Timewaster's Guide Archive

Expounding on the theory of Radiants powering their suits differently:

Would the Radiants be inhibited in the amount of stormlight they infuse themselves with like Szeth and Kaladin?
You'll recall that in the book the more they inhaled, they increasingly felt as though the storm would rip them apart.
Granted, the Radiants would be enhanced by the plate, but not infinitely. If they were using lashings they would be massively bound by time. It would be a balancing act of keeping the plate and self infused. The more spent on lashings, the less the plate has.

Thoughts?

Personally, I think they use the crystals in the armor/plate as batteries. Instead of directly absorbing the stormlight themselves, they absorb it and then store it in the armor - providing the armor with its glow.

Then they use the stored stormlight to fuel their lashings (or other powers). It's a process that must have been lost - directly using stormlight without having to absorb it first.

Or perhaps there's some sort of hybrid effect when the suit and the user can both use stormlight. We'll see, but I think my battery idea might be fairly close.

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS BECAME DEFINITE SPOILERS --- YOU'VE BEEN WARNED****


I would stress that a lot of your concerns from the Alethi point of view Dalinar is also annoyed with. Since the focus of their war has turned to primarily a game of speed-capture, seige weaponry would probably take too long to arrive at the battle field.

As far as assault from underneath - same logic. During the clean-the-chasm duty, they mention how easy it is to get lost in the chasms, and that getting to a specific chasm is very difficult and time consuming. By the time they reached the plateau, even if it were an easy climb, the gemheart would have already been taken.


As far as using fire on the mobile bridgemen...I think this goes towards something about the Parshendi that we haven't learned yet. Their is an odd sense of honor there, and there's definitely something...odd...about their behavior towards the bridgemen, even before Kaladin starts wearing their dead. Sadeas mentions how it was less effective to give the bridgemen shields, and that he wants to be able to focus the Parshendi arrow fire onto the bridgemen so that his calvary and foot soldiers aren't demolished.


A possible explanation -- the Parshendi are definitely a lot more similar to the Alethi than they realize. Look at their ability to utilize strategic withdrawl, their holding back of their shardbearers, and a few other moments in battle that seem to suggest they are more than simple barbarians. So to me, they understand that what the war has become is a skirmish over resources. Perhaps they feel that using fire on the bridgeman is either dishonorable, or that it would force the Alethi to really focus on destroying the Parshendi, instead of simply fighting for gemhearts.

Not knowing what the duladel (forgive me if this is spelled wrong, I'm at work...haha) is saying is kind of on purpose, I believe. You figure it out by the end of the book, but the point is that it's a foreign language to everyone but the one guy speaking it, so explaining it would feel a bit forced, I think.

I like when books don't hit you over the head with explanations. That being said, I prefer Brandon's methods of introducing new things as opposed to say, Steven Erikson. I love the Malazan books, but each time you start a new one, you spend the first 30% (or more) of the book generally puzzled and confused.