Brandon Sanderson: There's always another secret project.

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Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

treeboy posted:

These shards seem to group in pairs of opposites (always a 'good' and a 'bad' to balance one another) but they are closer in power and ability to greek deities rather than judeo-christian (unlike Adonalsium). Supposedly we've either directly met or encountered the effects/influence of something like six or seven shards if you read all his books.

I believe there was only one shard in Warbreaker. And in Way of Kings there are three. There's the 'Almighty' (who we don't know what shard he has but I have a guess), 'Cultivation' who is mentioned by the Almighty in one of Dalinar's dreams, and 'Odium' the big bad guy, and it seems the bad guy for the entire cosmere. Cultivations presence explains much about the society where Szeth is from. I think part of the reason Odium may be slightly more powerful than the other shards is he hasn't set down and tried to make people. I think the shards have to invest some of their power in making a world, and its magic, work, so Odium is just slightly more powerful than they are.

Yeroc2 fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 30, 2010

# ¿ Oct 30, 2010 01:40

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 17:23

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

treeboy posted:

Also curious what happened to the Almighty's shard power, in Mistborn we know that (ending spoiler, don't read unless you've finished the trilogy) Vin inherits Preservation's power, and then Sazed inherits the power of both Preservation (from Vin) and Ruin

Part of me thinks that its whats causing the Highstorms. They seem to be the source of the stormlight, which is likely the Almighty's version of magic. The only issue is this would mean the Highstorms haven't been happening all along, but I can't tell if they exist in few flashbacks we see.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2010 05:52

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

arioch posted:

Yeah, that whole post went off on a tangent I didn't even mean for, but it was late or whatever.

My point was originally going to be something like, Sanderson's "powers of the divine" in his books seem to have the distinction of both being infinite and being able to be completely drawn in to individuals or objects. Examples being, Preservation covered the entire world in mist yet Vin was able to embody the whole, the better part of Ruin was imprisoned within Atium encased in a part of Preservation, Sazed was able to draw both powers within him, etc. The powers are able to come and go (see Elantris) and be awarded and taken away (Elantris, Lord Ruler, hemalurgy, etc.). The powers that are "divine" in his universe are neither innate to the person nor indivisible.

edit: also, there's gotta be a reason that the two people we've seen so far with the Stormlight-drawing powers don't have shardplate yet. Maybe Shallan will also get a set at some point, who knows?

Are we sure all the orders had Shard Plate? The flashback only showed two (I think). Its possible the orders that did Soulcasting never had plate/blades, as their abilities are less combat oriented.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2010 06:52

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Mahlertov Cocktail posted:

Well, that's a little strong, I think. The serious dialogue isn't bad, it's just when he has characters who are supposed to be funny but, well, aren't. It reminds me of Studio 60, where everyone said what comic geniuses the in-show showrunners are, but whenever we see a sketch or something they wrote it's really lame.

I never got the feeling Wit was supposed to really be funny. He's just supposed to be blunt, and mostly annoying to everyone else because he can be. The joke is on everyone else, not in what he says.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2011 04:09

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

A Nice Boy posted:

I think the only thing about the book that I don't really buy is the fall of Elantris in the first place, and why it happened. I mean, if the Elantrians learned how to tap into the Dor in the first place by modelling it after the lay of the land/the city/etc, why didn't it occur to a SINGLE one of them that "hey, that new giant rift in the ground might effects our Aons!" I don't know...Seemed a bit odd, like Elantris was a city full of superpowerful morons.

Also, why the hell does everyone love Hoid so much? I kept waiting for him to do something awesome, based on posts in this thread, but el zilcho.

Somewhere (either in the book or on his website somewhere) its mentioned that the city was already there when people came to that part of the continent. And that people didn't start turning into Elantrans until after they found the city.

Those who probably could figure out how to fix the problem probably never had a chance. If I recall right, once the earthquake hit and the Elantrans lost their power, it didn't take long for things to go bad.

And I think Hoid was originally just a cute thing that kept popping up, and it just caught on like a meme. He's supposed to be getting a bigger role in the Stormlight Archive though, so maybe he can be awesome there.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2011 04:35

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

veekie posted:

Something I wondered about. The notes in the Way of Kings illustrations(like say, the sketch of the fabrial), any idea what they say? Some of them are written in english but others are basically soundwave graphs.

Someone managed to translate them. There used to be pictures with a more detailed overlay, but they seem to have vanished. The text is available here though: http://coppermind.17thshard.com/wiki/Navani%27s_Notebook

# ¿ Sep 23, 2011 21:37

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

veekie posted:

Thats pretty nifty. Wish I could see the overlay but it just takes a bit of cross referencing with the book illustrations to work out what goes where I suppose.

After a little more searching, I found it. The actual images are on yet another wiki http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Alethi_Script

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 17:41

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

I found another interview about Alloy of Law, this one includes an explanation about compounding which makes the whole thing make more sense.
http://www.openthefridge.net/blog/2011/11/18/interview-author-brandon-sanderson.html

# ¿ Nov 20, 2011 05:12

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Good news! A new Sanderson book is coming out in December 2012. It sounds pretty interesting. Its called The Emperor's Soul

Its supposed to be half the length of Alloy of Law, and set in the Cosmere somewhere.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2012 00:58

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Above Our Own posted:

I think that's just you defending the author by saying he made Wit intentionally unfunny instead of trying to make him clever and failing completely. I don't buy that he meant to do it because all the other "clever" characters are the exact same way.

I distinctly got the impression Wit was there to annoy all the nobles. He's fairly nice and much less annoying to the main characters who are less snobbish than the rest of the nobles. And remember the rule that anyone can kill the King's Wit, they just have to give up their title (or something similar) - you wouldn't have that rule if the Wit was there to be truly amusing rather than intentionally annoying to everyone.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2012 23:43

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

MildShow posted:

So if Book 2 is about Shallan, 3 is about Szeth, and 5 is about Dalinar, then who is Book 4 about?

My bet is Talenel. It would give us a lot of backstory for what happened in the prologue of Way of Kings.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 22:20

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Tunicate posted:

EDIT: I just spammed half the thread in PMs. I hope this is acceptable - I heard apparently they look down on people begging publicly or something.

If you're still handing this out, I'd love to get it.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 00:24

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

McGrady posted:

I checked out the google preview because I thought it was just the TOR chapters and scrolled to the end to see if I missed anything and of course the ONE line I read was a mega-spoiler from like page 450.

I didn't realize it would be random pages from the book!!

It also has Chapter 7 and I can see why they omitted it from the preview chapters.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2014 21:51

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

There's a Sanderson quote where someone asks about Sazed being unbalanced due to a bit of Preservation being in all the humans and the response was something like "Yes, I wonder what he's doing with that extra power...". So he's likely invested a bit of Ruin into something to keep himself more balanced.

And in looking for that quote I found another interesting one, apparently if Sazed were to die, he wouldn't drop two Shards, but just a single Harmony shard. Its interesting that they combine so easily then.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2015 22:02

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

senae posted:

Yeah, I expect that'll come up in the next book.

As to Davids powers, I need to re-read the last few chapters, but it seemed to me that he was being given something related to the bridge under the water, not the water itself. Controlling steel, maybe? There's no reason to think the power is related to the fear, just the weakness

I feel like its probably that his power is the ability to mimic the powers of other Epic's for a little while after being around them/touching them. The part where he 'explodes' and thinks that Prof's healing power saved him reads more like he used Oblivion's auto-teleport to save him. Someone obsessed with Epic's getting the power of Epic's he's around feels 'thematically appropriate' and lets him used Prof's powers when Epic's can't gift their powers to other Epic's

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 22:05

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

apophenium posted:

Sanderson is never content to let the reader assume that spren are around. He's gotta mention it every drat time.

How are you going to assume spren are around? You, the reader, have no real idea what does and does not cause a spren to appear. That's kind of one of the mysteries of the world that slowly makes more sense as the series progresses - what spren are and what can cause them to appear. He has to tell the reader they're around.

I actually liked being reminded. Things like 'fear spren' are interesting because it makes it hard, if not impossible, to hide how if you're afraid of something. Or any other sort of emotional spren. It changes social dynamics a bit, being able to read people that well in certain situations.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 02:21

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

BraveJoe posted:

Question theory - will the Nightwatcher and all involved with (him/her?), be explained in Oathbringer - i haven't read any of the released chapters yet. but so far we have next to nothing on the Nightwatcher.

Well this is the book where we get flashbacks from Dalinar's life. It feels likely that we'll get to see him going to the Nightwatcher because it's a relatively easy place to have a main character go see her without trying to make up a reason to have someone go while they're trying to deal with an oncoming war. And hopefully let us learn what his boon and curse are.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2017 00:48

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

OAquinas posted:

So uh, spoiler: eshonai survived the fall. I know, shocking twist.

There are other quotes I'm too lazy to find where Sanderson states that just because it's someones flashback book doesn't mean they're alive in that book. He's perfectly willing to show flashbacks for a dead character.

I mean I agree with you, she probably survived that fall but it's no guarantee just because she's going to get a book.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2017 01:45

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Evil Fluffy posted:

It also affects her too, which is why every time she used it she kept having her hand/arm wrapped up. Everyone around her thinks it's just an odd shardblade when it's probably more like a much less powerful/dangerous Nightblood. Draining color and not just vaporizing people, but also not draining the wielder as fast as Nightblood does too.

I'm fairly sure she's just Awakening her cloak like Vasher used to do in Warbreaker.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2017 06:13

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

blue squares posted:

Looked through my old posts and found the above quote. Does anyone else feel the same? I wanted to finish Oathbringer and see what happens but it felt like such a chore

Based on those two quotes maybe Stormlight isn't for you? While I thought the book was not as good as WoR it was still a good book for me. WoR was all about uniting our characters and that felt great, Oathbringer separates people a bit more, which while expected given the scope of the conflict, feels like a step back. And the pacing didn't feel off as much as the individual Parts felt disjoint. Each Part has its own goal and setting and it almost makes this feel like several smaller books thrown together - which I know is how he wrote it but I don't think he quite put it together in a way that made it feel like one novel. Nothing ever felt like a boring slog to read, it just sometimes I'd think "hey we haven't heard about X in a while, whatever happened to that?" and then it just never appears again. I think that's a bigger issue and I hope he manages to weave the plot together better for book 4.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2017 01:32

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Charlz Guybon posted:

Wyndle says that Lift has been in contact with his mother, who I assume is Cultivation.

That's probably the Nightwatcher like Syl calls the Stormfather her father.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2018 01:02

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

And the newsletter has a short story called Sylphrena's Interlude. I believe you can only get it via the newsletter. I'm intrigued by the implication that Kaladin is back to being a surgeon

# ¿ Jul 7, 2020 18:20

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Sab669 posted:

Sanderson posted this "spoiler-filled Q&A and reading from Rhythm of War for San Diego Comic-Con";

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lRDdxUy5iE

He says they've already started to release chapters weekly in the first minute or so, but I can't find that anywhere on his site or on Tor.com? I know they emailed out Chapter 1 if you sign up for the newsletter, but...?

https://twitter.com/BrandSanderson/status/1286437360696098818

Looks like he pushed up releasing things to match the video. Huzzah!

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 00:12

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

Anshu posted:

It does, but Moash gave up his Shardblade early in Oathbringer when the Fused attacked Graves' caravan, after which his eyes returned to their normal shade, and it's unclear what effect Honorblades (one of which he currently possesses) have on the eye color of the bearer.

On the topic of "what color are his eyes really?", here's what Moash's page on The Coppermind has to say:

In WoK the first Szeth interlude said that summoning his blade would make his eyes go "pale sapphire".

Yeroc2 fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Aug 26, 2020

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 23:21

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

From the facebook post:

quote:

Backers should get their ebook copy, DRM free, in multiple formats very soon. Once we confirm they have it, we'll put it up on the Ebook websites for sale, so you can grab a copy if you didn't do the kickstarter. We anticipate doing this before Rhythm of War comes out.

Hopefully it won't be too long after the backers get it.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2020 22:32

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

eszett engma posted:

Dawnshard headcanon: Chiri-Chiri bonded a member of some mandra rancher's herd; Chiri-Chiri is a cattle rustler.

Now that you mention that I just realized the mandra's 'dropping' that the Honorspren complained about in Oathbringer is one of the mandra's bonding with some sort of greatshell to allow them to grow big.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2020 22:26

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

eke out posted:

Re: Heightening -- there's a WOB on reddit now basically saying this is just a function of having that much investiture, or something along those lines, it's not technically her getting the same kind of magic. Might have something to do with how, like Breaths, being a Dawnshard is a part of you indefinitely, rather than a temporary thing you hold while you consume stormlight or burn metal.

And yeah, I think it makes how the initial Oathpact and Heralds were created a LOT more understandable. We may not know exactly what Dawnshard he used, but that + Honor's first Bondsmith probably could do things like make people immortal. Similarly, it makes a lot more sense how whatever he did was so powerful it bound Odium there too.

my guess about other Dawnshards is that they're more "primal" and less specific than things like "Passion" -- to rip off one of the people on 17th shard, something like CREATE/DESTROY or UNITE/DIVIDE and CHANGE/REMAIN. but seems like for now, all we can clearly say is that Rysn's Change exists (and would likely explain Ruin and Cultivation, plus potentially others like Endowment or Ambition or Autonomy, but I'm less sure about those) and that there's one that's Preservation or Stasis-oriented that's left Hoid some combination of immortal, almostly totally unkillable, and unable-to-kill.

also i have no idea how Dominion and Devotion would fit into this. it'd all be a lot easier if we actually knew what the remaining Shards were lol

Continuing Dawnshard spoiler:

All the Dawnshards are commands, so people are theorizing the "UNITE" Dalinar keeps hearing is another Dawnshard. In my head you can put Dominion and Devotion under UNITE, and possibly also Honor. For CHANGE it's Cultivation, Ruin, and Endowment. I feel like Autonomy, Ambition, and Preservation are another grouping but I don't know what that command would be, maybe SURVIVE or something similar. Which puts Odium on his own and might be something like FEEL?

The UNITE Dawnshard could also be how Odium was trapped. He has to stay united with Honor and Cultivation.

I look forward to learning a new shard intent and watching all the discussion on which Dawnshard they're grouped under.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2020 01:56

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 17:23

Yeroc2: Aug 13, 2003; "The glow is the combination of all your past lives, focusing their energy through your body."; Grimey Drawer

CapnAndy posted:

Don't forget that Roshar years are 500 days long. The Earth equivalent of those ages are 18 and 22.

But the days are shorter. According to the Coppermind wiki, each year is only 10% longer than a normal year. So everyone is a little bit older than expected, but not as much as 500 days makes it seem.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2023 00:47

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