#just a simple namedrop would suffice

[70eeznutz]

654 days since 1 million video

[peachdoxie]

Okay so I’m like way late in sharing my liveblog of chapter 13, but I read it earlier and took notes and here they are! Man, what a doozy of a chapter! I have a lot of things to say.

Conjoined fabrials require a careful division of the gemstone—and the spren inside. 

Like we knew this already but hearing about it directly is like. Yikes.

Other types of spren do not split as evenly, as easily, or at all. 

Gimme the lore, Branderson

Shallan had to deal with Veil’s alcohol abuse. Again. 

Yikes

He was using that time to go ride horses. 

The paranoid part of me thinks something else is going on, but also Adolin is still allowed to have interests, especially if he’s grown closer with Dalinar’s Ryshadium after losing Sureblood in Words of Radiance, as the chapter later describes.

Shallan found herself alone—and for the first time in weeks, she didn’t have a role to play.

Inchresting.

The deal is set and arranged. The spren will come.

wat

Seven years ago now—and if that timeline was correct, she must have begun seeing Pattern as a young child. Long before Jasnah had first encountered her spren.

I feel like this is important but idk why. It sort of implies that the Cryptics were the first spren to start forming Nahel bonds in the current era, but, again, why? What are the implications?

She couldn’t see those memories; didn’t want to see them. As she shied away from them, something dark shifted inside her, growing stronger. Formless. Shallan didn’t want to be the person who had done those things. That… that person could not… not be loved…

Oof but also not true

Memory loss was apparently common to these cases, but the rest of what Shallan experienced seemed distinctly different. Importantly, she wasn’t experiencing continued memory loss. So maybe she was fine. She’d stabilized.

I have the feeling Shallan does, in fact, have some significant memory losses that she’s either unaware of or so in denial about she doesn’t realize she’s in denial of them.

Besides, these fabrials did the work of a dozen people.

lmao Roshar is undergoing industrialization which is probably a bad thing

When she became Veil, the colors in the room… muted. The colors didn’t change, but her perception shifted.

Neat detail. I wonder how that would interact with the various Heightenings of Nalthis.

His pet chicken, the green one.

IT’S BIRB TIME!!!!!

“Of course, with your powers nothing is permanent, is it? You deal exclusively in the ephemeral.”

That’s kind of a recurring issue in Shallan’s life, isn’t it, the lack of permanence?

His chicken held its prey with one foot, eating almost like a person did with their hands. The thing was so strange, so alien. It stood upright, like no other beast Shallan had studied. When it chirped at Mraize, it sounded almost like it was talking, and she swore she could occasionally make out words. It was like a tiny parody of a person.

Lmao “alien.” Shallan, you have no idea how right you are. Also, I’m going to guess the bird may actually be talking to Mraize since it’s a fucking aviar

Ask a better question. “Nalathis,” Radiant said. “Scadarial. What are they?”

“Nalthis. Scadrial.” He spoke the words with a different accent. “Where are they. That’s an excellent question, Radiant. Suffice it to say they are places in Shadesmar where our Stormlight—so easily captured and transported—would be a valuable commodity.”

Okay sure just fucking namedrop the other planets in the cosmere again why don’t you

A more perfect gemstone could contain the Light long enough to go offworld, but there is still the Connection problem. This little flaw has caused untold trouble. And the one who unlocks the secret would have untold power.

dear fucking hell, Mraize.

tbh I don’t even know how to react to this revelation. It’s so simple and yet so ambitious, and it would have significant impacts not just on Roshar, but on the whole of the cosmere. Not to mention: Investiture on Roshar is renewable because when it’s used, it returns to the Spiritual Realm until it’s brought back into the Physical by highstorms or a perpendicularity. What would happen if Mraize found a way to take Honor’s Investiture and have it be used somewhere else in the cosmere outside of the Rosharan system? Would that unbalance the Shards even more?

just an absolute what the fuck. there are so many unknown Realmatic ramifications for this. what the fuck.

“I already have,” Mraize said, making a fist. “Though putting the plan into motion will be difficult. I have a job for you.”

Great, Mraize already knows how to do this incredibly ridiculous Realmatic bullshit. This is going to be bad if he gets it up and running, even if Mraize himself isn’t “evil.” It would radically change everything, and there are many bad people who would abuse that change.

“I have news for you,” Shallan said. “Sja-anat contacted me while I was away. She agreed to your terms, and is sending one of her spren to the tower, where it will investigate your members for a possible bond.”

Ah, so this is who Shallan was communicating with earlier. But how did Sja-anat use a spanreed? And what kind of spren will she send, and how has it been corrupted?

Also, Shallan and Mraize at least know that Glys was corrupted by Sja-anat. I wonder who else holds this knowledge.

“I cannot betray this secret,” Mraize said. “Let’s just say that Lightweavers fascinate me, and leave it at that. And you should not fear if I did keep someone close to you. Such a person could be an… aid in times of need. Iyatil did the same for me.”

*tosses another piece of evidence onto the theory I saw someone make that Shallan, in a very repressed persona, is actually Mraize’s spy*

“Immortality, in part. He thought he could become like the Heralds. In his quest, he discovered a secret. He had Voidlight before the Everstorm—he carried it from Braize, the place you call Damnation. He was testing the movement of Light between worlds. And one close to him might have answers. At any rate, we couldn’t risk Ialai or the Sons of Honor recovering these secrets.”

I honestly don’t know what to make of this but it seems important so

“Oh, we know where he is,” Mraize said. “He has asked for—and been granted—asylum in a city no other Ghostblood has been able to enter.”

“A place you can’t enter?” Shallan asked. “Where is security that tight?”

“The fortress named Lasting Integrity,” Mraize said. “Home and capital city of the honorspren in Shadesmar.”

OH SURE BRANDON, JUST DROP ANOTHER FUCKING BOMBSHELL IN THIS CHAPTER, I CAN DEFINITELY HANDLE IT

at least my question of “why the fuck is SHALLAN going to Lasting Integrity” is answered

“Oh, you will. And once you successfully return from this mission, your reward will be—as always—something for which you hunger. Answers. All of them.”

So like, first of all I’m skeptical that Shallan will actually succeed, so that’s one thing. And second, what’s to say that Brando will just have Shallan learn things off the page and we don’t know the answers? Either way, I eagerly await how this plot line will play out. Whatever’s gonna happen, it’s gonna involve some hella cosmere Lore.

Mraize had never been willing to speak of that, but she had to think they’d been grooming her—and her family—for over a decade.

He knew the truth about Shallan’s past. There were holes in her childhood memories. If they did what he asked, Mraize would fill them.

And maybe then, at long last, Veil could force Shallan to become complete.

The word “grooming” stands out to me here. What, exactly, were they grooming her for?

***

Anyway. Wow. What a fucking chapter. So little action, and yet so much just changed. Rhythm of War is taking on a very different look now that there’s Lore at stake.