Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive

I just had a horrifying thought about what happened to the Sibling. Bondsmith Ideal 2 is 'I will unite instead of divide'. A Bondsmith was used to mess with the parsh by essentially disconnecting them from their cognitive aspect. A Bondsmith divided instead of united. The Sibling was damaged the way Syl was!

Aren't post First Ideals different for each Knight for most orders?

I know that's definitely the case for Windrunners at least.

The First Ideal is the strength-before-weakness one, the one that doesn't vary across all the knights of all the orders. The ones coming after can vary in wording and to an extent meaning as long as the right general vibe gets through. Like how most Skybreakers dedicated themselves to always following the locally relevant law, but Szeth swore to follow Dalinar. It's still dedicating himself to a higher power, so it counts.

Edited by rikalous on May 24th 2019 at 4:30:19 AM

The Ideals actually get a bit complicated.

The only simple part is that as far as we know, the First Ideal is the same for all Knights Radiant regardless of their Order. "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination." We haven't seen any exceptions to this yet.

After that, the later Ideals generally seem to be the same within an Order, but differ between Orders. eg, the Second Ideal of the Windrunners is We Help the Helpless, while the Bondsmith's is to prevent We ARE Struggling Together. The general sentiment matters more than the specific words — different Knights of the same Order can swear to different wording as long as the basic idea is the same.

One definite exception is the Order of Lightweavers, who swear Truths rather than Ideals after the first. Each Truth is unique to the individual swearing it, so Lightweavers all swear different things.

Another exception is the Skybreakers, whose Ideals revolve around the concept of Law, and different Skybreakers swear their Ideals to different sources of Law. This means that the same Ideal can manifest wildly differently between different Skybreakers, even though the Ideal is pretty much the same ("I will follow the law of [person/place/etc]").

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Agreed, though note that even the Lightweavers, who you would assume would be extremely disparate due to the personal nature of their Truths, were said to be almost universally artists. So even though it doesn't seem like the basic idea would be the same, it ends up the same anyway.

I presume that has to do with the spren. The Cryptics are unlikely to show up to someone who doesn't mix truth and lies, which usually means some type of artist. Likewise, the Skybreaker oaths are judged by their highspren; presumably Szeth couldn't have sworn to follow himself, for example, and it was mentioned that his spren will have to approve his crusade (the Fourth Ideal).

The Lightweavers speaking Truths instead of swearing Ideals presents an intriguing possibility (one I'm certain I've mentioned in this thread before, but screw it).

For the other Orders, there's a set number of Ideals to swear. While the wording may differ from person to person, you're stills swearing the same general Ideals as everyone else. And once you've reach the last Ideal your Order has, you can't (as far as we know) come up with a new Ideal to swear to gain even greater power.

But the Lightweavers? Since they speak Truths instead, and the Truths are obviously unique to each person, there doesn't appear to be a set number of Truths that a Lightweaver can speak. Some of them might only have two or three secrets big enough to qualify as a Truth, while another may have a dozen such secrets to share. Is there anything stopping the latter from continuing to speak Truths, gaining new levels of Radiant power, long after the point where, in other Orders, they'd have run out of Ideals and so maxed themselves out?

Eh. "Just" making to the Fifth Ideal is a thing no Skybreaker's managed in centuries. So a Lightweaver is presumably going to need to speak truths with a corresponding level of oomph to get that far, and then find more truths with even greater oomph to get farther. Even if that's theoretically possible, which frankly smacks of no-limits fallacy to me, I don't think it's gonna happen.

I'm not so sure the Skybreakers are an exception. Different ones can have different ideas of what constitutes justice, but the same could be said for concepts like protection. You could have one Windrunner sticking people in a Gilded Cage to keep them safe from harm and another breaking them out to keep them safe from imprisonment, with both acting in accordance with their oaths of guardianship.

I seem to remember a bit where Syl tells Kaladin that just because she's an honorspren doesn't mean she has some objective knowledge of honor, but I'm having trouble finding it.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work — the Skybreakeres seem to revolve around swearing themselves to an external code — a legal system or an established philosophy or even a particular individual, but always something independent and outside themselves. The idea is putting your faith into something other than yourself, and trusting its judgement over your own, so "I will follow my own law" wouldn't work as a Skybreaker oath, I don't think.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Maybe they can do more than 5 Truths, but it doesn't seem very Sanderson-y for one of the ten orders to be able to arbitrarily access a much larger amount of Investiture without some crossover with another system.

True. On the other hand, it wouldn't be very Sanderson-y if someone in-universe didn't think to try gaming the system that way, whatever the results.

Though you have to wonder if the spirit of the Ideal requires them to be at least a little discerning with what external authority they swear to follow. Like, what would have happened if Szeth had sworn to follow Nightblood?

Edited by RavenWilder on May 25th 2019 at 9:27:20 AM

Well, swearing the Ideals seems to be more about the Knights internal state than actually saying the words — it's not that saying the words makes them true, it's that you can only say them if they're true.

Which means that someone swearing to follow the Law as embodied by Nightblood would have to honestly believe that Nightblood was a good model of behavior that people should emulate. But if they did, then yeah, they could presumably swear that as their Ideal and have it accepted. Which is frankly terrifying, but there you have it.

Personally, I expect to see more Skybreakers swearing to things based on their own culture. Like the teachings of Vorinism, or the Azish legal system.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Paladin of Bureaucracy is already my favorite character and they don't even exist yet.

Also destroying evil is a great thing for Skybreakers to do clearly Nightblood is best role model.

Okay I'm listening to the Oathbringer audiobook and some things I've picked up on some things I'd missed. Shallan has a panic attack when Adolin starts training her sword forms and Shallan makes Radiant to cope. But what really sets Shallan off is Adolin asking if Shallan has her plate already. It's a very similar reaction to Kaladin's realization that he can't say his next oath. But Shallan's always been a bit ahead of Kaladin, and she could summon the Patternblade way before she swore her most recent Truth. Makes one wonder if she already could summon it, given enough Stormlight.

And am I super crazy for thinking that Shallan's alternate selves are going to end up becoming her plate?

The current theory is that the Plate is made up of "lesser" spren. Windspren for Windrunners, gloryspren for Bondsmiths, lifespren for Edgedancers, and creationspren for Lightweavers. But it's a little odd that none of Shallan's illusions have drawn creationspren first, so maybe when she creates some really awesome illusions, that will draw enough of them to manifest her Plate.

What if she she eventually creates the illusion of Plate to bluff someone, and then it actually protects her?

I could see that happening. We've already had the "POV from an illusion," which a lot of people saw coming (though I assumed the illusion wouldn't know she was an illusion and would have an existential moment when confronted with the truth, but still). Kaladin will presumably get an awesome armor-up scene, but I could see Shallan's as more subtle.

I don't think it's creationspren, only because Cryptics don't seem to have the same relationship to creationspren that honorspren have to windspren. Lightweavers and Cryptics just work differently from the other orders. They can swear oaths early (then have to deal with the major backlash), but their Truths also serve to keep them from getting lost in their other selves as much as anything else.

I've got a feeling that Shardplate won't be made out of spren (lesser or otherwise). While there's clearly more to them than highly advanced fabrials, they still seem to work on principles similar to more mundane forms of Rosharan magic: they need to be fed stormlight to fuel their powers, those powers seem to be purely physical in nature, and those powers can be overcome through purely physical force.

By contrast, Shardblades are made out of spren, and seem like a different thing altogether. Unlike almost all other magic on Roshar, they don't rely on stormlight. Their powers go beyond the physical when they start cutting through people's souls. And while Shardplate is merely incredibly durable, Shardblades seem to be genuinely indestructible (I'm sure we'll see one broken or destroyed at some point, but I'm pretty sure Brandon's said that no amount of physical punishment is going to do the trick).

You could chalk this up to Blades being made of far more powerful spren than Plate, but it doesn't feel that way to me. From the way they work to the kinds of things they do, Shardplate feels of-a-piece with how stormlight is used elsewhere in Roshar, while Shardblades feel like they're playing from a whole different rulebook.

Except Shardblades are made of spren, and during the Shadesmar roadtrip we see the conscious ones using Stormlight! It's how they change their clothes, which are a part of them on that side and unchangeable otherwise. I think Blade indestructibility is a result of being physical component of a concept, while Plate is the joining of lesser concepts. It's kind of indestrucitble itself since you can't be rid of it completely, it just reforms after it's destroyed.

Kind of like how an army can reform even if individuals are slain. Now there's an image.

My guess is that the effects that we're seeing are going to come to a head, and I'm stuck on the idea of Shallan telling Veil and Radiant that they aren't her... but they could be her armor.

Personally, I don't think the armor is made from spren just because the spren we meet don't react to it the way they do shardblades, as has been pointed out.

But here's a thought - are any of the orders made by contracts with the spren of physical concepts? This would shoot a hole in the idea of creationspren being the lesser spren to Cryptics, but it could be that shardplate has different properties and is more subject to physical forces because it's made by (not necessarily from) spren representing purely physical concepts.

Aight, picked up reading again.

Stick best character.

Kaladin just got bucked off by Widowmaker— I mean, Dreamstorm—, Moash totes tried to kill the King, Adolin's an asshole to Kaladin despite not being an asshole in his POV chapters, Shallan's almost to the Shattered Plains (and I'm pretty sure her brother's gonna either be a major character later or turn out to be that nameless shardbearer Kaladin killed at the beginning of TWOK, because fantasy stories like this have no true nameless characters wielding plot-relevant objects, and Shallan's got to have that monkey wrench thrown into her future romance with Kaladin)...

Wonder when Taravangian's gonna be plot-relevant again. I coulda sworn he was going to be super-important, but no mention of him so far. Same with Szeth-son-son-Vellano, Truthless of Shinnovar. They've mentioned him a couple of times, but no new appearances.

EDIT: Ah, there's Szeth-son-son-Vellano, Truthless of Shinnovar. Just had to be patient for a couple more chapters.

Edited by Rytex on Jun 17th 2019 at 3:27:32 AM

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

Called it again. Kaladin killed Shallan's bro.

That 2.5v4 was a really cool fight. Shame Kaladin had to bungle it all.

Lift really kinda reminds me of a really young Rainbow Dash, with her fixation on "awesomeness" and whatnot.

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

12/10 by Dalinar. Some Thrawn-level planning, and Amaram gets Amarekt.

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

Finished Words of Radiance.

Called it a-fucking-gain. Jasnah lives! Only Martin would have the balls to kill off such a plot-relevant character so early in his story. And on the YMMV page, I'm pleased to see I wasn't the only one who thought that, considering the Like You Really Would Do It entry.

Our three heroes (and Renarin) have revived the Jedi Order, Tywin Lannisdouche is dead after trying to gloat one too many times to the wrong person, Altair Ibn la-Ahad looks like he's on his way to completing a Heel–Face Turn, and once again, the day is saved (for now), thanks to the Powerpuff Girls.

Qui odoratus est qui fecit.

Don't bully Renarin, he's doing his best.