On this week’s reread, Dalinar is visiting Vedenar… and his past. He’s slowly spiralling down into depression and what I suspect is PTSD, and it’s so very hard for us as readers to watch. Generally speaking, a character needs to hit rock bottom before they can begin the upwards trajectory of their arc, and Dalinar’s not there yet… but he’s heading that way, and fast. Join Alice and I as we walk alongside Dalinar on this descent and try to pick apart some nuances.
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.
No Cosmere spoilers this week, so no worries on that front.
Chapter Recap
WHO: Dalinar
WHERE: Vedenar
WHEN: 1174.2.5.1 (One week after the Monarchs’ Meeting, 8 days after the fall of Kholinar)
Dalinar is in Vedenar, dealing with his newly awakened memories. He has a brief discussion about spren with Taravangian, then visits some veterans of the Veden civil war who tell him about the Thrill’s presence in the city. Finally, he’s beset by some curates from the Holy Enclave who excommunicate him before he flees back to Urithiru to self-medicate with alcohol.
Beginnings
Title:An Old Friend
The Thrill.
It started to glow inside Dalinar. So familiar, so warm, and so terrible.
Alice: This is another title that is actually a quote from a different chapter. (I love those, and the way they link the events together!) In Chapter 120, when Dalinar approaches the red mist on Thaylen Field, he greets it with, “Hello, old friend.” We’ll talk about this more below.
A: I have to assume Ishar is here primarily to reflect the curates who step in at the end to denounce Dalinar. He could also be representing the madness of Ishar (though I’m not sure what that is), because this tactic at this moment seems moderately insane. Of course, there’s also the Bondsmith connection, because Dalinar does some very sketchy things with his power, and the Stormfather is not at all happy about it.
A: As for Chana, I can’t help noting that the Essence and the Soulcasting Property associated with her are Spark and Fire, respectively—and Dalinar is seriously bothered by that sort of thing, now that his memories of Rathalas have returned.
Icon: Kholin Glyphpair, for Dalinar’s POV
Epigraph:
I am convinced that Nergaoul is still active on Roshar. The accounts of the Alethi “Thrill” of battle align too well with ancient records — including the visions of red mist and dying creatures.
It seemed that Dalinar had been four people in his life. The bloodlusty warrior, who killed wherever he was pointed, and the consequences could go to Damnation.
The general, who had feigned distinguished civility—when secretly, he’d longed to get back on the battlefield so he could shed more blood.
Third, the broken man. The one who paid for the actions of the youth.
Then finally, the fourth man—the most false of them all. The man who had given up his memories so he could pretend to be something better.
L: So, we do get some plot-relevant things in this chapter (the presence of the Thrill) and some worldbuilding snippets (information about the spren), but primarily this chapter is about Dalinar and how he’s dealing with his newfound memories. There’s a lot of questioning of what makes a good person in here, and none of it is easy. There are no easy answers when it comes to morality. There are almost always shades of grey and extenuating circumstances, and poor Dalinar is having to face all of this from his own past. Who is he, really? Do his past actions define him, or is who he is now stronger than what he was?
A: So much of what he faces here are his own false dichotomies. (Is “quatrechotomy” a word?) He’s thinking, at this point in terms of “then” and “now” as if they were different people, but the seeds of one are in the others all the time. This very quotation will come back to him in Chapter 120, when he realizes there’s more of a continuity than he’s seeing here.
L: I’d also venture a mostly uneducated guess that what Dalinar’s dealing with here is PTSD. All of the hallmarks seem to be present—hearing things, phantom smells, intrusive memories and thoughts.
A: It may be PTSD, but there’s definitely a “magical” component to it as well. There are a few too many things here that show up later in a clearer context; one of the things he hears is a voice that says Give me your pain. That, and several other pieces from this chapter, are being built up to prepare him for his decisions in the climax scenes. I have to wonder, now that we know the context, if Cultivation is taking a hand here.
Stories & Songs
“Would you make it so the Sunmaker lived longer and accomplished his desire, uniting all of Roshar under a single banner? … But what if it left you, today, in command of a completely unified people? What if his slaughter let you save Roshar from the Voidbringer invasion?”
L: This is a really tough philosophical query, and I don’t blame Dalinar for not being able to deal with it, given his state of mind.
A: IMO, this is yet another false binary being set up by Taravangian, and I don’t know if he’s just trying to mess with Dalinar or what. It simplistically assumes that the Sunmaker’s tyranny is one option, and lack of unity is the only other option. Even on the face of it, the dichotomy is fake, because what happened was neither of those, though Dalinar falls for it anyway. There are many, many other paths that could have been taken to create greater unity, or to create greater divisions, among humans.
And frankly, I have very little patience for people who try to force someone to make a fake decision on something over which they never had, and never will have, control. It’s a stupid question masquerading as “deep,” and it irritates me. (Okay, Taravangian mostly irritates me these days…)
L: It’s the old “would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler” question, only Roshar-ized.
Though he still hadn’t recovered the details of him meeting with the Nightwatcher, the rest was as fresh as a new wound, dripping blood down his face.
A: Well, that’s graphic. Appropriate, though, I suppose.
Dalinar’s state of mind in this chapter, inexplicable though it is to those around him, is thoroughly shaped by the return of these memories. At this point, we really have to wonder, with him,
Why must I have these memories? he thought, angry. Why did they suddenly return?
A: He, and we, will have to wait a while yet (in book terms) to understand. At this point, though, the Nightwatcher seems to be capricious in the extreme. We’ll wait to discuss what really happened when we get to Chapter 114…
From reports he’d heard earlier, the civil war had brought incredible losses. Even baffling ones. Many armies would break after suffering ten percent casualties, but here—reportedly—the Vedens had continued fighting after losing more than half their numbers.
A: Certainly bizarre, and unaccountable to a seasoned veteran like Dalinar… until he talks to the wounded survivors later in the chapter. Worth noting: Each of these men had survived when his entire platoon had fallen.
“What was it like?” Dalinar asked softly. “The civil war, the battle here, at Vedenar?”
“It was a nightmare, sir.” …
… “Nobody would stop, Brightlord. Even when it should have been done. They just kept right on fighting. Killing because they felt like killing.”
“It burned in us… That river inside of you, pulling your blood all up into your head and making you love each swing. Making it so that you can’t stop, no matter how tired you are.”
A: To the reader, this is definitely A Clue, right? Sounds exactly like Dalinar in flashbacks. He recognizes it immediately, of course, and feels it stir in himself in response, even though it’s been a long time. And he connects the dots:
Even back on the Shattered Plains, when he’d last felt it, it had seemed to be weakening. Suddenly that made sense. It wasn’t that he’d been learning to overcome the Thrill. Instead, it had left him.
To come here.
A: Taravangian had commented on this in one of his Interludes in Words of Radiance. He was right.
It’s all about momentum.
A: Triggered by the comment from one of the veterans, this takes Dalinar—and us—right back to some of those earlier flashbacks. From the first one, in Chapter 3 (which is even titled “Momentum”), to the first battle at the Rift, to the ambush, to his slog back to camp, to the destruction of Rathalas, the Thrill urges and provides momentum. It can be useful, but it can also be terrible.
L: I’d say the terrible far outweighs the useful.
A: There’s a whole lot of this chapter that ties into the climax of the book, but I think we’ll address that more in Motivations and Spren.
Bruised & Broken
The air smelled of salt and was filled with the sounds of waves smashing on cliffs outside the city. How did they live with that constant roaring?
L: I just wanted to make mention of the fact that little things are annoying to him. This is indicative of his troubled state of mind, and we see this in Kaladin as well when he’s having a depressive episode. It’s very true to life.
Even along the sanitized path he walked for the tour, they passed scorched buildings, piles of rubble.
He couldn’t help but think of what he’d done to Rathalas. And so, Evi’s tears accompanied him. The cries of dying children.
A: This is so hard to read. I know he did those things, and in one sense he deserves to feel horrible, but… I like my 50-something Dalinar, and I don’t like seeing his pain. There’s more:
Out beyond—on the fields north of the city—black scars on the rock still showed where heaps of bodies had been burned following the war. He tried to turn away from all that and look out at the peaceful ocean. But he could smell smoke. That wasn’t good. In the years following Evi’s death, smoke had often sent him descending into one of his worse days.
L: I wonder if this smoke is real or if it’s just in his head, like the crying is. Either way it’s horribly tragic, of course.
Dalinar tried to stand, straight-backed and at attention, beneath the weight of it all. Unfortunately, he knew too well that if you locked your knees and stood too straight, you risked fainting. Why was it that trying to stand tall should make you so much more likely to fall?
A: This seems to need a deeply profound comment, and I can’t find one—except to note that it’s all true.
“Unfortunately, I’m certain I didn’t make the best choices I could,” Dalinar said.
“But you wouldn’t change them. If you did, you’d be a different person.”
I did change them, Dalinar thought. I erased them. And I did become a different person.
A: And there’s our dilemma, along with his. For two books, we knew Dalinar as the honest, honorable, self-controlled general—and we (or at least, most of us, I think) liked him that way. Now we’ve had it shoved in our faces that he wasn’t always such a great guy, and had some moments of being a truly horrible human being, and the disconnect is great and painful.
L: It’s a difficult question that Taravangian asks, here. In most cases, it’s our experiences—and especially our mistakes—that shape us into who we are. But Dalinar didn’t remember his mistakes. Does remembering them now change who he is? Clearly not, but he can’t know that.
A: That’s one area in which I have total sympathy for Dalinar: These memories have been dumped on him with very little time to adjust, in the midst of a chaotic situation with thousands of people depending on his leadership. Even trying to carry on and make decisions with all of this in his head must be excruciating.
As if that weren’t more than enough to go on with, the Curacy picks this moment to attack, as publicly as possible:
“Dalinar Kholin,” the ardent said, louder. “The council of curates declares you a heretic. We cannot tolerate your insistence that the Almighty is not God. You are hereby proclaimed excommunicate and anathema.”
A: I have a few theological issues with this—primarily, that there’s no “communion” for him to be excommunicated from—but I guess we’ll go with the “translation artifact” explanation for that. In any case, they do technically have the authority to proclaim him anathema, though I don’t think they’re likely to have the power to enforce it. Too many people look to him for leadership, and they’ll take a heretic general they know over any of the options. (Pretty sure the curates aren’t qualified to take his place, no matter what they think!) I’m not sure they picked a wise time or place, but… given what they think of him, I don’t suppose they’d be willing to travel to Urithiru by Oathgate!
What they couldn’t have anticipated was his instinctive reaction, and it shocks him, too:
I’m going to kill him, a part of Dalinar thought. I have to run now, or I will kill this man. It was as clear to him as the sun’s light.
So he ran.
A: What follows is fascinating in its own right, and we discuss it below. But the voices, and the Thrill, follow him. In another blatant foreshadowing, he turns first to The Way of Kings to drive back the pain, but he’s not there yet, and it doesn’t help. Broken man that he is, he slides backward to that recent flashback instead: He goes to Adolin’s room and finds some strong violet wine, the kind that would be kept for a special occasion. Trapped (as he sees it) between killing or getting drunk, he chooses the latter.
Poor Dalinar.
Squires & Sidekicks
“Sir?” Rial said, holding out a canteen that smelled of something strong. “I know you said I shouldn’t carry this, but I did. And … and you might need it.”
A: Oh, Rial. I know he means well, but that’s such a bad idea. I was pleased to see Dalinar turn away from it here… and very sad to see him turn back toward it later, in private. Interestingly enough, Rial is one of those who will later become a squire to Teft. How appropriate.
Places & Peoples
A: I don’t know that it’s of great importance, but Dalinar does mention a couple of times that the Veden people love ostentatious gardens. It’s a nice reminder that not all the world looks like the barrenness of the Frostlands or the Shattered Plains, and the farther you go west, the more you’ll find naturally lush greenery. It’s also a nice reminder that Shallan comes by her Natural History calling… well, naturally. She is Veden, after all!
Tight Butts and Coconuts
A: In the vein of “jokes and curses” we get Dalinar cursing
Taln’s palms!
I wonder what it is about Taln’s palms that makes them important? Of course, I wonder the same thing about Kelek’s breath and Ishar’s soul and Ash’s eyes…
L: Taln is the Herald of War, so his hands would be important (what he uses to hold his weapons.) Ash is the artist, and hence eyes would be integral to her, to see her works. Kelek is a little less obvious, as he’s a builder… what importance would breath have to that?
Meaningful/Moronic/Mundane Motivations
A: As we meet with Taravangian this week, I’m deeply distrustful of… well, pretty much everything he says or does. When Dalinar mentions that he seems to be feeling better, he says,
“It’s a good day for me. I feel better than I have recently, but that can be dangerous. I’m prone to think about mistakes I’ve made. … I try to tell myself that at the very least, I made the best choice I could, with the information I had.”
A: This has so many overtones I can’t possibly address them all. The first question I can’t help asking is whether this is a compassionate day or a genius day, or where it is on that spectrum. The cynic in me assumes it’s nearer the genius level, but with enough emotion to give him the insight to manipulate Dalinar like a puppet. That would imply that the “mistakes” he refers to are the decisions he makes when he’s “stupid,” which he now sees as bad decisions, but the best he could do with the mediocre intelligence he had to work with. (If you can’t tell, I like the “stupid but compassionate” end of the spectrum more than the “brilliant but emotionless” end… but I don’t trust either one.
L: I don’t know. I think he could also be more on the compassionate side and be looking at all of the awful things he’s done as his mistakes. He doesn’t seem to be doing a great job of manipulating Dalinar here, other than throwing him even farther off-kilter mentally than he was to begin with.
A Scrupulous Study of Spren
“There are legends of metal that can block a Shardblade. A metal that falls from the sky. Silver, but somehow lighter.”
L: I’m curious as to how and why aluminum is falling from the skies.
A: Meteorites, I assume. Real-life meteorites don’t typically contain aluminum, although a few have, but there’s no reason aluminum shouldn’t be more plentiful in Cosmere meteorites. (Now we just need Scotty to give them transparent aluminium, and we’ll be all set? Or is that what the atrium window in Urithiru is made of already?)
L: Hmm, yes, I was thinking meteorites as well but I never knew that aluminum has been found in them. Maybe this is speaking to more aluminum being present in space, or… maybe there are wrecks of starships up there!
“The gemstone,” Taravangian said, “imprisons the kind of spren that gives things substance, the kind that holds the world together. We have entrapped in that shield something that, at another time, might have blessed a Knight Radiant.”
L: Is he implying that they’ve got a HIGHER spren trapped in there? Ugh!
A: That certainly seems to be the implication, which is truly awful. I have to wonder just how much Taravangian knows about the Radiants and their spren, though. If he doesn’t really know much, he could just be guessing about these “blessing” a Knight Radiant. If he knows a lot more, he could be referring to the “cousin spren,” which (we assume) are instrumental in forming the living Shardplate. Given that he has a pet Dustbringer Radiant, I think the “complete ignorance” option is off the table.
But why would he be telling Dalinar about it? Doesn’t it seem that Dalinar would be upset by using the sapient spren in this way?
L: Unless that’s all Taravangian is trying to do, upset him. If so, he sure seems to be succeeding.
“You lure in a spren with something it loves. You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”
L: This is pretty awful to think about, especially since so many spren are important characters who we, as the readers, have come to love. The part that particularly troubles me is the “lure it with something it loves” part. This strikes me as awwwwwwfully foreshadow-y and I don’t. Like. It.
A: Well, it is foreshadow-y, but (I hope) not in the way you’re thinking. Dalinar remembers this exact quotation away off there in the climax, and applies it to Nergaoul, drawing in the Thrill like an old friend, and trapping it in the King’s Drop.
L: Yeah, that’s not what I was referring to in this instance. It feels bigger to me, like this is going to come back someday in an even bigger way, but… that’s pure speculation on my part.
A: We may find out this is how Ba-Ado-Mishram was trapped, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if it was a not-quite-successful version of this that partially imprisoned Re-Shephir. I truly hope we don’t see it used against other Radiant-bonding spren in further books, though…
I will not be a sword to you. We spoke of this.
Dalinar growled. He felt something he could touch, something beyond places. The power that bound worlds together. His power.
Wait, the Stormfather said. This is not right!
Dalinar ignored him, reaching beyond and pulling power through. Something bright white manifested in his hand, and he rammed it into the keyhole.
L: I’m left wondering if the Stormfather can’t be a Shardblade, or if he just doesn’t want to be. The “This isn’t right” part is a little troubling…
A: This whole scene is troubling. What exactly did Dalinar get hold of? He mentions “the power that bound worlds together”—could that be Adhesion? Did he grab the essential Surge itself? Or is “beyond places” referring to the Spiritual Realm, and the Stormfather doesn’t think he should be touching it? It feels… brutal, though, the way he just forces it into a key for his immediate use. I can’t help but think that this is related to what he does when he brings the Realms together (Chapter 120, yet again) except there, it doesn’t feel wrong—it feels perfect. Are they really the same kind of thing, or am I seeing more than is there?
Quality Quotations
It took being a soldier to understand the heroism of simply being willing to continue after all your friends had died.
* * *
The Nightwatcher had ripped apart his memories like the fabric of an old blanket, then sewn a new quilt out of it.
A: I love this analogy on multiple levels. There’s the obvious one, in which fabric is cut to pieces and then sewn together in a new way, which just makes me happy anyway. Then there’s the less obvious: if you take old fabric and piece it together to try to make something functional, any weaknesses in the fabric will give under pressure, and the new quilt will unravel despite all your work.
A: Just one chapter next week—Shadesmar Exploration Society does costuming!
L: YAY COSTUMING!
A: And also arrives in Celebrant, by the way.
L: As always, feel free to continue the discussion in the comments section below!
Alice is having fun playing with flags as frequently as possible. Also, three wins this week, and an overall 10-0 record. Whee!
Lyndsey has one more weekend of work remaining at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire before life goes back to normal (ugh) again. A special shout-out this week to her friends Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, the Misfits of Avalon, and the Penniless Jacks, all of whom you should absolutely check out if you love great entertainment!
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Austin
5 years ago
Dalinar ignored him, reaching beyond and pulling power through. Something bright white manifested in his hand, and he rammed it into the keyhole.
I’m still curious as to what this is. Pure investiture straight from the Spiritual Realm, perhaps?
Ulim
5 years ago
@1
I had thought it might be a piece of the Stormfather’s investiture, which would reside mostly in the Spiritual realm. Basically Dalinar grabbed Stormfather by the back of the neck and forced him into the physical realm to activate the mechanism. Kinda feels like Stormfather would consider that ‘not right’ as it would possible expose him to being hurt or killed.
Dalinar growled. He felt something he could touch, something beyond places. The power that bound worlds together. His power.
Wait, the Stormfather said. This is not right!
Dalinar ignored him, reaching beyond and pulling power through. Something bright white manifested in his hand, and he rammed it into the keyhole.
I thought one thing when I first read this…
Dawnshard
On re-reading and after what happens later on with Dalinar restoring (if temporarily) Honor’s Perpendicularity I now believe it was associated with Dalinar’s connection to / position as a surrogate holder of Honor’s Shard (or the pieces thereof).
I’m definitely of the opinion that Stormfather has the ability to become a sword, but doesn’t want to. I also think that whatever Dalinar grabbed to make a key is not Stormfather as sword.
And, we get a hint as to why the Desolations were as destructive as they were – clearly, that’s how the Thrill was used during them to draw out slaughter to the maximum as well.
According to his PoV chapters Taravangian having a “good” day means that he is smart and heartless – though not to the extent that he needs to be locked up. So, everything he says here is very calculated – but his EQ is possibly too low for his manipulations to be maximally effective. But everything he says is a trap – as Dalinar himself has been discovering, the kind of unification that Sunmaker was pursuing would not have served to oppose Odium. And Taravngian was certainly trying hard to shove and lure Dalinar on the path of conquest.
“You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”
Yes, there are many layers in this. After all, that’s what both Taravangian and Odium tried to do to Dalinar himself, attempting to exploit his past as a conqueror and a Thrill addict. But isn’t this also how the Listeners attracted the spren to change forms? I really don’t think that there is anything evil when this is done to non-spaient spren, because it is very similar to the natural symbiosis with the Rosharan fauna. I find it difficult to believe that they could have trapped Stoneward spren for fabrials, despite T’s insinuations. At this point, these spren want nothing to do with humans, so how would that even have worked? I am also not sure why T even brought that up – was he just revelling in running rings around Dalinar intellectually?
Also, didn’t Shallan have a soulcast aluminium necklace that wasn’t even _that_ expensive? So, shouldn’t they know this metal as something less rare than stuff falling from the sky? Obviously, there is at least one soulcaster that can produce it, and likely more than one.
The curates – I am amused that they are outraged by Dalinar’s claims that Almighty wasn’t God, but not by his claims that he was dead. Also, that’s what was mostly lacking in OB – everybody’s reactions to Dalinar’s revelations. Even moderately religious people (according to Sanderson), such as Navani and Shallan just too everything in a stride, when it should have turned their world upside down.
Gilphon
5 years ago
The specific part of Taravangian’s little Fabrial speech that worries me is ‘In that moment, it becomes your slave.’ Because that bit doesn’t really invoke the way things played out with Nergaoul. That particular sentence strikes me as foreshadowing we’ve yet to get the pay-off for.
As a side note, it’s notable that most of the epigraphs in this part are more about giving the reader information on the Unmade then they are anything that reflect the actual content of the chapter. But not this one- the epigraph this week doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, but it does remind us of something that’s about to be very important in the chapter.
In retrospect, it’s conspicuous that the Fabrial talk happened after the reader is reminded of Nergaoul, but before Dalinar is. This is a chapter that emphasizes a problem, and then covertly offers the solution.
And, indeed, it’s also a chapter that really drives home the point that Nergaoul is a huge problem- his influence killed thousands of people in the Veden civil war alone, and drove Dalinar to kill an entire city in the past. How many people have died because of him over the ages? I can’t imagine any of the other Unmade we’ve seen in action consistently causing bloodshed on that scale, personally.
Ah, we’re well into the middle part of Oathbringer, or as I call it, “The part where nothing much happens for far too long.” Sorry, but I find this next several hundred years, er, pages very slow-paced.
A: IMO, this is yet another false binary being set up by Taravangian, and I don’t know if he’s just trying to mess with Dalinar or what.
It’s a description of what Taravangian himself has done, murdering hundreds of the poor and homeless to get visions of the future that may or may not even be useful.
“There are legends of metal that can block a Shardblade. A metal that falls from the sky. Silver, but somehow lighter.”
L: I’m curious as to how and why aluminum is falling from the skies.
A: Meteorites, I assume. Real-life meteorites don’t typically contain aluminum, although a few have, but there’s no reason aluminum shouldn’t be more plentiful in Cosmere meteorites. (Now we just need Scotty to give them transparent aluminium, and we’ll be all set? Or is that what the atrium window in Urithiru is made of already?)
L: Hmm, yes, I was thinking meteorites as well but I never knew that aluminum has been found in them. Maybe this is speaking to more aluminum being present in space, or… maybe there are wrecks of starships up there!
I mentioned in the context of Hoid’s aluminum that it has to be starship crashes. Hoid’s metal even arrived in the form of premade sheets.
Except by now we know that a shardblade doesn’t have to take the form of a sword. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a weapon. Can Wyndle the Shardfork operate the Oathgate?
Gilphon
5 years ago
@8: We know that keyhole reshapes itself around what you stick in there, so I see no reason why a Shardfork wouldn’t work just fine.
Just a bit of clarification (though I understand why the clergy misunderstood). Dalinar is stating that Tanavast is dead. Not that in his mind God with a capital G. To Dalinar, there is a God with a capital G, just Tanavast isn’t it because God with a capital G in his head wouldn’t get killed. He feels the golden light hints to that. Navani and Shallan theoretically could be fine with it, because they simply have a different interpretation on who or what is God with a capital G. They all agree in their opinion that one exists, just they disagree who or what that is. The clergy on the other hand realize their power would fall apart if people started to believe the religious figure their whole religion revolves around is “false”. So they excommunicate him in an attempt to silence him.
OMG, all I can think of now is the Stormfather as a ShardSPORK.
Anyway, I too think the “makes them your slave” comment is indeed what happened with the Parsh; but that means the unmade are spren doesn’t it? So when they were unmade it didn’t turn them into something that wasn’t a Spren but maybe a Spren that lost it’s original purpose????
As for Dalinar being four different men (sequentially not in parallel like Shallan), I think that could be said of all of us. Haven’t you ever looked back at the you who existed when you were 20 and wondered at how different that person’s thoughts and actions were to the current you?
I feel bad for Dalinar in this chapter! Manipulated by Taravangian, having flashbacks to bad deeds, kicked out of his church very publicly… I mean, any one of those could give you a bad day. Put them all together, and while I don’t condone him getting into the wine I can understand to an extent.
As for the half-shards, I REALLY hope they have the cousin/lesser spren, not full high spren! I can fully believe Taravangian capable and evil enough to use the higher spren. But I hope that’s not what it is.
The oathgate key/Stormfather sword…. I don’t think what we saw was the Stormfather as tiny shard blade. I think it was something more, a tiny preview of what Dalinar is capable of later in the book. I don’t think we know all the things that can go with it yet. There are always so many secrets! But that’s part of the fun
It makes sense that the Stormfather “rumbled” when Dalinar said you could no more enslave a spren than a chull.
I like that Dalinar still “growled” wordlessly when annoyed. It was one of my favorite bits of the Knife Escapade — when a servant tried to take away Dalinar’s food and he “growled at him,” just the way my family’s dog (like most dogs, probably) does when someone reaches toward whatever is in his mouth. Not as funny as the Escapade’s finale, but up there.
Ah, Dalinar’s horrible not-so-good day. Taravanginan is a politician who doesn’t quite have a handle on his opponent, likely due in part to his days of variable intelligence. It looks to me like he’s employing a scattershot approach, throwing a bunch of different types of troubling ideas at Dalinar to see what disquiets him the most. Dalinar is certainly not political, at least not naturally. He doesn’t even realize he’s being attacked since no one is charging him with Shardblades in hand.
Speaking of Shardblades, Dalinar and his Oathgate trick must have had some components of the Stormfather in it or he would not have been so upset. All I saw in the text when Dalinar merges the realms later is a sense of awe at his bondmate. By that same token I see a certain amount of spiritual mumbo jumbo involved with it as well. Would anyone other than a Bondsmith be able to pull off a move like that? Don’t think so.
Whenever I read Taravingian and Dalinar having these quiet conversations together I don’t see it as the first trying to manipulate the other but as Taranvingian using Dalinar as a sounding board to justify to himself the things he does. So he is not trying to draw Dalinar in with false dichotomies but displaying his own reliance on extreme opposites, likely as a consequence of how his swinging intelligence tends to shred the middle ground in his thinking.
(btw I’ve only now gotten around to rereading Oathbringer. Something about it just made me keep putting it off but as attention is being brought to the inevitability of the next book’s release I’ve finally re-engaged with it. I’ve been reading it over the last week and have reached chapter 115 so I’m going to be going over this reread backwards for a while.)
I suppose for me Dalinar’s culpability and his struggle with self condemnation comes down to the deity factor: Was he directly targeted by Odium from an early age based on Odium’s read on the future? Or indirectly sifted via the Thrill until he was one of the strongest candidates and then Odium took an active hand in “shaping” him? I would guess it’s the former based on Cultivation’s counter, but it’s not a slam dunk. These discussions about past vs. present Dalinar are all about Odium’s timing and measure of influence for me. Dalinar’s ability to resist Odium are directly tied to his ability to tap into pieces of (or previously be protected by) a counter deity. Dalinar is a tragic figure. I’m entirely sympathetic to his past and present conditions. He’s a living piece on a chess board in a contest between gods. Every part of this discussion hinges on that.
I do think that “becomes your slave” is indeed foreshadowing the Ghostbloods intentions with Sja-Anat. After all, Shallan’s new mission, if she chooses to accept it, is to convince her to ally with them _or_ to trap her and hand her over. I strongly doubt that anybody among Our Heroes is stupid enough to try to make a Nerghaoul fabrial.
Carl @7:
But is there any reason to think that starships would contain lots of aluminium? Sheets of it, which somehow fall to Roshar unharmed? I dunno. Maybe it’s properties used to be better known and utilised, so that Hoid just opened some forgotten cache of it, somewhere. Personally, after how how alumium insulation prevented the spren from locating Azure’s soulcaster, I can’t help but think that it would also prevent the spren from eavesdropping on people in the Physical from Shadesmar. Jasnah and Dalinar should really invest in it for their council chambers.
Scáth @10:
I’d think that news that Honor/Almighty is dead would be much more upsetting and contraversual to a lot of people, including some of our PoVs who are, according to Sanderson, moderately religious, than it seemed to be in OB, where everybody just took it in a stride. Particularly since Odium, his enemy, is alive and well. And while Hoid did mention Tanavast in front of Dalinar, he didn’t speak of the Vessel – Shard symbiosis, so Dalinar is currently ignorant of it.
By-the-by it is also very questionable that dying should disqualify Honor from godhood. Certainly, many of RL religions featured dying/ressurecting and dead gods (those last, usually as part of the origin of the world myths). In fact, that’s where I could see reformed Vorinism eventually going – into the death and ressurection of Honor proving his Divinity. Something That Kabsal said about Almighty being in people’s hearts(?) makes me think that teological foundation for it already exists.
Anyway, I’d think that the Curates at this point should have been more offended by the very notion that Almighty is dead, than by Dalinar’s suggestion of another, “true” God.
Oh, and apropos of nothing – there is something odd about Rial, isn’t there? He seems to stick out in the ways that make me doubt that he was a simple bridgeman. Or even if he was one at all.
CireNaes @16:
I really hope that Dalinar was “sifted via the Thrill”, rather than “destined” in some way. I very much appreciate that future in SA is fluid, rather than pretty much set in stone, like in WoT. And that people forge their own fates. By the time Cultivation got her chance to influence him, Dalinar did evolve into somebody important enough to become the bone of contention between the 2 deities.
But is there any reason to think that starships would contain lots of aluminium? Sheets of it, which somehow fall to Roshar unharmed? I dunno. Maybe it’s properties used to be better known and utilised, so that Hoid just opened some forgotten cache of it, somewhere. Personally, after how how alumium insulation prevented the spren from locating Azure’s soulcaster, I can’t help but think that it would also prevent the spren from eavesdropping on people in the Physical from Shadesmar. Jasnah and Dalinar should really invest in it for their council chambers.
Sanderson has said that there is an Investiture-based way to fly between the stars faster than light. I’m assuming it has something to do with aluminum shielding. Obviously, that’s just a guess.
This sounds wishy washy I know, but I think its a combination of the two approaches that has Dalinar in the Crux. I’m basing this on how Shards interpret the physical world while living primarily in the spiritual. Odium and Culti have likely had their eyes on the Kholin family for a long ass time, like the Davars. So they watch and sort of predict how a certain person would likely react based on the paths they could go down, then they manipulate events so that they follow the desired path, and then wait and see. A shardic understanding of the world means they don’t have to fixate on one person, though it seems like Sanderson’s Cosmere gods tend to keep their focuses rather limited. I do think that those characters that receive that focus are special and worth looking into further. However, if Dalinar dies in that ambush before the massacre at the Rift I’m not sure it alters Odium’s or Culti’s plans nearly as much as it would for a similar character from WOT. Not is there any mechanism actively protecting the characters from their choices.
I hope the opposite is true and I’m fine if I’m wrong and Dalinar was sifted; the strongest survivor, a suitable champion to pressure towards ending the constraints of the original shardic agreement. It’s much easier for me to sympathize if Odium has been pressuring him for a long time bringing a Greek tragedy flavor to me as a reader. I think from a world building perspective that human free will used to work with a measure of balance and autonomy between human choice and Shardic influence. I don’t think it’s worked that way for some time in the Stormlight sector of the Cosmere with Honor shattered, the Heralds driven insane or compulsive, proto-KR’s being hunted down, and Cultivation laying low. The power imbalance has only recently been evened out to a degree now that Dalinar and a powered up Master Control Stormfather are bonded restoring the ability to resist Odium’s machinations. This is why I give the guy a clean slate so to speak and only consider his actions post-bond to be truly his own, not Cultivation’s or Odium’s.
I know we both know this. Just thinking out loud. I think some Shards are better at it than others. And how long the Shard has been held goes a long way towards diminishing not the power, but the ability to wield that power towards anything other than the specified attribute. The Mistborn novels are a great look into the conundrum of holding Shards too long. Where I go off into theory land is I think Rayse is unique. He’s figured something out and maintained more of his autonomy than the others. Whether he takes breaks or his will is stronger than the others (which could be argued based on the Herald’s performance while on Braize) he’s clearly got something going for him that makes it easier to fight his competitors without being subsequently torn apart. Ruin and Preservation are another interesting edgecase.
I’m sure that all the vessels are aware of the elephant in the room i.e. shardic merging. They all must find ways to cope with or compensate for this. Rayse’s work-around doesn’t seem to be a work around at all. He wanted to be Hatred, he was a hateful guy, vessel and intent fit like hand in glove. His personality didn’t need to be subsumed or excised because it supports the Shard intent. Ati seems like he got a bad deal, Leras basically punted on the problem, Sazed is…confused. Badvadin is probably doing the avatar thing to cope with her Shard mandate, and it ultimately serves that mandate in a way that allows her to keep her mind at least somehow intact. As far as Egli and Culti, your guess is as good as mine.
I used to be in that camp: hand/glove, matching intents make it easier to focus, the intent itself is easier to prosecute a war with; Now I’m not convinced by that line of thinking. They were great explanations for his earlier successes/shatterings, I don’t think they hold up after holding the Shard for any significant length of time. I’m basing this off of Ruin/Ati, but they all show evidence of it, the youngest being Harmony who is already struggling with doing anything other than maintaining balance. And we don’t see Wit all that concerned about the other Shards. Rayse has figured something out. H
It was controversial. The other highprinces thought he had gone mad. Actually leaders across the continent thought he had gone mad enough that a lot of his warnings were flat out ignored. Remember by the time we started Oathbringer, people still largely did not believe Dalinar. By midway, they barely trusted him. By the end the counsel nearly shattered. I would say that is quite controversial, and that there was quite the fallout from it.
You are free based on your personal beliefs, to find it questionable, however those are not Dalinar’s beliefs. From what we read of Dalinar, he received visions that he was convinced were truth, and the entity itself told him it was dead. Dalinar is very much an all or nothing kind of man. He experiences a golden light, and is convinced that it is the true power, one higher than Tanavast. So for him it is god. Jasnah might reason how do we know the golden light is not just another Tanavast that has not been revealed yet? But Dalinar is a man of convictions. When something feels right to him, he moves forward as if that is the ultimate truth. It can be seen as a failing, it can be seen as admirable. It certainly has both helped and hurt him. The religion of the Almighty preaches that he cannot die. The Almighty is eternal. So if the Almighty dies, then it is counter to the religious belief structure. Other religions may allow for their deity to expire, but not Vorinism.
I am sorry, maybe I was not clear. They are upset that Dalinar is saying the Almighty is dead because that would erode at their power. What they do not take into account, due to their concern for their power, is Dalinar is not an atheist. He is not denying the existence of any deity. He just thinks there is something else out there.
Harmony is a special case in that he’s double sharded and the mandate of one is diametrically opposed to the other. But I still think the hand in glove anolog works when we speak of Shard/vessel relationships. Given an infinite amount of time the Shard will succeed in absorbing the mind of its holder. The power is mindless but it still has agency, that basically whatever is connected to it eventually becomes it. But if one is alligned with the Shard I believe that one wlll be able to hold off total absorbsion for far longer than one who is at constant war with the mandate of the Shard. And I imagine some shards by intent are easier to slide into Oblivion for than others. Devotion seems like an easy one to fall in love with. Dominion maybe less so unless paired up with a megalomaniac. If we take Ati and Ruin as our example, we’ve been told that Ati initially steered Ruin in the direction of natural decay instead of wanton destruction. By the end of Mistborn era 1 there is very little of that Ati left. Contrast that with Rayse and his seemingly comfortable relationship between himself and Odium and it’s difficult not to come to that conclusion.
I have always wondered if Dalinar’s family has a history of alcoholism. If I recall correctly, there was a WoB before Oathbringer was published that the answer to that question would be answered in Oathbringer. Unfortunately, I do not think that question was answered in Oathbringer.
Alice and Lyndsey. I disagree with you that Dalianr has been 4 people in his life. In my opinion, he has been 5. The fifth is who Dalinar currently is. The man who is living with the memories that Cultivation temporarily removed. I also disagree with you that he gave them up so he could be a better man. Becoming a better man may have been the result of his giving up his memories. Yet, the reason he was willing to give them up was because he wanted to stop the hurt. He wanted to revert back to the person he was before the Rift. Instead, he soon discovered the teachings of Nohadon and became a follower of Nohadon’s teachings. This caused Dalinar to become someone different than he was pre-Rift (and, in my opinion, a better person).
Alice. I do not think Cultivation is taking a hand with anything that Dalinar does or does not due in Chapter 100. Rather (as others have noted in prior comments), Cultivation is playing the long game. She is like the master chess player who makes a key move many moves earlier before the other player (or anybody watching the game) realizes the significance of that move. Cultivation made her move when she pruned (her words) Dalinar’s memory so that he might become a better person and would be able to deal with the memories when they resurface. Now all she can do is watch how things play out. Perhaps, I am arguing semantics. But that is how my mind works.
Lindsey. I disagree with you that Dalinar’s dislike of the constant sounds of the waves crashing on the cliffs is a sign of his troubled state of mind. It is nothing of the like. Rather, he is just not used to the waves. Dalinar’s dislike of the waves is no different than a person who lives in the country and when he/she visits the city, cannot sleep because of all the common sounds that occur in a city during the nights. On the other hand, a person who is used to living in a city, has no problem sleeping with all those sounds.
Thanks for reading my musings. AndrewHB aka the musespren
I disagree with you regarding the reasoning for Dalinar removing his memories. He went to the Nightwatcher to try and become the man Evi saw in him. I am getting a little ahead of things, because this comes up in Chapter 105 but, here is the quote below
Oathbringer page 982
“The Old magic can change a person, Evi had said, Make something great of them”
“Evi had said the Old Magic could transform a man. it was about time he started trusting her.”
Then the reason why he gave up his memories was because he did not feel he deserved her. He initially resisted, but then acquiesced because he felt he didn’t deserve the good memories he had of her. But that is also getting a bit ahead of things in Chapter 114
Oathbringer page 1080
“And with them, I take her.”
“I…” Dalinar tried to speak as plant life engulfed him. “Wait!”
“You’ll take…” He spoke with difficulty. “You’ll take Evi from me?”
“All memories of her. This is the cost. Should I forbear?”
Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut. Evi…. He had never deserved her
I missed commenting on this one, but I enjoy the discussion!
I haven’t reread the book since my initial read, but I think I thought T was probably in a middle-state and possibly trying to justify his own actions. Although it’s certainly possible he was manipulating Dalinar all along.
I’m still curious as to what this is. Pure investiture straight from the Spiritual Realm, perhaps?
@1
I had thought it might be a piece of the Stormfather’s investiture, which would reside mostly in the Spiritual realm. Basically Dalinar grabbed Stormfather by the back of the neck and forced him into the physical realm to activate the mechanism. Kinda feels like Stormfather would consider that ‘not right’ as it would possible expose him to being hurt or killed.
I thought one thing when I first read this…
Dawnshard
On re-reading and after what happens later on with Dalinar restoring (if temporarily) Honor’s Perpendicularity I now believe it was associated with Dalinar’s connection to / position as a surrogate holder of Honor’s Shard (or the pieces thereof).
I’m definitely of the opinion that Stormfather has the ability to become a sword, but doesn’t want to. I also think that whatever Dalinar grabbed to make a key is not Stormfather as sword.
And, we get a hint as to why the Desolations were as destructive as they were – clearly, that’s how the Thrill was used during them to draw out slaughter to the maximum as well.
According to his PoV chapters Taravangian having a “good” day means that he is smart and heartless – though not to the extent that he needs to be locked up. So, everything he says here is very calculated – but his EQ is possibly too low for his manipulations to be maximally effective. But everything he says is a trap – as Dalinar himself has been discovering, the kind of unification that Sunmaker was pursuing would not have served to oppose Odium. And Taravngian was certainly trying hard to shove and lure Dalinar on the path of conquest.
“You give it something familiar to draw it in, something it knows deeply. In that moment, it becomes your slave.”
Yes, there are many layers in this. After all, that’s what both Taravangian and Odium tried to do to Dalinar himself, attempting to exploit his past as a conqueror and a Thrill addict. But isn’t this also how the Listeners attracted the spren to change forms? I really don’t think that there is anything evil when this is done to non-spaient spren, because it is very similar to the natural symbiosis with the Rosharan fauna. I find it difficult to believe that they could have trapped Stoneward spren for fabrials, despite T’s insinuations. At this point, these spren want nothing to do with humans, so how would that even have worked? I am also not sure why T even brought that up – was he just revelling in running rings around Dalinar intellectually?
Also, didn’t Shallan have a soulcast aluminium necklace that wasn’t even _that_ expensive? So, shouldn’t they know this metal as something less rare than stuff falling from the sky? Obviously, there is at least one soulcaster that can produce it, and likely more than one.
The curates – I am amused that they are outraged by Dalinar’s claims that Almighty wasn’t God, but not by his claims that he was dead. Also, that’s what was mostly lacking in OB – everybody’s reactions to Dalinar’s revelations. Even moderately religious people (according to Sanderson), such as Navani and Shallan just too everything in a stride, when it should have turned their world upside down.
The specific part of Taravangian’s little Fabrial speech that worries me is ‘In that moment, it becomes your slave.’ Because that bit doesn’t really invoke the way things played out with Nergaoul. That particular sentence strikes me as foreshadowing we’ve yet to get the pay-off for.
As a side note, it’s notable that most of the epigraphs in this part are more about giving the reader information on the Unmade then they are anything that reflect the actual content of the chapter. But not this one- the epigraph this week doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, but it does remind us of something that’s about to be very important in the chapter.
In retrospect, it’s conspicuous that the Fabrial talk happened after the reader is reminded of Nergaoul, but before Dalinar is. This is a chapter that emphasizes a problem, and then covertly offers the solution.
And, indeed, it’s also a chapter that really drives home the point that Nergaoul is a huge problem- his influence killed thousands of people in the Veden civil war alone, and drove Dalinar to kill an entire city in the past. How many people have died because of him over the ages? I can’t imagine any of the other Unmade we’ve seen in action consistently causing bloodshed on that scale, personally.
Ah, we’re well into the middle part of Oathbringer, or as I call it, “The part where nothing much happens for far too long.” Sorry, but I find this next several hundred years, er, pages very slow-paced.
It’s a description of what Taravangian himself has done, murdering hundreds of the poor and homeless to get visions of the future that may or may not even be useful.
I mentioned in the context of Hoid’s aluminum that it has to be starship crashes. Hoid’s metal even arrived in the form of premade sheets.
Except by now we know that a shardblade doesn’t have to take the form of a sword. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a weapon. Can Wyndle the Shardfork operate the Oathgate?
@8: We know that keyhole reshapes itself around what you stick in there, so I see no reason why a Shardfork wouldn’t work just fine.
@5 Isilel
Just a bit of clarification (though I understand why the clergy misunderstood). Dalinar is stating that Tanavast is dead. Not that in his mind God with a capital G. To Dalinar, there is a God with a capital G, just Tanavast isn’t it because God with a capital G in his head wouldn’t get killed. He feels the golden light hints to that. Navani and Shallan theoretically could be fine with it, because they simply have a different interpretation on who or what is God with a capital G. They all agree in their opinion that one exists, just they disagree who or what that is. The clergy on the other hand realize their power would fall apart if people started to believe the religious figure their whole religion revolves around is “false”. So they excommunicate him in an attempt to silence him.
OMG, all I can think of now is the Stormfather as a ShardSPORK.
Anyway, I too think the “makes them your slave” comment is indeed what happened with the Parsh; but that means the unmade are spren doesn’t it? So when they were unmade it didn’t turn them into something that wasn’t a Spren but maybe a Spren that lost it’s original purpose????
As for Dalinar being four different men (sequentially not in parallel like Shallan), I think that could be said of all of us. Haven’t you ever looked back at the you who existed when you were 20 and wondered at how different that person’s thoughts and actions were to the current you?
I feel bad for Dalinar in this chapter! Manipulated by Taravangian, having flashbacks to bad deeds, kicked out of his church very publicly… I mean, any one of those could give you a bad day. Put them all together, and while I don’t condone him getting into the wine I can understand to an extent.
As for the half-shards, I REALLY hope they have the cousin/lesser spren, not full high spren! I can fully believe Taravangian capable and evil enough to use the higher spren. But I hope that’s not what it is.
The oathgate key/Stormfather sword…. I don’t think what we saw was the Stormfather as tiny shard blade. I think it was something more, a tiny preview of what Dalinar is capable of later in the book. I don’t think we know all the things that can go with it yet. There are always so many secrets! But that’s part of the fun
It makes sense that the Stormfather “rumbled” when Dalinar said you could no more enslave a spren than a chull.
I like that Dalinar still “growled” wordlessly when annoyed. It was one of my favorite bits of the Knife Escapade — when a servant tried to take away Dalinar’s food and he “growled at him,” just the way my family’s dog (like most dogs, probably) does when someone reaches toward whatever is in his mouth. Not as funny as the Escapade’s finale, but up there.
Ah, Dalinar’s horrible not-so-good day. Taravanginan is a politician who doesn’t quite have a handle on his opponent, likely due in part to his days of variable intelligence. It looks to me like he’s employing a scattershot approach, throwing a bunch of different types of troubling ideas at Dalinar to see what disquiets him the most. Dalinar is certainly not political, at least not naturally. He doesn’t even realize he’s being attacked since no one is charging him with Shardblades in hand.
Speaking of Shardblades, Dalinar and his Oathgate trick must have had some components of the Stormfather in it or he would not have been so upset. All I saw in the text when Dalinar merges the realms later is a sense of awe at his bondmate. By that same token I see a certain amount of spiritual mumbo jumbo involved with it as well. Would anyone other than a Bondsmith be able to pull off a move like that? Don’t think so.
Whenever I read Taravingian and Dalinar having these quiet conversations together I don’t see it as the first trying to manipulate the other but as Taranvingian using Dalinar as a sounding board to justify to himself the things he does. So he is not trying to draw Dalinar in with false dichotomies but displaying his own reliance on extreme opposites, likely as a consequence of how his swinging intelligence tends to shred the middle ground in his thinking.
(btw I’ve only now gotten around to rereading Oathbringer. Something about it just made me keep putting it off but as attention is being brought to the inevitability of the next book’s release I’ve finally re-engaged with it. I’ve been reading it over the last week and have reached chapter 115 so I’m going to be going over this reread backwards for a while.)
I suppose for me Dalinar’s culpability and his struggle with self condemnation comes down to the deity factor: Was he directly targeted by Odium from an early age based on Odium’s read on the future? Or indirectly sifted via the Thrill until he was one of the strongest candidates and then Odium took an active hand in “shaping” him? I would guess it’s the former based on Cultivation’s counter, but it’s not a slam dunk. These discussions about past vs. present Dalinar are all about Odium’s timing and measure of influence for me. Dalinar’s ability to resist Odium are directly tied to his ability to tap into pieces of (or previously be protected by) a counter deity. Dalinar is a tragic figure. I’m entirely sympathetic to his past and present conditions. He’s a living piece on a chess board in a contest between gods. Every part of this discussion hinges on that.
Gilphon @6:
I do think that “becomes your slave” is indeed foreshadowing the Ghostbloods intentions with Sja-Anat. After all, Shallan’s new mission, if she chooses to accept it, is to convince her to ally with them _or_ to trap her and hand her over. I strongly doubt that anybody among Our Heroes is stupid enough to try to make a Nerghaoul fabrial.
Carl @7:
But is there any reason to think that starships would contain lots of aluminium? Sheets of it, which somehow fall to Roshar unharmed? I dunno. Maybe it’s properties used to be better known and utilised, so that Hoid just opened some forgotten cache of it, somewhere. Personally, after how how alumium insulation prevented the spren from locating Azure’s soulcaster, I can’t help but think that it would also prevent the spren from eavesdropping on people in the Physical from Shadesmar. Jasnah and Dalinar should really invest in it for their council chambers.
Scáth @10:
I’d think that news that Honor/Almighty is dead would be much more upsetting and contraversual to a lot of people, including some of our PoVs who are, according to Sanderson, moderately religious, than it seemed to be in OB, where everybody just took it in a stride. Particularly since Odium, his enemy, is alive and well. And while Hoid did mention Tanavast in front of Dalinar, he didn’t speak of the Vessel – Shard symbiosis, so Dalinar is currently ignorant of it.
By-the-by it is also very questionable that dying should disqualify Honor from godhood. Certainly, many of RL religions featured dying/ressurecting and dead gods (those last, usually as part of the origin of the world myths). In fact, that’s where I could see reformed Vorinism eventually going – into the death and ressurection of Honor proving his Divinity. Something That Kabsal said about Almighty being in people’s hearts(?) makes me think that teological foundation for it already exists.
Anyway, I’d think that the Curates at this point should have been more offended by the very notion that Almighty is dead, than by Dalinar’s suggestion of another, “true” God.
Oh, and apropos of nothing – there is something odd about Rial, isn’t there? He seems to stick out in the ways that make me doubt that he was a simple bridgeman. Or even if he was one at all.
CireNaes @16:
I really hope that Dalinar was “sifted via the Thrill”, rather than “destined” in some way. I very much appreciate that future in SA is fluid, rather than pretty much set in stone, like in WoT. And that people forge their own fates. By the time Cultivation got her chance to influence him, Dalinar did evolve into somebody important enough to become the bone of contention between the 2 deities.
@Isilel:
Sanderson has said that there is an Investiture-based way to fly between the stars faster than light. I’m assuming it has something to do with aluminum shielding. Obviously, that’s just a guess.
Sifting vs Destiny
This sounds wishy washy I know, but I think its a combination of the two approaches that has Dalinar in the Crux. I’m basing this on how Shards interpret the physical world while living primarily in the spiritual. Odium and Culti have likely had their eyes on the Kholin family for a long ass time, like the Davars. So they watch and sort of predict how a certain person would likely react based on the paths they could go down, then they manipulate events so that they follow the desired path, and then wait and see. A shardic understanding of the world means they don’t have to fixate on one person, though it seems like Sanderson’s Cosmere gods tend to keep their focuses rather limited. I do think that those characters that receive that focus are special and worth looking into further. However, if Dalinar dies in that ambush before the massacre at the Rift I’m not sure it alters Odium’s or Culti’s plans nearly as much as it would for a similar character from WOT. Not is there any mechanism actively protecting the characters from their choices.
Stormlight is breathed and held in the lungs. As a builder, breathing stormlight to set whatever he’s building makes sense to me.
@Isilel
I hope the opposite is true and I’m fine if I’m wrong and Dalinar was sifted; the strongest survivor, a suitable champion to pressure towards ending the constraints of the original shardic agreement. It’s much easier for me to sympathize if Odium has been pressuring him for a long time bringing a Greek tragedy flavor to me as a reader. I think from a world building perspective that human free will used to work with a measure of balance and autonomy between human choice and Shardic influence. I don’t think it’s worked that way for some time in the Stormlight sector of the Cosmere with Honor shattered, the Heralds driven insane or compulsive, proto-KR’s being hunted down, and Cultivation laying low. The power imbalance has only recently been evened out to a degree now that Dalinar and a powered up Master Control Stormfather are bonded restoring the ability to resist Odium’s machinations. This is why I give the guy a clean slate so to speak and only consider his actions post-bond to be truly his own, not Cultivation’s or Odium’s.
@EvilMonkey
I know we both know this. Just thinking out loud. I think some Shards are better at it than others. And how long the Shard has been held goes a long way towards diminishing not the power, but the ability to wield that power towards anything other than the specified attribute. The Mistborn novels are a great look into the conundrum of holding Shards too long. Where I go off into theory land is I think Rayse is unique. He’s figured something out and maintained more of his autonomy than the others. Whether he takes breaks or his will is stronger than the others (which could be argued based on the Herald’s performance while on Braize) he’s clearly got something going for him that makes it easier to fight his competitors without being subsequently torn apart. Ruin and Preservation are another interesting edgecase.
I’m sure that all the vessels are aware of the elephant in the room i.e. shardic merging. They all must find ways to cope with or compensate for this. Rayse’s work-around doesn’t seem to be a work around at all. He wanted to be Hatred, he was a hateful guy, vessel and intent fit like hand in glove. His personality didn’t need to be subsumed or excised because it supports the Shard intent. Ati seems like he got a bad deal, Leras basically punted on the problem, Sazed is…confused. Badvadin is probably doing the avatar thing to cope with her Shard mandate, and it ultimately serves that mandate in a way that allows her to keep her mind at least somehow intact. As far as Egli and Culti, your guess is as good as mine.
I used to be in that camp: hand/glove, matching intents make it easier to focus, the intent itself is easier to prosecute a war with; Now I’m not convinced by that line of thinking. They were great explanations for his earlier successes/shatterings, I don’t think they hold up after holding the Shard for any significant length of time. I’m basing this off of Ruin/Ati, but they all show evidence of it, the youngest being Harmony who is already struggling with doing anything other than maintaining balance. And we don’t see Wit all that concerned about the other Shards. Rayse has figured something out. H
@17 Isilel
It was controversial. The other highprinces thought he had gone mad. Actually leaders across the continent thought he had gone mad enough that a lot of his warnings were flat out ignored. Remember by the time we started Oathbringer, people still largely did not believe Dalinar. By midway, they barely trusted him. By the end the counsel nearly shattered. I would say that is quite controversial, and that there was quite the fallout from it.
You are free based on your personal beliefs, to find it questionable, however those are not Dalinar’s beliefs. From what we read of Dalinar, he received visions that he was convinced were truth, and the entity itself told him it was dead. Dalinar is very much an all or nothing kind of man. He experiences a golden light, and is convinced that it is the true power, one higher than Tanavast. So for him it is god. Jasnah might reason how do we know the golden light is not just another Tanavast that has not been revealed yet? But Dalinar is a man of convictions. When something feels right to him, he moves forward as if that is the ultimate truth. It can be seen as a failing, it can be seen as admirable. It certainly has both helped and hurt him. The religion of the Almighty preaches that he cannot die. The Almighty is eternal. So if the Almighty dies, then it is counter to the religious belief structure. Other religions may allow for their deity to expire, but not Vorinism.
I am sorry, maybe I was not clear. They are upset that Dalinar is saying the Almighty is dead because that would erode at their power. What they do not take into account, due to their concern for their power, is Dalinar is not an atheist. He is not denying the existence of any deity. He just thinks there is something else out there.
@Cire
Harmony is a special case in that he’s double sharded and the mandate of one is diametrically opposed to the other. But I still think the hand in glove anolog works when we speak of Shard/vessel relationships. Given an infinite amount of time the Shard will succeed in absorbing the mind of its holder. The power is mindless but it still has agency, that basically whatever is connected to it eventually becomes it. But if one is alligned with the Shard I believe that one wlll be able to hold off total absorbsion for far longer than one who is at constant war with the mandate of the Shard. And I imagine some shards by intent are easier to slide into Oblivion for than others. Devotion seems like an easy one to fall in love with. Dominion maybe less so unless paired up with a megalomaniac. If we take Ati and Ruin as our example, we’ve been told that Ati initially steered Ruin in the direction of natural decay instead of wanton destruction. By the end of Mistborn era 1 there is very little of that Ati left. Contrast that with Rayse and his seemingly comfortable relationship between himself and Odium and it’s difficult not to come to that conclusion.
I have always wondered if Dalinar’s family has a history of alcoholism. If I recall correctly, there was a WoB before Oathbringer was published that the answer to that question would be answered in Oathbringer. Unfortunately, I do not think that question was answered in Oathbringer.
Alice and Lyndsey. I disagree with you that Dalianr has been 4 people in his life. In my opinion, he has been 5. The fifth is who Dalinar currently is. The man who is living with the memories that Cultivation temporarily removed. I also disagree with you that he gave them up so he could be a better man. Becoming a better man may have been the result of his giving up his memories. Yet, the reason he was willing to give them up was because he wanted to stop the hurt. He wanted to revert back to the person he was before the Rift. Instead, he soon discovered the teachings of Nohadon and became a follower of Nohadon’s teachings. This caused Dalinar to become someone different than he was pre-Rift (and, in my opinion, a better person).
Alice. I do not think Cultivation is taking a hand with anything that Dalinar does or does not due in Chapter 100. Rather (as others have noted in prior comments), Cultivation is playing the long game. She is like the master chess player who makes a key move many moves earlier before the other player (or anybody watching the game) realizes the significance of that move. Cultivation made her move when she pruned (her words) Dalinar’s memory so that he might become a better person and would be able to deal with the memories when they resurface. Now all she can do is watch how things play out. Perhaps, I am arguing semantics. But that is how my mind works.
Lindsey. I disagree with you that Dalinar’s dislike of the constant sounds of the waves crashing on the cliffs is a sign of his troubled state of mind. It is nothing of the like. Rather, he is just not used to the waves. Dalinar’s dislike of the waves is no different than a person who lives in the country and when he/she visits the city, cannot sleep because of all the common sounds that occur in a city during the nights. On the other hand, a person who is used to living in a city, has no problem sleeping with all those sounds.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
@27 AndrewHB
The comment about Dalinar being 4 people was a quote from the text, not something that Alice or Lyndsey was asserting.
@27 AndrewHB
I disagree with you regarding the reasoning for Dalinar removing his memories. He went to the Nightwatcher to try and become the man Evi saw in him. I am getting a little ahead of things, because this comes up in Chapter 105 but, here is the quote below
Oathbringer page 982
“The Old magic can change a person, Evi had said, Make something great of them”
“Evi had said the Old Magic could transform a man. it was about time he started trusting her.”
Then the reason why he gave up his memories was because he did not feel he deserved her. He initially resisted, but then acquiesced because he felt he didn’t deserve the good memories he had of her. But that is also getting a bit ahead of things in Chapter 114
Oathbringer page 1080
“And with them, I take her.”
“I…” Dalinar tried to speak as plant life engulfed him. “Wait!”
“You’ll take…” He spoke with difficulty. “You’ll take Evi from me?”
“All memories of her. This is the cost. Should I forbear?”
Dalinar squeezed his eyes shut. Evi…. He had never deserved her
I missed commenting on this one, but I enjoy the discussion!
I haven’t reread the book since my initial read, but I think I thought T was probably in a middle-state and possibly trying to justify his own actions. Although it’s certainly possible he was manipulating Dalinar all along.
Wasn’t there a part earlier in Oathbringer where Kaladin had describer himself as four men? #parralels