Timewaster's Guide Archive

One reason I think his Truthlessness is not just a curse, but actually something granted him/encouraged upon him is the story of the king that sailed to the far off island.  The island where the people would slaughter someone for a mistake, but when it turned out their emperor was dead they went mad with guilt.  It would seem that being Truthless allows Szeth (or more accurately Szeth's masters) to commit the sins he does without the normal consequences in Shin culture.  In a sense, Szeth's Truthlessness is the emperor up in the tower.  The real thing I am looking forward to is when Szeth finally casts off his Truthlessness and begins to follow the morality he clearly wishes he had the freedom to follow.

There are definitely some bits of monologue that skirted at the edges of this idea, so that could be foreshadowing a conflict to come when we get to the book that focuses on Szeth.

I don't think walking on stone is part of his truthless-ness – actually it's only because he's truthless that he can bear to commit this sin. I'm pretty sure its taboo for all of Shin, part of Stone Shamanism – which is probably a result of their having the only real 'soil' in roshar.

Has anyone thought that a refusal to take payment might have actually meant he was priceless? I'm thinking of the bartering style where everyone under-prices their own goods. It's probably not likely, since being truthless is always referred to as a punishment, but that could just be Szeth's way of thinking about it – the fact that he has to kill constantly is a terrible punishment for him, but that wasn't actually the intent behind his oath.

I think it's probably more the concept that he's worthless or even harmful to own, being Truthless.

I wonder if maybe Shallan doesn't know what her Shardblade is and how valuable it is. She never refers to it as a Shardblade. She has no background in military or fighting  matters and might not know enough about Shardblades to recognize it as one - especially if her father having a Blade was a secret.

Maybe the events happened something like: Shallan's father dies, his blade materializes, Shallan grabs it, but later lets go of it (perhaps in horror), and it disappears, as Shardblades do. If no one witnessed these events, perhaps no one else saw the sword at all. Or perhaps the only people who saw it also failed to recognize what it was, and may have thought it was gone for good when it disappeared.

Shallan's brothers never say anything indicating they know she is the one who killed their father. Maybe the two were alone when it happened? Or just Nan Balat was there, but he was too badly injured to see what happened? In the viewpoint we have from Nan Balat, he thinks of Shallan as "Shy, quiet, delicate"; he doesn't seem to regard her the way you would expect if he knew she had killed someone.

Brandon has said previously that picking up a Shardblade confers you with the knowledge of how to use it. This is how she knows that it takes ten heartbeats to summon the blade- which perhaps is something Shardbearers keep to themselves. I don't recall it being mentioned, but I haven't done a close read of the book yet.

I do like the possibility that she doesn't know much about her blade, given that only the men seem to talk about Shardblades and Shardplate, but for now I think it's purely a guess.

Fairly in line with what I'd imagined while reading the Ars Arcanum. 10 Essences and 3 Shards. From the Almighty, we have 10 Orders of surgebinders, from Odium there would be 10 Orders of voidbinders, and from Cultivation there would be 10 Orders of Old Magics-binders (or perhaps Old-binders).

I really think that's oversimplifying things. If it was that cut and dried, Brandon wouldn't have said that it depends how you count the systems.

I think that while perhaps the Voidbringers were the reason that Szeth did something to be punished, they may not be the heart of the infraction as far as the Shin were concerned- so maybe he ended up contradicting something else because of his beliefs about the Voidbringers.

I wouldn't rule out Cultivation or Odium having some stake in some of the abilities we've already seen, like when we found out that Feruchemy was balanced between Preservation and Ruin. It's possible that a lot of the magic systems involve interactions between the three powers, and aren't just directly the result of one of the shards present on Roshar.

Quote from: Munin on September 13, 2010, 07:33:47 PM

Actually, only one order of the Radiants were Surgebinders. The Windrunners, I believe.

The Ars Arcanum said that WIndrunners used two primary types of surgebinding, implying that there are other sorts of surgebinding, perhaps some of the other orders of radiants employed said other types.

Or it could just imply that Surgebinding divides neatly in two, and that secondary types of surgebinding rely on cooperation between the two orders of Surgebinders.

As fireborn says, you've essentially got it backwards.