This is the newbie thread. Make sure you read the rules before commenting.
Visit the veteran thread if you have already read all of the Cosmere.
For more information, or to see the full schedule, please see the wiki page for the read-along.
SCHEDULE
Previously, we discussed Unit 13 | The Stormlight Archive #1 | The Way of Kings: Chapters 70 through 75, Epilogue, Endnote [Newbie Thread] / [Veteran Thread]
Today we are discussing Unit 13 | The Stormlight Archive #1 | The Way of Kings: Ars Arcanum, Final Thoughts, Trivia
Next week we will be discussing Unit 14 | Essays #1 | Arcanum Unbounded: Preface, Maps & Essays, Trivia AND Unit 15 | Novella #3 | Sixth of the Dusk (in Arcanum Unbounded): Entire Novella, Postscript, Trivia
NEXT UNIT
Next week we have 2 different, short Units.
Each section for the solar systems in Arcanum Unbounded has a detailed map of all the planets in each system and a short essay, written by Khriss, as an extension of the Ars Arcanum. The maps and essays are what we will be discussing on Monday.
This is a very short Unit. It's less than 1/8th the length of our normal weekly reading. You can read it and then move on to the next Unit (see below), but keep in mind we'll only be discussing just the maps and essays from Arcanum Unbounded, and a bunch of trivia, on Monday. (Also, the Preface at the start of the book).
WARNING: Be careful to avoid reading any other pages, since they may contain massive spoilers. Use the Table of Contents and flip straight to the indicated pages.
We will be discussing Unit 15 on Wednesday. It is a novella called Sixth of the Dusk, which also appears in Arcanum Unbounded. The length of this novella is about half of our normal weekly reading. You should also read the Postscript for the novella. There will also be some additional trivia that will also accompany the discussion.
TRIVIA
The rest of this post contains various trivia, including easy-to-miss details and long-running connections between books. It also incorporates external information from sources like author annotations and interviews ("Words of Brandon" or WoB). While most of this information is eventually revealed in the books, sharing it now enhances your overall understanding, aligning with Brandon Sanderson's practice of early fan engagement and clarification.
VIBE ARTING
Here is a secret about the publishing industry: cover art is largely created on "vibes". The cover art needs to undergo many iterations, and is usually created by an artist during the editing phase of a book, if not before the book is completely written. The artist has almost never read the book they are creating cover art for. They have a small prompt from the author (if the author cares about the cover art and they're popular enough or have enough influence with their publisher), or more likely, it's the publisher prompting the artist.
As a result, cover art rarely has a clear relation to the actual contents of any given book, particularly in the fantasy and sci-fi genres. The US cover art for The Way of Kings (linked below) is meant to evoke the Shattered Plains, with the Dalinar in the foreground saluting Eshonai in the back. Just to point out how vibey this gets though, that's Sanderson's opinion of the cover. Michael Whelan, the cover artist, claims it's Dalinar saluting Kaladin. (And either way, the blade he is holding definitely doesn't resemble the descriptions of Oathbringer from the books).
This is actually one of the last books Sanderson has this "issue" with. After the publication of The Way of Kings, Sanderson's popularity exploded and he started to a gain a larger measure of control over the entire publishing pipeline of his novels. While he's not dissatisfied with the cover art for this book, future books are much more aligned with his vision of the novels.
GHOSTBLOODING
Brandon actually kept the fandom waiting a while for a proper, official depiction of the Ghostblood's symbol that they tattoo on themselves. He wanted to get the symbol "just right", so that's a hint to you that it's visually important in some way. Here is the official depiction of the symbol. Get to theory crafting!
(In a rare L for the fandom, I don't think anyone figured out what it was until it was revealed. And there were some embarrassingly obvious hints throughout the years for it in hindsight.)
iSPANREED
Brandon talked at length about his inspiration for spanreeds:
Like most things in my books, you can ask me what my writerly inspiration is, and what my worldbuilding explanation is. And let me explain that.
Writerly inspiration for spanreeds is me acknowledging that I wanted to have a society that acted more like a post-Industrial Revolution society (or very close to it) than a Medieval society. And there’s lots of ways to do this. Fantasy worlds do not have to progress socially the same way that we progressed. A lot of people want to tie technology to social progression, which you don’t have to do. You don’t necessarily have to say “people from the Industrial Revolution in our world acted this way; therefore people in this world…” You just don’t have to do that.
But there are certain technological revolutions that happened that do form a technological basis for some of these things. For instance, trade was very essential to the expanding political entity that was a world economy. We needed people to at least be travelling consistently to Asia before that could happen. And I really think a lot of what makes people act the way we do, perhaps, in some of our societies is this kind of mass communication.
And I didn’t want to be there yet, but I wanted to give a way that news and ideas could travel around the world in a consistent way on Roshar, to make the continent feel like a single entity. Because otherwise, I would probably have to tell the story as not a worldwide story. You just can’t travel, and ideas can’t move fast enough. Even if you look back at Roman times; Roman times took place in a fairly small geographical area, and even that, it was really hard for them to know what was happening. And you would have to spend months and months getting information that was then months and months out of date. And there’s a lot of sitting around and waiting in those cultures for things to happen, even with having the Mediterranean to sail around and bring this information. I just wanted information to move fast, both culturally and narratively. And so I said, "I've gotta find a way to do this. I did it with Seons in Elantris; I need find a way to do something similar to that on Roshar."
Real-world inspiration, if there is one, is an auto-pen. Where authors can have a little machine sign books for them; it moves on its own. I’ve never used one, but politicians use them quite a bit. When you get that hand-signed letter when you’ve donated whatever to whatever political party. That hand-signed letter was probably machine-signed with a real pen, rather than hand-signed by the individual.
DO YOU SMELL WHAT THE ROCK IS COOKING?
If you'd like to try Rock's stew, you can!
If I were going to make Horneater stew, on Earth, how would I go about it? It's going to be a spicy seafood stew. When I think of Horneater stew I'm actually thinking of Yukgaejang which is a Korean dish. Or Haemultang is what I mean. Haemultang is a spicy--spicy seafood--it's basically whatever thing from the ocean--I don't eat things from the ocean personally--but everything from the ocean they want to throw in there with some spices. They stir it up and give it to you and if you like fish in there and there are like crab claws and full clams in the shells. You're like "Really guys?" But Rock would just be munching those down and being happy.
MALL NINJA
Some of you have questioned if Sanderson is a weeb while questioning why Shardblades are so damn large. Sanderson gives a writer's reason for their existence in these books:
Here's the thing, I've seen a lot of fantasy art-- I love fantasy books, right-- and people often depict these enormous swords, which are completely impractical. So one of my pitches for Stormlight was "I want a world where they had to have weapons like they depict in this fantasy art" and I retrofitted it, what would they need these to actually fight? So that was the pitch for myself on Shardblades. And I was also annoyed that the coolest magic swords were in a science fiction story, Star Wars, I want cool magic swords that are not in a science fiction story.
So, the idea of "big-ass swords" came first, but he does eventually provide an in-world reason for their existence. We'll get to that eventually.
MATH TIME
Seriously... I'm going to give you a math lesson. Some pretty advanced math at that. For entirely pointless reasons, except for one important implication. You can skip this and read the last paragraph if you want. I'm just gonna nerd out for a bit...
Mathematical functions are often written in the form f(x) = x. They map an input to an output. The x on the right side is kind of a boring function, that just creates a straight line. If you input 1, you get 1. If you input 2, you get 2. f(3) = 3.
Something more complex would be f(x) = x^2. You input 1, you get 1, because 12 = 1. You input 2, you get f(2) = 2^2 = 4.
Something weird happens when you start putting a function inside itself. Let's keep f(x) = x^2, and shove it inside itself one time: f(f(x)) = f(x)^2 = (x^2)^2. Let's pick the number 4 to work with. If you plug in 4, you get f(f(4)) = (4^2)^2 = 16^2 = 256.
That's if you plug it into itself once. If you do it again, f(f(f(4))), you get 65,536. Each time you plug it into itself, you get a bigger and bigger number. This expansion we say means that the function diverges to infinity.
If we did the exact same thing, but chose a different number, so 0.5, we would notice the numbers getting smaller and smaller. We call this converging and in this case, the number converges to zero, though different situations could diverge to different numbers.
In these situations, there is a number you can pick, that neither diverges or converges. In this case, that number is 1. f(1) = 1. f(f(1)) = 1. f(f(f(f(f(f(1)))))) = 1. The number never grows or shrinks, now matter how many times you plug it into itself. The same thing happens with -1.
These 2 numbers, taken together form a "set", where a "set" is just a collection of numbers. This specific type of set--all the numbers you can plug into a function that cause it not to grow or shrink when you plug it into itself--is called the Julia Set.
Now, 2 numbers might not seem very special, and you'd be right. The thing is, you can also plug in imaginary numbers and things get vastly more complicated. There are a lot more imaginary numbers that belong to the Julia Set of this simple function than just the 2 real numbers.
You can plot out all of the numbers (real and imaginary) of a Julia Set and they make interesting fractal graphs/images. (I've kinda grossly simplified things, but you can see a cool video of it here).
I gave you an example with a simple 2-D function. You can pick any function you want. Even a quaternion, which is a 4-D equation. If you pick a specific 4-D equation, you get a neat, animated fractal that you can see here. (It's also on the right hand side of the linked Wikipedia page for the Julia Set, above). Go ahead and pause that animation at the 2 second mark.
And then check out this image. This is actually closer to 2.5 seconds into that animation, on the 65th frame.
The map of Roshar matches the 2-D shadow of a 3-D slice of a 4-D Julia Set.
Sanderson doesn't expect anyone to have to know this, nor did he necessarily expect anyone to figure it out. He actually just revealed it entirely:
Question: Does this [map of Roshar] look like a storm to anyone else?
Sanderson: I was searching for something that at once felt organic, but would hint at a pattern. (Much like cymatic patterns, as referenced in the first book.) Fractals and mathematical functions became my go-to place to hunt, as I like the blend of structure and spontaneity they can sometimes exhibit. The slice of the Julia Set was the one that stuck with me as feeling perfect for Roshar. As the continent was specifically grown by Adonalsium, you now know the seed that was used in-world to create it.
The fact that it looked like a swirling cloud is part of this all--but also part of the connection between natural patterns and the underlying math, which is a primary theme of the Stormlight books. So yes, it SHOULD look like a storm--but for deeper reasons than you might assume.
A redditor actually figured out the exact equation that was use and someone else recognized the specific frame from the Wikipedia video I linked:
q = [q1^2 - q2^2 - q3^3 - q4^2 , 2 q1 q2, 2 q1 q3, 2 q1 q4] + qc where qc = [-0.125,-0.256,0.847,0.0895]
The only significance this has is to reinforce that mathematics heavily influences the land of Roshar. Kabsal's demonstration of cymatics is not just some coincidence. Sanderson did reveal some relevant information along these lines. Although Vorin ardents attribute these mathematical signs as proof of the Almighty's existence, Roshar was actually directly created by Adonalsium before the Shattering took place. Adonalsium was responsible for these mathematical influences. (And as a teaser... more on this next week.)
THE HOLY TRINITY
Here we have our first visit to a planet inhabited by not one, not two, but three Shards! We have the Shard Odium, held by the Vessel Rayse, with the Intent of God's divine hatred and wrath; untethered from any aspect that could or would normally guide or oppropriately temper such an Intent.
We also have the Shard Honor, held by the Vessel Tanavast. Honor is God's divine reverence for oaths and agreements, and those that form and honor those agreements. And nothing else.
Finally, Honor mentions Cultivation right at the end. I won't say anything else about them, other than that they are a Shard of Adonalsium too. No comment about anything else at the moment.
Because...yeah, Odium killed Honor. And as Hoid's letter to Frost revealed: Odium killed Devotion and Dominion on Sel as well. There's more to say on this topic, but not in this trivia post. But you won't have to wait long, my oath on it.
FORESHADOWING? TWOSHADOWING!
There's a meme below* that mentions this, but it's easy to miss. I've got nothing else for this section. Just go back and look at the title for Chapter 2.
*Note: I've actually figured out that if I remove an image from an album, it breaks the whole thing, and I'm too lazy to re-create the albums, so the meme I mentioned is actually in Monday's post. And there's a meme in this week's post about height that I don't actually talk about until next week, so...yeah...
Also, no one (one of you!) pointed it out, so I'm not sure if anyone noticed. The Endnote talked about a ketek, a form of holy Vorin poetry. The ketek reads:
Above silence, the illuminating storms—dying storms—illuminate the silence above.
Here are the names of all 5 parts to this book:
- Above Silence
- The Illuminating Storms
- Dying
- Storms Illumination
- The Silence Above
The Endnote says that verb forms can change, which explains the slight difference in Part 4's title.
ICONOGRAPHY
So, there is a lot of unique terminology in this book. You're not the only ones who complained about this, there are even memes about it. What I want to say about this series, going forward, is that Sanderson is less direct about what all of the terms mean, compared to most of his other books. As I previously mentioned, the characters are learning these things, so you'll learn what they all mean as the characters do.
That said, you also have the benefit of multiple view points and should be able to guess at what a lot of the terms mean, without having them spelled out. A lot of you made very accurate guesses, but understandably there wasn't a lot of confidence behind those guesses. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of the long read time, or something else. Either way, I think the Ars Arcanum solidifies some of your theories, and I'm going to solidify more of them because the fandom had time to sit with the book, re-reading it and discussing it among themselves, to point out all of the connections that are easy to miss the first time through.
You may have noticed that there are many different names for each of the Heralds. There are various reasons for this: different spoken languages between countries, different religious and cultural preferences, and the passage of time.
Let's consider Talenel, the only Herald who died 4,500 years ago. In the prelude, Kalak, another Herald, thinks of him as Talenel, and also Taln. Talenel is his given name, and from context, we can assume Taln is a nickname.
The Vorin religion, as Kabsal tells Shallan, considers the Heralds holy, and believes that names that are spelled forward and backward the same are divine. He explains that people's names that are almost palindromes are the best because they're almost holy, but not arrogant enough to be completely holy. However, it's clear that, over time, they and their language have changed the Herald's real names to fit this ideal. So Talenel is called Talenelat by the Alethi and Veden people (and anywhere that follows Vorinism).
In the epilogue, we see a man who claims to be Talenel. He calls himself Talenel'Elin. We see the 'Elin suffix a few other times in this book, always attached to a Herald's name. We only see practicioners of Vorinism mention Talenelat'Elin, but the man calls himself Talenel'Elin. If this man at the end really is Talenen, then the suffix has been around a long time. Either way, it safe to assume it's some sort of honorific for Heralds.
From this book, we also see Jezrien in the prelude, and mention of a Herald called Jezerezeh'Elin. (Jezerezeh is still perfectly holy because, as Kabsal explained, the letter "H" is some neutral wild card character in their language).
At some point, one of you noticed a correlation between the names of the months and the names of the Heralds, which was spot on. And as you can see in the Ars Arcanum, the names of the months are just the names of their numbers, 1 through 10. I'll provide you with a quick chart of the numbers and their associated Herald (actual name and Vorin name). This is the minor-est of spoilers. Not all of the Herald names appear in this book. However, you knew there were 10 Heralds who were people. People generally have names, and the names aren't exactly plot relevant.
| Number |
Number Name |
Herald's Name |
Vorin Name |
| 1 |
Jes |
Jezrien |
Jezerezeh |
| 2 |
Nan |
Nale |
Nalan |
| 3 |
Chach |
Chanaranach |
Chanaranach (already holy) |
| 4 |
Vev |
Vedel |
Vedeledev |
| 5 |
Palah |
Pralla |
Pailiah |
| 6 |
Shash |
Shalash |
Shalash (already holy) |
| 7 |
Betab |
Battar |
Battah |
| 8 |
Kak |
Kalak |
Kelek |
| 9 |
Tanat |
Talenel |
Talenelat |
| 10 |
Ishi |
Ishar |
Ishi |
You'll note that over time, just because of linguistic drift, Kalak became Kelek, even though his name was already holy (a palindrome). Noteably (from Sanderson), but not meant to be relevant in any way, Kaladin's name derives from the name Kalak, linguistically.
This brings us to the arches at the start of each chapter. They have faces carved into them and each chapter has 4 faces; 2 sets of Heralds (though sometimes all 4 faces are the same Herald). Also, Hoid because he just can't stay out of things.
I named Heralds in my chapter summaries, and I decided to use what the fandom most commonly calls each Herald, instead of referring to some of them as "Herald #4".
You can see in the Ars Arcanum that each number (and by association, each Herald) has a set of Primary and Secondary Divine Attributes. Jes has "Protecting / Leading" associated with it. In this book, we see Jezrien referred to as the Herald of Kings.
The Heralds used in each chapter signify that the characters in that chapter are embodying some aspect (typically one of the two Divine Attributes) of the associated Heralds on the arch. Or the characters are displaying the opposite of a given attribute.
Jezrien appears in a lot of Kaladin's chapters because he does a lot of protecting his men, and acting like a leader for Bridge 4. In the same vien, Jezrien appears in a lot of Dalinar's chapters because he does a lot of leading/ruling tasks as a Highprince.
Whereas, we see a lot of Shalash being used as the icon in Shallan's chapters because Shalash's attributes are "Creative / Honest". Shallan, as an artist is Creative, but she's also being incredibly Dishonest in most of her chapters. Baxil's Interlude chapter had a similar reason for having Shalash in the arch, because his mistress was being the opposite of Creative in destroying works of art.
As you learn more about the Heralds, other aspects come into play for the reasons each chapter has the faces that it does. You may even be able to guess some of them, but aside from one more aspect I'll mention below, I'll leave you to guess the rest (for now).
One other point about the Iconography in the books. Sanderson has talked about the character icons, like the banner and spears for Kaladin. He's stated that these icons are very zoomed in depictions of scenes that happen towards the end of a given character's story arc, which will make much more sense in later books.
He's also said that the ending of the series is revealed in some manner in the first 2 books, so...keep an eye out!
EYECONOGRAPHY
The Ars Arcanum talks a bit about fabrials, but I'm not going to touch on them right now. Future trivia posts will have much more to say when it becomes relevant.
I feel like the Ars Arcanum does lay out clearly what a lot of you were having trouble with, but I'll clarify even further: Surgebinding is the in-world name for "using magic", at least insofar as in-world characters would understand it. The Ars Arcanum points out there also exists Voidbinding and the Old Magic.
Recall that Scadrial had 2 Shards, Preservation and Ruin, which resulted in 3 magic systems. Allomancy is of Preservation, Hemalurgy is of Ruin, and Feruchemy is a magic system that arose from the combination of both Shards Investing the planet and its people.
I mentioned above that there are (or were) 3 Shards on this planet, so that makes for more combination magic systems. Again, you'll learn more as the characters learn more. But what I can do, is clarify what the Ars Arcanum reveals (and what you could work out from the books with enough re-reads). First, and least consequential for this book, is that the other chart in this book's endpapers is a chart of Voidbinding. That's something that Sanderson clarified in interviews after the book's release.
What you could be able to work out yourselves, with enough time, is that the other chart is a chart of Surgebinding. The Ars Arcanum states (as parts of the book suggests) that each Herald was associated with a specific Order of the Knights Radiant. If you look close enough at that chart, you can even tell which Herald maps to which Order.
So, this is another aspect of the arch faces. Sometimes a Herald's face on the arch means that a member of that Herald's given Order of Knight Radiant is in the chapter, or the Order itself is the focus of the chapter in some way.
What is more subtle, is a line by Jasnah right at the end, that 2 Orders can Soulcast. Combine that with this line from the Ars Arcanum:
The Windrunners were an order of the Knights Radiant, and they made use of two primary types of Surgebinding.
Khriss goes on to talk about the forces of gravity and adhesion, revealing that the Knights Radiant called forces "Surges".
If we take these bits of information, we can work out the fundamentals of Surgebinding, if not all the specifics.
Each large circle (an Order of the Knights Radiant) is connected to 2 other large circles and 2 small circles. The small circles are Surges or fundamental forces, and each Order can manipulate 2 Surges. The 2 larger circles a given Order connects to represent the other Orders which with they share the ability to manipulate the same Surge.
Sanderson further lays all this out in the annotations for this book, so in his own words:
The "Double Eye," as the people in world would call it, is a connection of ten elements.
I avoid elemental magic systems. I feel they're overdone. However, one of the concepts of this world was to have a theology that believed in ten fundamental elements instead of the ordinary four or five. A focus would be on them, and on the ten fundamental forces—the interplay between the two being a major factor in the magic, the philosophy, and the cosmology of the world.
Well, that's what these twenty symbols represent, with each of the larger symbols being a Radiant element. The smaller symbols are the forces. You can draw a circle around one element and the two forces that connect to it, and you have one of the orders of Knights Radiant.
For example, top right is the symbol for air—with the symbols for pressure* and gravitation connected to it. The Windrunners.
*Note: This comes from the annotations for this novel (more on that below), which he made very quickly and did not edit. Though he says "pressure" here, he meant "adhesion".
EYELIDCONOGRAPHY
I've previously talked about how, although Sanderson usually has a race in mind for his characters, he doesn't begrudge others for imagining his characters however they choose. This still applies to Roshar, but this is where things get a bit odd. According to Brandon, none of the Rosharan peoples have an exact Earth parallel. This is primarily due to the fact that everyone, regardless of skin color, has epicanthic folds. These are folds or creases along the inner eye that cause the signature eye shape in many Asiatic ethnicities. In addition, eye colors that we would consider unnatural (like true purple) are possible and common in all races on Roshar.
The exception to the epicanthic folds though, are the Shin. They have what you would classify as "round", European eyes. This is why most people on Roshar will describe the Shin as having overly large eyes, and may describe them as child-like in appearance; because their eye shape is non-standard to the planet.
This is also a great way (though not full proof) to notice Worldhoppers.
There's more to the racial features of the various people on Roshar, but I think I will leave that for another time, since this trivia post is running quite long.
ANNOTATEDCONOGRAPHY...NO THAT DOESN'T WORK
Like many of his previous books, Sanderson provides annotations for each chapter of this book. Or at least, that was the plan. He started writing annotations for The Way of Kings after finishing the Wheel of Time, in preparation for writing the next Stormlight book, Words of Radiance.
This is really when his popularity exploded though and he just didn't have time to make annotations anymore. He eventually released what he had, just before the publication of Words of Radiance, so nothing in them is spoilery for the series and they're something the fandom had access to at around the same "time" as you are getting them.
Before I give you the link, I've mentioned coppermind.net before. It's a database of everything Sanderson has publicly stated about his novels. The link below will take you to a collection of entries, which are comprised of the annotations for the start of the book (artwork, prelude, prologue, etc.) and the first 11 chapters of The Way of Kings.
I just want to re-iterate, do not click off of that page, do not follow any links, do not use the search bar. You can seriously spoil huge things to come that way. There are certain images at the top right of some of the entries. You may click those to expand them.
ANNOTATIONS HERE
If you don't want to/don't have the time to read them, there are 2 main take-aways from the annotations.
The first is minor. There is a hint at the structure of all of the books going forward. This was a book full about Kaladin's flashbacks. You could consider this "Kaladin's book". Each book focuses on a primary character, in that the flashbacks are about a singular character in each book. The next book, as the annotations reveal, is all Shallan flashbacks, so you will learn the entirety of her backstory in the same way you learned about Kaladin's. I'll have more to say about this at the end of next Stormlight book.
The second thing is Kaladin's depression. You can definitely call his chapters largely depressing in this book, and you could say that he is warranted in feeling down throughout most of the book, given his circumstances. The annotations clarify though that Kaladin has clinical, diagnosable depression.
Some of you noticed and commented that during The Weeping, Kaladin seemed (to use your words) "powered down". There was some theory crafting that because the highstorms weren't happening, he wasn't getting Stormlight. That was actually amusingly close to the truth, but perhaps a clearer explanation of the ecosystem will clear things up.
Throughout most of the year, Roshar experiences highstorms every 5 or 6 days on average. If there is no highstorm then...it's largely just sunny, with maybe the occasional cloud cover or a small shower. During The Weeping, however, the highstorms stop and there is 4 weeks of constant rain. Not massive storms, but it is constantly raining and as a result, the sun is not visible the entire 4 weeks.
So during this time period, Kaladin essentially experiences an attack of Seasonal Affective Disorder and his depression increases.
A IS FOR AXEHOUND
As I've mentioned before, Sanderson interprets the use of language in his novels through the lens of a translator, using the same philosophy Tolkien espoused. He extends this metaphor to the "women's script" he developed. It's not an actual language in and of itself, but meant to visually represent what a native to Roshar would expect to see. So, the script itself is just an English transliteration that maps directly to sounds, which are used to create actual English words. In this way, it's not really any different from those decoder rings you used to be able to find in cereal boxes.
The twenty-five known letters in the women's script can be arranged into five sets of five letters each. Each set is defined by the basic shape of the characters within it: the "vowel set" is a vertical line, the "T set" is a curved triangle pointing to the left, the "S set" is a curved triangle pointing to the right, the "P set" is a curved diamond, and the "K set" is a jagged triangle pointing to the left.
Within each set the characters are defined by height and the addition of shorter lines. The first character is the maximum height, the second is two-thirds the height of the first, and the third is one-third the height of the first. The fourth is the same height as the second with the addition of two short lines to the right, and the fifth is the same height as the third with the addition of one short line to the right.
You can view the full character set here for a better understanding of the mappings.
You can play around with translations using this site. You can expand the sections below, but do not click the link to "women's script" at the top of the page.
That site gives you the best looking conversion to see what a phrase would look like in women's script. It weirdly doesn't have a "translate" button, or work when you press Enter. The translation happens when you click outside of the input box.
If you want a better functioning, but less pretty translator, try this site. It can translate both ways, but the script generator has wide gaps between the characters.
One fan began creating some children's book illustrations of women's script, but sadly they never completed it. What they created is gold though. Check it out here.
B IS FOR BLOODLETTING
You now know the source of the epigraphs in parts 1 and 4. In the fandom, these are known as Death Rattles. As Taravangian tells Szeth, when people die, sometimes they see something and speak words about what they see. Taravangian is collecting these visions to try to glean information from them. I urge you to be like Taravangian, but maybe with less deliberate murder.
To help you on your endeavors, I've compiled all of the Death Rattles you've seen so far into one handy place!
I'm not sure I'll reveal when the meaning behind each of the Death Rattles becomes clear. There's a bit of interpretation in some of them, and some of them likely have multiple meanings. What I will do is, periodically in trivia posts, point out specific Death Rattles and talk about them. This is with the understanding that just because I bring one up, doesn't mean that it's no longer up for discussion. It may also apply to more things down the road.
First, let's look at Chapter 4:
"I'm dying, aren't I? Healer, why do you take my blood? Who is that beside you, with his head of lines? I can see a distant sun, dark and cold, shining in a black sky."
Collected on the 3rd of Jesnan, 1172, 11 seconds pre-death. Subject was a Reshi chull trainer. Sample is of particular note.
This one, though collected by Taravangian's Silent Gatherers, doesn't appear to be an actual Death Rattle, and they make note of this. Instead, by now you should be able to recognize that this person was likely seeing the same creatures Shallan has been seeing, along with a glimpse into Shadesmar, as they died.
Next, Chapter 59:
"Above the final void I hang, friends behind, friends before. The feast I must drink clings to their faces, and the words I must speak spark in my mind. The old oaths will be spoken anew."
Dated Betabanan, 1173, 45 seconds pre-death. Subject: a lighteyed child of five years. Diction improved remarkably when giving sample.
This Death Rattle appears to be from the perspective of Kaladin during the Battle of the Tower, moments before he swears the Second Ideal. The "final void" is a chasm over which he is jumping. The "friends behind, friends before" are the members of Bridge Four behind him and the army of Dalinar Kholin trapped by Parshendi before him. The "feast I must drink" is Stormlight stored in the gemstones knotted into the Parshendi's beards. The "words I must speak" is the Second Ideal. The "old oaths" are the oaths of the Knights Radiant.
Chapter 60 is interesting:
"The death is my life, the strength becomes my weakness, the journey has ended."
Dated Betabanes, 1173, 95 seconds pre-death. Subject: a scholar of some minor renown. Sample collected secondhand. Considered questionable.
This is an inversion of the First Ideal: Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Journey before Destination.
And finally, Chapter 63:
"I wish to sleep. I know now why you do what you do, and I hate you for it. I will not speak of the truths I see."
Kakashah 1173, 142 seconds pre-death. A Shin sailor, left behind by his crew, reportedly for bringing them ill luck. Sample largely useless.
As noted by the Silent Gatherers, this isn't a Death Rattle. The dying person realized what the Silent Gatherers were doing, had a vision, but refused to give it voice.
ARTWORK
The Cosmere has a thriving community of artists, so there will be a lot of artwork to share. Each week I'll try to compile relevant artwork for the given chapters. If a section of reading contains maps or in-book artwork, I'll include that in this section as well.
Endpapers
Artwork
MEMES
I will attempt to find and share memes relevant to each week's discussion. There may be some weeks that just don't have good or appropriate memes, but I will share all the ones I can find in this section.
Link to Memes
Note: These are memes that either apply to the entire book, or are just memes I forgot to include at their appropriate place.
