Welcome back to the Oathbringer Reread, where we get to watch a game of Skybreaker Paintball with Szeth and his fellow Skybreaker squires. Swoop! Also, Nalan shows up, being as obnoxiously mysterious and arrogant as usual.
Reminder: we’ll potentially be discussing spoilers for the ENTIRE NOVEL in each reread – if you haven’t read ALL of Oathbringer, best to wait to join us until you’re done.
In this week’s reread we also discuss one thing from Warbreaker in the Cosmere Connections section, so if you haven’t read it, best to give that section a pass. It’s spoilerish.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Szeth
WHERE: Purelake
WHEN: 1174.2.6.3 (8 days after the last time we saw him in Chapter 92)
Szeth and his fellow squires are instructed to participate in a “test of martial competence” where they use their Lashings, as well as strategy and tactics, to play a game over the Purelake. Szeth wins the contest, due to a lot of outside-the-box thinking, much to the annoyance of the other squires. He decides that he’s going to advance to the Third Ideal, but before he can speak the words, Nalan shows up and shanghais the whole group for purposes not yet revealed.
Beginnings
Title: Loopholes
“Remember that while loopholes are to be exploited, Szeth-son-Neturo, they are dangerous to rely upon.
A: As we’ll see, he fully exploited several loopholes in this contest. I’m trying to remember if there are other loopholes for him to use, later, but… really, Szeth doesn’t seem the type to use loopholes except when he feels like the current exercise is a waste of time. Otherwise, he mostly follows the rules to the nth degree.
Heralds
Nale—Herald of Justice; patron, member, and leader of the Skybreakers; role of Judge; divine attributes Just & Confident
A: Between a bevy of Skybreakers and his own appearance at the end of the chapter, Nale’s presence is easily accounted for.
Talenel—Herald of War; patron of the Stonewards; role of Soldier; divine attributes Dependable & Resourceful
A: Taln is a little less obvious… maybe. That whole “resourcefulness” thing is a dead giveaway, though. I suppose you could also consider the mock-battle aspect of the game as the soldier, too, if you need another rationale for Taln.
Icon
The Assassin, for a Szeth chapter
Epigraph
Lore suggested leaving a city if the spren there start acting strangely. Curiously, Sja-anat was often regarded as an individual, when others—like Moelach or Ashertmarn—were seen as forces.
—From Hessi’s Mythica, page 90
L: This makes me wonder if whatever spren, people, or entities the Unmade were before their… Unmaking could possibly have been plural. Is it possible that multiple entities were combined in order to create Ashertmarn?
A: Oh, I love that thought! It would explain some things, for sure. There are several that seem to fit that motif, really; Moelach, Ashertmarn, and Nergaoul for sure, and maybe Re-Shephir (though Shallan thinks of her as an individual). It seems like Chemoarish and Ba-Ado-Mishram were more individual, like Sja-anat. What a fascinating thought.
Stories & Songs
Nin-son-God, Nale, Nakku, Nalan—this man had a hundred different names and was revered across all Roshar. The Illuminator. The Judge. A founder of humankind, defender against the Desolations, a man ascended to divinity.
The Herald of Justice had returned.
A: Nalan finally makes his reappearance to the Skybreakers at the very end of this chapter, only to take off again with the masters and the best of the squires, and we don’t even get to find out what he’s been up to or where he’s going!
Since he disappeared last time, it seems that his subordinates have less confidence in him than one might expect:
“We must train to fight, if the Desolation truly has begun.”
Without Nin’s guidance to confirm, they spoke of the Desolation in “if”s and “might”s.
A: His leadership seems pretty sketchy to me, you know? Do the masters really believe him to be a Herald? If so, why are they so hesitant to take his word for the Desolation? … come to think of it, he’s been leading them on a crusade to keep Radiants from developing so as to prevent a Desolation. Then all of a sudden he popped in, told them the Desolation was here, and zipped off again. So… terrible leadership style, and never an explanation to be had when you need it. He’s the kind of boss that sends me into a full-on depressive episode. No wonder they were reluctant to go all-in on the Desolation idea.
L: I read this a little differently. It seems to me that before he left, Nalan still wasn’t 100% sure and wasn’t willing to totally commit, so his people are waiting for him to give the absolute word on whether or not the Desolation has really come. Perhaps I need to go back and reread what he told them after he and Szeth got back from Azir….
A: Well, yeah, we could do something crazy like that. I guess. (Yes, I’m working off my memory and assumptions!) Maybe he wasn’t very convincing because he wasn’t quite convinced? Also, he’s insane, and the people he goes to for advice are equally or more insane, so there’s that.
… So I went and checked to see what Nalan told the other Skybreakers, and we really aren’t told. As far as Szeth can say, Nin left him in Tashikk for weeks, then came back for him, dumped him at the fortress, and promptly left again to “seek guidance.” So you’re probably right – Nalan didn’t convince the other masters because he didn’t quite know what to believe, himself.
Relationships & Romances
A: It occurs to me that we know virtually nothing about Szeth’s family — whether they’re still alive, if they bear some measure of his shame, or if they completely disowned him when he was declared Truthless. About all we know is that Szeth switched to calling himself “son-son-Vallano” rather than “son-Neturo” so his father would not be “sullied by association” with him. This implies, I supposed, that his father is likely still alive, and his grandfather dead. Mother? Siblings? Extended family? Just a blank.
Anyway, as a Skybreaker rather than Assassin, and knowing himself to not be Truthless, he’s switched back. I expect we’ll have to wait for Book 5 to learn much more about his family.
L: I, for one, can’t wait to learn more about him and his past!
Bruised & Broken
Szeth had rarely fought in the air itself…. [He] found he was enjoying himself. …
He wove between thrown pouches, dancing above a lake painted by the hues of a setting sun, and smiled.
Then immediately felt guilty. He had left tears, blood, and terror in his wake like a personal seal. He had destroyed monarchies, families — innocent and guilty alike. He could not be happy.
A: Well, he has a point, I must admit. He did do all that, and it does seem unjust for him to let it all go and have fun. And I can’t say that I believe Nin any more than Szeth does, about it all being “undone” and being reborn – mostly because I don’t see that even a Herald has the authority to declare all of someone’s evil deeds wiped away.
Then again, Nalan is pretty broken too; I’m sure he believes he has that authority.
L: This is a really hard one for me. I feel like, as long as he is actively working towards reparations for his wrongs, he doesn’t deserve to live a life entirely devoid of joy.
A: I know what you mean. He has, for one reason and another, become a different person in a way. Mostly, he knows the truth – or at least, more of it – and the truth has set him free from being bound by the Oathstone. He’s not doing those things any more, and he’s determined to bring truth (and a certain amount of repercussion!) to those who wrongly set him on the path he had followed. So, yeah, he’s not murdering on command any more, so good. At the same time… he did do those things, and he did them voluntarily. Ugh. Szeth is such a complicated character! But a life with no joy, thrust upon him against his will… I can’t really wish that on him.
Squires & Sidekicks
A: So… let’s review those squires. Do you suppose we’ll see any of them later on?
Joret: clever guy thinks he can win by dominating a single color; promptly gets hit with literally every other color. Fail.
Cali: misses the pouch she reached for because Szeth pulled the pole away. Bummer.
Zedzil: fails to realize that he can’t throw a pouch that will overtake a triple Lashing, and hits himself instead. Persistent, but also fails to realize that when you’re chasing someone, all they have to do is let you run into a pouch when they toss it. Fail. Except… smart enough to know when he’s outclassed and go looking for an easier target. So… meh?
Fari: gathered all pouches from one pole to hoard the color, which also denies Szeth the ammunition he’d like. Pass.
Ty: leader of a group of four who work as a team to isolate and bomb other individuals. Gets one of his thrown pouches batted right back in his face by Szeth. Shaky, dude. Very shaky. Also, the cocky one who follows the rules as understood, rather than as stated, so … Fail.
My favorite, though, was the girl he grabbed and shoved at one of her companions, taking them both out for a bit:
“You attacked me!” said the woman he’d thrown at someone else.
“Physical contact was not forbidden, and I cannot help it if you are unable to control your Lashings when I release you.”
The masters didn’t object.
That one always makes me laugh a little.
Places & Peoples
A: This week gives us just a few glimpses of cultures we don’t get to see much during the main action. It’s hardly our first look at the Purelake, and we don’t really learn much new about it. There’s just a small reminder about another culture here:
The Azish man looked strange in the garb of a Marabethian lawkeeper, chest bare and shoulders draped with the short, patterned cloak. The Azish were normally so proper, overly encumbered with robes and hats.
A: Not really important, just the usual fun-fact worldbuilding to remind us that there are, indeed, a number of widely diverse cultures and beliefs on this planet. We saw the short cloak before, and this serves to remind us that the Skybreaker fortress is technically located in Marabethia and they operate under Marabethian law.
Here’s one culture where we keep finding strange things, making us want moremoremore:
This would be like those days in [Szeth’s] youth, spent training with the Honorblades.
A: We’ll see this come into play more in the big battle at the end, but how’s that for a casual fact-drop? He trained with the Honorblades. BLADES. Plural. We don’t know how common this is, of course, though my expectation is that this is part of the training to become a Stone Shaman. In any case, some Shin youths train with the Honorblades held by the Shin, becoming practiced in manipulating all the Surges which can be accessed through the Blades they hold. It’s a pretty fair assumption that Szeth has some experience with every one of the ten Surges, since the only missing Blades belonged to Taln and Nalan, and those don’t overlap. Wow.
L: It’s really cool that he knows all of that, but I can’t help but feel like the Shin have been very stingy all this time. I get it – if people knew that they had the Honorblades, war probably would have been waged over them. But are they doing anything with all that knowledge now that the Desolation has returned? I suppose we’ll find out eventually…
A: My other question is whether they used the Honorblades in those earlier attempts to take over the world (that we talked about back in Chapter 2) – the “Shin invasions.” It hardly seems likely that they’d have such weapons and not use them, does it? Again, I suppose we’ll find out eventually.
Tight Butts and Coconuts
SKYBREAKER PAINTBALL!!
A: I mean… fun and games up in here! Oddly, though the game itself takes up most of the chapter, it seems the least meaningful part. It’s pretty fun to visualize them zipping around, grabbing bags of colored powder from the poles, trying to figure out strategies literally “on the fly.” (Okay, am I the only one who had to forcibly remove broomsticks from the picture? It felt very akin to quidditch. Just me?) Szeth’s solutions make me laugh, though.
L: His tactics were very militaristically valid and wise.
Weighty Words
Szeth suddenly felt frustrated by their games. … The time had come for him to ascend to a rank beyond all this.
…
“You shall soon have your spren, gauging by this performance.”
“Not soon,” Szeth said. “Right now. I shall say the Third Ideal this night, choosing to follow the law. I—”
“No,” a voice interrupted.
L: What I find most interesting about this is that he proclaims his intent. We don’t really see this in the other orders… when they swear their Ideals, it’s very much an “in-the-moment” type thing. I was a bit taken aback that he didn’t just do it when he felt the need to… but the Skybreakers seem to have more rules and traditions about such things. Probably because their traditions weren’t lost to time like most of the Orders of Knights Radiant…
A: I know, right? I never know whether to think the Skybreakers are just oddly regimented, or whether to assume that all of the Orders were this organized and we’re just getting the rediscovery process in the others. I lean toward the latter, by now; remember that one epigraph from the gemstone archive, where the Windrunner was so reluctant to speak the Fourth Ideal? He clearly knew what it was, and it sure sounded like it was more or less common knowledge.
Still, there do seem to be some differences. Like at the end of the book, when Lopen says the second Ideal, it sounds like he’d said the words before, but it wasn’t accepted (whether by his spren or by the Stormfather, I’m not sure) because he wasn’t as ready as he thought he was. At least in some cases, it’s clear that there’s more involved than just knowing the right words to say.
But here, it certainly sounds like the individual, and to some extent their superiors in the Order, get to decide when they’re ready; the spren just … accept it, presumably? I can’t tell how much input the spren are getting.
In any case, Nin shows up and declares that before he swears, there are things he – and all of them – need to understand. Whatever the issue is, Nin considers it important enough to grab all the gemstones, leave the trainees behind, and take off with all the masters and the better-trained squires.
“Tonight. It is time for you to learn the two greatest secrets that I know.
What those secrets are… we’ll have to wait for our next Szeth chapter to learn.
Cosmere Connections
You think like Vasher, the sword said in his head. Do you know Vasher? He teaches swords to people now, which is funny because VaraTreledees always says Vasher isn’t any good with the sword.
A: Of course, Szeth doesn’t even know Zahel on this world, so the answer would be no. Still, this is as good a place as any to note that, despite Denth’s derision, Vasher was actually quite a good swordsman, and well qualified to teach. He just wasn’t as good as Arsteel, or Denth himself. (VaraTreledees = Denth, in case you’d forgotten, and Arsteel = Clod.) Like Szeth, though, Vasher was far more aware of loopholes than those he defeated – which is how he defeated them.
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
What were those two spren floating nearby, shaped as small slits in the air? They separated the sky, like wounds in skin, exposing a black field full of stars.
A: Highspren, presumably? Very weird.
L: These are really cool looking. Assuming that these are the Skybreaker highspren, I wonder what personality type they are. And I’m really curious about how whatever spren he bonds is going to interact with Nightblood!
A: Hey, yeah. We haven’t seen … well, really anything of his spren, have we? Even by the end of the book? Presumably we’ll get something, sometime, but for now they seem very aloof, even from their Radiants. Look at this one from an earlier chapter, Master Ki speaking to Szeth:
“During my prayers last night, Winnow proclaimed the highspren are watching you.”
That sounds oddly distant, compared to Syl, Pattern, Wyndle, Ivory, Glys, even the Stormfather is more present with his Knight than this implies. They interact with their humans all the time, in all situations – not just during their private prayers. I don’t think I understand the Skybreakers and their spren very well.
Quality Quotations
Though he didn’t care if he won arbitrary tests of competence, the chance to dance the Lashings—for once without needing to cause death and destruction—called to him.
A: Okay, I do feel for him. To have had the powers of a Windrunner and be obligated to continually use them to do things you hate… it would be a terrible balance to live with. The joy of flying always countered by the horror of killing more people – it’s no wonder the poor guy is a mess.
Well, that’s it for the nonce. Let’s go talk about it in the comments! As always, be sure to join us again next week for Chapter 99, as we rejoin the Shadesmar Exploration Society and discover a whole new race of spren to intrigue us.
Alice is having a lovely fall, thus far. Sun Mountain Lodge is a lovely place to spend a birthday, in case you were wondering.
Lyndsey is having a wonderful time working at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire, but is disappointed in Ravenclaw House for putting in such a poor show at Wizard’s Weekend. Slytherin House won the House Cup Trivia Competition on BOTH DAYS! If you’re an aspiring author, a cosplayer, or just like geeky content, follow her work on Facebook or Instagram.
Like last week, the chapter title on the picture does not match what you say is the chapter title. Is there a reason for that?
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This was a fun chapter. I kinda like how the Skybreakers go about training recruits. It makes me really want to see how the other orders did it back before the Recreance. Can we get a Harry Potter-style novella with new recruits training at Urithiru please?
The flying paintball sounds so fun. Useful training for the lashings too, I guess. Seriously fun though.
If everyone had washed off at the end of the battle, I wonder how the masters would have judged the result.
I think there’s a WoB that the Shin Invasions did use Honorblades.
There is an argument to be made (not one I agree with) that dying pays any remaining moral price for one’s actions up to that point. The fact that Szeth came back to life again (mostly?) would mean he gets an actual, literal second chance with a clean slate.
The game here made me think of one of those cheesy tests that went around in the lower grades from time to time, where the instructions say to read the entire thing before beginning. Most students fail the test, as the last problem is basically a declaration that you need to disregard everything else and just flip the test over. Szeth is akin to the one student in the class who actually read and thinks about all the instructions before diving in and recording answers.
The Highspren are really, really weird. What sticks out to me the most is that apparently the deciding factor- what finally made one of them want to bond Szeth- was that he won a game of paintball. I am looking forward to finding out what their deal is.
I’m also looking forward to finding out what Szeth’s spren thinks of Nightblood. Maybe it’s aloof even by Highspren standards because of that?
I’m following this re-read as well as the Wheel of Time one, and a big difference in style is that this one doesn’t actually recap what happens in the chapter very much, while the WoT one tends to recap a little too much. I never minded the difference in style until this chapter where I couldn’t really remember the rules of their competition nor what Szeth did to win and it isn’t discussed.
@6 I did that in 4th grade and “passed” it because I was told about it previously by an older sibling. I always had a problem with the fact that just because you read the last order that says to ignore everything that came before, the first order just says to read them all before starting. There is nothing in the instructions that says because you read that final order that you should actually do what it says, when you aren’t supposed to do all of the other orders even though you read them.
I’m very curious about two of these names/titles. First, Nin-son-God seems to imply that he might have been an actual child of one of the Shards (they being the ones who seem to be referred to as Gods on Roshar and elsewhere). Second, “founder of humankind” implies to me that he was one of the original human settlers on Roshar. If so, he must be a LOT older than I thought, or the creation of the Heralds happened relatively shortly after they came to the planet.
Is Zedzil possibly related to Sigzil? The names seem quite similar.
What I find most interesting is that Skybreakers CAN advance to the third ideal without having bonded a spren. I got the impression based on Kaladin and Shallan that having a bonded spren is the indication that the FIRST ideal was accepted (and that the person in question was a KR rather than a squire).
Does Nighblood maintain a link to Vasher? If not, how does it know he now teaches swords, especially under an assumed name?
Skybreaker Paintball is the best paintball. Especially if you can get away with using it as an excuse to go swimming in a lake. :-p
Nightblood might be fun to read about. But I feel it can’t be good for Szeth, with his rightful regret about his bloody past and hope for a better future, to have a sword that complains about not being used to kill people.
I feel there’s something especially cool about the way (certain) people can fly in this story — lacking any visible means of conveyance other than their human bodies, pulling themselves around by manipulating the strength and direction of graviry’s effect on them but looking more like they’re swimming in the sky without even needing the motion of swim-strokes. Gah. It’s a difficult feeling to explain.
@9:
I struggle with this, too. How can someone skip steps in bonding with a spren? A spren gains just as much as a KR when an oath is sworn. They grow more sentience and memory. So the Highspren are handicapped when they finally bond? Doesn’t make sense. Also, I’m not sure how a squire doesn’t immediately gain access to both surges. Like, how is it withheld from them?
So, why did old legends advise people to leave the settlement where Sja-Anat was changing spren? I mean, the non-sapient spren can’t actually affect anything in the physical, can they? Can she do something else, that actually hurts people?
Why is one of the Nale’s titles “The Illuminator”, when he has nothing to do with the surge of Illumination? Shouldn’t it have been Shalash who had this honorific instead? Or Pailiah? Oh, and I am pretty sure that the Skybreakers believe that he is a Herald, since he is physically unchanging – which would have been confirmed by their predecessors back when they first joined, as well as by their own observations. IIRC, his eye color doesn’t even change when he is surge-binding, like that of normal Radiants or users of Honorblades does. But he did tell Szeth and the squires with him back in Tashikk that his mind couldn’t be trusted even before the Desolation broke out, so here is to hoping that many Skybreakers took it to heart and aren’t going to follow him to the Fused-side.
Wasn’t it in this chapter where we saw the castle in Purelake, which, for some reason, the natives know nothing about, and also got some idea about the Skybreaker numbers? As far as I remember, there were over a hundred of them present, though I am not sure if the squires are included in the count or not, and it was mentioned that some of them still were on missions across Roshar.
And here we have the final confirmation that Szeth wasn’t given his Honorblade because he had been made Truthless and all Truthless are handed one before they are kicked out. This notion never made any sense to me, but it used to be quite popular. Instead, we have the far more reasonable scenario of him having trained with all of them for years, before he was given charge of Jezrien’s blade. And the Truthlessness came later.
I really hope that Szeth would have a chance to share his training with the budding Radiants at Urithiru – a modification of this Skybreaker game would certainly help the new Windrunners and their squires to get up to speed. Not everybody is as naturally talented at it as Kaladin – who, according to a WoB, could have been a professional athlete iRL. Not to mention that he might have a few pointers for Lift and everybody else.
Re: Vasher – he had enough time to actually become an excellent swordsman and overall martial artist between Warbreaker and SoA, which is what I think happened. I can’t wait for him to come somewhat more into the limelight and interact with Szeth, Dalinar, etc.
RogerPavelle @9:
According to a recent WoB only Shalash may have been born on Roshar, all the other Heralds were immigrants, so conflict with the singers happened quite soon after the humans arrival.
I really have nothing of value to add, except that I’ve been listening to Les Miserables a lot, and so now I’m just going to imagine Nale as Javert (and vice versa), lol.
Except Javert maybe even more unyielding, as he won’t accept that people can change? It’s interesting in some ways that Nale accepts Szeth at all. Was he not breaking the law by killing everybody, or does Nale just not care by this point, or view him as ‘okay’ because he was acting under his own culture’s laws? I feel like this must have been discussed before but I probalby just don’t remember it. (Which, interesting tidbit, in the book, Javert actually is mentioned as having been a policeman under multiple regimes; he’s not picky about WHICH law he serves, just that he serves The Law.)
I was also going to make a semi-serious comment about how, under various points of view, Dalinar or maybe even Kaladin could be a foil in the Jean Valjean type (given their previous crimes – although agian, Dalinar isn’t exactly a *criminal* by his culture’ standards) but then I realized it’s much more fun to view Lift as the perfect foil, especially as she’s already got a history iwth him.
Alice and Lyndsey. I have a feeling that statement by the Skybreaker to Szeth that loopholes can be dangerous to rely upon will rear its head in the next book. I think it will impact the Skybreakers and whether or not they remain on Odium’s side and/or an unforeseen consequence of the contest of champions that Odium and Dalinar agreed to later on in Oathbringer. Odium had thought he was getting Dalinar as his champion.
I find it interesting that Nightblood was with Vasher long enough for Vasher to establish himself as Zahel and have Zahel be an ardent who teaches Shardes to Alethi young Brightlords. Also, Vasher obviously had studied Shardblades and Shardplate enough to be comfortable teaching about how to use those items.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@soursavior:
In my field, “serious fun” is a common buzzword, referring to “gamification”, the idea that if you combine learning with a fun activity reminiscent of gaming it’s more effective. I associate the term with Karl Kapp, but it’s a huge thing these days. The gamification concept fits well with Skybreaker paintball.
@RogerPavelle:
I assumed it was metaphorical. The Maccabees, for instance, were known as “sons of God”, as I recall. Now you’ve made me wonder: could he literally be the son of Tanavast?
Most squires take the First Oath, apparently. Certainly all the new Windrunner squires did. It’s the Second that involves a mandatory Nahel Bond, as I read the text. As with both Shallan and Kaladin, it’s clearly possible to have a beginning Nahel Bond and not realize it. The nameless Highspren might be present but invisible, as with most sapient spren when they enter the Physical Realm, before a powerful Nahel Bond makes them intellectually capable.
We don’t know when Nightblood and Vasher became separated. It’s perfectly possible he was already Zahel when that happened. Note also that Nightblood is clearly remembering something that has changed since his creation, demonstrating that he isn’t as memory-fixed as Vasher thought.
Note also that Nightblood is so Invested that Hoid is afraid of him. This must give him a strong Spiritual Realm connection, which means he potentially knows everything.
No, I’m not serious about the Spiritual Realm knowledge … but who knows?
EDIT
@Lisamarie:
It pretty much has to be be the last, but also Nale makes it clear that since Szeth died, all pending charges against him would be null. He’s a new person, in Nale’s sight–and since Nale has taken the Fifth Oath of the Skybreakers, he is the law!
@13: Nale was impressed by Szeth’s commitment to the Shin laws. He was convicted for a crime he didn’t commit, and the sentence made him do a lot of things that he really didn’t want to do, but he kept following the rules, no matter how terrible the consequences were or how much it damaged Szeth’s sanity. This all means that Nale ended up with a lot of respect for Szeth, but very little respect for the people who wrote the Shin laws or sentenced Szeth.
@11: I imagine this issue will become clearer once we find out exactly what’s going on with squires. For both Windrunners and Skybreakers, we see them swearing the first Ideal before anything starts, and then a group of spren hanging around and watching the squires before actually bonding any, like they’re deciding which ones they want to bond. It seems like the Windrunners need a bond to swear the second Ideal, though, while the Skybreakers can wait to the third. But our sample size there is too small to say for sure.
But I imagine the reason Skybreaker squires don’t get Division is because that ability is locked behind the Third Ideal for Skybreakers.
@9: the various human cultures consider the Heralds to be some shade of divine; I take “son-God” to either mean that the Shin think they’re demigods, or that it’s a metaphorical title meaning “part of the celestial hierarchy” .
And Zedzil is probably Azish like Sigzil. And autocorrect hates the fantasy genre.
@15 Carl
As far as I know, anyone can say the words of the oath. The Bridge 4 training session earlier showed that the squires repeat the oath at the start of every training session. Shallan’s squires/trainees, I would think, also have said the oaths at least once, but haven’t achieved a bond. So, my feeling is that the difference between being a squire and being a KR is when a spren accepts being bound to the person by the oath.
What I’m not totally sure about is how the process is affected by people bonding without having been a squire. Shallan, especially, is a strange case since I don’t think we ever saw her swear the first oath yet she was able to have her Pattern-blade manifest.
The Shin invasions could also be the time when they collected all the Honorblades.
Swearing the first oath might normally be the way to become a squire, but if there is nobody who could accept you as a squire you need a spren from the beginning. The squires seem to borrow their Surges from their Knight, but if there is no Knight you need a spren to have access to Surges.
@19 I think they had them from the beginning based on the vision we saw of the last desolation with the Shin man finding the blades. But, I think you just hit the nail on the head for the discussion that’s been happening about the apparent difference between Skybreakers and others about bonding a spren and when you get surges. Kaladin’s squires have access to the first surge w/o bonding a spren just like the Skybreaker squires.
Isilel @12:
It could just be that this is the first sign that something horrible is going to happen (like others of the Unmade showing up, maybe) and that you should get out while you still can.
This seemingly lighthearted paintball game is a nice break between the Shadesmar chapters. The way the Skybreakers do their ideals and bonding seems very structured compared to what we’ve seen before. Perhaps once the other orders are reestablished more fully there will be some others like this. I could see Stonewards being similar, with their militaristic outlook. I guess we’ll see later?!
But really, I want more about the Shin and their training program. And Szeth’s pre-truthless life. I’m guessing he was an initiate of some group that trained on the surges; I can’t see that kind of training going to the general population. I’m sad we have to wait for book 5 for a lot of this, the Radiants at Urithiru could really use their help in training now!
Loopholes coming back to bite the Skybreaker organization: definitely gonna happen. And I hope it’s sooner than later, with their arrogant attitudes
I believe the difference between what we’ve seen so far with other orders and how the Skybreakers do it is simply that the leadership of the order are in close consultation with the spren council of highspren. They trust each other because they don’t have the baggage of the Recreance to deal with, therefore they are authorized to give humans some latitude when granting surges on a provisional basis. The other orders carry emotional scars so even those orders that see the necessity of the Bond are wary.
It seems that the most detail oriented people are likely to find a home in the Skybreakers, and rise high.
Denth! I still feel betrayed by him.
I think that Szeth being a Skybreaker is all part of the way he has to earn his forgiveness. Sure, Nale told him he was cleared but he certainly doesn’t seem to feel it. To have the mix of his murders being the result of his following the law of his people added to him joining the KR that follow the laws to extremes is just sublime. This is the Raidients Gordian knot. Nale wants to slice it open and be done with it but Szeth needs to follow the loops and unravel it.
Hm, I edited my post from yesterday and it vanished?
Anyway:
AndrewHB @14:
The notion of Vasher still having Nightblood with him when he trained his martial skills in Alethkar and eventually became an instructor is rather incongrous and frightening, as Alethi are exactly the sort of people who would lust after it. Not to mention that not even swordmaster ardents walk around armed. Was this the reason for their separation, I wonder?
Carl @15:
Things come full circle, don’t they? Since playing is how young animals learn things and sharpen their skills. Concerning squires’ Oaths, we really don’t know all the ins and outs of it, since the Windrunners aren’t typical, given that their Resonance is “strength of the squires”.
Gilphon @16:
Personally, I find it likely that squires normally only have access to one surge of their Order. Frankly, them being able to use both, would be overpowered, IMHO, with the exception of Windrunners, who are special because of their Resonance. Therefore, for Skybreakers Division isn’t “locked” behind the Third Oath as such, they just need to be Radiants with a spren of their own to use it. If 1st or 2nd Ideal bonded Skybreakers existed, they could do it.
Necessary_eagle @17:
Not just human cultures, the Stormfather also considers the Heralds to be divine, as he demonstrated when Shalash and Taln showed up as Dalinar united the Realms.
Joyspren @22:
While most other Orders likely used to be more structured too, I imagine that Skybreakers always were on the extreme end of the scale. For one thing, there is a WoB that not all Orders had squires at all. So far we have confirmation that Windrunners, Lightweavers, Skybreakers and Dustbringers (as seen in Dalinar’s Purelake vision) all did, but we can only speculate about the rest. Stonewards pretty much had to have them and in decent numbers, IMHO, and arguments could be made for both Edgedancers and Elsecallers having them too. OTOH, I imagine that the spren of all other Orders occasionally used to chose suitable people from outside the Radiant hierarchy, who had never been squires, with varying amount of frequency, whereas the Skybreakers always had to rise through their own ranks.
There is also a question of when the Radiants can have squires. Only Skybreakers of the 4th Ideal can have them, and Shallan is also on her 4th (3rd Truth) when Vathah became one. Kaladin is on his 3rd, but this might be the result of his Resonance yet again. But Stonewards would need to have squires as soon as possible too…
My pick for those who _didn’t_ have squires would be Bondsmiths and Truthwatchers, given that the latter were supposed to be “esoteric”, but Willshapers are also a possibility, given their rugged individualism and variety.
Regarding Szeth – it has been hinted in many places in WoK and WoR that he used to be a member of Shin elite. For one thing, he is fluent in the languages of all the countries that he finds himself in – which is got to be very unusual for his reclusive people. He is literate in Alethi woman’s script and doubtlessly in others as well. He even outright thought in his PoV that he was an educated man. He is also an accomplished martial artist in a funky unarmed combat art. Which probably sneakily circumvents the weapons prohibition, just like the Honorblades do? So, yea, definitely not a member of genpop. I hope that he can teach the other Radiants some of his many skills to make up for the giant PR disaster that he is to Dalinar.
I get the impression that knowing the ‘form of’ the ideal was common place in the orders before the last desolation, as per the Windrunner discussing the fourth ideal. I also think that Kaladin knows what the fourth ideal is. He just can’t currently bring himself to accept the ideal and hasn’t found his own ‘form of’ the words for the ideal.
Nale later explains clearly to Szeth what all the ideals are for the Skybreakers, and Szeth doesn’t speak them on the spot because he doesn’t yet believe / uphold the virtues / values the ideals truly represent.
The ‘form of’ the words behind the ideal can differ, look at how the word Teft spoke for his third ideal (related to his own self loathing) differed from Kaladin’s (related to an external antagonist) but both accepted the underlying ideal. Likewise, just repeating the words as a mantra didn’t work for Lopen with the second ideal until he accepted what it meant to uphold the ideal.
I get the impression that accepting the ideal internally alters the spirit web and allows a step change in the Spren bond as a result
Yes, all Heralds came over to Roshar from Ashyn, except maybe Shalash.
@Havi: “Yes, all Heralds came over to Roshar from Ashyn, except maybe Shalash.”
However, the “creation of the Heralds” had to come later. That is, these immortal beings did come over from Ashyn, but they weren’t Heralds at the time, because the Oathpact couldn’t possibly happen until after Ashyn was the place Odium lived and Fused came from.
Of course, but that doesnt matter, since they werent immortal before they became Heralds, so them becoming Heralds must have happened at maximum a few decades after their exodus
@18: According to Pattern, Lightweavers “speak no oaths beyond the first”, instead they speak Truths. He also mentioned that Shallan spoke the first oath long ago, before she forgot, and she must have spoken enough Truths back then to get Pattern to manifest as a Shardblade, which she did remember she had, even if she forgot where she got it.
I’m also not sure that Squires NEED to speak the Oaths to have access to the surges, because we’ve seen fledgling surgebinders have access to some of their powers before they’ve spoken any oaths. Kaladin, for one. Jasnah also managed to slip into Shadesmar before she even knew she had a spren. And I can’t remember (and I’m not in a place where I can go look it up), but I don’t think Lopen spoke any Words before he started sucking Stormlight. Shallan’s squires also have not been shown speaking the oaths yet. I think Kaladin makes his squires do it because he intends to make them full KR, so making them speak the oaths until they’re accepted would be the first step on this path. The Skybreakers seem to have a similar mentality.
Lazerwulf @30:
I am not sure that we can directly compare people bonding a spren of their own to squires. The former do get intermittent access to surges before they speak the words. But we have no idea about the latter.
Certainly, all of Bridge 4 heard Teft’s explanation of the Immortal Words to Kaladin, so those of them who began to glow at the Battle of Narak might have repeated the words to themselves at some point and been immediately ready to go when Kaladin reached the 3rd Ideal. Ditto Vathah – people had lots to say about the Windrunner training before they set out from Urithiru and the First Oath would have become well-known among the general population.
We don’t know if the Orders other than Windrunners actually need to say the Second Ideal before they can become squires, because so much depends on the Radiant accepting a person as their follower. That certainly was the case with both Bridge 4 and Vathah before their respective Radiants even knew about the possibility of squires. But Skybreaker masters _only_ accept somebody after they have passed a number of tests and spoken (and internalised?) the Second Ideal, so it may be a purely organizational limitation. That being said, Shallan did make Vathah accept a (the?) truth during their heist of the obnoxious noblewoman – i.e. that their work finally allowed him to sleep at night after all he had done, so it is murky if he achieved the Second Ideal before first using Illumination or not.
I have gone back and re-read the previous Szeth chapters to get a better idea of the Skybreaker numbers and their initiation processes. When he says the First Ideal in chapter 90:
“There were some fifty here, and that didn’t count the dozens who were supposedly out on missions.”
This number includes a “handful” of squires who then underwent the “prison outbreak” test together with Szeth and the other 5 “hopefuls”. Which, I suppose, means that there were over a hundred Skybreakers all-told, counting squires at that point, but less than 200.
The “hopefuls” were chosen because a full Skybreaker (which means 3rd Ideal or higher) vouched for their “dedication and solemnity”, and they also “traveled with the Skybreakers and joined them in one of their missions”. It seems that none of them other than Szeth became squires after the test – none of them actually found any escapees in the first place. It looks like normally, progressing from “hopefuls” to squires is a somewhat involved process, consisting of many tests. So, it isn’t that surprising that Helaran, if he really joined the Skybreakers, still wasn’t a squire when he died in his attempt on Amaram. It also occurs to me that the Skybreakers must have had a procedure to eliminate the prospects who proved themselves unsuitable at any stage, or they wouldn’t have remained secret for long. Also, being squires, particularly Nale’s squires, could be quite risky, if events in “Edgedancer”, where he let them erroneously attack a Sleepless and get themselves killed are any guide.
Anyway, in this chapter, there are 20 squires other than Szeth himself participating in Skybreaker paintball – it is unclear if they were part of the original 50, or if the members have been tickling in between the chapters because all missions were cancelled and everybody was summoned back to the homebase. Could be interesting if half of the Order was still scattered across Roshar when Nale proclaimed his new course and how they’d react to it.
@Havi
What makes you think they were not immortal before arriving on Roshar? The timing doesn’t work, in my opinion, if only a few years or decades had passed since the human irruption. They have to be confined to Shinovar, build up a civilization there, break out (“The Girl Who Looked Up”), drive the Singers out of enough of their lands to make them switch sides and work for Odium, etc. It had to be centuries.
Well humans are not immortal in the cosmere, if your theory is, that they all were immortal, even Taln as a simple soldier/bodyguard, then id like to see where it would have been indicated. I didnt see a hint, that the heralds were immortals before their pact with honor,
@havi: Well, we know they became immortal (or rather, became Cognitive Shadows) at some point. The only question is when.
Yay, “Loopholes”! AKA Extended Baptism Metaphor, AKA one of my favourite chapters in the Stormlight Archive.
This chapter is at least as much about the symbolism of the game as about the game itself. To me, it’s a summation of Sanderson’s view of redeption in the Stormlight Archive. It isn’t about how many stains you get on you (what you’ve done); it’s about whether you wash them off (repent). It’s notable that the first moment Szeth is hit with the paint comes immediately after his thought that redemption is impossible for him.
Out-of-universe, the baptism symbolism is very obvious, with the addition of the previous Szeth chapter title comparing the waters of the Purelake to blood.
The chapter is very appropriately placed in Oathbringer, since the book’s primary character focus is all about Dalinar’s crimes, repentance, and redemption.
@35 Very interesting analogy.
Hmm, could using loopholes that Nale warned of refer to the way that he manipulated the laws to allow him to kill proto radiants? He was essentially twisting the impartiality of the laws to achieve his own wants – the death of specific people.
I assume that the very regimented steps and ranks of skybreakers and their abilities is unique in how stiffly structured they are because that is simply the nature of the spren involved and the stiff necked idiots that can’t operate without a strict adherence to (possibly flawed) laws that would bond with them. They can’t understand ‘shades of grey’ mentality and so their order’s structure is very strict and specific.