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You guys make it seem like Hemalurgy is a bad thing. You get magical powers! How awesome. Sure there's a price, but hey, that guy had it coming. Hemalurgy is the solution to all problems. A person cuts you off in driving? Well he will never make that mistake again when you cut into him with a Hemalurgic spike. Problem solved. Police coming after you because of your spiking rampages? Good thing you have magical abilities to stop them. Unlimited power, for the low, low cost of some metal of the correct alloys! Try Hemalurgy today! (17th Shard is not responsible for your actions. We just give you the spikes. What you do with them is your business. We respect privacy! Also, we legally don't want to know what you do with them.)

I wrote 1,000 words today…. ….with the wifi on. Seriously, the last time I did that, the wifi was out. Super proud of myself for that.

Hahaha. I think @Mestiv and @Chaos will either laugh or cringe at this (or possibly both):

Found a bunch more cool birbs on Saturday! (Yes, I misspelled that intentionally.) I took 275 photos and kept more than 50 of them, but it's late, so here are just a few of the very best pictures from my trip. Black-necked Stilt (aptly named; you'll see why): Clark's Grebe (the larger bird on the right): Swainson's Hawk (It was screaming at me in this picture): Western Meadowlark: I had never seen a Swainson's Hawk or a Clark's Grebe until today, so I'm thrilled that I got identifiable photos of them both.

I must say I for one don't see websites that ask me to agree to their use of cookies the same way anymore.

I see your strange book and raise you

Homemade soonie pup!

I think I'll get to read this book before I get to read another Rothfuss book.

Kill me now. Agfjskfrucbosbrhxgwh

What @Jondesu said - the Israelis were and are God's chosen people. There have been pushes through history by Christians to say that the Jews have been replaced in Gods plan by the Christians - but that is an extremely divisive topic, one Christians still argue about. I fall firmly into the camp of believing that God still has a specific plan and place for Israel (and, as Jondesu said, you guys are either figuratively or literally key to the events in the Revelation, the events of the end times whenever those may be). While I don't support all the actions of the state of Israel, I absolutely support the existence of the state of Israel. What you'll find through history is that a lot of the anti-Jewish theology was based off of either Roman politics or racism, usually a mixture of both. It has no place in scripture, for remember! Our New Testament was also written almost entirely by Jews! It is an incredibly Jewish book! Christianity is a religion "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek". While Jesus (Yeshua) predicted the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, he didn't call for it. He merely anticipated it. On another topic, Christ anticipated the destruction of His temple, and that he would raise it up again in 3 days. And so it is that Jesus the Christ is risen, on this third day from the Passover! Happy pascha/Easter to all my Christian friends here, and to all others as well, for Christ came for the whole world, he died for the whole world and is risen for the sake of all of us.

Re ages, we also have characters who are a spread of ages for people to identify with. We have what, 13, 16, 19, 25, 35, 50ish, female and male, scholars, warriors, spunky street children, wise people, irrational people........there's someone for everyone to identify with.

Hey everyone! Yesterday I did some various updates. Let's talk about what happened, what's new, and what's coming up later this year. The first thing which I did was update some server architecture, which means things should perform better. Then, I also upped server resources so that our server so that it is now a beast. We had some bizarre crashes the past few months and this should fix it. In addition to that, I upped our software version for 17S. That update fixed a lot of bugs and should increase performance, too. But it also came out with some features! Activity Stream Menu In the original big update last summer, Activity Streams were a thing, but they didn't perform particularly well. Additionally, since I heavily modded the main navigation bar, I didn't know how to replicate the menu that the default skin used to generate Activity Streams. That meant I essentially gimped some functionality for a while, and made this more like "View Unread Content" on the prior version. In this version, though, Activity Streams perform much better than before, and I got the menu properly replicated, so here they are, at long last. So what are Activity Streams? It's a way to view activity on the site in a totally customizable way. Maybe you want to view Unread Content, but you only want to view things in the topics you follow. Or, maybe you want to view new content but you just want to see stuff in various Book Discussion boards--perhaps you don't care about the RP content, or, alternatively, maybe you really care about RP content and only want to see that. Activity Streams allow you to make custom feeds of basically whatever you want. You can look at all content of a type (topics or gallery images, etc.), sort by particular forum, sort content by individual member, and you can sort what date range you want for every stream. How do you access Streams? On desktop, click the newspaper icon next to the Search bar to see the Streams menu. (On mobile, the stream menu is in the sidebar.) There are a number of default streams: All Unread Content Content I Started Content I Follow Content I Posted In (I can create more default streams, if you find something useful. For example, I could make a "Members I Follow" stream, but I decided to cut that for now to make the menu smaller. Let me know what you'd like to see. Notably, I cannot create a stream that narrows Topics by a particular forum, but you can create a custom stream for that.) After the default streams, you will have all of your own streams, and by clicking the Create New Stream you have an abundance of options for things you'd like to do. Most options are self-explanatory. One thing I expect you'd like to do is to sort things by forum, so you only see something from a certain list of forums. To do this, select Content Type, and hit Topics, and you'll see a gear next to it. If you click that gear, you can click which forums you want to see in that stream. By going into each stream, you can rename it, make it your default stream, or delete it. Setting something as your default stream is primarily useful on mobile, when the newspaper icon takes you automatically to your default stream, rather than opening a menu. I'm really excited for you to have this customizability at last. Play around with it and let me know if you want any additional default streams. Leaderboard In this update, we restore a functionality we had in the old version of the site prior to 2016: a way to see who has the most reputation. But it's actually way more than that. There are now Reputation Leaderboards. (You can access this from the menu to the right of the Search bar, or the usual menu on mobile.) Every day, if you get top reputation, you'll get a trophy saying you "won" that day. This trophy is present on your profile, too!. On the Leaderboard page, there are three tabs, one for the current Leaderboard (and you can set who "won" in whatever date range you want), one for past daily winners, and one for Top Members. You can sort Top Members by not just Reputation, but by Post Count and more. It's awesome! Unfortunately, on Top Members, I can only display the top 100, but it's certainly much better than not having any way to see this. Maybe I'll figure out how to put these trophies on posts, but in the meantime, it's not only useful but a fun little game to see who got upvoted the most in a day. Other minor notable things There's a lot of minor fixes: Moving multiple PMs to different folders Can clear old data in the text editor Display name history is now on profiles (as it should be) The log out bug from multiple devices is (apparently) fixed Many bug fixes There were also some other things I did: I moved the Birthdays sidebar widget to the bottom. There is also now a widget for users online in the past 12 hours. I can set this to be whatever time frame you'd like. I did this because we had this on the old version of the site and thought you'd maybe like it back, but I worry it's too long. What do you guys think? Certain abilities that new accounts would need to manually enable are now automatically enabled for brand-new accounts. These include the ability to View Signatures, Enabling Status Updates, and having a Recent Profile Visitors block on your profile. Apparently these weren't enabled by default when you register, which is insane to me. Thankfully, that's resolved. What's next I have some other big goals for 17S. I'll be moving the Coppermind to its own device to further enhance server stability. That way if 17S is acting up, the Coppermind won't go down. This is not a significant extra expenditure, so don't worry. Though, speaking of expenses: ads are eventually coming, since we've spent a lot on hosting and software with nothing in return. We want to make ads very clean with nothing annoying. The first phase of this will be to include some Amazon affiliate links in natural places. I want to make it obvious when these are implemented, but hopefully you guys won't mind? My goal, always, is to make a clean interface for you all, so I think this will be a reasonable start... I also want to get HTTPS support on the whole site. There are some specifics on implementation that I need to sort out, though, so this will happen this summer, most likely. There will be a big feature update from our software, IPS, in moving from version 4.1 to 4.2. In 4.2, there are some very cool features that are pretty neat, and we'll be opening up some discussion talking about these features and we'd like your input. We might be changing some long time features, like the reputation system, so we'd love to hear your thoughts, when the time gets closer. Lastly, there are some minor things on my agenda that just haven't been a top priority in my limited time I have to spend this semester. (Being permanently overtime in my teaching assignment this semester is really fun! Not.) But these will happen: forum game subforum, Back to Top button, and more emoticons. Phew, I think that's it. What do you think of the new stuff?

Of course, Brandon is a Mormon, and in Mormon thought, the 3 most important things are the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement/Resurrection. Adonalsium is the powers of Creation. Let's refer to this as Adonalsium 1.0. There seems to be some suggestion that the shards of Adonalsium were more powerful after the Shattering. Perhaps that is just the result of more Investiture being available, because of his death. Let's compare this to the Fall and refer to this as Adonalsium 2.0. We know that cracks and damage to people's souls are ways that the magic can take hold. Perhaps this is also true of Adonalsium. Brandon has said that one of the themes of the Cosmere is Resurrection. (This seems like an appropriate Easter post!) If Adonalsium is resurrected, let's refer to this as Adonalsium 3.0. I propose that it will be more powerful than any of the either pre- or post- Shattering magics that we have seen.

*hugs* Would cute photos of Lil Bub also help?

This is the prologue for my novel, which I have entitled A Plague of Fear. Spoilered for length, please tell me what you think.

….and now I'm up to 1,050. I have tripled my usual daily word goal, and nearly finished the chapter.

I prefer the traditional, "Happy Zombie Jesus Day". You found them! Yay, you get some cookies. There were a few things I didn't notice in my testing, like the mobile menu and some issues with Tags, which I'm working to resolve.

Courtesy of my wife's steady hand Oh, and if you noticed one of the ten is now missing, I guess Nalan got to him/her in between photos. Or one of my kids.

Hey Kindred Spirits Hopefully you will enjoy my being here as much as I intend to To be in a place where I can describe the wonderful thing my stomach just did, reading that there are 10 (TEN!!!!) books planned for the Stormlight Archive! Maybe even to get my own writing going. I love you all already. Helina xxxxx

Announcement: Stink and I have decided to extend this cycle by 24 hours, on the grounds that today is Easter Sunday.

Christ is risen!

Um, I finished my prologue. Maybe I'll make it longer later.

Putting the semantic confusion about context vs connotation aside... This one? My husband is quoted in it! He's talking about the article (which hasn't gone through peer review yet - computer science is different that way) in which researchers describe an classifier they've made, using off-the-shelf algorithms, to identify criminals by their facial features. The authors, when contacted, seemed completely unaware that they might have found a pattern in criminals' facial features because they trained their classifier on real world data, which may be (read: is) based on judges' unconscious biases. In fact, the fact that their classifier did find a pattern in criminals' faces is evidence that judges have unconscious biases. This same research group did a study where they wrote a classifier to identify personality traits of "attractive Chinese females" based on their facial features. Here's a quote from the first version of their abstract: "our empirical evidences point to the possibility of teaching computer vision and machine learning algorithms, using example face images, to predict personality traits and behavioral predisposition." Their data sets were based on keyword searches on Baidu, and the data was sifted by male grad students. And... their data sets were labeled S+ and S-. So much is wrong here. Luckily, in the updated version of their paper, they recognize their classifier is about perceived, and not actual, personality traits: "Our empirical evidences point to the possibility of training machine learning algorithms, using example face images characterized by internet users, to predict perceptions of personality traits and demeanors." I hope my above examples demonstrate that bias in computer-generated classifiers is already a problem. And fixing it is actually not simple AT ALL. First of all, not all programmers are even trying to counteract this, even though any classifier trained on human-generated data is going to reflect our biases. But second of all, counteracting those biases is really hard. I'm not sure what you mean by reevaluating everything from scratch. Coming up with a clean data set isn't possible, so you have to counteract biases in the programs you have. But how are you going to evaluate your data? How are you going to define fairness? My husband really likes the work of Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard professor who's interested in this and just starting to work on it. He won the Genius Award, so you know he's smart. So, simple? No, unfortunately not.

*is now playing the Night Vale theme on mandolin* I'm now a bloodsworn fan of WTNV, there's no going back.

Actually, that would probably be a bad idea, mainly because it would tell the Inquisitor exactly who needs to be killed/converted. I suppose a seeker who wanted protection could PM me (as a self-proclaimed Lurcher) directly, if you trust me, but even that is risky in case I ever get converted. Really, if I were a seeker, here's what I would do: I would PM 3 random players and say something like: "This is a message that originated from the seeker. The following players have been cleared on the following nights (or whatever info you want to pass on)... forward this message, word for word, on to 3 other players, and instruct them to do likewise. Do not reveal who originally PMed this to you." That way you could pass info on to the village and make it very difficult for the Spiked to trace the message back to its source.

Well, he already was, but 'tis a good day to celebrate it! And to anyone who doesn't, I hope you have a great day too!

I'm thinking of branding the peep in the front center with a shash for "dangerous", LOL.

Any of us can die at any second so who knows if it will be completed? If it makes you feel any better the series will consist of two 5 book story arcs; so the first conclusion will come whithen less then 10 years or so.

Shards literally invest in worlds, and that investiture, colored by the intent of the Shards is bound to influence the people and therefore the the events of the stories. I don't think anyone is going to argue with that. I pretty much took it as a given. The level of influence is going to vary though, depending on the intent of the Shards involved. And at points human nature is going to overcome that intent and work opposite to it. For example, Nalthis, Breath is a currency, and while the magic system requires giving it away to use, people horde it for the benefits it offers, and the wealth it literally is. On Roshar, we see that for the majority of the alethi, honor is truly dead in all but name. This may be due to the the state of the Shard, but I think it is just the tendency of people towards greed and thirst for power. Dalinar is shown as being mocked and ostracized for truly having a sense of honor. Mistborn Era 1, the Lord Ruler held the world in stasis. He was far more of Preservation than Ruin. He was cruel and ruthless, but he held the world in a kind of stasis. Once he was gone, and Ruin was freed, without Preservation whole to fight against him, we see the only instance of a Shards direct involvement in story events so far, and that is literally the story of HoA. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "influence," but yeah. They do, for the most part in very subtle ways.

LG32: Night 7 - Celebration Dear __________ Salutations from a far away land! I hope you’ve all been having a grand time over in your land of murder and paradise, while I am just in the land of murder. It’s an alright place though, if you’re into that kind of stuff. So, I heard you’ve actually managed to get another Spiked! Not the inquisitor, but close enough right? They both have Spikes, and want to kill you all. That’s good enough for me, at least. And so it is time for a grand celebration! Your results have improved drastically over the past few days, and so a feast will be held. Poor Remart won’t show up of course, but I’m sure he would have loved to be there. Now thanks to my grand assistant, you will all notice that a grotesque amount of you all voted for Randuir, but I’m not really allowed to comment on that. Neither can I comment on anything really interesting, which is a downer. Anyway, my time is currently limited due to exterminating a population, so I will see you later! Cheers, The Court Fool Randuir was lynched! He was a Spiked Smoker! Vote Count Kipper (1): Figberts Randuir (9): Wilson, Hemalurgic Headshot, Yitzi2, Lopen, Arraenae, Hero, Elenion, OmeGaster, Randuir Night 7 has begun. You have 24 hours to send in all actions and/or wait to die. Player List 1. Arinian - Alrin 2. Hemalurgic Headshot - Quinn 3. Jondesu - Remart - Spiked Coppercloud 4. Elenion - Roger Elariel 5. Drake Marshall - Serray - Regular Crewmember 6. Darkness Ascendant - The Phantom Stranger 7. Randuir - Magister Agemtsar Spiked Smoker 8. Magestar - David Agemtsar 9. Herowannabe - Herwynbe 10. Yitzi2 - Garshin 11. Metacognition - Village Pewterarm 12. Silverblade5 - Ryth 13: Arraenae - Rhea 14. TheMightyLopen - Sidon 15. little wilson - Willie Klara 16. Droughtbringer - You - Regular Crewmember 17. Iamspartacus - Astrid the Bold 18. Ornstein - Winkleton - Regular Crewmember 19. Araris Valerian - Wol Village Rioter 20. Dalinar Kholin - Lebochevkowski - Village Coppercloud 21. OmeGaster - Rieyun 22. Kipper - Elenion - Pewterarm 23. Sart - Gaetan - Regular Crewmember 24. Bugsy - Jelwynd 25. Figberts - Quond 26. Mark IV - The Follower 27. Manukos - Reval 28. Aonar Faileas - Vana Izenry Village Coinshot] 29. Ecthelion - Amnar - Village Pewterarm 30. Amanuensis - Mykal - Village Smoker

Just speculation here, but we know that the Ghostbloods have world hoppers and are therefore somewhat Cosmere aware. What if the the three overlapping diamonds of their insignia represents the three realms?

Aaaaaactually, as you mentioned a second person. I'm not really sure I agree. ********** Biology nerd broke loose, proceed reading for an instant headache. ************** The only reason people, and I'm pretty sure all mammals require both a male and a female in the process, is the absence of a mitotic spindle (the thingy that makes your cells divide) in the egg cells - we need a sperm cell to provide it, then the division can start. Many animals that DO have the mitotic spindle in their egg cells are capable of parthenogenesis - a process, where a single egg cell, with nothing else needed first duplicates the genetic information (as eggs are haploid = contain only half compared to all other cells) and then proceeds to divide and form an embryo, and...well, you know how it goes this is actually pretty common in insects and such. So, as kandra can do, well, various stuff with their cells, I'm pretty sure they would be able to develop an egg cell with the mitotic spindle...and have babies with themselves ********************************** The end of bio-nerd blabber **************************************** But thanks for confirming the rest

I totally saw Brandon the other day, and he was getting drunk on stormlight. He was so drunk that when I offered to help him carry the giant vats of concrete he was lugging around (don't ask), he just handed me some notes on his plans for Stones Unhallowed and walked away. Being a loyal fan of Brandonalsium, I decided to do the only logical thing and post what will happen in the next book for all to see. I hope you enjoy having Stormlight Archive #3 ruined for you! - The prologue is Elhokar at the party where Gavilar died. He notices Dalinar following the codes as Gavilar said. Then, the two mysterious men convince him to trick Dalinar into getting completely wasted. He gets Dalinar drunk, then gives Szeth directions to Gavilar's room, gives Sadeas the handbook on how to stop the Desolations (it was the only one of its kind, and Sadeas destroys it), gives Venli the tip that she needs to unlock Stormform, and gives Darkness a list of crimes committed by all Surgebinders so that he can kill them. Adolin is also revealed to have dated Shallash. - In present day, the Ghostbloods say that Shallan must find true love if she wants to join them. She angsts over whether she loves Kaladin or Adolin. - Kaladin flies in to Hearthstone in the middle of Roshone's marriage to Laral (it was a really long engagement). Roshone has now grown an evil goatee and intends to push his new button that gives supreme power to Odium once he gets married. Kaladin bursts in and gives his objection right before the vows. Everyone cheers that Kaladin saved the day, only for a brick to knock him out. - Jasnah has to babysit Baby Odium, the suckling child from WoK Chapter 57's Death Rattle. - Szeth decides to chase his dream and become a rockstar. It is revealed in his flashbacks that everyone in Shinovar discouraged this dream because stone was sacred. Szeth was sad, but then he saw someone Soulcasting some grass into a guitar. Using the guitar, he rocked out, singing that the end was coming. He was made Truthless because his music was too loud. - It's revealed that Lirin has turned evil and crowned himself Emperor of Hearthstone. Kaladin, Roshone, Laral, Jost's Dad, and Hesina team up to stop Lirin from upgrading the Voidbringers into the Super Voidbringers. However, when Kaladin tries to fight him, Lirin goes Super Saiyan and defeats Kaladin, telling him that he has to unlock more true potential. - Dalinar confesses that he doesn't remember his wife, only to find out that her name actually is "Shshshshshshsh". - Jasnah runs into a hat-obsessed man who likes drinking metal, claims that two and two equals pickle, can regenerate and slow time, is a master of disguise, and hates guns. Brandon's notes indicate that he is indeed a worldhopper: Hrathen. - The Highspren cause Highstorms, but they've grown tired of it so they give Adolin the power to make Highstorms. - Shallan actually does draw herself as a bridgeman, causing her to realize that she loves Kaladin. - Kaladin decides to say the Fourth Oath to get enough power to defeat Emperor Lirin. However, when he learns that it's, "I will not go after my friend's girl", he refuses to say it. - Dalinar walks up to Shallan and says, "Kaladin killed Helaran" with no context, then walks away. - Nalan is also in possession of a giant block of ice in which Spook has cryogenically frozen himself. - The recurring Interlude character (like Szeth in WoK and Eshonai in WoR) is Mazrim Taim. - Ghost Sadeas appears and swears the Oath, "The death is my life, the strength becomes my weakness, the journey has ended", causing him to transform into Sataneas. - Kaladin tries to flee Hearthstone, but ends up tripping over and unplugging a power cord. This gets rid of Emperor Lirin's power, and Kaladin easily defeats him. As thanks for stopping Lirin, Laral gives Kaladin a big smooch. However, as she does, Shallan walks in, gasps, and runs away. Kaladin chases after her saying that he can explain and we see no more of them in this book. - To raise money for the new Radiants, Dalinar and Renarin start a car wash. However, Amaram's 1974 Parsher truck turns out to be a Carform Parshendi, which turns into the legendary Voidmobile when Adolin hits it with a Highstorm. - Lopen is part of the 11th Radiant Order, the Ganchos. - Szeth and Darkness can't get into Shinovar because there's a ten dollar admission fee. Spook defrosts and the trio go on an epic quest to find ten dollars. - Derethil is still alive and the Aesudan subplot is resolved when Wandersail falls from the sky and crushes her. - Nan Balat reveals that Shallan's mom's name was 'Restares Davar'. - Szeth, Spook, and Darkness run into Jasnah, owner of Roshar's last ten dollars. Szeth and Jasnah bond over their mutual fakeout deaths. - Navani falls into a parallel dimension where Steelheart, The Rithmatist, and Alcatraz are part of the Cosmere. - Lift eats Sadeas's body, causing Sataneas to get mad. - Szeth finally gets back to Shinovar with the ten dollar admission fee, only to find out that they're closed for the summer. - Taravangian finds love. - Adolin gets a puppy and names it Sureblood Jr. However, his puppy gets eaten by TenSoon. - It's revealed that Odium wants to destroy the Cosmere because he got friendzoned by Cultivation. - The Nightwatcher is revealed to actually be the Nightwasher, and only gives you a boon and a curse if you wash your dishes. - Eshonai wakes up and finds that she has been rebuilt into a cyborg. - It's revealed that the Ten Fools founded a group called the Knights Radian. It takes two orders to form a Knights Diameter. - The big twists of the book are: 1. The Recreance happened becuase the Knights Radiant were no longer given a discount on fast food. 2. Elhokar has already been assassinated and Danlan has tricked everyone into thinking that she is Elhokar. 3. The masked Ghostblood is Stella, daughter of Dalinar and Vin, master of all Radiant powers, only one who can stop Odium, and love interest of Hoid. (Totally not a Mary Sue.) 4. Nohadon plaigirized The Way of Kings, stealing it in its entirety from How to be Evil by Dilaf. 5. Lift gets a Shardfork. 6. Ronald McDonald is coming to Roshar. I hope you are all happy to have the book utterly spoiled! Sorry Brandon, but I had to share this new info.

So last night I couldn't sleep. I was restless and worrying about alot of crap. Then I just sort of started writing, and well, here's what I came up with. This is the creation myth for the world I conceived. And I think it could apply to our world as well ------------------------------------- On Harmony, and the Creation of the world In the beginning, there was a single note. A pure, clear, constant note. This was known as the tune of Chaos. Then one day, the note was broken, and out rushed the ocean from the discord. The ocean created and filled the first sphere of existence, and added it’s own song to the tune of chaos. And there was harmony once more. 5 more discords occurred, and with each one something new was made. The second discord happened, and the sky spread from the broken harmony, overlapping the ocean and it created and filled the second sphere of existence. But the sky was empty, and it only rang with one note. But there was harmony again nonetheless. Then the third discord struck, and out spurted the heavens, greater and even more all-encompassing than the sky. They pushed and redefined the boundaries of the world, creating and filling the third sphere. There were 7 layers to the heavens, and each brought with them an octave to add to the song of the universe, for before then, the world sung on one octave, and was mostly empty. They added their tranquil and ethereal siren song to the symphony that was creation. For now the heavens were empty, there was nothing but chaos that filled the gaps. And there was harmony once again. From the fourth discord came the first manifestation of life. The Mariner. Sprung from one of the greatest discords the music had experienced. The Mariner was flung into the oceans with a ship and a lantern. His advent created and filled the fourth sphere of existence. The Immortal Plane. The symphony became a cacophony now. There was no more harmony. For with the mariner came his discordant tunes, the song of displaced life. And the mariner spent his days sailing the now chaotic seas, concepting land wherever he went, all sprung from the discords of his music Thus he created and filled the fifth sphere of existence Earth itself The discord continued for many centuries, until the mariner finally began to question the world truly. These questions, tho he had no answers, slowly brought a semblance of order as the mariner endeavoured to find answers. Over time, the heavens stopped reaching into the world, the oceans stilled, the storms stopped and the sky sang a pure note once more Finally, there was a recognisable melody, the melody of a the mind. A quiet piercing melody. Not quite harmony, but a semblance of it. But one day. The Mariner gave up, he stopped looking for answers, stopped asking questions. And with his broken will, the harmony was shattered. And with this tumultuous discord, came mortal life First in the form of a bird, a white dove. It was the first animal to to explore the new world, the first creature to travel the land. It created and filled the sixth sphere of existence: The Mortal Plane And with it, the music became wilder and chaotic, a complicated, overlapping on-rush of discord. One day, as the dove sung its song, a bolt of lightning struck it asunder, and the Mariner, by the fate of the music, stumbled upon it's broken corpse. For then, the spirit couldn't leave the body after death, unless the proper rites were performed The mariner fashioned a draught of life, with his tears and the waters of the ocean. And administered to the bird, nurturing it and rejuvenating it back to life. And with this came a special thing, for the Mariner created something, Love. Love was created, and it filled the six known spheres of existence. And the mariner found an answer. Love was the answer. And with this revelation, the bird died a second time, but with it's death, a star, twinkled into existence in the sky, the first star, the morning star, the evening star. A sign of hope and love for all! The star represented the first story of the world. The story of creation and love. The song of first age of the earth. The Mariner ascended to the heavens after burying the dove's limp body. He no longer sailed the seas, but sailed the stars themselves! And he became both sun and moon, his lantern the sun, himself the moon. His arm was always outstretched, carrying the lantern before him and lighting the way for the world. And so there was Day and Night. The Mariner knew his purpose now, and it was to nurture and kindle the stars, to preserve the stories made and pass them down to the land he now oversaw. To guide the world beneath him and shed light on the answers that were sought by all, just as the dove shed light on the answers he sought. With the advent of love; burst forward more life and music; filling the mortal sphere, the land, the sky, the oceans. And with these creatures, they brought their own stories, developing over the course of their mortal existence Whereupon the end, they ascend to the stars and heavens. Their souls continuing to the heavens, their light, their story, painted on the dark canvas of night. Kept and kindled by the Mariner, their souls able to enter the heavens peacefully. There was a seventh sphere, not one of existence but one of non-existence. A counterpoint to to the creation of everything. The seventh sphere was a subtle one. The Void. No harmony, no discord, no music. This sphere seeped into the other spheres, corrupting and defiling. The music was the genetic code of the universe, and the Void removed the music, taking away notes and tones, “chromosomes”. Mutating and defiling the symphony. The only way to battle it was to look to the stars, and find hope. For hope was the only thing that the void feared. And that was how the world was created, not through some divine plan, but through mistakes. Many many mistakes. And questioning, and searching for answers, through ideas and stories, for they are truly the things that shape the world around us. Our flaws can be our greatest source of strength, our reasons for asking questions, for searching for answers. They are the reasons we strive to be better people, the reason we love, live and endeavour. But they can also be the reasons we fall, the source of our darkest thoughts and deeds. But through our stories, through our compassion which is innate in all things. we can bring harmony to the discord and guide others. support each others and add our tales to the stars. Nothing was ever perfect and nothing will always be perfect Our stories are the tools from which we change and shape the world, our songs are the partof a greater symphony of life. Always have hope and never throw away your story, everything is worth it and there is no reason to stop living and evolving. And there was harmony forevermore. -------------------------- This is just the scribblings I wrote, I still need to explain things like the clouds, the rain and crap heh.

I'm sure this has been pointed out somewhere but I am bad at searching for specific things like this but was Ati's name based on Ate- the Greek god of mischief and ruin? Probably and I am stupid for asking this question when it seems pretty obvious that it is true.

@Dragon314 yeah, I realise that. I'm just saying there are (not too many) fandoms apart from Sanderson and WoT connected in such a way.

Traditional Easter greeting (or at least here it's traditional) I had to use some google-fu to find the English greeting and Wikipedia told me it's "Christ is risen!" and the response would be "Truly, He is risen!". Obviously, I have no idea if and where this greeting exists

Airsick Lowlanders.

... I have no idea why, but I'm suddenly reminded of the Kindergarteners from Recess. ... You know, Recess? That old Disney cartoon, about the school kids? God I'm old

It only took me way too long but I finally reverse engineered a menu that I've always wanted the forums to have. I only stayed up way past my bedtime to figure it out. You'll see it soon, as well as a few more site updates very very soon.

that's true. Even if we lower it to a 2-1 kill/death ratio for Koloss, that is pretty darn impressive. And that is in a situation where the enemy army doesn't break and flee (so the koloss fight to the death but the enemy survive). Which is what happened with Cett's army. Imagine the amount of kills koloss can achieve if the enemy army routs? Historically most casualties came from people being run down when they flee. I imagine that most human armies facing Koloss would break and flee at some point, and then the Koloss (being faster) can run them down and greatly increase their casualty count. Lets just imagine the first battle between Roshar and the FE- a large Alethi army with Parshendi auxillaries fights an army of Skaa veterans and conscripts, supported by a sizeable force of Koloss and some mistings. Say 10'000 on each side, with 2000 Koloss. First up would be the armies approaching- arrows would be traded. The arrows of the Imperial forces strike true, inflicting light casualties amongst the Alethi. The Alethi and parshendi arrows barely reach their targets- mysterious forces knock them about, out of the sky or off target completely. The armies come close- the Alethi grow nervous at the sight of hulking blue monsters in front of their human opponents, and the FE levies look bewildered by the tight formations of the Alethi and the marbled skin of the Parshendi. The Koloss, in a frenzy by now, charge. The Alethi are terrified, but they hold, while the Parshendi sing, without fear of death. Arrows are useless, and the Alethi brace as the blue monsters come closer, sprinting in rage. The Koloss crash into the Alethi like a thousand raging bulls. The strength of the Koloss allows them to crash straight through the Alethi shieldwall, like the Parshendi were able to jump over it during the war on the Shattered Plains. Their brutal swords, more like metal clubs, cleave through human flesh like nothing, breaking shields and shattering spears. The Alethi fight back, using their spears to give them reach and impale individual Koloss through the neck and face. But the Koloss had reach too- their long arms and longer swords could reach past any spear or batter it aside, and the Alethi buckled. Suddenly, hope- the Parshendi warpairs descend, filling in the gaps between the broken Alethi formations and taking the fight to the Koloss. Warforms possessed strength and speed that humans didn't, and when working together with their axes and hammers they smashed and cut the Koloss in their path. The Koloss falter before these strange creatures that are bigger on the inside than they seem, the challenge scaring them and calming their anger. But the rage of the beast cannot so easily be undone. Parshendi fell to brutal swings like any mortal would, and the Koloss felt their rage growing once more. Despite being grossly outnumbered, the Koloss charged forward, beating down human and Parshendi alike. The Alethi buckled, their lines being torn apart, but their superior numbers soon began to tell. In the face of monsters and horrendous casualties, the Alethi and the Parshendi began to win. The Koloss never knew it, but one by one the monsters fell, fighting to the death in their rage. Finally it was over- the last Koloss slain. The Alethi and the Parshendi had been mauled badly- a mere 2000 Koloss inflicting over twice their number in casualties. The Alethi and the Parshendi rejoiced- but the battle was not over. The full human forces of their enemy, rested and fresh, began to move forward. 5000 tired, battered Rosharans were faced with 8000 enemies, and they felt their hope die. As the Final Empire's army got closer, individual allomancers leapt forward- coinshots, spraying handfuls of coins at the tattered Alethi ranks. Any groups of Alethi that reformed their tight battle formations found themselves assailed with coins from the mistings, and any arrows sent back were easily deflected. Some warriors, angered and enraged, charged towards the misting skirmishers, but they were too fast, easily steelpushing away from any attack. Then the levies of the Final Empire, organised around a core of professional warriors and supported by pewterarms, coinshots and emotional allomancers, clashed with the tired and disorganised Alethi and Parshendi. The Rosharans continued to fight for as long as they could- individually they were more skilled, more experienced, and better-trained than the troops of the Final Empire, but their formations were unformed and broken, and their morale was perilously low. It didn't take long for the Rosharan army to begin buckling, and finally to break and flee completely. The Skaa pushed forward, and inflicted grievous casualties on their enemies. Even though many escaped, many more were captured or left dead on the field. The battle was lost- and victory was granted to the Final Empire. Personally, I think this is even a little generous to the Alethi- I think most human armies would break if fighting Koloss. But it demonstrates that the Final Empire can win a fair fight with the Rosharans- and I think that even if there are only 50'000 Koloss (personally, I think there are at least double that) even a small amount can turn the tide of a battle to favour Scadrial. The war, I think, goes to Scadrial. What are your thoughts on my battle hypothetical scenario? Fair point- it certainly seems high. I do believe that it is 16% normally (so noble-blooded), and if you consider the amount of mistborn we see in the series (which are stated as being one in 10'000 aren't they?) there must be at least 20'000-50'000 noble mistings. Although this seems very high. Maybe the proportion of mistborn are higher in pure noble bloodlines. ah cool, thanks for that- so we can assume quite a few Hazekillers then. Obviously Hazekillers are common enough that you CAN, if desperate, hire hundreds of them, or train hundreds.

Maggie gasps, as if suddenly waking up. "I-I . . . Am I alive? Opal, is this real? I thought we were dead." Opal rolls her eyes. "Dead people don't talk this much. Oh, and hey. You need to get around to reading Snapshot, you slacker. If you don't, it goes against your oaths." "But I've been busy lately!" Maggie groans. "Busy doing what? I thought you said we were dead." "Oh . . . Shut up."

I do find it ironic that some who put an emphasis on hearing all sides and respecting all viewpoints will stop listening the second someone espouses a viewpoint they personally dislike.

And anyway, in Soviet Roshar, spoilers hide YOU!

Spoilers for The Alloy of Law follow.

Inquisitor spikes can see through your measly closet!