Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

Did we know about the nine Unmade before now?

Young Dalinar was definitely a bad guy.

Also: Does anyone have any objections to keeping spoilers from the new chapters exclusively to this thread?

I know some people won't want to follow along, and if we do it that way the general thread will still be safe for them to read.

edited 30th Aug '17 6:35:26 AM by 32ndfreeze

Already we get a flag. After all, in Roshar the magic number is 10.

I could see the two passives thing being the result of "Surge A as influenced by Surge B" and "Surge B as influenced as Surge A" rather than just being "a mix of Surge A and B".

Just finished the chapters, they were pretty interesting.

Some more world-building on the Urithiru side is actually what I was looking forward to the most.

I love that Sanderson takes the time to talk about supply lines, provisions, policing and agriculture. I was very curious to learn about the logistical aspects of displacing the entire court of Alethcar to the city and these first chapters do a wonderful job of establishing how good of an administrator Dalinar is. I'm a sucker for talk about delivering grain shipments and establishing administrative districts in a fantasy setting.

The flashback chapter was interesting as well. We all had a vague idea that Dalinar was a much different man in his youth but to actually witness it is something else.

edited 30th Aug '17 3:20:26 PM by GutstheBerserker

One thing I wished they talked about along with the logistics was lighting. Until they get a chance to charge up gems, people will be living in the dark (which will make policing 300% by itself), made worse by the fact Shallan and Renarin will need stormlight to train.

That will probably come up in the next couple chapters, when the training starts.

Speaking of Stormlight, are they going to be able to recharge their gems directly in Urithiru? It's mentioned that they're above the storms, after all. I mean, worst case they can pop back to the Shattered Plains right before a storm to recharge everything, but that would be a pretty big logistical annoyance. Then again, in Words there were a few mentions of crem buildups (though not very much), so maybe they're just above the fury of the storms, and will still be able to get the Light.

Oh, and one last thing that was bugging me: Seems these first few chapters are taking place before the end of Edgedancer. So we know that pretty soon people will actually believe Dalinar about the Everstorm, and his warnings will help people survive relatively unscathed.

Was annoyed we didn't see Kaladin this week. I wanted to see what happened after that preview a few years ago!

I'm trying to remember: what did they end up doing with Szeth's Honorblade? Since it turns whoever bonds with it into a Windrunner, it's both the single most valuable object in the Alethi army, and also pointless for Kaladin to keep for himself, since he's a Windrunner already. In these sample chapters Dalinar mentions wishing they still had Kaladin around to help with reaching the other Oathgates on Roshar, so I'd assume getting someone bonded to that Blade ASAP is a priority.

I don't think the Honorblade works as a key. For one, it never seems to have had shapeshifting capability needed to work the gates.

I think it's an important distinction that honorblades don't make that person a member of the appropriate order — they merely give them access to the appropriate Surges. (Whether this includes the passives abilities beyond basic stormlight buffs is unclear.) They haven't actually bonded to a spren, which means 1) there's no check on their behavior, 2) honorblades seems to be stuck permanent in sword form (which is probably why shardblades are swords by default, given that shardblades are patterned off the honorblades), and 3) I'm willing to bet that there's more shenanigans that we don't know about yet related to this issue.

Honestly, though, I'd generally consider the honorblades more of a hazard than anything else. They're powerful, certainly, but there's also nothing to keep their wielder from going crazy and doing whatever the hell they want, and they don't seem to have any abilities that a Radiant of the appropriate order doesn't. Given all that, they're probably better off holding on to it and simply keeping it safe rather than giving it to someone to actually wield.

I wonder how living shardblades would react to an honorblade, though. They don't like dead shardblades, but what about the original thing their physical forms were based on?

It's only the first three chapters. In Kings, we didn't even see Dalinar or any of the Alethi court until chapter 12, after the first set of epigraphs. My guess is that the next trio will be Shallan and Renarin training (or possibly Shallan dodging training to deal with the Ghostbloods), Adolin having to deal with the investigation into Sadeas' murder, and then Kaladin arriving in Hearthstone. Though it's possible that Kaladin's arrival could be pushed back a bit farther; he doesn't get back until after the Everstorm, and I'm unclear on how far away that is.

Hm? Dalinar doesn't mention anything about sending Kaladin to activate the Oathgates. He only mentions them in a "yet another thing we'll have to figure out sooner or later" tone, but it's pretty clear that it's low on the priority list at the moment.

We also know that they require a lot more Stormlight than even a low-level Radiant. Anyway, I was going to say about the same thing: Right now, it's just a danger. Pretty much everyone they actually trust is either a Radiant, a squire, or not a fighter. Who are they gonna give it to? Aladar? Navani?

As for spren reacting to them, remember Syl was the one who told Kaladin to grab it. "Be careful with it. It is a treasure."

Random thought: if you give someone an Honorblade, can they then use the ability to use Stormlight to power, say, Feruchemy or Allomancy? Because Stormlight-powered Feruchemical speed, well... than the bug becomes a feature.

If you know how to use those powers, and you know how to "investiture shift" (ie, turn one form of investiture into a form useable by a different power), then you probably don't even need an Honorblade, honestly. You'd need to learn how to use stormlight, but if you can already manipulate investiture, you should be able to figure out how to do that without outside help.

Why not give Adolin the Honorblade? He's both a great fighter and easily among Dalinar's top three most trusted people (though obviously that could change if the truth about Sadeas's death comes out). Why wouldn't they want to turn him into a superhero?

We could end up with Dalinar deciding to give Adolin the blade, and then changing his mind when he learns about Sadaes.

Also I feel like the Honorblades have quite a few things we don't know about them to be uncovered.

Whoops, I forgot to list "already have Shardblades" in the group of people they won't give the Honorblade to. Especially since Adolin has the Plate, too, and you can't use both at once (at least, the Shin never figured it out). I mean, I guess they could give Adolin the Honorblade and then he could give his current Blade and Plate to someone else, but by Alethi standards that would be weird. Even Dalinar giving his own son his Plate was considered bizarre. I suspect it won't even occur to them. Renarin will have to give up his current Blade and Plate at some point, though, since they're redundant at best at the moment.

I wonder if he'll offer it and Adolin will deny the Blade out of guilt, since he knows the Windrunners aren't assassins.

Adolin wouldn't necessarily need to give up his Shardblade; I'm pretty sure there's Word of God that says being bonded to two different Blades at once is entirely possible. He might want to learn some Dual Wielding techniques, though.

As for passing around Shards, while giving them away is virtually unheard of, we see from one of Adolin's duels that loaning someone a Blade or Plate for specific circumstances is not uncommon.

edited 31st Aug '17 11:47:52 AM by RavenWilder

If anyone can pull of dual wielding BF Ses, it's Adolin "I'll fight two to make it fair" Kholin.

Hm, you know, I'd forgotten that we don't know how the Radiants originally used their shardplate. The blades are the physical forms of their bonded spren, is the plate just an extension of that? We do see a Radiant in one of Dalinar's visions making their helmet (or was it just their visor?) disappear and reappear, which seems similar to shardblades shifting to meet their bearer's needs. Maybe the spren can take the form of the plate and blade simultaneously after you've sworn more of the oaths? Or maybe it's a second spren that bonds to you? But I don't think we've heard of Radiants hearing the plate the way they can hear the blades screaming....

edited 31st Aug '17 1:54:54 PM by NativeJovian

Kaladin mentions when he´s in the chasms with Shallan that only the King and the Highprinces traditionaly loan their Shards (not sure if he said it is forbidden or it´s just not done). So i wouldn´t really call it common.

I think the best theory is that the blate is formed from the "cousin-spren" of the radiant-spren (Honerspren + Windspren; Cryptics + Creationspren; Cultivationspren + Lifespren;etc) and radiants don´t hear them scream because they are not sapient. I think there´s a Wo B (too lazy to search right now) that if you want an actual Shardbow you would need to choose between your spren becoming the bow or the arrow, so it wouldn´t really make sense for them to turn into a suit of armor comprised of many different parts.

Yeah, it seemed pretty clear that Plates don't exactly work like Blades. Stormlight-enhanced abilities aside.

Huh, I like that idea. Makes a lot of sense.

edited 31st Aug '17 3:20:39 PM by NativeJovian

Adolin's Plate also seemed to "wake up" when he fought the stormforms. At first he was getting blinded by the lightning and everything, and then when they actually hit him with it... well, I'll just quote the whole passage.

So there's that.

I figure Shardplate is probably just very advanced fabrials.

Except Shardplate has no similarities to fabrials except that they both need Stormlight. That was a minor plot point in... I can't remember which book, but the Veden invented those half-shard shields and thought they were finally closer to making Shardplate, only to realize that the two are based on completely different principles. They pretty much just stumbled on some random thing that can block a Shardblade, while Plate is something else entirely.

There's also the part where Dalinar mentions how odd it is that the only suits of Plate are built for war and paired with the Blades. If they were just advanced fabrials, there would be different types for more mundane tasks. It makes far more sense for them to be tied to the abilities of the Radiants themselves; they didn't give Plate to the common people because they couldn't.