are all confirmed to have them by the end of ''Oathbringer.'' Most terrestrial species--we see humans, horses, pigs, and minks--lack a gemheart [[spoiler: because they didn't originate on Roshar]].
125** Also [[InvertedTrope inverted]] when it comes to the country of Shinovar. By the time Highstorms reach there they've expended most of their energy, so the ecology of the region is a lot more similar to Earth, even to the point of having strawberries and chickens, and in ''Edgedancer'' Lift remarks that the region has something akin to goats living in the mountains. Visitors to this land from the rest of Roshar find it extremely strange. There is a RunningGag where Eastern characters call every bird a chicken.
126** Even humans from Roshar [[OurHumansAreDifferent have some odd quirks of their genetics compared to those from Earth]]. For example, hair and eye color inherit fractionally rather than through dominant/recessive combinations. Brown hair and blonde hair will make a kid with half brown, half blonde hair. The same is true for a darkeyes and lighteyes having children: They can have one light eye and one dark, though they might just be born with either normal light or dark eyes.
127** As it turns out, [[spoiler: this trope is [[InvertedTrope inverted]] for the planet as a whole; humanity is an invasive species on Roshar, fleeing the destruction they inflicted on their original homeworld and settling in Shinovar, hence the Earth-like flora and fauna native to that country. This is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by the Stormfather, who points out that it should be obvious that humans were never made for a world like Roshar.]]
128* BizarreAlienSexes: Singers have four genders: malen, femalen, male, and female. Malen and femalen are asexual; when two singers wish to reproduce, they change to 'mateform', changing from malen to male or femalen to female.
129* BizarreSeasons: It's not terribly obvious, but the seasons appear in random order, and change every few weeks. A season that lasts 40 days is considered unnaturally long. There is also the month of the Weeping, with constant rain but no Highstorms, when farmers usually rest.
130* BloodKnight:
131** The Alethi, once a ProudWarriorRace, have degenerated to this. The Thrill they all experience, which makes combat addictively euphoric, doesn't help. [[spoiler: The Thrill is caused by a powerful Voidspren, so this is likely deliberate on [[GodOfEvil Odium's]] part.]]
132** [[spoiler: Stormform]] also does this to Parshendi. Before the transformation, we see them as a doomed but resolute people, resigned to their fate but willing to explore alternatives. After, a military coup, genocide of their own dissenters, and the shattering of peace talks with the Alethi through regicide are implemented almost casually.
133* BothSidesHaveAPoint: A running theme throughout the stories is that both sides in a war are usually fighting for a reason and that, even if the reasons of the leadership are simple greed or hate, most of the soldiers have a lot more in common with each other than their leaders.
134** This is also a major problem in the conflict with the Singers, and comes to a head in Oathbringer. [[GodOfEvil Odium]], god of hate, has worked very hard for millennia to engineer a situation where basically everyone has a perfectly legitimate reason to...well... hate each other. It makes peace virtually impossible, and disadvantages the side trying to be moral.
135* BrokenAngel: Syl losing her mind near the beginning of ''Words Of Radiance''.
136* BrokenBird: According to the back of ''Words of Radiance'', only a broken soul can have Surgebindings inserted into it, making it into a BrokenAce.
137* ByTheBookCop: Skybreakers, according to what we've seen of them.
138* CallASmeerpARabbit: The Alethi refer to all birds as "chickens", which probably stems from the fact that birds don't exist natively in their region. For the same reason, cats are referred to as "minks" even if they don't look at all like what we'd call a mink. Axehounds are a halfway-case, as pointed out by Hoid, who notes that hounds don't actually exist in this world.
139* CameBackWrong: The Fused are the ancient dead of the Singers, returned to this world by Odium's intervention. The most unhinged of their number come back as Thunderclasts, enormous monsters made of stone.
140* CapitalLettersAreMagic:
141** As with most Cosmere works, capitalization indicates a concept specific to a system of magic. Most notably: Blades (Shardblades), Plate (Shardplate), and Light (Stormlight) are abbreviations, and Surges refers to the forces their magic system manipulates.
142** Further, "parshmen" (the non-sapient "absence of form" in which most singers exist) is not capitalized, while "Parshendi" (singers who retained their minds) is.
143* CareerNotTaken: Kaladin spends a lot of time lamenting the fact that he threw away his chance of becoming a surgeon in order to follow his little brother Tien to war. He thought he could protect Tien, but Tien ended up dead anyway, and Kaladin ended up on a much darker path.
144* CastFromLifespan: Select Ardents have use of a fabrial capable of Soulcasting. It is traditional for Soulcasters (the people) to be kept apart from the populace at large. This is because extended use of a Soulcaster slowly turns the ardent's flesh into the same thing that the Soulcaster makes. An interlude in ''Oathbringer'' implies that this is eventually fatal, as it shows an ardent whose body is slowly turning into smoke.
145* ChariotPulledByCats:
146** The planet Roshar's unique ecology leans heavily towards crustaceans, so the primary draught animal is a huge, docile, crab-like creature called a chull. They're fairly slow-moving, but actual horses are far too rare and expensive to waste on draught work.
147** The ships that navigate the SpiritWorld of the Cognitive Realm are pulled by Mandras, {{Giant Flyer}} [[OurSpiritsAreDifferent spren]] that look like a cross between an eel and a sea slug. They don't need to be fed, so they're a very economical means of transport, their habit of occasionally vanishing into the Physical Realm notwithstanding.
148* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Weirdly, wines come in not just "red" and "white" but an entire chromatic range, each known for its particular strength and piquance. This is probably another case of CallASmeerpARabbit, as actual grape wines, red and white, are exclusively an exotic Shin drink. The examples we've seen so far do seem to fit a possible pattern: all are among the seven traditional colors of the rainbow (ROYGBIV) in ascending order of alcohol content. Orange is [[FrothyMugsOfWater non-alcoholic]] and yellow is mild, while blue and violet are much more intoxicating. White wine is essentially hard liquor, while ''Horneater'' white is so strong is ''melts the cups''. [[spoiler:Turns out the wines are actually just dyed those colors for lighteyes' convenience; lower classes just drink it undyed.]]
149** Additionally, Stormlight has a pleasant white glow, while Voidlight has a deep purple and ultraviolet light. This makes an easy reference for whether a given use of magic is coming from Honor or Odium. Similarly, the eyes of someone holding Stormlight change to a clear light color, while someone holding Voidlight has eyes that glow red. Lifelight is faintly green in comparison to Stormlight. Combinations of Light, [[spoiler: as Navani discovers in ''Rhythm of War,'']] are the colors of both component parts at once.
150* ColorCodedStones: Played with somewhat, where there are ten gemstones used in [[AlchemyIsMagic Soulcasting]]; each gemstone can transmute a certain element, and the association is based mainly on the commonality of colour between them. In order, with colors and elements listed, the gemstones are: Sapphire, blue, [[BlowYouAway any clear gas]]. Smokestone, black, [[SmokeOut any opaque gas]]. Ruby, red, [[PlayingWithFire fire]]. Diamond, white, crystal. Emerald, green, [[GreenThumb plant matter]]. Garnet, rusty red, blood. Zircon, yellow, oil. Amethyst, purple, [[ExtraOreDinary metal]]. Topaz, brown, [[DishingOutDirt stone]]. Heliodor, golden, flesh. Originally their magic was going to be based on mineral composition, until Sanderson realized that most gems are identical from that perspective, so color is easier.
151* ComfortTheDying: In a flashback, [[spoiler:Shallan]] comforts [[spoiler:her [[AbusiveParents father]]]] while she strangles him to death for trying to murder [[spoiler:her brother]]. The knowledge that his SanitySlippage was [[spoiler:partly, albeit inadvertently, caused by her is only ''part'' of the TraumaCongaLine of her backstory.]]
152* TheCommandments: The Ideals of the Knights Radiant. The Second through Fifth Ideals differ from Order to Order between the ten, but the First remains the same. [[spoiler:Breaking them results in the spren involved in giving Surgebinding to the Radiant dying, causing a {{Depower}} and killing the [[MorphWeapon Shardblade]] made, rendering it incapable of morphing.]]
153* ContinuityNod:
154** There are a number of references throughout the books to [[Literature/TheCosmere Sanderson's larger multiverse]]. ** In [[Literature/TheWayOfKings2010 The Way of Kings]], the epigraph of Chapter 18 mentions Ati (who was [[spoiler:the mortal identity of Ruin]] in the ''Franchise/{{Mistborn}}'' books), the reoccurring character Hoid makes yet another appearance (as the King's Wit, and continues to reappear as Wit in every subsequent book), and the three foreigners in the Ishikk interlude are all examples (Grump, Thinker, and Blunt being [[spoiler:Galladon from ''Literature/{{Elantris}}'', Demoux from Mistborn, and Baon from the unpublished White Sand]], respectively).
155** In Literature/WordsOfRadiance it is heavily implied that Zahel is [[spoiler:Vasher]]. Also [[spoiler:Nightblood makes an appearance]], given to Szeth. Confirmed by [[WordOfGod Sanderson]].
156** Literature/{{Oathbringer}} also heavily implies that Highmarshal Azure is [[spoiler:[[Literature/{{Warbreaker}} Vivenna]]]], searching out Vasher. Confirmed by [[WordOfGod Sanderson]].
157** The Ghostbloods' trophies:
158*** A vial of pale sand - from Taldain.
159*** A couple of thick hairpins - Hemalurgic spikes.
160*** A lock of golden hair - belonging to a Returned.
161*** A branch with writing on it - an object presumed to be from Yolen.
162*** A silver knife - from Threnody.
163*** A preserved flower - a Tear of Edgli.
164*** A chunk of pink crystal - a broken Aether sliver, presumed to be from Yolen.
165* CoolHorse: Ryshadium horses; bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than virtually any other breed. They choose their own riders and are apparently ''very'' picky; Dalinar estimates that no more than a dozen men have been chosen, out of the hundreds of thousands in the warcamps. Dalinar compares the difference between a Ryshadium and a regular horse to the difference between [[PoweredArmor Shardplate]] and regular armor. [[DimensionalTraveler Khriss]] even speculates that they might be sapient. Oh yeah, and they have ''stone hooves''.
166** Given that Horneaters are a mix of human and Parshendi, you have to wonder; what bred with a horse to make a Rhyshadium? Or vice versa?
167* CoolSword: Pick a Shardblade, any Shardblade.
168* CopeByPretending: Shallan privately admits that [[StepfordSmiler Stepford Smiling]] is the only thing keeping her on the near side of the DespairEventHorizon, and outright suppresses the memories of [[spoiler:having killed both her parents in self-defense.]] This causes her problems when she becomes a MagicKnight, since her powers cause her various personas to develop into full-fledged [[SplitPersonality Split Personalities]] that threaten to overwhelm her.
169* CrypticBackgroundReference:
170** Many, though in particular the anonymous letter excerpts given at the start of certain chapters contain many references to mysterious people, places, and events.
171** The Old Magic and the precise nature of spren in particular. They're mentioned often, accepted as part of the world... but aren't truly ''explained'' for the first couple of books.
172* CourtJester: The Alethi king has a position known as "the King's Wit" who insults people in the king's stead so that the king doesn't have to sully himself. His primary role is to humiliate and humble the various "lighteyed" lords and ladies by mocking them, which he does with relish and gusto. The current Wit (Hoid) does hide his genuine criticisms in a lot of straightforward insults, but they are there. It's ''technically'' legal for a slighted lord to kill the Wit, if he is willing to revoke all his lands and titles. [[spoiler: This fact is exploited by Jasnah in Rhythm of War. She baits Ruthar, who has been completely opposed to her rule, into attacking Wit so he can be neatly removed and replaced with his more cooperative son.]]
173[[/folder]]
174
175[[folder:D-F]]
176* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: The Listeners have songs of the horror of their old Gods, and of the Faustian bargain that came with the forms of power they granted. As the Listeners grow desperate under Alethkar's unending siege, they consider resorting to these forms again. [[spoiler: And are consumed as a people by Odium.]]
177* DealWithTheDevil: Forms of power. They grant a Singer supernatural powers, but require bonding with a [[spoiler: Voidspren]], subjugating part of their will to it, and by proxy [[spoiler: Odium]].
178** Even moreso with the Fused. The Fused never truly die, their souls returning to Braize instead. Bringing them back to Roshar requires providing them with a Singer whose body they can overtake. This evicts the Singer's own soul, effectively killing them permanently.
179* DeathWorld: The wildlife and weather patterns of Roshar are dangerous for human life, with deadly highstorms and animals and plants covered in heavy armor. Survival of any settlement is often dependent on geography. Even "safe" areas like the Purelake still require humans building strong shelters to withstand the wrath of a highstorm. The only Earth-like region is Shinovar, which is so far west that the highstorms lose all their power by the time they reach it. [[spoiler: The lethality of the environment to human life is, in hindsight, a clear sign that humanity and Earth-like life is not native to the planet.]]
180* DefectorFromDecadence: People defect from both sides of this conflict, because BothSidesHaveAPoint and both sides suffer internally from loads of FantasticRacism.
181* DefiantToTheEnd: One of the recorded Death Rattles is of a Shin man bluntly informing the people watching him die that he's not going to tell them what he sees.
182-->''"I wish to sleep. I know now why you do what you do, and I hate you for it. I will not speak of the truths I see."''
183* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Alethi culture is very closely modeled on the usual medieval European fantasy feudalism (with a dash of an Indian-style caste system thrown in), but with a much more intricate set of enforced gender roles designed primarily to make the setting distinctive. Women are the only ones allowed to be literate (with men being restricted to a simplified pictograph language), and most non-administrative white-collar jobs are restricted to women. The Shin have a perspective much closer to the reader's, written in a surreal and overly-specific style to highlight the alienness of the Alethi and their allies. Slavery is also for the most part accepted, although it is ''supposed'' to only be used as a punishment for crimes or debt. Slavers are looked down on as a despicable but necessary evil, and it is considered a [[CruelMercy "mercy"]] reserved for the lower castes, since a higher-caste lighteyes would usually be executed for what would get lower-tier lighteyes or almost any darkeyes enslaved.
184* DiseaseByAnyOtherName: Only people who have suffered some form of mental illness and/or a traumatic incident can bond with a spren and become a Surgebinder. Several characters are dealing with issues that readers will be able to identify, but Roshar doesn't specifically have names for.
185** Kaladin has severe depression, post-traumatic stress, and survivor's guilt due to [[spoiler:Tien's death]] and his time as a slave. He also claims that even as a child his mood would worsen during "The Weeping", an annual month of unchanging rain, a form of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
186*** By extension, most of the early Windrunners have PTSD from their bridge running days.
187** Shallan has PTSD as a result of her abusive childhood, and her brothers show signs of being similarly affected. In ''Oathbringer'' she begins to exhibit signs of Dissociative Identity Disorder. By the time of Rhythm of War this has developed into a system of three personas dubbed simply the Three, and her personas are described explcitly as "alters" once.
188** Renarin suffers from a "blood weakness" which Kaladin later identifies as epilepsy, specifically myoclonic seizures. WordOfGod has also stated that Renarin is on the Autism spectrum, which is hinted at in his social awkwardness and occasionally stimming with a small, metal box he keeps with him.
189** Dalinar may have been a bona fide sociopath, given his bloodlust, ambition, and cruel treatment of his wife [[spoiler: and that's before he killed her, which was at least on accident]]; this seems to have been fixed by the Nightwatcher. Regardless, he is explicitly a recovering alcoholic, after using wine to dull his memories of his wife and brother.
190** Teft struggles with a lifetime of addiction, this time to a FantasticDrug called firemoss that seems to be Roshar's version of magic mushrooms.
191* DivineRightOfKings: Vorin religion teaches that the lighteyes are marked for rule by the Almighty due to their light-colored eyes, and the darkeyes are marked for service. It is possible for a darkeyes to become a lighteyes, but only by capturing one of the astonishingly rare Shardblades, which hasn't happened in living memory. Dalinar's visions imply that all current lighteyes are descended from the first darkeyes who stole the Blades left behind by the Knights Radiant when they disbanded, meaning it's all little more than AsskickingLeadsToLeadership writ large. Kaladin eventually learns (to his chagrin) that [[spoiler:anyone who becomes a Radiant and gains the ability to summon their spren as a Shardblade automatically becomes a lighteyes, regardless of their previous station, due to the Nahel bond changing the color of their eyes.]]
192* {{Doorstopper}}:
193** The original title of the second book was going to be ''The Book of Endless (or Infinite) Pages'', until Brandon's editor pointed out that the title might be a bit on the nose for a 1001-page book. As it happens, this second book--which was eventually named ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance''--apparently clocks in at 10'''88'''. Any longer, ''it would have been unpublishable''. ''Oathbringer'' bests that at 1264 pages, by using thinner paper.
194** The audiobooks aren't much different. ''The Way of Kings'' lasts a good 45 hours 37 minutes. ''Words of Radiance''? 48 hours 13 minutes. Oathbringer blows them both out of the water at 55 hours and 6 minutes. ''Rhythm of War'' tops out higher still, at ''57 hours and 26 minutes,'' a full feature film longer than the book that required thinner paper to get the print edition out the door. Hope you enjoy listening, because you're going to be doing a lot of it.
195*** For comparison, the first ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}'' book, ''The Final Empire,'' comes in at 24 hours and 39 minutes, barely half the length of ''The Way of Kings!''
196* DramaticSpineInjury: [[SoulCuttingBlade Soul-cutting]] Shardblades cause instant death when they touch the spine, [[EyeScream burning out the body's eyes]] in the process. In the original release of ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'', Kaladin ends his HighAltitudeBattle with [[spoiler:Szeth]] by stabbing through his spine [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice from the front]], but [[OrwellianRetcon later editions remove this]].
197* DualityMotif: The child of a darkeyes and a lighteyes can have one eye of each color. This makes them something of an outcast.
198* DuelToTheDeath: One method of becoming a Shardbearer is by killing the previous bearer in battle. Shards can also be staked on the outcome of a formal duel, though this usually permits other victory conditions than death.
199* DysfunctionJunction:
200** [[JustifiedTrope Justified.]] If you want to be a Surgebinder, being [[BrokenAce broken]] is a prerequisite. Damage to the mind and spirit is necessary for a spren to form the bond needed to grant Surgebinding.
201** Shallan's entire household is made up of these. Shallan is broken from the trauma of her mother's death, and as a child she was rendered mute for months. Every time she remembers what happens, she blanks out and her mind shuts off as a defensive mechanism. Her brothers include a sadist who pulls the legs off of small cremlings, a gambling addict drunkard, and a pyromaniac. Her father was so violent and abusive that he nearly killed one of his sons before [[spoiler:Shallan killed him herself]]. The only one in her family that is remotely level-headed is the eldest brother, Helaran, and even he [[spoiler:joined the Skybreakers and was ultimately killed by Kaladin.]]
202* EasyLogistics: Soulcasters can virtually eliminate an army's need for supplies, as they create food, wood, buildings, and other such things out of thin air. Considering that the armies are camped on the edge of the shattered plains in the middle of nowhere, this makes them every bit as strategically important as Shardblades. The king's tax on the use of his Soulcasters is Elhokar's main income source.
203* ElementalEmbodiment:
204** Spren. There are traditional elemental spren like flamespren and windspren, but there are also spren for certain activities (creationspren for creating art, musicspren for performances), emotions (fearspren, gloryspren), biological processes/conditions (rotspren appear on infected wounds, lifespren appear near healthy plant life, hungerspren appear around someone starving, etc), and other things (starspren, which look like shooting stars but can change direction; deathspren, a mythological spren that are only visible to people who are very close to dying).
205** It is strongly suggested that there is a Voidbringer minion connected to each of the Ten Essences, though so far we have only seen thunderclasts (massive, humanoid beasts of animated stone, connected to Stone) and Midnight Essence (animate smoke inside a weasel-like skin with sharp teeth and claws, connected to Smoke).
206* EldritchLocation: Shadesmar, which is a strange inversion of the Physical world made up of impressions and ideas from the Physical. On Roshar, it is a realm with a black sky and a white, stationary sun, where the shadows point toward the sun instead of away. Where there is land on Roshar, there are instead seas of tiny beads, each holding the spren of an object from the Physical world. Intelligent spren live in this world in cities, and other types of mobile spren form a strange ecosystem.
207* EternalRecurrence: Roshar is trapped in one, with cycles of great Desolations destroying civilization every few millennia only to be barely saved by the returning Heralds. [[spoiler: In Words of Radiance this is revealed to be an elaborate trap keeping [[GodOfEvil Odium]] bound on Roshar, and the Heralds return for the Desolations because of something called the Oathpact]].
208* ExpositionAlreadyCovered: Having survived an [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat apparently successful]] assassination attempt, [[spoiler:Jasnah]] reappears at the end of ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'', intending to deliver an apocalyptic InternalReveal. Instead, they meet the InexplicablyAwesome Hoid, who nonchalantly tells them that everything they're going to reveal has already happened or been worked out by others in the interim. They're a combination of relieved others had worked it out, furious they're so late, and just plain perplexed.
209* ExtradimensionalEmergencyExit: Elsecallers can travel into Shadesmar at will, which is how Jasnah escapes her assassination in Words of Radiance. She also keeps supplies stocked in Shadesmar, as last time she ran out of Stormlight and it took her months to make it back. Dalinar gains a similar ability in ''Oathbringer,'' though he hasn't used it for this purpose yet. Ishar also shows the ability to do this at the end of ''Rhythm of War.''
210* ExtradimensionalPowerSource: The titular Stormlight, which powers magic and fills gems with light, is brought into the physical world when a Highstorm causes the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual planes to intersect, thus allowing energy to flow from one to another. In ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' [[spoiler: Dalinar gains the ability to open a perpendicularity (essentially a portal) between realms that lets Stormlight in to recharge the powers of his allies.]]
211* EvilCounterpart: Comes up on a lot of levels.
212** The greater conflict of the setting originated between Honor and Odium, two Gods of the Cosmere who look so alike that Odium has to introduce himself as, "the other one," at least once.
213** Honor's Stormlight powers most magic on Roshar. The Singers get their own magic when the Everstorm adds [[spoiler: Voidlight]] to the mix.
214** The bonding of a mortal being and an immortal being is the foundation of the Knights Radiant (a human and a spren) and the Fused (a Singer and the soul of a Fused). Note that the Radiant pairing is symbiotic, while the Fused pairing functionally [[spoiler: kills the Singer]].
215** Most of the power sets used by the Knights Radiant and the Fused are reflections of each other. This is especially apparent in ''Rhythm of War,'' where the Fused varieties start getting named and explicitly compared to their Radiant equivalents.
216* EyeColorChange:
217** It is believed by many characters that if a person with dark eyes wins a [[SoulCuttingBlade Shardblade]] their eyes will become light. Szeth's eyes are normally dark green but become pale blue when he is actively using his Blade; he notes this is unique to his particular blade, so it's not entirely clear what the actual situation is.
218** Some more details come up in ''Words Of Radiance'', as [[spoiler:we see Kaladin's eyes turn sky-blue when he uses his Blade, although they fade back to his normal color a few hours after he dismisses it. Moash's eyes turn light tan when he bonds a regular Shardblade. Also, we discover that Parshendi eyes turn glowing red when they become Voidbringers.]]
219* EyeDentityGiveaway: Defied. Shallan Davar's many personae sometimes shift her eye color depending on who's in control. Shallan, for instance, has blue eyes, as does [[TheParagon Radiant]], the better to blend in with lighteyed members of society and to verify that she is a member of the Knights Radiant. [[TheLadette Veil]]'s eyes, meanwhile, are brown, and allow her to get in with fellow darkeyes.
220* EyeOfNewt: Soulcasting, even Radiant Soulcasting, requires a gem tied to the Essence you wish to produce. So if you want to turn a man into glass, you need a diamond. If you wanted to turn him into blood or water, you'd need a garnet. And so forth.
221* FairyCompanion: Syl usually takes this form.
222* {{Familiar}}: The spren that Surgebinders must bond with in order to gain magical powers function very much as familiars.
223* FantasticCasteSystem:
224** The Parshendi can shift between a variety of different forms, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. Warform is the one we usually see them in, making them big and strong and causing them to grow an armored carapace. Workform is similar to warform, but without the armor and with a mental block against conflict. Mateform is used for reproduction, while nimbleform is generally dexterous and quick, while the lost scholarform is intelligent, artform is creative, and meditationform introspective and good for teaching. Finally, we have dullform, a baseline form with no distinguishing properties, and slaveform, the mindless state that most parshmen exist in. [[spoiler: There's also Stormform, one of their Voidbringer forms, which turns them into hate-filled killing machines that can generate lightning and in large groups can summon an Everstorm, Nightform for predicting the future, Smokeform for stealth and more. Including a [[WalkingWasteland decayform.]]]]
225*** Post-Everstorm, the Singers have a fairly concrete hierarchy. Humans are on the bottom, treated as slaves. Then come normal Singers whose forms are created by bonding with a normal spren of Roshar. Above them are Regals, Singers who have bonded a corrupted spren of Odium, granting them low-level supernatural powers. At the top are the Fused, immortal Singers from past Desolations, who answer only to Odium.
226** The Alethi and other Vorin kingdoms have their own caste system, dividing people into the roles of lighteyes (higher-caste, denoted by having bright eye colors like pale blue or green or violet), darkeyes (lower-caste with very dark blues or browns or blacks) and ardents (priests who are considered the possessions of their rulers, and thus exempt from many societal norms like the taboo on men reading). Within the castes is also a hierarchy of ten ranks ("nahn" for darkeyes and "dahn" for lighteyes), earned via a meritocracy, which determines rights such as land ownership and the ability to marry into a higher caste. Some lighteyes, known as "tenners," are in the lowest dahn (tenth) and are virtually indistinguishable from the mid-upper ranks of darkeyes, save for their eye color.
227* FantasyCounterpartAppliance: Spanreeds are a convenient way to communicate in writing, not unlike texting or a very fast telegram. Spheres, because of their Stormlight, are used in affluent areas as lightbulbs.
228* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Downplayed, but present.
229** The Alethi are a religiously dogmatic people with tan skin and black hair. They have only recently united under a single king after generations as squabbling princedoms--very reminiscent of Renaissance Italy.
230** The Azish are a dark-skinned people who live in an empire run by a large and powerful bureacracy, much like India.
231** The Thaylens run an island nation that wields power via trade and a powerful navy, are ruled by a Queen, and have their own little tweaks to the dominant religion, much like 16th century Britain.
232** The Horneaters live on volcanic mountains, and their language sounds Hawaiian.
233** The Alethi are also a mixture of Western Renaissance and Eastern Chinese and Japanese influences, along with Persian and Ottoman aesthetics. For example, the Alethi clothing is similar to Renaissance Western-style long coats, complete with fashionable slashes in the outfits to show different-colored fabric underneath, but they also wear Japanese-style clothing underneath the coats. Their armor, meanwhile, is explicitly styled after Ottoman and Persian breastplates and helmets.
234* FantasticFaunaCounterpart: Several animals native to Roshar play the role of real-world animals. Chulls are beasts of burden like oxen, axehounds are, well, hounds, songlings are similar to singing birds, and cremlings are very much like crabs.
235* FantasticHonorifics: "Brightlord" and "Brightlady" are used to refer to lighteyes in much the same way as "lord" or "lady" would be used for nobility, although a high-ranking noble is unlikely to call a lower-ranking one "Brightlord". "Brightness" is also used for lighteyed ladies, and seems to be more common than "Brightlady". High-ranked darkeyes are sometimes called "Citizen".
236* FantasticLightSource: Spheres, which double as ''money'' (see FictionalCurrency, below). When infused with [[{{Mana}} Stormlight]], they [[PowerGlows glow]]; the brightness and color of the light depends on the size and type of gemstone, respectively. Diamond spheres make the best light sources, as they're pure white; a mark is almost as bright as a candle, and a broam is several times that -- and (unlike candles, lamps, or torches) they don't flicker, don't give off smoke, and last for a week or so before needing to be re-infused. Clear goblets are filled with spheres and used as lamps; "wasting" spheres on light is something of a status symbol. The amount of time a sphere holds Light depends on how well the gem is cut, and a gem does not have to be set into a sphere in order to hold Light.
237* FantasticRacism: Between the Alethi and the Parshendi/parshmen, as well as between lighteyes and darkeyes in Vorin nations. Nations in the west of Roshar don't seem to divide class by eye color, though. Rooted in the fact that parshmen have a very non-human psychology in addition to a BizarreAlienBiology, and prior to the setting's written history [[spoiler: successfully caused the apocalypse at least once.]]
238** [[spoiler: Moash's]] story arc suggests that the lighteyes/darkeyes dichotomy may actually be a subversion. After bonding with a Shardblade, his dark eyes lighten. After losing it, they darken again.
239** In addition to the hierarchical racism of the lighteyes/darkeyes dichotomy, each of Roshar's human cultures have markers (for example, the Shin have round eyes, the Horneaters have massive stature, and the Thaylens' eyebrows grow to shoulder length). Each culture tends to carry both positive and negative stereotypes...in a word, racism.
240** Within the singers, we see more of this trope. The Fused pretty explicitly treat other singers as second-class citizens. Additionally, singers have different skin color patterns (white, red, and black in all combinations) and don't seem to get on as well with other skin colors.
241* FictionalCurrency: "Spheres", which are glass beads with gemstones embedded in them. The spheres themselves are always the same size, but the gems inside them come in three different sizes: chips, marks, and broams. Ten different gemstones are used; their relative value is based on their usefulness in Soulcasting (see MagicAIsMagicA, below). To make things even ''more'' complicated, sometimes different names are used for the gems. [[labelnote:Details]]Spheres are roughly the size of a person's thumbnail, usually with one side slightly flattened so you can set them down without them rolling away. Chips are the smallest denominations, with just a tiny shard of gemstone; marks are larger, worth five chips; broams are the largest. Different gems used include diamond (the lowest), garnet, zircon, sapphire, ruby, and emerald (the highest). One emerald broam (the highest possible denomination) is worth one thousand diamond chips (the lowest possible denomination), and the system seems to be based on multiples of five. Their alternate names are descriptive; diamonds are "clear", garnets are "blood", sapphires are "sky", and rubies are "fire" -- e.g., a clearchip is a diamond chip, a firemark is a ruby mark, etc.[[/labelnote]]
242* FilchingFoodForFun: Lift is a young thief who is both a Knight Radiant, and obsessed with food, due to her boon from the Old Magic that allows her to directly convert food into Light. When she uses her powers to steal, it uses up the calories in the foods, and makes her more hungry. She's introduced by breaking into a palace just to steal the food. She has a separate novella featuring her stealing the festival pancakes of another town.
243* FlashbackBPlot: Each book features a plot thread told in flashback, focusing on a different character. ''[[Literature/TheWayOfKings2010 The Way of Kings]]'' focuses on Kaladin, ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' on Shallan, ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' on Dalinar, and ''Literature/RhythmOfWar'' on Eshonai and Venli.
244* FlawedPrototype: The Honorblades, the original Shardblades the Almighty gave to his Heralds. They give anyone who uses them surgebinding powers of the appropriate Order, but they consume Stormlight at a prodigious rate, and lack [[spoiler:a spren, so they don't have the behavior checks of the Knights Radiant]].
245* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: [[spoiler:Honor did this, and that's the source of Dalinar's/Kaladin's visions.]]
246* FlyingBrick: Windrunners of the Fourth Ideal or higher are this. Even basic Windrunners get powers of flight and a HealingFactor, but swearing the Fourth Ideal gives access to [[spoiler: their living Shardplate]], which bestows super-strength and NighInvulnerability.
247* ForeignFanservice: Downplayed example when Adolin meets Shallan. The Alethi tend to be very tall, solidly built, tan skinned, and dark haired. When Adolin meets Shallan, who is short, petite, red-haired, pale, and freckled, he thinks her exotic looks are very striking.
248* FuturePrimitive: The Parshendi are known to be living in an ancient ruin early in the series. ''Rhythm of War'' gives a much closer look at their society before the Vengeance Pact sees all of Alethkar descend upon them. They've lost knowledge of metallurgy and have no written language (though to be fair, their songs are supernaturally aided by the rhythms of Roshar, allowing them to record information in great detail in living memory rather than text). Venli mentions that basic steel weapons are treated by Listeners with the same reverence that the Alethi show to Shards.
249[[/folder]]
250
251[[folder:G-K]]
252* GambitPileup: There are a lot of different factions, some more mysterious than others, and all seem to have their own agendas.
253* GargleBlaster: The Alethi have "wines" that would be classed as distilled spirits on Earth, and even they tread carefully around Horneater "lager". Some pubs won't even stock it because it [[AteTheSpoon melts the cups]].
254* GiantEnemyCrab: The chasmfiends.
255* GodOfEvil: [[spoiler:Odium]].
256* GoldFever: Ultimately what caused the strategic breakdown of the Alethi war effort. As soon as they realized how many chasmfiend gemhearts were present, acquiring those for themselves became more important than cooperating with the other princes to win a decisive strategic victory against the Parshendi.
257* GoodThingYouCanHeal: All of the Radiants inherently have a certain degree of HealingFactor just from holding Stormlight, but [[spoiler: Renarin,]] who also has HealingHands as one of his powers, takes this trope to [[ComicBook/XMen Wolverine-like levels.]] At one point he kills a [[GiantMook Thunderclast]] by abandoning defense entirely and letting himself get pancaked 20 times (!!!) just so he can get in a good Shardblade hit on them each time.
258* GravityMaster: The Surge of Gravitation, usable by the Radiant Orders of Windrunners and Skybreakers, as well as the Fused variety known as the Heavenly Ones.
259* GroupIdentifyingFeature: All full members of Ghostbloods, a secret organization working towards mysterious goals, are required to have three overlapping diamonds tattooed somewhere on their bodies.
260* HalfHumanHybrid: The Unkalaki, the eponymous natives of the Horneater Peaks, are the descendants of interbreeding between the singers and humans. Herdazians ans some Vedens have less singer ancestry.
261* HealingHands: The Surge of Progression grants this ability (known as Regrowth) to the Radiant Orders of Edgedancers and Truthwatchers, as well as the Fused variety known as the Magnified Ones.
262* HealItWithFire: Kaladin uses this several times.
263* HeartIsAnAwesomePower: The power sets of the Knights Radiant are pretty far afield from normal MagicKnight fare. While some stalwarts, such as flight and healing, are present, many surges grant control over unusual things like friction and cohesion. And they're all ''terrifying.'' For example, Jasnah uses her powers of Soulcasting (transmutation) to do things like turning an assailant into a cloud of fire, or turning air to oil and setting it alight. Edgedancers use their control over friction to slide across the ground as fast as a charging horse. Et cetera, et cetera.
264* HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Other characters' esteem for Meridas Amaram goes all over the place, often in the same book.
265* HenotheisticSociety: Honor, who for a long time was called the Almighty, is the patron god of humans, whereas Odium is the patron god of the Parshendi/Singers, though the Singers did worship Honor once.
266* HeroesPreferSwords: Swords, be they Shardblades or regular ones, are considered the weapons of choice of the "heroic" light-eyed nobility. Common soldiers use axes and spears, and there is a cultural taboo against them owning swords. Averted as Kaladin prefers the spear.
267* HeterosexualLifePartners: Skar and Drehy are shaping up to be a subversion of this trope, as Drehy is not actually heterosexual. However, the two have shown no romantic interest in one another and simply seem to be close friends among Bridge 4. They consistently take the most dangerous tasks together such as defending Adolin during the Battle of Narak, infiltrating Kholinar, and [[spoiler: smuggling Gavinor out of an occupied city.]]
268* HighFantasy: Sanderson has described this series as his "love letter" to the genre.
269* HiveMind: It seems that the Parshendi have something like this. They have an uncanny ability to sing in time and in tune with each other... even when out of earshot. This turns out not to be the case when we get Parshendi [=POVs=] in later books. Instead, the planet Roshar has subtle magical "rhythms" that humans are not able to sense but Parshendi are, and if two of them attune themselves to the same one, they will hear and be able to sing the same moment in the same song. ([[WordOfGod Word of Brandon]] says that a [[{{Literature/Mistborn}} Seeker]] would be able to sense the rhythms with his allomancy.)
270* HollywoodTactics: InUniverse, {{Justified}} examples:
271** The Alethi are on the whole VERY good at war, and individual highprinces' armies are quite disciplined and use effective battlefield tactics, but they're still very much feudal and have only been unified into one kingdom for roughly a decade. Because of this, despite the fact that the ostensible purpose of the war is to punish the Parshendi for murdering the king, the Highprinces are mainly concerned with hunting the beasts that provide them with gemhearts and the wealth they represent, and only fight against the Parshendi when it's necessary to reach the plateau where the beast is spotted or withdraw back to their camps after claiming the gemheart. Dalinar has noticed this and is trying to turn the campaign into an actual war.
272** [[StormingTheCastle Assaulting defended walls without besieging]] is entirely justified in-universe by highstorms; you cannot hope to siege a city where any temporary constructions you build beyond the walls will be blown away in a couple of days by a highstorm, and Soulcasters mean starving a city out is nearly impossible. Any invasion needs to be quick, brutal, and violent, often with Shardbearers to break the defenses. In addition, cities are often built in such a way to shelter them from the constant devastating effects of highstorms, putting them in sub-optimal defensive positions as a result. The city of Kholinar takes advantage of the storms by having everything outside the city's walls within a day's march cleared away, leaving no buildings, hills, or forests of any kind to shelter a potential invader.
273* HostileWeather: The highstorms. They strike every few days, blowing from east to west, and are so powerful that being out unprotected in one is a death sentence. They've also scoured all dirt and soil from the eastern half of the continent (leading to some bizarre plants and animals), and bring the mystical Stormlight that powers everything. By the time of the third book, there is also the Everstorm: [[spoiler: a slower and less destructive storm controlled by [[GodOfEvil Odium]] that travels in the opposite direction, but which has deadly lightning strikes that target exposed people and structures with selective and vindictive hatred.]]
274* HubLevel: Shadesmar allows those who know how to access it to move across Roshar from outside Roshar's physical realm. ''Mistborn - Secret History'' also mentions that Shadesmar can be accessed from elsewhere in the Cosmere.
275** Any bearer of one of the sixteen Shards of Adonalsium (gods like Cultivation and Odium, not to be confused with mortal Shardbearers like Adolin or Kaladin) are able to create a Perpendicularity, which is a portal between the Cognitive realm (where Shadesmar exists) and the physical realm of places like Roshar and Scadriel.
276** Urithiru serves as this as well: while limited to Roshar, it has Oathgates that allow mass teleportation between major cities.
277* HumansAreWarriors:
278** In the ancient past, humans departed from Shinovar to conquer [[spoiler: almost the entire rest of Roshar, completely destroying ancient Singer society save for a small, remote group gone primitive]].
279** The Alethi in particular exemplify this trope. They possess an above-average number of shards (most highprinces have at least one Shard, while the king possesses half a dozen sets and his brother has two more sets) and Soulcasters. This gives them battlefield superiority and EasyLogistics to wage long campaigns other nations would balk at. There's also the fact that they have The Thrill [[spoiler: one of the Unmade]] on their side, let them fight harder and longer than their foes.
280* HumansAreWhite:
281** Heavily averted. It's implied that most people on Roshar have Asian facial features and darker skin than white people. The rarely-seen Shin may be the only white people in the setting, described as being excessively pale and having eyes that are too round. Additionally, the Alethi are dark-skinned and black-haired. Going deeper, race and hair/eye color are less closely correlated on Roshar than on Earth. For instance, Adolin is a tan-skinned Alethi with blonde hair and light eyes. One of the more far-flung races, the Natans, has a blueish tint to their skin.
282** The trope is also averted among the parshmen. Kaladin notes that he's seen parshmen with red-and-black skin, red-and-white skin, and a few with a mix of all three colors.
283* HumongousHeadedHammer: {{Justified|Trope}} with Shardhammers, which are made specifically to be used by (and [[AntiArmor against]]) noblemen in PoweredArmor. It takes two servants to carry one around.
284* IncapableOfDisobeying: TheDreaded "Assassin in White" Szeth is compelled to obey any command from whoever holds his Oathstone that doesn't involve [[ICannotSelfTerminate killing himself]] or surrendering his [[SoulCuttingBlade Shardblade]]. {{Subverted|Trope}} when [[spoiler:it's revealed that the Oathstone is just a rock and Szeth is only driven by {{honor|BeforeReason}} and self-loathing.]]
285* IncestStandardsAreRelative: The Vorin religion has a taboo against remarrying to a relative of a former spouse, under the perception that in-laws are related. Though Navani and Dalinar clearly care for each other, her prior marriage to his brother Gavilar means this proves an obstacle to their romance, [[spoiler: and even though the literal Stormfather officiates their marriage, it ultimately is a factor in Dalinar's excommunication from Vorinism.]]
286* InsaneTrollLogic: Lift's specialty. The high point is probably when she convinced the king of Azir not to join an alliance against the Voidbringers because she doesn't like Dalinar's butt. [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight Even if her explanation actually makes an odd sense: a king with a firm, toned butt like Dalinar's has spent far too much time fighting to be entirely trustworthy.]]
287* ItsRainingMen: According to Dalinar's visions, the Radiants could arrive for battle this way.
288* JackassGenie: The Nightwatcher, who will grant seemingly any wish, for a price. In fact, most people who go to the Nightwatcher end up regretting it. Only two people we've encountered don't regret this. One we have only heard of was one man who made his wish to feed his family through a harsh winter. His curse was that he saw the world upside-down for the rest of his life. It was weird, but he got used to it. The other was Lift, who seems [[LittleMissBadass somewhat immune]] [[IncorruptiblePurePureness to regret]]. [[spoiler:For Dalinar, the Nightwatcher erased all his memories of his wife. He can't remember anything about her except that she existed, and whenever someone speaks her name, all he can hear is ''shshshssh''. As of ''The Way of Kings'', it's unclear whether this is his curse or his wish. In ''Oathbringer'' we learn that it was both his wish and curse, but was actually granted to him not by the Nightwatcher, but by her mother Cultivation]].
289* KarmicTrickster: Wit's job. He enjoys it considerably, and it is fairly obvious that the nobility deserve his treatment almost to a man.
290* KillTheHostBody: [[spoiler: Without anti-Light or Nightblood]], this is all you can do to a Fused. Kaladin mentions that he hates fighting the Fused because "killing" one only means that the singers will have to sacrifice another civilian to give the Fused a new body.
291* KilledMidSentence: [[spoiler: King Elhokar]] in one of the series biggest TearJerker moments, is [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice run through the chest with a spear]] by [[spoiler: Moash]], ''a second'' before he finished swearing the First Ideal and become [[HealingFactor able to shrug off the wound]].
292--> "Life... life before death..., Strength... before weakness.... Journey. Journey before..."
293* KnowNothingKnowItAll: Eshu of the ten fools, who speaks of things he does not understand in front of those who do.
294[[/folder]]
295
296[[folder:L-O]]
297* LanguageEqualsThought: Averted. In Alethkar, the lighteyes ''are'' the nobility, and the Alethi language doesn't appear to treat them as separate concepts. Rock runs up against this when trying to talk about how nobility works in other countries, as Alethi words describing leaders all imply lighteye-hood thanks to millennia of Vorin tradition, but no character shows any particular trouble recognizing the idea of lighteyes not being on top in foreign countries.
298* LegacySeeker: King Gavilar Kholin seems to have been obsessed with leaving a lasting mark on Roshar. To this end, he first united the kingdom of Alethkar (the first person to do so in 500 years) and then planned to literally bring TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. In one of their arguments, Navani even threatens him that when he dies, she will do everything to tarnish his memory, in this way robbing him of his legacy.
299* LightningBruiser: Shardplate not only bestows inhuman strength, but it amplifies the speed of movements to a degree one would normally only expect from a very agile man unburdened by armor.
300* LikeCannotCutLike: Shardblades can parry each other.
301* LiteralGenie: Subverted. One character thinks that the Nightwatcher works this way, and plans to word his request to her carefully enough that it doesn't backfire. His friend informs him that this isn't how the Old Magic works, though; the Nightwatcher will grant you your wish just like you wanted it, but she will also place a curse on you which she feels is equal to the wish's value. Sometimes the curse makes the wish ironic, but it's often completely unrelated.
302* LostCommonKnowledge: The Parshendi abandoned Odium and the Fused in the distant past, and left a significant part of their history behind with them. Among the things they've lost is a written language, maps (including their home regions), and the ability to make steel.
303* LostLanguage: Scholars have untranslatable records of the Dawnchant, the language of the planet Roshar's original occupants, [[spoiler:the [[FantasticRacism persecuted]] Parshendi species]]. Dalinar's visions force him to rant in the Dawnchant while he experiences the corresponding {{Ghost Memor|y}}ies in his native language, making him a living Rosetta Stone when scholars transcribe and cross-reference them.
304* LostTechnology:
305** Shards. Scholars have been trying to replicate them for as long as anyone can remember, but only recently has any progress been made in the form of "half-shards"; shields that can block a shardblade, but don't grant any of the other benefits of Shardplate.
306** Navani notes that the half-shards aren't actually progress towards Plate, since as far as anyone can tell they use a different mechanism.
307** [[spoiler: The revelation in ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' that Shardblades are actually transformed spren explains why the artifabrians have had so much trouble with them. ''Rhythm of War'' reveals that Shardplate is formed from other spren (windspren for Windrunners, at the very least) when a Radiant swears their order's Fourth Ideal.]]
308* LovedByAll:
309** Meridas Amaram is considered by everyone to be a paragon of Alethi values, an upstanding and honorable lord who treats opponents fairly and is even [[NiceToTheWaiter extremely kind to those in his service]]. Unfortunately, he's not as good as he appears, which Kaladin Stormblessed suffered for. However, his sparkling public image is also lightly lampshaded and played with, as Adolin Kholin is the one person to believe Kaladin that he isn't as much of a paragon as he puts on because anyone who would have such a good reputation free from any blemish must have been putting in the effort to be hiding something.
310** King Gavilar was beloved by all Alethi characters in the books, to the point where his assassination at the hands of Szeth led to the formerly divided Alethi highprinces forming a "Bloodpact" to go to war with the people responsible for Gavilar's death. However, it's slowly revealed that Gavilar was a much darker and more evil man than he first appeared, with megalomania and dreams of attaining godhood, and this causes his reputation to start crumbling.
311* MagicAIsMagicA:
312** There are at least two different (though related) systems: fabrials and Surgebinding. Fabrials are a form of {{Magitek}}: by trapping a spren in a gemstone and providing it with Stormlight, you can force the spren to do whatever you designed the fabrial to do, from emitting warmth to telekinetically synchronizing two objects to turning rocks into (bland) food. Surgebinding is granted by the Nahel bond, a link between a human and a spren whereby the spren gains sentience in the Physical Realm and the human gains Surgebinding powers. All Surgebinders can inhale Stormlight to gain enhanced strength and speed and a moderate HealingFactor, but each order can also use Stormlight to accomplish specific magical effects. Each Surge is shared by two orders, but their uses by each order can differ, and the surges of their orders can also combine to produce a new, unique effect.
313*** Windrunners have the [[GravityMaster Surge of Gravitation]], allowing them to redefine "down" at their discretion. So a Windrunner can decide that gravity now pulls them forwards or up or sideways, and they will fall in that direction. Or they can make an enemy fall straight up into the sky. Windrunners can also increase an object's gravitational pull towards another specific object, allowing them to pull arrows out of the air and into a shield or bridge or whatever. Finally, Windrunners can also use the Surge of Adhesion to fuse together two objects with a temporary but virtually unbreakable bond. Combined, they allow Windrunners to have more squires than other orders: the metaphorical implications are of a [[MagneticHero gravitational hero]] who binds people together.
314*** Skybreakers share the Surge of Gravitation and also possess the [[MakeThemRot Surge of Division]].
315*** Dustbringers/Releasers possess the Surge of Division and the Surge of Abrasion, letting them control friction and turn things to dust. What little we've seen of them implies their resonance powers have to do with [[PlayingWithFire fire]].
316*** Edgedancers can also control friction, letting them climb walls like a gecko or slide over floors as if they were greased. They also possess the HealingHands magic known as Regrowth and could furthermore use this to [[GreenThumb quickly grow plants]]. One of their resonance abilities seems to be reducing ''social'' friction: code-switching with ease between scholars, beggars, and even the deeply formal [[spoiler: Heralds.]] It's a shock to see [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Lift]] of all people suddenly break out the formal diction.
317*** Truthwatchers have the HealingHands ability of Regrowth and demonstrated the power to discern the future, albeit cryptically. [[spoiler: "True" Truthwatchers are implied to see things in the present. Renarin's ability to see the future, and even then not a guaranteed future, is heavily implied to be the result of having bonded with a corrupted Truthwatcher spren or even one of Odium's spren.]] They also share the Surge of Illumination with Lightweavers, though their use of it could be different.
318*** Lightweavers gain the Surge of Transformation, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the ability to transform one substance into another]] (such as [[TakenForGranite turning a bandit's body from flesh to glass]], turning rocks into food, or a goblet into blood). They also can conjure incredibly detailed illusions, complete with sounds and motions. Combined, they allow Lightweavers to have superhuman mnemonic abilities. It also seems to help them transform people through interaction, changing how they see themselves to bring out their best qualities.
319*** Elsecallers share the Surge of Transformation, but also have [[TeleportersAndTransporters the Surge of Transportation]], which lets them translate between Realms and teleport from one point to another.
320*** Willshapers share the Surge of Transportation and also possess the Surge of Cohesion.
321*** Stonewards possess the Surges of Cohesion (which lets them mold solid objects like wet clay) and Tension (which lets them stiffen and harden normally flexible substances.
322*** Bondsmiths share the Surges of Tension and Adhesion, but due to their high power level are able to use them to accomplish far more spectacular feats than other orders. A bondsmith's use of Adhesion appears to also be able to reach into other realms and adhere mystical connections, such as languages or how an object sees itself with what it actually is. [[spoiler: Presumably, this is what allowed for Dalinar to lock Odium to the CombatByChampion and create Honor's Perpendicularity at the climax of ''Oathbringer''.]]
323** Voidbinding also exists as the [[PowerOfHate magic of Odium]]. It seems similar to Surgebinding, with some slight differences in how each Surge can be applied, but it seems to draw primarily from Voidlight instead of Stormlight. Also, Voidbinders only have access to one Surge each rather than two. Another difference is that the Surge of Adhesion is unavailable to Voidbinders, being referred to as a "Surge of Honor".
324* MagicalSensoryEffect: Stormlight leaks in glowing wisps from Surgebinders who are holding or using it and from objects being actively affected by some Surgebinding techniques. Stormlight-infused [[PowerCrystal gemstones]] also have a distinctive glow that makes them [[MundaneUtility useful light sources]].
325* TheMagicComesBack:
326** A major theme of the series as a whole. With another [[spoiler: Desolation coming around]], magic has started to reappear as [[spoiler: the spren seek out potential new Radiants and bond with them]]. It's also hinted that the magic has been coming back for a while now, as [[spoiler: Shallan]] started manifesting powers as a child and another, an old healer, has been manifesting for decades. In fact, the magic would have been coming back ''sooner'' except that [[spoiler: Nalan, one of the Heralds, has been actively hunting down and executing anyone manifesting Surgebinding powers if he can catch them breaking laws that make it legal for him to kill them.]]
327** The fact that the magic is coming back is actually considered a ''very bad thing'' by some people. The main reason is that [[spoiler: the Recreance actually ''killed'' a huge number of spren bonded to Radiants, and was considered such a terrible act that the spren abandoned humans. That the spren are bonding with humans again now is because they sense another Desolation approaching and are acting as much out of self-preservation as anything else, because the alternative is extinction of both.]]
328* MagicalUnderpinningsOfReality: Many natural phenomena are caused by spren - gravityspren are responsible for pulling things down, windspren accompany wind, the Stormfather sends forth the highstorms and [[spoiler:hatespren can create an Everstorm.]]
329* MagicalWeapon:
330** Nightblood, which appears in both ''Literature/{{Warbreaker}}'' and ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive,'' will instantly vaporize anyone and anything it hits, desires to destroy evil without [[ChaoticGood particularly knowing what evil is]], and drains the life of both its victims and its wielder, though it can be fed with [[{{Mana}} Stormlight]] while on Roshar.
331** Shardblades can be [[SummonToHand Summoned to Hand ]] out of thin air, can cut through any non-living matter instantly, and directly attack the souls of those they are used against, killing anyone they hit in the head or chest, regardless of whether the wound would be lethal for a normal weapon. While normal ones are made from [[spoiler: the souls of dead spren]], Radiant spren also possess the power to transform into any necessary shape.
332** The Honorblades have the same properties of Shardblades [[note]] and Shardblades were specifically crafted in their imitation[[/note]] except that they also [[PowersViaWeapon grant their wielders Radiant powers.]] Both Honorblades and living Shardblades can be used as [[spoiler: keys to the [[MassTeleportation Oathgates.]]]]
333* MagicKnight: The Knights Radiant in the backstory, Szeth [[spoiler:and ultimately Kaladin]] during The Way of Kings, and more and more every book thereafter as more bonds are formed.
334* {{Magitek}}: Fabrials, which are essentially steampunk-type devices which run on Stormlight, and are used for a variety of purposes, including Soulcasting. [[spoiler: Though Jasnah and Shallan don't need them to Soulcast.]] Shardplate and Shardblades represent a much more ancient and advanced form of {{Magitek}}, though the secrets of creating them have been lost (not that people don't try). ''Oathbringer'' reveals that fabrials are actually [[spoiler:trapped lesser spren who generate their effects via Stormlight]], which is why the shield-like "half-shards" are able to repel Shardblades.
335* MarsAndVenusGenderContrast: Enforced heavily by the Vorin religion, to the point that men and women are not only segregated into different professions (men are not allowed to learn to read, as only women can be scholars), but they even eat different foods (sweet for women, spicy for men). This starts to break down as of ''Oathbringer'', as Dalinar becomes the first powerful highborn man to openly learn to read, and a number of women start bonding spren and become Radiants. This does cause some friction, but Dalinar is too powerful for much to come of his literacy, and the forces at Urithiru are so desperate for Knights Radiant that they can't afford to turn away any female recruits.
336** Defied with the Parshendi, where there is almost no difference at all between the genders outside of mateform.
337* MatterReplicator: Fabrials used for Soulcasting are capable of transforming things like rock and sand into any number of useful things, be they finished goods or food. They are absolutely critical in maintaining a large army in an area as remote as the Shattered Plains.
338* {{Mana}}: Stormlight functions like this when used to directly power magical abilities. The [[spoiler: Voidbringers]] use a version called [[spoiler: Voidlight which comes from the Everstorm.]]
339* ManChild: One of the Ten Fools, Cabine, is mentioned to have behaved like a child even though he was an adult.
340* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Sanderson adores playing with this by having incredibly mundane explanations for things in a setting that definitely has magic and gods. For example, see MysticalCityPlanning
341* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: Sanderson ''loves'' these, peppering early books with things that only make sense in light of later books, and a lot of them can be incredibly easy to miss. The first book opens with a throwaway line about Elhokar eating dinner with a man with a pale mark on his cheek and another animated man. They show up again, given much more prominence, in the opening to the fourth book in an interaction with Gavilar.
342* MeaningfulName:
343** "Kaladin" is one letter away from "[[ThePaladin paladin]]."
344** Alethi culture usually gives meaningful names to lighteyes. Their names are usually close to palindromes, but not quite there, like Sadeas or Renarin. In ''Words of Radiance'', it is revealed that the nearly-but-not-quite fitting a pattern is meant to reflect their place in the social order - closest to God - and actual symmetrical names are seen as presumptuous arrogance.
345** Shadesmar = Shade Sea. It's an ocean made of the spren of all the objects on the land of Roshar. A sea of spirts, or shades.
346* MedievalEuropeanFantasy:
347** Odd subversion. The Alethi and related cultures at first ''seem'' to be this, with their knights and castles and lords and so forth, while other cultures like the Shin seem like {{Wutai}}. But then there's an interlude where we actually visit the Shin lands, and in fact they are much more 'normal' feeling to the reader because they have fertile soil and plants that are familiar to us (such as strawberries and non-motile grass) but treated as exotic and alien by the Alethi.
348** To play with this even more, the Shin are the only race on Roshar that don't have "Eastern" almondine eyes. It's noted to give the Shin a "childlike" appearance.
349** Looking at a lot of the drawings and sketches, it actually looks like the Alethi draw heavily from Ottoman and Chinese cultures, at least as far as clothing and armor designs go.
350* MedievalStasis:
351** The Desolations are the direct cause of this on Roshar. They are so destructive that civilization is often broken by the time they end, to the point that the Heralds won't even be sure if the next civilizations can forge ''bronze'' when they show up to fight the next one. However, the Heralds' abandoning of the Oathpact at the start of the first book [[spoiler: and the Parshendi's abandoning of their gods]] appears to have delayed the Desolations long enough for a rather advanced set of societies to develop.
352** That said, Shardblades are considered the superweapon of the setting, four thousand years after the previous Desolation, implying civilization never moved past a tech level where armored knights with swords were the premier military strategy. And that's before we consider that [[spoiler: modern Shardblades are dead, making them inferior to the same weapons when wielded by their Radiants.]]
353* MentalShutdown: Spren can't die, but can be driven to permanent catatonia if they suffer terrible harm. They also become mindless automatons called Deadeyes if they [[spoiler:bond to a Knight Radiant who then breaks their vow]]. In ''Literature/RhythmOfWar'', [[spoiler:a deadeye shows signs of recovery for the first time in history.]]
354* MistakenForInsane: In her BackStory, Jasnah was locked in a dark room (the setting's traditional way of treating the mentally ill) because her family thought she was losing her mind - while in fact it was the result of her Radiant powers manifesting.
355* MobileCity: Played with and discussed but ultimately subverted. The location of the city of Urithiru was lost long ago by the peoples of Roshar, but maps existing at the time of the Knights Radiant depicted it as being located immediately next to that mapmaker's nation's capital city. Jasnah and Shallan theorize that Urithiru was a city which moved from place to place, but ultimately it's revealed to exist in the mountains and be accessible to these capitals through portals.
356* MoralityKitchenSink: The series is practically a case study of this trope. On one end of the scale, there are the Radiants, who are all trying very hard to do the right thing at every turn, but who often disagree on just what the right thing is -- they are all on board with [[WeHelpTheHelpless protecting the innocent,]] but each order of Radiants has its own ideas of just who needs the most protecting and how to go about it -- and who are also very capable of making mistakes, especially since each Radiant is in some way [[BrokenAce "broken."]] On the other we have Odium, the embodiment of God's passion and rage without any of God's gentler virtues to temper it, and thus horrendously evil by most definitions - but nonetheless someone who can honestly claim that [[NecessarilyEvil without him and what he represents, humans would be incapable of being human.]] In between the two, we have an entire WorldHalfFull of people who aren't ''evil'', per se, and who might if pressed on the subject admit that they'd ''like'' to be good, but who nevertheless feel like they have to look after themselves by whatever underhanded means are available because [[InherentInTheSystem everyone else is doing it]] and trying to have morals just turns you into a DoomedMoralVictor. And then there's the listeners / Parshendi, who look an awful lot like someone's LegionOfDoom but who are in fact [[spoiler: the original inhabitants of Roshar who were invaded and ultimately enslaved by the humans, meaning that they are pretty much in a position to wage a GuiltFreeExterminationWar on the humans, something that many of the heroes openly acknowledge while still having no intention of letting their people get exterminated.]] Add to that at least two factions who both think that UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans, and one who thinks that the human conscience is inherently flawed and that [[KnightTemplar following a pre-existing code of conduct with psychotic strictness]] is the only morally permissible option. Yeah, if Sanderson hasn't represented every imaginable shade of morality in this series, it certainly isn't for lack of trying!
357* MorphWeapon: [[spoiler: A living Shardblade]] is this, being able to take any form to suit the wielders needs, including spears, shields, and ''forks''.
358* MundaneUtility: Used straight and {{discussed}}.
359** Infused spheres used for light. See FantasticLightSource and FictionalCurrency.
360** Dalinar wonders why no one ever uses Shardplate for anything but combat. And then proves his point by using his Plate to dig a latrine pit ''out of solid rock''. He later learns that [[spoiler:Bondsmiths can pretty much repair entire cities with their powers.]]
361** Kaladin once asked [[spoiler:Syl]] to become a mirror so he could see what he looked like. [[spoiler:She refrained.]]
362** [[BigEater Lift]] uses [[spoiler: her living Shardblade Wyndle]] as a fork.
363* MysticalCityPlanning: Ancient cities like Kholinar are built with complex radial symmetry that matches specific [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymatics cymatic patterns]]. Since symmetry is sacred to the Vorin church, some in-universe scholars take this as proof that those cities were built with divine guidance. In fact it reflects the fact that the stone their built on has resonance patterns that, over time, has caused the stone to break in specific ways.
364* NamedWeapons: Some Shardblades are named. The one most relevant to the story is Oathbringer. Adolin considers naming his Blade, but declines on the idea that many people have wielded it through the centuries and it isn't his to name. [[spoiler: He eventually learns that her name in life was Mayalaran, Maya for short, and calls her that]].
365* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Odium.
366* NatureSpirit: Some spren seem to fill this role, though many others instead seem to either be attracted to or created by intense human emotion.
367* NoBiochemicalBarriers: [[spoiler: Humans]] have no problem eating Rosharan flora or fauna, despite not being native to the planet. [[spoiler: They are also able to interbreed with singers, despite singers BizarreAlienSexes and [[AlienBlood orange mold-smelling blood]]]].
368* NoCureForEvil: While Edgedancer and Truthwatcher Radiants can bind Progression to heal others, no known Fused brand or Regal form can do this. Even the Fused brand that binds Progression uses it to augment their own bodies rather than for healing others.
369* NondescriptNastyNutritious: [[MiracleFood Food created by Soulcasting magic]] is a vital component of military rations, though the total lack of character in the meat- and grain-like substances make people avoid it when they can. Kaladin is outright incredulous when a recipe manages to make Soulcast meat tasty.
370* NonhumanUndead:
371** [[spoiler: Shardblades are, for all intents and purposes, zombie spren. They were killed when the humans they were bonded to broke their oaths, and are partly revived by the ten heartbeats it takes to summon one. They are also in extreme pain when summoned, and if an active Radiant touches one, they and the person wielding it can hear it screaming.]] In ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' [[spoiler: we get to see Adolin's Blade manifested in spren form in Shadesmar. She looks like her eyes are [[EyeScream scratched out like a painting that was damaged]], appears to be made of dead vines, and is mostly unresponsive except for following Adolin around unless prevented from doing so. And screaming when he reflexively tries to summon the Blade. Other spren refer to these spren as "deadeyes".]]
372** The Fused are essentially [[spoiler: Parshendi liches, with the soul of the original bearer of the body dying and their body being taken over by the Fused, who is a long-dead listener who serves Odium. There is no known way to return the previous soul to the listener's body, as the soul moves on to the Spiritual Realm.]]
373* NoSell: The Lashings (and presumably all other forms of Surgebinding) can't be directly used on Shardplate or its wearer.
374* OhMyGods:
375** "Stormfather!" and "Living Heralds above!" are both commonly used as exclamations. Also, "Damnation" is used in place of "Hell", and if you don't like someone you tell them to "Storm off."
376** "Storms" is usually used in place of the f-bomb, as in "Storm off", "storming", or "Storms!"
377* OldTimeyAnkleTaboo: In Vorin cultures, women do ''not'' show their left hand, their "safehand". It just isn't done. Shallan is driven to fits of embarrassment just thinking of going out with a ''glove'' on rather than having her hand safely hidden in a buttoned up sleeve. Fans have enjoyed this, with one going so far as [[https://safehandhub.com/ to make safehandhub.com]], complete with pictures of women's hands and ''videos of hand models and sign language translators'', the whores.
378* OlderThanTheyLook: Singers mature much faster than humans, reaching adulthood around eight. Venli is implied to be in her late teens by the events of ''Rhythm of War,'' eight years after being present for Gavilar's murder.
379* OnceMoreWithClarity: A series-wide example spanning multiple books. Each novel opens on a specific viewpoint character during the fateful night that Gavilar Kholin was assassinated, and each viewpoint character reveals a little bit more of the mystery behind why the Parshendi assassinated him and what his real plans were.
380* OncePerEpisode: As above, each books prologue is the night Gavilar was assassinated, with a different POV character each time. Also, each book features an epilogue from Hoid's perspective, usually including him giving a lecture to whoever (or whatever) happens to be near him.
381* OneBadMother: Re-Shephir, the Midnight Mother.
382* OneCastMemberPerCover: The US publications for the books feature one of the main focus characters of the series on each cover.
383* OneDegreeOfSeparation:
384** All over the place, if you look. The chief guard of the caravan rescued by [[spoiler: Shallan]] is also the one who orchestrated [[spoiler: Jasnah's]] assassination. The Shardbearer killed by Kaladin in his DarkAndTroubledPast happens to be [[spoiler: Shallan's missing older brother]]. Everyone knows Wit, but he doesn't count because he's doing it on purpose. The Brightlord that [[spoiler: Dalinar]] exiled to Kaladin's hometown [[spoiler:used to menace Moash's family]] before menacing Kaladin's family. The slaver that sold Kaladin to Sadeas was the same one that Shallan hired to get her to the Shattered Plains.
385** This is noted as being a pattern in Edgedancer; one of the most knowledgeable characters notes that Surgebinders tend to clump together and get into contact if left to their own devices and surmises that they must be drawn to one another.
386** This is in play on the night of Gavilar's assassination. Not only are the parshendi there (including the, at that time, very unimportant Eshonai and Venli),and Gavilar's family, and the political elite of Alethkar, as you would expect, but ''four'' of the Heralds. Nale and Kalak speaking to Gavilar for their own, separate reasons, Jezrien as a random drunk beggar being shown charity, and Shalash to destroy art representing her.
387* OneManArmy: The Shardbearers -- even [[InvokedTrope stated outright]] several times. Also the Surgebinders, even without the Blade, as [[spoiler:Kaladin]] proved.
388** [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] with the recurring quote "A Shardbearer cannot hold ground": a single Shardbearer can indeed generate a full army's body count, but they're still just ''one person'' on the battlefield. The (admittedly demoralized) survivors can fill back in behind them after they pass to easily retake strategic ground or -- more frequently -- require the Shardbearer to fight their way back through if they need to get to friendly ground. Moreover, while the Shards make things much easier, a Shardbearer can still get tired, or their Plate can get tangled up or otherwise tripped, or their enemies can just gradually chip away enough for things to break anyway (especially after the previous immobilization). Indeed, Shardbearers are usually supported by a small, elite squad following close behind rather than just rushing out on their own.
389* TheOrder: The Knights Radiant, founded by the Heralds. The Knights Radiant were actually divided up into [[ArcNumber ten]] individual orders (even called such in-universe), though all of them seemed to be Shardbearers. Each Order had two types of magic like Soulcasting or Surgebinding (see MagicAIsMagicA, above) and each of those was shared by two orders (the diagram on the inside front cover of ''The Way of Kings'' illustrates this).
390* OurAngelsAreDifferent: The Vorin church teaches of the Dawnsingers, kindly spren sent by the Almighty to care for humans after they were forced out of the Tranquiline Halls. In ''Oathbringer'', [[spoiler:it is revealed that the Dawnsingers were actually the parsh, the original inhabitants of Roshar, who took the humans in when the humans destroyed their own world. The humans turned on the Dawnsingers, so the Dawnsingers joined with Odium and became the Voidbringers. Because the Voidbringers are resurrected infinitely, the modern Fused are the same people who were first betrayed by the humans thousands of years ago]].
391* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Voidbringers. ShroudedInMyth. [[spoiler:They're the Parshendi/parshmen. Sort of. The Parshendi naturally take different forms by bonding with various spren, many of which leave them under the control of Odium. Meanwhile the closest thing to real demons are the Voidspren, the various spirits of Odium.]]
392* OurNudityIsDifferent: The cultures based on the Vorin religion consider a woman with her left hand (the "safehand") bare to be roughly equivalent to being topless. Commoner women wear a glove to cover it, while noblewomen wear dresses with left sleeves that cover the entire arm and hand and button shut. If a woman wants to appear provocative, she might wear a fingerless glove, showing just her fingertips (but only a woman of questionable reputation would do that). At one point we see a prostitute, who wears a short-sleeved dress, and Kaladin cannot take his eyes off her safehand. And Shallan has a huge problem with showing her safehand when impersonating a messenger boy. She solves it by wearing thick worker's gloves on ''both'' her hands.
393* OurOrcsAreDifferent: The Parshendi, of the ProudWarriorRace variant [[spoiler:unless/until they become Voidbringers]].
394[[/folder]]
395
396[[folder:P-T]]
397* ThePaladin:
398** Kaladin. [[WeHelpTheHelpless Helping the helpless]] is a strong personality trait of his from the start, both on the battlefield and with medicine.
399** In ''Words of Radiance'', it is eventually revealed that [[spoiler: Surgebinding powers depend on adherence to a code, at least for some of the orders. In Kaladin's case, this means that his powers fade when he stops being protective.]]
400* PeopleOfHairColor: Certain nationalities have hair colors strongly associated with them -- black for the Alethi, red for the Vedens, and gold (not blonde, but actual, shimmering ''gold'') for the Iriali. You can even tell people of mixed nationality, because they usually have multicolored hair in streaks.
401* PerpetualStorm:
402** It's mentioned in passing that some people theorize highstorms are actually one single storm that circles the world, rather than fresh storms each time. [[spoiler:Given that the Stormfather is in every highstorm, it's entirely possible this theory is true.]]
403** In the first book, there is talk of "the Everstorm" that is yet to come, which seems to be a metaphor for the FinalBattle (see also AStormIsComing). However, given that the world is periodically wracked by powerful storms which may or may not be sent by the BigBad, there might be a literal storm in the offing.
404** At the end of book two, [[spoiler: the Voidbringers summon the Everstorm. It is a cyclical storm like the highstorms, except for two things. First, it carries with it spren that will transform parshmen into Voidbringers. Second, it moves around the world in the opposite direction from highstorms, so buildings sheltered and reinforced to be protected from regular highstorms may be devastated by the everstorm. Needless to say, this is very bad.]]
405* PersonOfMassDestruction: Shardbearers and Surgebinders.
406* PhotographicMemory: Shallan. She can, by blinking, take a Memory of a scene, which allows her to later reproduce that scene with photographic accuracy, including showing the otherwise invisible Cryptics. In addition, when she sketches a Memory, the Memory is gone, leaving her with only a regular memory of the scene. ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' implies that most if not all Lightweavers possessed this ability.
407* PhysicalHell: Damnation is not simply a theological concept. It is a physical planet called Braize, ruled by [[GodOfEvil Odium]]. Voidspren originate there, the Heralds are tortured there between Desolations, and it is presumably where Odium stays when not bringing Desolations to Roshar.
408* PlayingWithFire: Implied to form a large part of the Releasers' abilities. The Prelude mentions them leaving the very ground smoldering and smoking, and they are tied to the Essence of Fire.
409* PooledFunds: Played with. Shadesmar, the Cognitive Realm Reflection of Roshar, features seas of glass beads, with embedded crystals in them. These seas have to be navigated as if they were an actual liquid. As per FictionalCurrency, glass beads filled with polished gemstones are the most usual form of currency, and have been since Time Immemorial. However, the glass beads merely represent land-bound inanimate objects in the Physical Realm.
410* PortalStatuePairs: The legendary Oathgate teleporters look like empty platforms in the physical world, but in the [[SpiritWorld Cognitive Realm]], the [[OurSpiritsAreDifferent Spren]] powering them appear as a pair of titanic {{Living Statue}}s that float overhead. Crucially, they can grant or deny use of the Oathgate at will.
411* PosthumousCharacter: Several, with the most influential probably being King Gavilar Kholin. We technically see him alive at the very beginning of the very first book, but the bulk of the narrative takes place six years after his death.
412* PoweredArmor: Shardplate is a {{Magitek}} version, a type of LostTechnology powered by [[{{Mana}} Stormlight]].
413* PowerCrystal: All gemstones become invested with [[{{Mana}} Stormlight]] if they're left out during highstorms. The stored Stormlight can in turn be used to power fabrials or fuel a Radiant's abilities.
414* PowerGlows: Stormlight is the magical "fuel" of this world. As the name suggests, it emits light, as does anything infused with it.
415* PowersViaWeapon: Honorblades give their wielders powers of Radiant Knights of the relevant order, which always include instant healing.
416* PracticalCurrency: Gems inside glass spheres, infused with Stormlight, are primarily money but can be used as light sources or as power sources for Surgebinding.
417* ProudMerchantRace:
418** The Shin are the complete inversion of [[ProudWarriorRace the Alethi]]. They consider warriors, "those who take," as the least of their society, and treat them as slaves. Farmers and the like, or "those who add," are given the highest position, since they are contributing to the world. Although never stated outright, one would assume they likewise hold their women in very high esteem.
419** The Thaylen culture appears to be heavily mercantile, most of the Thaylens we see are merchants, and Kaladin's father mentions that every Thaylen he ever met tried to cheat him.
420* ProudScholarRace: Thanks to the strict gender roles of the Alethi (and the Vorin religion in general), Alethi women are like this, while their male counterparts are closer to a ProudWarriorRace.
421* ProudWarriorRace:
422** The Parshendi. While [[TheCombatPragmatist perfectly willing to target bridgemen to disrupt incoming attacks]], once battle is joined they focus on targeting the strongest and most capable of enemy combatants, avoiding the wounded, invalid, or noncombatant if possible. Unless they're [[BerserkButton disturbing Parshendi bodies...]]
423** The Alethi deconstruct it; most brightlords are more interested in looking the part than living it. In addition, many Alethi have the "Thrill," a form of bloodlust that grips them in battle, and they've become so glory-hungry that they consider even ''thinking'' about peace cowardice. The Alethi ''used'' to be a straight example of this trope: Back in the days of the Silver Kingdoms, Alethela (as it was then known) was specifically designated as the nation of warriors, the ones whose job it was to protect the other nine Kingdoms against the Voidbringers.
424* RealMenHateSugar: ''Enforced'' as part of Alethi culture; men eat salty, spicy food and women eat sweet food.
425* RedMage: Each order of Knights Radiant has access to two distinct power sets called Surges. The ten Surges each belong to two orders each, but their arrangement is unique to each Order (for example, Elsecallers have Soulcasting and Transformation, while Lightweavers have Soulcasting and Lightweaving). Each order has a unique power as well. This is in contrast to [[EvilCounterpart the Fused]] who have a single Surge (albeit with thousands of years to master it).
426** Venli gets this even more, being a Knight Radiant who also wears one of Odium's forms of power (courtesy of simultaneously bonding to a Voidspren and a more powerful native spren who overpowers it). She gets all three power sets of her Radiant Order in addition to the powers provided by her Regal form.
427* ReluctantFanserviceGirl: Shallan has a tendency to be forced to reveal her safehand, which in Vorin society is equivalent to going topless. [[SubvertedTrope Although to non-Vorins, it's just her left hand]].
428* ReplacedWithReplica:
429** Shallan's original plan is [[spoiler: replacing Jasnah's working Soulcaster with a fake one. It doesn't work, since Jasnah's Soulcaster is only a replica as well, hiding the fact that Jasnah can soulcast by herself]].
430** During the invasion of [[spoiler:Thaylen City]], BigBad Odium tries to grab a priceless, massive gem out of its treasury, since [[spoiler:it can be used as a CrystalPrison for his most powerful minions]]. The defenders include a MasterOfIllusion and a MagicKnight expert of ConfusionFu, so they soon have Odium's forces chasing after a fake gem while they carry the real one to safety.
431* RoomFullOfCrazy: [[spoiler: King Taravangian]] has one which was written [[spoiler: on a day when his mutable intelligence was astronomically high]]. It has become something between a master plan and holy scripture for his followers.
432* RunningGag: Kaladin loses Wit's flute after their first meeting. Wit never misses an opportunity to give Kaladin grief for losing it from that point on, no matter the circumstance.
433* SchizoTech:
434** Though technology is generally at a roughly medieval level, [[MagiTek fabrials]] allow for some surprisingly modern conveniences, such as central heating, hot water plumbing, and even ''ceiling fans''. Urithiru has powered elevators and indoor heating. A prominent scene in ''Rhythm of War'' involves a Thaylen ''vacuum tube.''
435** Also, while still at a roughly medieval level, medical technology is roughly around that of the industrial age, primarily due to the presence of rotspren providing a visual indicator of disease. Being able to see rotspren allows people to recognize the importance of soap and antiseptics to repel them and clean wounds, and thus prevent infections and disease - something that in the real world wasn't developed until the 1800s.
436** Also, despite technology being at a medieval level, mounted combat is still in its infancy, due to horses being incredibly rare and expensive and thus rarely risked or experimented with in battle. The Vengeance Pact is the first time that mounted charges are really used. The idea of horseback archery is a random pipe dream that Dalinar muses over at one point.
437* TheScream:
438** A Radiant who touches a Shardblade [[spoiler:that died when the Radiants abandoned their oaths]] will hear a terrifying, ear-splitting scream from [[spoiler:the spren that was killed by the broken oath]]. If a Radiant touches a Blade that somebody else is holding, that person will hear the screaming as well, and apparently be accused of [[spoiler: murdering the spren]]. This is enough to cause Relis to panic, drop the Blade, scream in anguish, and then flee the scene when Kaladin performs a BarehandedBladeBlock. When Dalinar [[spoiler:becomes a Bondsmith and then picks up Oathbringer, he hears a "dull" scream that's much less intense; the Stormfather explains that the dead spren is aware of the honorable oath he made to hand Oathbringer over to free the bridgemen, and as a result it "hates (Dalinar) less" than it does everyone else]].
439** In ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'', Adolin attempts to summon his Blade while in Shadesmar. The deadeye spren standing next to him promptly starts screaming.
440* SelfHealingPhlebotinum: Shardplate armor can be fixed, even if a piece of it is shattered, by installing gemstones infused with Stormlight. The gemstones usually crack in the process. And like a starfish, if you have only one piece, you can eventually regrow the whole Plate, unless someone else has a larger piece and is doing the same thing. Unopposed, it is possible to regrow a complete set of Plate from a single mote of the dust it was pulverized into.
441* ShapeshifterModeLock:
442** The parshmen appear to be stuck in one, when compared to the Parshendi. [[spoiler: Contact with the Everstorm unlocks them in ''Oathbringer.'']]
443** [[spoiler:Shardblades]] are also a form of this, being [[spoiler:spren locked into the shape of a large blade in the Physical Realm]].
444* TheSiege:
445** The entire Vengeance Pact is one prolonged example. Because the Alethi can't move their entire force out onto the Shattered Plains without getting surrounded by the much more mobile Parshendi, they instead cut off escape to the west and proceeded to engage in a seven-year-long war of attrition to reduce the Parshendi numbers, with much of the fighting occurring over the gemhearts left by slain chasmfiends (used to power Soulcasting). While an effective strategy, the siege causes massive strain on Alethkar itself, costs a tremendous number of lives, and eventually pushes the Parshendi to [[spoiler: develop stormform bodies, which triggers their DemonicPossession, starts up a new Everstorm, and begins the next Desolation]].
446** Alethi cities are often built to defend first against highstorms and then secondly against sieges, since the highstorms will often blow away any attempt at a prolonged siege. For this reason, the Alethi tend to avoid sieges where they can, instead aggressively assaulting the walls. The city of Kholinar itself takes this a step further; ''everything' within a day's march of the city itself is cleared out, leaving only open fields with no buildings or hills or anything else than can shield an invading army, making it much, much harder to set up an effective siege of the city.
447* SoulCuttingBlade: Shardblades. Which is why they burn out the eyes of their victims.
448* StayInTheKitchen: The Alethi and other Vorin cultures (i.e. most of the people we meet) have this for ''both'' sexes--only men are permitted to be warriors, but only women are permitted to be scholars (unless a man joins the ardents), and it is taboo for a man to be literate; men are only expected to know the simpler ideogrammatic glyph system rather than the alphabet. In terms of a person's Calling, it seems to boil down to men being physical and women being creative and/or scholarly. Although it gets into even weirder territory with safehands and the fact that they're not even supposed to eat the same ''food''. That being said, by the third book, [[spoiler:things have slowly started to change, with Dalinar learning to read, multiple female Radiants wielding Shardblades, and women being openly trained as soldiers in Bridge Four]].
449* AStormIsComing:
450** See the page quote. "The Everstorm comes" is a major [[ArcWords arc phrase]] in the first two books.
451** In more mundane terms, the threat or arrival of a highstorm shapes a lot of the plot. Rarely does a highstorm pass without something strange happening.
452* SoldierVsWarrior: The Parshendi and Alethi are a strange contrast. While the Parshendi fight in loose order, engaging in individual combat during battles, their HiveMind makes them fight in a regimented manner on the large scale with similar goals. The Alethi, meanwhile, fight in tight ranks of regimented spearmen, but all of the highprinces are divided and seeking personal glory on the large scale.
453* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: The forces arrayed against the Alethi tick upward over time.
454** ''The Way of Kings'' has the Parshendi in warform. Physically superior to a human, they are poorly equipped (beyond their built-in carapace armor) and trained, with far less military experience both as warriors and as a nation at war than Alethkar.
455** The Parshendi achieve what would later be called Regal forms at the end of ''Words of Radiance.'' These forms of power give them supernatural abilities, such as shooting lightning or understanding any language.
456** The Fused, ancient, immortal Listeners with Surgebinding powers, were awoken at the end of ''Words of Radiance,'' but we don't really see what they're capable of until ''Oathbringer''. That said...
457** ''Rhythm of War'' shows new varieties of Fused awakening on Roshar, able to teleport or swim through solid rock. Additionally, by this point mainline singer troops have developed appreciable veterancy and the forms of power unleashed in ''Words of Radiance'' have become commonplace in fighting units.
458* StrategyVersusTactics: The Alethi have a much firmer grasp of battlefield tactics and formations than the Parshendi, but the Parshendi have a better strategic focus during the war (namely, their survival). A major problem Dalinar has is uniting the Alethi into a unified army that can work towards a strategic objective.
459* SummonToHand:
460** Shardblades work this way; they vanish into thin air when released, and appear in the owner's waiting hand ten heartbeats after they decide to summon it. (Someone whose pulse is racing can call their Shardblade faster than someone who is calm and collected.)
461** It is revealed in ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'' that [[spoiler: Radiants can summon their Shardblades instantly.]]
462* SuperpoweredMooks: The singer "forms of power" (or Regal forms, as the Fused call them). The powers they grant are relatively limited compared to the abilities of a Fused or Radiant, but Odium can create them in numbers vast enough to field entire armies.
463* SuperSliding: The [[MagicAIsMagicA Surge]] of Abrasion controls friction, allowing users to skate on any surface without ever losing momentum, even [[RequiredSecondaryPowers from wind resistance]]. TheArtfulDodger Lift incorporates this into her ConfusionFu with great effect as she learns to control her powers.
464* SymbolFace: The Cryptics are a type of spren who appear in the Cognitive Realm as humanoids with a floating, ever-changing fractal pattern in place of a head. They also have an intuitive understanding of patterns, making them excellent logicians, translators, and cryptographers.
465* TattooConcealsScars: Slaves in Alethkar are branded on their foreheads to convey their status to anyone who sees them. Slaves who've been freed usually opt to cover the branding scar with a tattoo which includes the date they were granted their freedom. Subverted with Kaladin, who has such a brand and ''tries'' several times to tattoo over it, only to find the ink mysteriously fading before the tattoo can set, leaving his brands always visible, as a form of WoundThatWillNotHeal.
466* TechnicolorEyes: The Alethi (and most of the rest of the continent) are split into "darkeyes" and "lighteyes," based (obviously) on eye color. The lighteyes are the rulers, and their eyes are things like gold and violet and white in addition to more mundane colors like blue and green (although ''dark'' green is a darkeyes color).
467* TerminalTransformation: Living bodies can be Soulcast into inert substances, though it's [[TheDarkArts deeply sacrilegious]] to do so. [[LadyOfBlackMagic Jasnah Kholin wields this in battle]], reducing her enemies to smoke, crystal, and fire.
468* ThemeNaming: All mainline books in the series so far are named after in-universe texts of some importance. [[spoiler: The third initially looks to be named after Dalinar's Shardblade, Oathbringer, but the final chapters reveal he is writing a memoir named after the Blade, since he carried it during his greatest and most shameful moments.]]
469* ThereAreTwoKindsOfPeopleInTheWorld: Kaladin tells Syl that his father had told him that there are, well, two kinds of people in the world: those who take lives, and those who save lives.
470* TokenEvilTeammate: There's ''three'' among the Knights Radiant (at least who are also unambiguously ''on the same team'' the good guys, considering there's also several [[DoubleAgent Double Agents]]) by way of [[spoiler: Szeth, Venli, and Glys.]] Rlain may also count, depending on the definition of evil.
471* TomatoInTheMirror: ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'' offers a startling revelation once the Dawnchant script is properly translated. [[spoiler:It's revealed that the ''Parsh'' were the ones who wrote the Dawnchant and are the native people of Roshar. It was the ancestors of ''humans'' who were the Voidbringers, coming as refugees to Roshar after destroying their homeworld through Surgebinding. The Parsh gave some land to the humans, but they eventually wanted more and went to war, taking the world from its rightful owners and enslaving them. Even worse, ''humanity'' were the original worshipers of Odium and were responsible for bringing him to Roshar, while Honor was the patron of the Listeners.]]
472* TranslatorMicrobes: It initially appears that Dalinar's visions are translated for his benefit, but it eventually turns out that it's the other way around--he's speaking and understanding ancient languages so perfectly he doesn't even notice, which is the source of the "gibberish" witnesses hear him speaking. The Heralds are implied to have something similar going on, since they speak the local dialect perfectly even if they've been out of touch for four and a half thousand years. Zahel and other [[spoiler: characters from different worlds]] also have something similar. Zahel speaks Alethi perfectly with no mention of an accent, but still uses his own idioms, which are translated literally and become nonsense. As of ''Literature/{{Oathbringer}}'', [[spoiler: Dalinar can use his powers as a Bondsmith to temporarily learn another person's language by establishing a spiritual connection with them.]]
473* {{Transmutation}}: Radiant Knights of the orders that can use the Surge of Transformation can change one form of matter into another at will, as long as they have enough Stormlight. Soulcaster devices have similar but more limited matter-alteration abilities.
474* TransplantedAliens: has alien wildlife that apparently occupied the world of Roshar before humans were brought over, though there are also more familiar species such as horses, pigs, cats, and birds that must have arrived with the humans.
475* TronLines:
476** The Knights Radiant have them in one of Dalinar's flashbacks, right down to the colors -- either blue or gold for the two Orders we've seen. It's implied that the other orders will branch out into whites, greens, and reds, though what color the Skybreakers (whose gem is ''black'') will be is anyone's guess.
477** In ''Literature/WordsOfRadiance'', we see them on [[spoiler: true Shardblades, specifically blue for Sylphrena and red for Pattern.]]
478[[/folder]]
479
480[[folder:U-Y]]
481* UpperClassEquestrian: Justified by the setting's ecology making horses extremely rare and expensive. Most people make do with crustacean draft animals; only the wealthiest or elite warriors get horses; and the luckiest get ''Ryshadium'' horses, which are much stronger, nearly sapient, and very choosy about their riders. It's also one of the few martial pursuits open to Light Eyed women, since Vorin holy texts don't specifically reference and categorize it as one of the masculine or feminine arts, making it fair game to anyone.
482* VictoryByEndurance: About the only reason the Alethi are winning the war against the Parshendi is because the harvesting of gemhearts allows the uncoordinated Highprinces to keep their massive armies in the field in perpetuity.
483* VortexBarrier: The lost islands of Aimia are cut off from the rest of Roshar by a perpetual storm, among other defenses, but the coming of the Final Desolation weakens it enough for a well-prepared ship to get through. The WrongContextMagic necessary to create such a thing is one of ''many'' mysteries about the place.
484* WasOnceAMan: It's not clear what [[spoiler:Meridas Amaram]] has become by the time of his death, but it definitely isn't human.
485* WeaponsBreakingWeapons: Non-magical weapons or armour don't slow a shardblade down at all. A shardbearer on the battlefield is a MookHorrorShow, cutting down hundreds of regular soldiers amid the ruins of their equipment.
486* WeatherOfWar: [[spoiler: Enough Parshendi in stormform can summon the Everstorm, essentially an amped-up highstorm that blows the other way round.]]
487* WeHaveReserves: The warfare on the Shattered Plains enforces this, since Alethi armies end up in hard fights with the Parshendi every few days. Attrition takes a hard toll on the Alethi armies, and Highprinces like Sadeas resort to using "expendable" bridgemen to minimize losses on the "real" soldiers during the charge toward the final plateaus.
488* WeirdWeather:
489** Highstorms, solid walls of wind and water sweeping from east to west that scour away any trace of soil, kill anyone caught unprotected, and carry with them the godlike spren who charges exposed gems with Stormlight.
490** Seasons change at seemingly random intervals, generally after a highstorm, and as a result you'll have abrupt shifts from hot summers to frigid winters with no warning. Fortunately, the plant life on Roshar is very hardy and can handle these shifts in weather. Years are marked by a precisely predictable forty-day period of constant rain known as "the Weeping."
491** In the second book, [[spoiler:the desperate Parshendi unleash the Everstorm, an even nastier highstorm that travels in the opposite direction and destroys the very ground when the two collide.]] In the third book, this gets even weirder, as [[spoiler:the Everstorm's winds are less destructive but it shoots out lightning that ''intentionally'' targets houses and structures to cause widespread ruin. It even vindictively targets temples to the Herald Taln, indicating that Odium himself is directing the Everstorm.]]
492* WhamEpisode:
493** ''The Way of Kings'', Part 4: [[spoiler: Sadeas betrays Dalinar and therefore ends their alliance, Kaladin speaks the first two Oaths and saves Dalinar, and Bridge Four is freed]]. The whole book, save for Shallan's chapters and the interludes, is a huge set-up for these events.
494** ''Words of Radiance'', Part 5: [[spoiler: The War of Reckoning ends with an invasion on Narak, Eshonai and most of the other listeners die, Kaladin saves Elhokar, regains his bond with Syl, speaks the third Oath and beats Szeth, the Everstorm is unleashed, Shallan speaks her third truth, opens the Oathgate and discovers the long-lost city of Urithiru]]. And even after all of that, [[spoiler:[[ArcVillain Sadeas]] is killed by Adolin, and Dalinar bonds the Stormfather, becomes a Bondsmith and speaks his first two Oaths]]. Same here: The whole book builds up to this part, but in this case, a lot of these things have been set up since the beginning of ''The Way of Kings''.
495** ''Oathbringer'', Part 3: [[spoiler: [[DarkestHour Kholinar is lost to Odium's forces]], Elhokar is killed, almost a dozen of named minor characters die, the heroes in Kholinar are involuntarily sent to Shadesmar - and Dalinar's memories of Evi's death return]].
496** Also ''Oathbringer'', Part 5: [[spoiler: Szeth joins Dalinar, Dalinar takes a stand against Odium and opens Honor's Perpendicularity, the Radiants fight the Fused in Thaylen City, Urithitu is attacked, Teft speaks his third Oath, Amaram is killed (after being established as an antagonist in the ''first book''), Nergaoul is captured, Jasnah made queen]] - among other things.
497** ''Rhythm of War'' includes such highlights as [[spoiler: Urithiru being occupied by the Singers, Navani being forced to collaborate with a mad scientist and revolutionizing the understanding of Investiture, Navani inventing weapons that can kill the Fused, the Fused learning to do the same to Radiant spren, Navani becoming a Bondsmith, and the full restoration of Urithiru. Not to mention the largest MassOhCrap for fans, Taravangian ''killing Rayse and assuming the mantle of Odium.'']]
498* WhoWantsToLiveForever: The Heralds spent millennia alternating between an unending war and an eternity of torture, and that was thousands of years before the story proper began. [[spoiler:Now they've all turned into caricatures of themselves.]]
499* WiseOldFolkFacade: The GodOfEvil Odium appears to Dalinar as a regal-looking old man with powdery white hair and a tidy beard, addresses him as "son", and chats with him about their duties and motives. The facade [[FauxAffablyEvil falls away]] when he reveals his true intention to drive Dalinar over the DespairEventHorizon and [[spoiler:make him his Champion]].
500* WorldOfBadass: Unless you live in Shinovar, you have to contend with highstorms, Shardbearers, brigands, hostile terrain, and huge monstrous fauna. Generally, you either die, get sold into slavery, or [[TookALevelInBadass man up and rise to the occasion]]. Sometimes you get to do all three.
501* WoundThatWillNotHeal:
502** At the start of the series Szeth notes that even with the regenerative powers granted by Stormlight a limb rendered unusable by a Shardblade won't recover. Although in the second book, [[spoiler: Kaladin's]] arm is killed by Szeth's blade, and it does recover. This is because Szeth's sword [[spoiler: is actually an Honorblade, which gives Szeth weaker Surgebinding than Kaladin has.]]
503** Kaladin's regenerative powers won't heal his slave brand until he [[spoiler: realizes that his failures are anything but]] during ''Rhythm of War.''
504*** This is due to the fact that Stormlight healing restores the body to the "ideal Spiritual self", combined with how the patient perceives themselves, [[spoiler: Stormlight will not heal Kaladin's brand or Rysn's paraplegia because they have each internalised them to become part of their identity]].
505* WrongContextMagic:
506** In ''The Way of Kings'' and ''Words of Radiance'', ''all'' Radiant magic is considered this since [[TheMagicComesBack it has been thousands of years since Surgebinding was openly practiced]].
507** Other, outside-context magic is used elsewhere in the books. In ''Oathbringer'' and ''Rhythm of War'', [[Literature/{{Warbreaker}} Awakening]] is used several times by Hoid, Azure, and [[spoiler: Zahel]]. It is also implied that Hoid is using [[Franchise/{{Mistborn}} Allomancy]] in several scenes (specifically Soothing and Rioting) and late in ''Rhythm of War'' Shallan discovers [[spoiler: Mraize was using [[Literature/{{Elantris}} an imprisoned Seon]] to remotely communicate.]]
508* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: The ordinary way to obtain Shards. Whoever strikes the killing blow on a wielder gets to take the Shards for himself. This is more social convention than anything to do with the Shards - Kaladin refused to take up one he earned in combat, in his backstory, and someone else took it instead.
509* YourNormalIsOurTaboo:
510** Mostly shows up with the people of Shin versus those from most other countries. For example, the Shin people value humility above all else (to the point that their trade negotiations consist of merchants ''downplaying'' the value of their goods rather than exaggerating them) and consider walking on or otherwise touching or damaging stone to be disrespectful. After travelling throughout the other lands, the Shin viewpoint character Szeth reflects that it's rather hard to hold foreigners to these rules considering their lands don't have soil covering the bare rock.
511** The Horneaters have a caste system based on the order in which children are born, which defines their vocation. When Rock explains this to the other bridgemen (mostly from Alethi-related cultures), the oddest part to them is that the Horneaters do not consider being a warrior to be the highest and most respected vocation. Rock also stuns the others by saying that Horneaters consider long-ranged weapons better and more honorable (whereas among Alethi, there's a reason the officers get swords and the grunts get spears).
512** Crosses over with DeliberateValuesDissonance, but this is also true of the general Vorin culture we see with the Alethi and related peoples compared to the ''readers''. For example, literacy is restricted to women.
513[[/folder]]

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