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Hello readers of insignificant topics such as this one! I'm Miri, but as you can see I am currently using the name Linaeres as it's better to keep your personal information private obviously. Alternatively it could point to me being quite a fraudulent character, but that's going off topic isn't it. I found my way to this amalgamation of cosmere and Brandon Sanderson related stuffs through my interaction with my best budd Iredomi(name drop) who is always lurking around somewhere on the 17th Shard reading threads etc. I've read a majority of Brandon Sanderson's stuff and nearly all of his available cosmere books, this list excludes Dragonsteel - which I would like to note I'm super excited about. I have started Alcatraz and I am keen for Sanderson's upcoming works, especially Stormlight Archive 2 as The Way of Kings was one of those books you just can't put down lightly, it does weigh quite a bit. So yeah, if you manage to read this tell me the current book you're reading or the video game or computer game you're playing I'd be interested to know, I'm playing Bioshock Infinite and reading Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians

I just realized that the description of the Trill is that it "sings". We also know that the Parshendi sings when in battle. There seems to be a Connection here. Thrill Parshendi Spoiler for Words of Radiance: It is usually accepted that the Parshendi is heavily influenced by Odium. (at least sometimes) It has also been suggested that the Thrill is coming from odium because of its destructiveness and Dalinars growing aversion to it. So if the Parshendi is influenced by Odium via forms and songs, then it's probably possible for Odium to influence persons affected by the thrill. And if Odium is not involved, then is there probably still a connection between them. What do you think?

More realistically, though, i honestly think it has to do with the subject and focus of the site more than anything. Afterall, it's not terribly surprising that a writer for adult fantasy (not like erotic-style, but like not teenage twilighty stuff. Like thick, 1,000 page epic fantasy books) has more well-read fans who are capable of coordinating themselves like adults. Also probably has to do with community size as well. We aren't exactly huge here, which helps control the atmosphere a bit better. If there was thousands of visitors and posters every day, i'm sure we might have a bit more issues.

There might not be an Antarctica but there is an antarctic which in most people's minds are synonymous with each other. We know Scadrial isn't Earth, that is immanently obvious. King of Nowhere was likely using a metaphor relate-able to us as Earthlings. As for the question at hand, if I remember correctly the Final Empire was not at the True North Pole but the Magnetic North Pole (compasses pointed towards Luthadel). I think it was at a more temperate latitude (but on the northern end of that range) since the northern dominances were colder than the southern ones. If it was at the TNP then the central dominances would be colder than the outer dominances instead. Also the day/night cycle wasn't as wonky as it would have been at the TNP. When Sazed fixed the world I would expect he nudged them into the more central temperate latitudes. I don't remember any references to compasses in Alloy but I think Sazed would probably have shifted the MNP closer to the TNP as well. The Southern Peoples would likely by the inverse of the above (southern instead of northern, and vice versa)

So I live in New Zealand and we found a USA first edition hardcover copy of The Well of Ascension at a secondhand bookshop. We then proceeded to buy the copy.

My opinion is that Nalthian's are given an extra something by Endowment, but aren't any superior to normal humans, aside from the fact that they can awaken. Much in this way the Nalthians just haven't developed their immune systems or life sense because they are dependent upon their breaths to provide these things for them, so Drabs would be slightly inferior to your average human just because their body was dependent upon the breath they were born with. Drabs may or may not develop a stronger immune system if they don't have a breath for long enough, but I'm not sure. Now if an earth human could theoretically travel to Nalthis, they wouldn't be more irritable or less immune to disease than the Nalthians, but wouldn't have any Breath. Fyi this is my first post.

First of all, I don't think "deus ex machina" is really the right term here. Even if Brandon did institute the rule for purely convenient reasons or, beyond that, it somehow violates Realmatics, that doesn't really qualify as a deus ex machina. At worst, it's a contrivance. Second, the "randomness" could come down to a variety of factors. It may well be a case of predictable refraction, but it all amounts to the same thing when you're trying to shoot someone with a gun, so "random" will cover it so far as Wax's thought processes go. The "refraction" might also depend on a number of highly changeable factors: the "compression factor" of the bubble, the speed of the bullet, some cosmic flux going on in the background, etc. In the end, the deflection probably is law-like, but not predictable in any useful sense.

This was my bookcase before I moved, after the move those books are now all in boxes...

Hello my fellow Sharders. Below is a list of frequently asked questions and their answers. Spoiler-wise, there is one post for every major Cosmere series, with each post following the normal spoiler rules (spoiler tags for referencing another series, embargo period for new releases) and the Cosmere section will be essentially a free for all except for the aforementioned embargo period. This post simply serves as an index. Index: -Cosmere -Mistborn -Stormlight -Warbreaker -Sel (Elantris and The Emperor's Soul) We are always looking for contributions, though I would prefer that you post on the individual submission threads (Cosmere, Misborn, Stormlight, Warbreaker, Sel) rather than here, just so that everything can stay neat. For a more comprehensive and in-depth look at all things Brandon, why not head over to the Coppermind wiki? Other resources include: Cosmere 101, Theoryland Database

In the "Overview Box" in the wiki article for Hoid it lists Feruchemy as one of his abilities, yet this is absent from the main abilities section. As I'm not yet an expert on Hoid, I didn't know if the box listing was the error... I'd not heard anything about Hoid having Feruchemy elsewhere, but I also haven't read all the Cosmere books yet.

It's that kinda time when I think of some wacky idea for the boards. All you need to do is take a picture of your books, whether they be on shelves, in piles, or propping open windows. As long as they're not on fire, take pictures of them and share with us your collection so we may wallow in jealousy at your awesome tomes. And yes, I will find time to take pictures of my own meagre shelves, if only I had a camera.

This might not deserve it's own thread butttt, Brandon did also confirm at the signing that we would find out where shardblades come from in book 2. Edit: Also just realized which forum I posted this in, not sure how to move it to the Stormlight section.

After re-reading The Way of Kings again, making likely a dozen times now, something leaped straight out of the pages and slapped me across the face that I had never considered before, and judging from a cursory search has not been brought up yet. (If I'm wrong and it has, which I hope I am not, feel free to tell me.) It was an epiphany, of sorts. So let me lay it out. It's been confirmed that there are 3 types of Shardblades, yes? Dawnshards, the 10 blades of the Heralds, Honorblades of the Knights Radiant, and Shardblades (which Syl hates and is evidence enough that they aren't good, whether or not they are of Odiuum or not.) Here is a description of Oathbringer, Dalinar's Shardblade : "Oathbringer—formed in his hand, coalescing from mist, appearing as the tenth beat of his heart thudded in his chest. Six feet long from tip to hilt, the Blade would have been unwieldy in the hands of any man not wearing Shardplate. To Dalinar, it felt perfect. He’d carried Oathbringer since his youth, Bonding to it when he was twenty Weepings old. It was long and slightly curved, a handspan wide, with wavelike serrations near the hilt. It curved at the tip like a fisherman’s hook, and was wet with cold dew." And here is one of Elhokar's blade : "Elhokar bellowed, his Shardblade—Sunraiser—springing from mist into his hand. It was long and thin with a large crossguard, and was etched up the sides with the ten fundamental glyphs." Here's where the epiphany comes in. Check this out : "an enormous Shardblade six feet long with a design along the blade like burning flames, a weapon of silvery metal that gleamed and almost seemed to glow. A weapon designed to slay dark gods, a larger counterpart to the one Szeth carried." That is the description of Gavilar's blade, which is clearly not the same as Elhokar's blade. It is also described entirely different from any other Shardblade in the book -- with the exception of the blades carried by the Knights Radiant in Dalinar's vision. It is repeatedly stated that Gavilar began to change towards the end of his life, taking lessons from the Way of Kings and generally being far more honorable than he was normally. His last words for Dalinar perhaps are a clue as well. While Shardplate can be repainted, and Elhokar could indeed possess Gavilar's suit, there is a missing shardblade here -- Gavilar's. Here is where I may be stretching it. I am confident that Gavilar's shardblade was an Honorblade, or becoming one at least (much as Honorblades lost their glow and became Shardblades in Dalinar's vision), however this next bit requires a leap. Gavilar's blade is never mentioned again. It is tradition that, if defeated, the opponent has claim over the defeated's shards. Perhaps, upon finding Gavilar's body, they assumed that the assassin took Gavilar's blade. Szeth, however, did not. Is it not so that Dawnshards vanish upon the death of their wielder? (Hence Taln being alive at the end of WoK, since his blade remains.) Is it possible that Gavilar possessed a Dawnshard? Perhaps. Did he at least possess an Honorblade? Absolutely. Anyway! Let me know what you think!

Definitely some interesting ideas to note. I'm particularly interested in their infused gems and why they form a chrysalis. Also, both the Parshendi and the Reshi view Greatshells as gods. As for their size, that is made possible by two things: 1) that Roshar's gravity is about .7 of Earth's (which is also what makes Dalinar's huge bridges possible) and 2) the symbiotic relationship with spren (which Brandon explains in the quote Windrunner provided) In an interview Brandon said: Also: I though that the smoke was confirmed to be spren. I'll have to see if I can dig up a quote. I'm fairly certain those are larkin, which are smaller than a person's arm (if I understood correctly). You find out a little bit about them in the interlude for Rysn in WoR that Sanderson posted as videos of him writing on Youtube. Anyway, as a final point, I always assumed that the physical manifestation of Honor was the Stormlight, just how the physical manifestation of Ati is Atium and Leras is Lerasium. Atium was a means of release of Ruin, via the Pits of Hathsin. It seems to be very similar: a way to siphon off some of the power (like an outlet as I mentioned) that gives some sort of magical ability to those who can harness it. Edit: Forgot we were in Cosmere boards and had too many spoiler tags.

So would copperclouds shield against an awakener's lifesense, then?

Actually, it's in the Abilities section, with a citation That's the only other time Feruchemy is listed in the article, but it is totally cited!

sazed surely moved all the storage caches so they would be in the same place. he also created the elendel basin, and he removed the ashmounts. We don't know how radical are the transformations he did otherwise. But we can be sure he moved the people in the southern continet too, otherwise they would have found themselves suddenly in the middle of antartica and would all have died. I wonder why he choose to keep the popolations separated.

It's from an interview with Brandon, I'm guessing it isn't in more detail because we don't really know what he does with it, how he got it, etc.

I don't know if it's been confirmed exactly where they are now in relation to poles/equator, but they are still referred to as the northern and southern continents. So whilst Elendel is almost certainly still north of the equator, it needn't be as near the pole as before. Keep in mind that at the end of HoA Sazed did move the land so that everyone exiting the storage caches were close to each other, so the landscape must have been reshaped drastically.

It's all the spiking, it keeps the rest of them in line

You need to Awaken the spikes as well, with a command of 'Nyan!'.

Here's a bit of history about J.R.R. Tolkein via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien. The author was a visionary! To this day, I remain amazed that he wrote just what he did at the time in which he did. However, there was this. First and foremost, I'm a reader. Never, will I ever, post a reply if I've not read (or, in some cases, watched) an issue's specifics. Therefore, I've naught left to say this night.

Can I just say that I love Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs-boson_particle Also, I remain intrigued with not just the science, but also in the implications of it. Just how that might translate in science fiction, we may already know! Imagine the possibilities! "One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated collision between two protons. It decays almost immediately into two jets of hadrons and two electrons, visible as lines." There's more on-site to be read, of course. I'm not much of a theorist with regard to that which I read, but I love it when facts fit with that which I've read in fantasy, science and historical fiction (i.e.: my main three genres) nonetheless. Most often, I've not sought the truth to prove the possibility of the fantasy; I've just taken the fantastical as factual to the novel/series/epic and left it at that. However, the writing of Brandon Sanderson, his systems of magic, the connection between worlds in which he's written, the as-yet-to-be-determined unknowns have me contemplating subjects I never before did. In all honesty, I welcome this wholeheartedly! I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brandon's are the systems of magic that surpass all of which I've read before! So, maybe I didn't reply exactly to the discussion above, but I'm pleased to have stated that which I did ... just because it's me.

My undesirable specialty is doing everything slowly. My "superhero" name would probably be "The Snail" or "The Tortoise" or something. My detailed description of this "specialty" is lengthy enough that I got a bit embarrassed by it, so I'll just put it in a Spoilers tab.

While I very much appreciate the notion and like the idea, I have far too many bookcases to take pics of and post here!

I totally agree with you, Shaidar, that Brandon definitely develops the very best systems of magic in fantasy fiction. They're diverse, yet connected; elemental, yet literal; symbolic, yet actualized ... and more. I hope you'll share some of your own writing with us and welcome!

When you use a Hemalurgic spike, you rip a part of the spiritweb out of the victim. Since applying the hemalurgic spike essentially "staples" the stolen spiritweb onto your own, I personally don't really see a syringe taking a bit of blood working for hemalurgy.

They were the "Piercings of the Hero".

^Yeah, copper is weird. In fact, based on its weirdness, I hereby posit that talk of "clouds" is, in fact, highly misleading for how copper actually works. Given that we know that copper can absorb/negate the Investiture of Rioters/Soothers aiming at the Smoker, as well potentially shield the emotions of others, what if copper actually actively absorbs Investiture, rather than masking it? So the Investiture aimed at a Smoker is absorbed because it's right in the middle of the cloud and/or he automatically defends himself with his absorbtion-powers, while the "ripples" that Seekers detect are actually comprised of energy themselves, energy which the Smoker can take in and counteract with his own copper-fueled energy, to an extent. So a skilled Smoker would be able to consciously extend the scope of his absorbtion to include Rioting/Soothing directed at others. This seems to solve a bit of weirdness, since Copper is supposed to be both internal and pulling, yet doesn't seem to do either when you think of a Smoker as actually establishing some miasma of negation, rather than the Smoker's range simply being a measure of how far out he's reaching to absorb stuff. "Piercing" a coppercloud, then, is simply a matter of reading whatever left-overs the Smoker isn't strong enough to eliminate. This claim in particular could decide my ad hoc theory, since we have some stuff from the books to evaluate it on. I don't have my copies handy, but did Vin mention Kelsier's pulses being abnormally weak when they tested her cloud-piercing?

I'm surprised by my own answer, given that I adore Mistborn and Stormlight Archives, but my favourite character in the Cosmere (so far) has got to be Lightsong. Almost every line of dialogue he utters is pure gold, which makes him a joy to read, but also his character arc is wonderfully executed, and genuinely moving. *edited for spelling error*

I'm going to doubt you on both counts here, sorry. First of all, I don't think that Vin was detecting the Lerasium, because that Lerasium was sitting literally right next to a larger, more active, and more accessible version of itself. Recall that Seekers detect "a ripple of sound in the fabric of creation itself—the power of creation being used, creating a drum beat to those attuned to it." Also recall that Lerasium is essentially the same stuff as in the Well, only solid and with a lot less power, what with it's inability to move planets. Beyond that, it was inactive at the time. As far as just being able to detect inactive Lerasium/Atium: maybe. A small maybe. Those two metals are unique in that they have power in and of themselves, instead of simply being the "form" that keys for Allomantic power like all the normal metals. That power is usually pretty firmly locked down, though, so I don't think that they'd cause much discernible "rippling." Vin, super-seeker extraordinaire could barely detect the Well, which was orders of magnitude more powerful than a few beads of god metals. Perhaps she could have detected the Atium cache, given its size, though. For normal metals, I'm just going to give a flat no. Iron, pewter, etc. work only insofar as they key for specific Allomantic powers: they do not have any power by themselves. So unless someone is burning them, you're not going to get anything.

Ha ha, I do this all the time! Then I feel dumb, that I don't even know what the basic sayings are supposed to be. As an English major, this is particularly problematic. I also have something similar to this. I tend to talk too loud, especially when I talk with my mom for an extended period of time. I can't tell at all, but usually ten minutes into a conversation my mom gets really upset with me and says, "You don't need to yell! Keep your voice down!" The problem is, it's not like I'm good at projecting my voice. It just progressively gets louder. I also have no idea what to do with my hands in a form situation. Presentations, job interviews, talking with the CEO... it's like I'm suddenly unable to control them in a way that's acceptable. So instead, I wind up picking at my nails without noticing, or I grip my hands tightly in my lap or on the table top, which just looks odd itself.

I don't think I ship me and Syl. I told you guys, she's non-corporeal and immortal, this can never work

Well, you see, when a mommy and a daddy shardblade love each other very much...

Heh, no problem. It's right here. Pretty great stuff in there. This is the second one, with the stormform. You've heard the first one, right? If not, it's here. Enjoy, it's incredible!

For sometime now, I was looking something that link those dates with the events and the date and this just what I was looking for With the above in mind, it has to be before ~700 years before the Hierocracy and 3300 after the "Last" Desolation. Only that comes to mind is 'The Day of Recreance'. Its possible.

Maybe they started number the years after the so-called "Last Desolation"? Not counting the outlying scenes (prologues, flashbacks etc.) I'd say that only 2 or so months pass during the course of the book. Dalinar only goes through 4 visions that we actually see (there were more that we didn't see, but not between the ones we do see), which happen every Highstorm, which happen roughly once a week (5 days, 10 weeks to a month). There is a date given for the map Navani drew of the Tower battle, which is "circa 1173". The dates of the epigraphs cover a period a little over two years. (1138 days total, from the 271st day of 1171 to the 409th day of 1173, there are 500 days to a year) I don't think we know an exact date for when anything happens, but we could pretend that the one epigraph out of chronological order is happening on the same day as the events it describes. That would make it more or less the last day of the book from Kaladin's and Dalinar's perspectives.

This is my take on what has been said: I think that every human (and very likely every sapient creature) in the Cosmere has something "extra" (possibly divine) which makes them a self-aware agent. I suspect that this something extra is spiritual. It is also this "something extra" which gives them access to their respective magics, at least potentially. (See also, sDNA.) Thus people throughout the Cosmere access their magics from their respective Shards by doing something in accordance with their Shard's purpose. This then makes the case of Breath seem logical, as follows. People on Nalthis have the sDNA to endow others and things with some of their "something extra." It just follows naturally from the Shard that created or influenced them. This would then make a drab slightly less than baseline human. This then thematically fits in with the notion of the sacrifice that endowment implies, as others here have noted. It definitely makes Breaths a more balanced system in Cosmere terms, as well.

I think I would have to say my least favourite would be Iadon, just because he seemed like the most repellent character in the books. Somewhere close to being a bad guy but not really a worthy anbtogonist just really pathetic and sadistic to go with it. I'm not sure he was a badly written character but I just really don't like the guy. And to top it off he kills himself and doesn't even face his punishment. So yeah. There are my two cents thrown into an old unused well.

I like the overall theory provided here, it sounds plausible and feels well thought over. I like the idea of the Parshendi being splinters of honor which gives them the seemingly unnatural powers - ie. the skin-grown armor and heightened physical ability. A question I have links to the honorspren and how they are connected to honor, supposedly being splinters of honor itself. So if Sylphrena is an honorspren, a splinter of honor... does that make the Parshendi a kind of spren too? Assuming we're running with the theory of honorspren being splinters of honor of course.

What are you talking about? There is no Antartica in Scadrial. Scadrial isn't Earth.