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Hey everyone! It’s finally the day we have all been waiting fo-- Oh wait. No, not that day. You still have to wait a week for Oathbringer. But it is the day that I have been working towards for a couple years now. The idea that it is finally out is a tiny bit terrifying, but Harmony is it exciting as well. Before we get into it, we should all thank Theoryland and all those who contributed to their database. They have done a great service to our fandom. We just wanted something more tailored to us, with more features and active development. Here it is. Arcanum, the Brandon Sanderson Archive: https://wob.coppermind.net Take a look. There are over 7,700 entries in there. We did not simply copy and paste a bunch of text from the old Theoryland database. We hunted down audio from many years back and put it into our new system. The result is this for any audio we have found: You can press play on any entry and get the audio of that exact moment. No longer will you have to take it on someone's word on what Brandon said; you can just press play and listen to it! In the process of getting all these audio sources into Arcanum, we found that there were mistakes in some old transcriptions, or things that were never transcribed at all, existing only in heavily paraphrased form. As such we have worked hard to ensure the accuracy of everything that has been inputted into Arcanum. This is trickier than it may sound, as while our brains are good at registering the meaning of what someone is saying, they aren’t always so good at remembering the exact phrasing. If the transcriber is not careful, those mistakes can add up to the opposite of whatever was intended. Our goal is to have a centralized place where everyone can reliably find all audio and all quotes for many years to come, and do so in such a way that we can have these quotes be as accurate as we can get. WoBs for which we don't have audio (or are directly written by Brandon) are always marked as paraphrased, so you won't have to guess which things are accurate and which are not. Audio is the best way we can ensure accuracy, and so we put it front and center. (One note on Words of Brandon: signing lines can be very long, and Brandon's memory is not perfect. Brandon can make mistakes. Brandon can also change his mind when actually writing a book, instead of just talking about it. We do try to denote things like this whenever we catch them, but, at the end of the day, the books are the true sources.) What's in Arcanum right now? It has been a massive undertaking for our small team to import every WoB ever and update things to our new standards with transcriptions. We have a ton of WoBs--over 7,700 of them. A lot of this is from Theoryland, but there’s a good chunk that is brand-new stuff which is not. We have: Every annotation for the main books, including those for The Way of Kings Every relevant quote from Reddit and Twitter we could find Everything from 2014 to the present is fully imported* That includes several events where the full transcriptions were never made available, which include some never-seen-before WoBs: Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing White Sand vol. 1 Orem signing White Sand vol. 1 release party Barnes & Noble B-Fest 2016 Calamity release party Bands of Mourning release party Shadows of Self Portland signing Shadows of Self release party Firefight release party We are not yet finished importing everything from Theoryland, but we wanted to make sure that Arcanum was live and ready to go for the release of Oathbringer. We focused on events 2014 and forward as that was the point where the WoB situation began to deteriorate and things started to become harder to find. We do have various things from before 2014, most notably the annotations. We also have the A Memory of Light tour in (the Brandon related stuff, not the Wheel of Time stuff, which we are not importing), much of the Steelheart tour, and much of the Alloy of Law tour. We also have some very old, yet foundational events like the Hero of Ages TWG Q&A (where we learned about Shards for the first time), the Barnes and Noble Book Club Q&A, and other text events. All said, we needed our Arcanists to transcribe things and we decided to spend our efforts on new things. After the Oathbringer tour we will get these older years inputted, and when there is audio, get it into our new format. If you're wondering whether Arcanum replaces Theoryland, the answer is yes, but on some very old things, we aren't going to do it just like Theoryland did. Theoryland made an event for every one of Brandon's blogs in the beginning, and we are not doing this. Many of Brandon's blogs are updates, announcements, and other things that are not important to search. We are just grabbing the parts of Brandon's blogs that are relevant. There are also a lot of interviews that Brandon did with media outlets that is more of a promotional nature and aren't important for Arcanum. Long story short, we will finish the project of getting everything relevant from Theoryland to Arcanum, but we felt you still should get Arcanum now, because we can wait a bit on some of the older Theoryland stuff being imported. (*There are some events that have general Q&As which are not transcribed yet, but those contain very little relevant information. We will get them in soon.) Other Big Improvements on Theoryland Arcanum has made big strides over Theoryland in usability. Arcanum has a totally responsive design, so it works great on your phone or desktop. Search Searching functionally on Theoryland, or rather the lack thereof, has become an unfortunate meme in the fandom in recent years. As such we’ve made sure our search works. We’ve also made sure to include options to give you more control to fine-tune the results you get. Citations In Theoryland it’s not immediately obvious how to link directly to an entry. For Arcanum we’ve made sure that it's easy to grab a citation, just click that Share link for the direct URL for the entry. You also get this link even in the search results page. How to help One of our primary goals with Arcanum is to make the transcribing process and input process are transparent, rather than be a mysterious cabal of people who input stuff into Theoryland at a very slow pace. And we need your help, too. The biggest help you can be is if you have a recording of a signing or something Brandon said, upload it! This was why we worked so hard to get Arcanum ready for the Oathbringer tour, so we are no longer in the Shadowdays where audio was hidden in random places. We can now have audio in one centralized location where we can transcribe it. Do you have audio? Adding it is easy! Go find the relevant event--we have most events made except very old one; Oathbringer tour events are already added--and on the upper right of the event, click "Upload Sources". Easy! If you get new audio on the Oathbringer tour, don't delay, let's get it into Arcanum so we can transcribe it immediately. If you have old audio from years past, we'd also love to see get that, too! Right now our Arcanist team has done transcribing efforts, and they are awesome and fast. But our plan was always to let the general public assist in transcribing too. This functionality is currently been the top programming priority, but it isn't ready right now. At the very least, you can upload audio. Stay tuned in our Arcanum forum or our Arcanum channel in Discord, and help coordinate event audio and transcription efforts there! Arcanum is a community effort. We can't do this without you. We hope with your help the Oathbringer tour will go smoothly and we'll get new information to you sooner than ever. In 2018, our software will go open source and if you're a web developer, you can go contribute there! If you're in another fandom and you'd like a system like this, you'll be able to make your own installation of it. Credits Arcanum has been in the works, in one form or another, for over two and a half years now. We're thrilled (and terrified) that you all finally get to see it, and we hope it will be everything you wanted it to be. We want to tell you everyone on the team. Our administrative consists of me, Mestiv, and Chaos. I suppose I'm ultimately in charge of this project, and I've transcribed a ton of things. Mestiv is our amazing coder who suggested all of this audio stuff, which changed everything. He's a rock star, and is the real hero. Chaos does a lot of the managerial work keeping everything organized. He also headed up the design team, and helped whip our Arcanists in the right direction to get things ready for launch. Special thanks to Joe_ST, who coded a previous incarnation of our WoB archive and always has sensible suggestions to improve things. Without Joe, we never could have gotten here. Our Arcanists: We invited a bunch of people who provided input, bug testing, and most importantly, worked their butts off inputting and transcribing things. Argent Blightsong Calderis Comatose Dragon13 Extesian jofwu Kandra Kurkistan Oversleep Pagerunner Windrunner Some special thanks: jofwu is a god at transcribing difficult audio (don't listen to the Arcanum Unbounded Hoboken audio unless you want to cry), Argent is an absolute machine of work-ethic and did so much, and somehow Calderis did all his Arcanum work on his phone. Last, but not least, thank you KChan for the beautiful logo, and moru for design help! We really hope you love Arcanum. There's still plenty of work to do on it, but it's amazing. Best, The Arcanum Team46 likes -
I've never done something like this, so not sure how it is. Spoilered for size. Kaladin's story, Part One: The story begins with our hero in his usual upbeat mood Till the surprising news He says hi to old acquaintances Before sharing all his new flashy gear Everyone reacts with the expected awe So he decides to cut short his family visit Then the ominious foreshadowing As he hunts down the evil monsters He eventually takes his leave His new friends are unhappy he leaves without a proper farewell And to end in his usual optimistic mood he decides to pick a fight with the shadow of a god The end of Part One.
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I just wanted to quickly say for a moment how awesome all the Arcanists are. They spent MANY hours and evenings going through plenty of audio, hunting down random things on Twitter and Reddit. They are really the rock stars. They are also rock stars for dealing with me being a grumpy manager and pestering them about tasks The Shadowdays of finding WoBs and researching are done, friends. We did it. This changes everything. This is so surreal to me, because I obviously wanted a system like this for so long. There's nothing on the internet quite like this system, to my knowledge, so designing how it should function, along with its look-and-feel, was terrifying. It's brand-new! This is also the largest project 17th Shard has ever done, to code something from the ground-up. It's crazy. Not only was coding intense, but on the input side of things, we basically redid all of Theoryland. How crazy is that? It's finally here for you to see and browse, and it will be around for the duration of the fandom, I assure you. There's still a lot to do. I'll be posting an Upcoming Features topic pretty soon, explaining what we still have left to do. We'll be very open about everything with Arcanum. But it's here, in time for Oathbringer, and that's incredible. Special thanks to Mestiv, who is the true hero. Without him, this would not exist. He changed this entire project and coded this all. What a boss. He's also the nicest guy ever (second to, I think, Brandon Sanderson himself), so you should pour a ton of adoration his way. He got all this audio stuff working. It's incredible. I hope you like it <314 likes
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This is just a small bit of last-minute speculation before Oathbringer arrives. I've had a Ghostblood Symbol-related idea before that was already debunked, so I thought might as well attempt a second one. This time, one of my inspirations came from an unexpected place: a Sharder's profile photo. Specifically, @Aon Ati's profile photo, which I noticed just a few hours ago. Admittedly I had totally forgotten what Aon Ati looked like, and when I saw that picture it simply blew my mind. It felt like a Eureka moment in my quest for deciphering the Ghostblood symbol. But another major thing that led to this idea came to me last year via a different Aon. Part I: Aon Ire The truth is that I've never really bothered to analyze the shape and forms of the Aons before. Old-timers like me remember other people's futile attempts at connecting Aon Ati with the Vessel Ati before, and because of this I tended to shy away from Aons in general, especially their off-world potential. But in reality, Aonic symbolism has in fact traveled across planets at least once. In particular, we know that there is a Scadrian version of Aon Ire. Of course, it's perfectly possible that the steelified Ire symbol doesn't really exist in-universe and was just something Isaac and Brandon thought up to symbolize in a way familiar to Mistborn readers the group of mysterious beings who call themselves Ire, but at least it sets a precedent for the idea of Aons being seen in a non-Selish cosmere story. Take note that Kelsier actually sees Aon Ire in his head when he hears Alonoe say her group's name: We'll come back to this later on. Meanwhile, let's get to the meat of this theory. Part II: Aon Ati You've already seen what Aon Ati looks like, and if you've been paying attention to your Stormlight symbology, you'd know that the Ghostblood symbol has been described as three interlocking diamonds. This similarity (which I first noticed when I saw that profile photo) is what led me to my theory: The Ghostblood symbol was derived from Aon Ati. But obviously it's not exactly Aon Ati as the Elantrians knew it. For one, it doesn't have the dots. Based on @Viridian's report, the Ghostblood symbol also differs from Aon Ati in that its diamonds are arranged horizontally instead of vertically. So it's not exactly Aon Ati, but is rather a slight modification. Just like how the Steel alphabet version of Ire is a modification that relates to a Scadrian writing system (the Steel alphabet), I speculate that the Ghosblood symbol is a form of Ati made to look like some sort of Rosharan writing. (Edit: Thanks to @Iridium Savant's comment below, I now realize the Ghostblood symbol looks like Women's Script, which in hindsight I should have noticed.) The differences between the original Aon and the "localized" version aren't even that big, but the truth is I wouldn't have entertained this idea at all without my prior thoughts about Aon Ire's appearance in a Scadrial story. Because there is another connection there: We know that Aon Ati represents the concept of Hope. Well, there is another entity in the cosmere that (ostensibly) represents hope, one who had prior encounters with Elantrian magic and likely learned more about it later on, one who by the way is as deceptive and as ruthless (likely more so) as any Ghostblood member we've seen so far: (Edit: I compiled a few more interesting instances of Kelsier reinforcing his claim of representing hope in M:SH in a reply below.) Wouldn't it be interesting if Kelsier really is the one in charge of the Ghostbloods? I mean, it already has at least one Scadrian among its ranks. This makes me even more curious about what that "Thaidakar" guy looks like...13 likes
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Hey everyone! It’s finally the day we have all been waiting fo-- Oh wait. No, not that day. You still have to wait a week for Oathbringer. But it is the day that I have been working towards for a couple years now. The idea that it is finally out is a tiny bit terrifying, but Harmony is it exciting as well. Before we get into it, we should all thank Theoryland and all those who contributed to their database. They have done a great service to our fandom. We just wanted something more tailored to us, with more features and active development. Here it is. Arcanum, the Brandon Sanderson Archive: https://wob.coppermind.net Take a look. There are over 7,700 entries in there. We did not simply copy and paste a bunch of text from the old Theoryland database. We hunted down audio from many years back and put it into our new system. The result is this for any audio we have found: You can press play on any entry and get the audio of that exact moment. No longer will you have to take it on someone's word on what Brandon said; you can just press play and listen to it! In the process of getting all these audio sources into Arcanum, we found that there were mistakes in some old transcriptions, or things that were never transcribed at all, existing only in heavily paraphrased form. As such we have worked hard to ensure the accuracy of everything that has been inputted into Arcanum. This is trickier than it may sound, as while our brains are good at registering the meaning of what someone is saying, they aren’t always so good at remembering the exact phrasing. If the transcriber is not careful, those mistakes can add up to the opposite of whatever was intended. Our goal is to have a centralized place where everyone can reliably find all audio and all quotes for many years to come, and do so in such a way that we can have these quotes be as accurate as we can get. WoBs for which we don't have audio (or are directly written by Brandon) are always marked as paraphrased, so you won't have to guess which things are accurate and which are not. Audio is the best way we can ensure accuracy, and so we put it front and center. (One note on Words of Brandon: signing lines can be very long, and Brandon's memory is not perfect. Brandon can make mistakes. Brandon can also change his mind when actually writing a book, instead of just talking about it. We do try to denote things like this whenever we catch them, but, at the end of the day, the books are the true sources.) What's in Arcanum right now? It has been a massive undertaking for our small team to import every WoB ever and update things to our new standards with transcriptions. We have a ton of WoBs--over 7,700 of them. A lot of this is from Theoryland, but there’s a good chunk that is brand-new stuff which is not. We have: Every annotation for the main books, including those for The Way of Kings Every relevant quote from Reddit and Twitter we could find Everything from 2014 to the present is fully imported* That includes several events where the full transcriptions were never made available, which include some never-seen-before WoBs: Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing White Sand vol. 1 Orem signing White Sand vol. 1 release party Barnes & Noble B-Fest 2016 Calamity release party Bands of Mourning release party Shadows of Self Portland signing Shadows of Self release party Firefight release party We are not yet finished importing everything from Theoryland, but we wanted to make sure that Arcanum was live and ready to go for the release of Oathbringer. We focused on events 2014 and forward as that was the point where the WoB situation began to deteriorate and things started to become harder to find. We do have various things from before 2014, most notably the annotations. We also have the A Memory of Light tour in (the Brandon related stuff, not the Wheel of Time stuff, which we are not importing), much of the Steelheart tour, and much of the Alloy of Law tour. We also have some very old, yet foundational events like the Hero of Ages TWG Q&A (where we learned about Shards for the first time), the Barnes and Noble Book Club Q&A, and other text events. All said, we needed our Arcanists to transcribe things and we decided to spend our efforts on new things. After the Oathbringer tour we will get these older years inputted, and when there is audio, get it into our new format. If you're wondering whether Arcanum replaces Theoryland, the answer is yes, but on some very old things, we aren't going to do it just like Theoryland did. Theoryland made an event for every one of Brandon's blogs in the beginning, and we are not doing this. Many of Brandon's blogs are updates, announcements, and other things that are not important to search. We are just grabbing the parts of Brandon's blogs that are relevant. There are also a lot of interviews that Brandon did with media outlets that is more of a promotional nature and aren't important for Arcanum. Long story short, we will finish the project of getting everything relevant from Theoryland to Arcanum, but we felt you still should get Arcanum now, because we can wait a bit on some of the older Theoryland stuff being imported. (*There are some events that have general Q&As which are not transcribed yet, but those contain very little relevant information. We will get them in soon.) Other Big Improvements on Theoryland Arcanum has made big strides over Theoryland in usability. Arcanum has a totally responsive design, so it works great on your phone or desktop. Search Searching functionally on Theoryland, or rather the lack thereof, has become an unfortunate meme in the fandom in recent years. As such we’ve made sure our search works. We’ve also made sure to include options to give you more control to fine-tune the results you get. Citations In Theoryland it’s not immediately obvious how to link directly to an entry. For Arcanum we’ve made sure that it's easy to grab a citation, just click that Share link for the direct URL for the entry. You also get this link even in the search results page. How to help One of our primary goals with Arcanum is to make the transcribing process and input process are transparent, rather than be a mysterious cabal of people who input stuff into Theoryland at a very slow pace. And we need your help, too. The biggest help you can be is if you have a recording of a signing or something Brandon said, upload it! This was why we worked so hard to get Arcanum ready for the Oathbringer tour, so we are no longer in the Shadowdays where audio was hidden in random places. We can now have audio in one centralized location where we can transcribe it. Do you have audio? Adding it is easy! Go find the relevant event--we have most events made except very old one; Oathbringer tour events are already added--and on the upper right of the event, click "Upload Sources". Easy! If you get new audio on the Oathbringer tour, don't delay, let's get it into Arcanum so we can transcribe it immediately. If you have old audio from years past, we'd also love to see get that, too! Right now our Arcanist team has done transcribing efforts, and they are awesome and fast. But our plan was always to let the general public assist in transcribing too. This functionality is currently been the top programming priority, but it isn't ready right now. At the very least, you can upload audio. Stay tuned in our Arcanum forum or our Arcanum channel in Discord, and help coordinate event audio and transcription efforts there! Arcanum is a community effort. We can't do this without you. We hope with your help the Oathbringer tour will go smoothly and we'll get new information to you sooner than ever. In 2018, our software will go open source and if you're a web developer, you can go contribute there! If you're in another fandom and you'd like a system like this, you'll be able to make your own installation of it. Credits Arcanum has been in the works, in one form or another, for over two and a half years now. We're thrilled (and terrified) that you all finally get to see it, and we hope it will be everything you wanted it to be. We want to tell you everyone on the team. Our administrative consists of me, Mestiv, and Chaos. I suppose I'm ultimately in charge of this project, and I've transcribed a ton of things. Mestiv is our amazing coder who suggested all of this audio stuff, which changed everything. He's a rock star, and is the real hero. Chaos does a lot of the managerial work keeping everything organized. He also headed up the design team, and helped whip our Arcanists in the right direction to get things ready for launch. Special thanks to Joe_ST, who coded a previous incarnation of our WoB archive and always has sensible suggestions to improve things. Without Joe, we never could have gotten here. Our Arcanists: We invited a bunch of people who provided input, bug testing, and most importantly, worked their butts off inputting and transcribing things. Argent Blightsong Calderis Comatose Dragon13 Extesian jofwu Kandra Kurkistan Oversleep Pagerunner Windrunner Some special thanks: jofwu is a god at transcribing difficult audio (don't listen to the Arcanum Unbounded Hoboken audio unless you want to cry), Argent is an absolute machine of work-ethic and did so much, and somehow Calderis did all his Arcanum work on his phone. Last, but not least, thank you KChan for the beautiful logo, and moru for design help! We really hope you love Arcanum. There's still plenty of work to do on it, but it's amazing. Best, The Arcanum Team
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Arcanum: over 300 unique Brandon "uhh" and "hmm" sounds!9 likes
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I posted this in the wrong forum, so here it is I'd like to step in to raise some toasts here. Quite a few people contributed significant amounts of time to this...masterpiece of Cosmerology. I feel like it's dominated my minimal spare time for a while but I was a later and lesser contributor (and helping was something I was both honored and duty-bound to do given my WoBsession). Sharders we all know and love like Jofwu, Kurkistan, Windrunner, Calderis, Blightsong, Oversleep. Particular praise to Pagerunner and Argent for their outsized contributions. Unsurprisingly Chaos is magnificent, delegating like a demon and pulling endless long nights, working on this thing long, long before I was even a member of this site. (And my involvement with this is recent so forgive me if I've under-credited people). I may have contributed a bit but I'll get so much more out of Arcanum than I could ever give to it. Many of you know my WoBsession and this transforms the ability to gain a black belt in WoBfu. But my endless thanks for truly making this Wonderland of WoBs happen go to two people. Firstly, Mestiv. The Codebringer. He has done so much in making this dream happen. I don't speak code but I understand what he's done is not easy and I know the results are beautiful. He has enabled our addiction. And, this cannot be emphasised enough - he's not even a WoB fiend. He did this for the community, for you. What a guy. But my endless gratitude, admiration and love are for Weiry. the Master of WoBs, a guy I looked up to even before I realized the scope of this and his part in it. He made this happen. Since long before i was a member of this site he plotted and planned, and of course WoBbed. He put in the work. He had the vision. This was his Citizen Kane. For years and years from now, when you can learn the Cosmere more easily, you have Weiry to thank. He's my hero, and he'd better be your storming hero too. So go! WoB like you've never WoBbed before. Browse over seven THOUSAND WoBs, many never before seen, with full sources. If you've ever wondered where that WoB is you swear you remember, it's here. If you've ever wondered about Brandon's intonation in that doubtful WoB, or wanted to hear his hilarious reaction to bizarre theories (e.g. Wayne stole a Returned Horse), the audio snippet awaits. If you're obsessed with a particular topic and want to research it, it's one search away. So go! Enjoy the labor of love of many, inspired by one. Soak it up. So go. Dance with the WoBs.7 likes
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Thanks People keep telling me I'm doing a good job with these...7 likes
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I wonder how many memes we will have after we read the whole book. Here are my last ones for a while.
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um maxal. We just finished part 1. There are still 4 more parts to go through. Brandon isn't going to leave the Adolin thing alone. I would bet my metacarples on it. As I've said before, trust the Man. He Knows better than we do. And I've never known him to just leave something like that hanging forever. If it's not addressed, please go ahead and get upset. But let's actually finish the book before we make any judgments.7 likes
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He's our hero I definitely get the "he's special" vibe from Kaladin. There's a lot to unpack in this chapter, but the whole thing was basically Kaladin being a Big damnation Hero on a level that the other characters can barely approach. Maybe other Radiants are "farther ahead" in their oaths, but the quality of Kaladin's oaths and the degree which he lives them indicate to me at least that he's progressing towards something more than being just another Radiant. We have Stormfather once again referring to Kaladin as the "Son of Tanavast". I believe he has referred to Kaladin as either Son/Child of Tanavast or Son of Honor in every book so far. To the best of my recollection we have no indication that Stormfather addresses anyone else with that title, not even Dalinar. Not sure what exactly it means (a direct genetic descendant of Tanavast?), but it seems like an important title to keep popping up specifically for Kaladin. In addition to that, we have Kaladin challenging Stormfather, a literal representation of a highstorm, to stop the highstorm from blowing and Stormfather actually seems to consider it! At the end of the chapter Stormfather gives Kaladin a storm-ride straight to Urithiru as a sort of apology. This is the same Stormfather who tried to call down a highstorm on the whole Alethi army last book, and never felt the need to apologize to Dalinar afterward. Yet here he seems to be shamed by Kaladin's example of fighting the storm itself to save a few lives. I'm really not sure how you could better demonstrate the Windrunner "I will protect" ideals than what Kaladin was doing in this chapter. He seems to come alive in those moments of crisis when another person needs protecting. If only he could stay on the front lines protecting people from the storms, but unfortunately he's been drawn back into the Urithiru politics clowncar and it's time to run into Amaram yet again.7 likes
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Originally, I believed the Unmade to almost be Odium's Heralds, however this quote makes them seem more like large spren, not completely aware of those around her. Can they really bond with a Human or Parshendi for that matter, this could have large implications. What type of power could one gain from a bond with the Midnight Mother... This quote definitely makes Re-Shephir seem like she is a "de-creation" spren. Perhaps a creation spren corrupted by Odium, also talked about her seeming like she was "missing" something, perhaps she was missing a bond with someone. Any thoughts, quotes or WOB? I find this very interesting.6 likes
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UPDATE, GUYS It WORKED. Before you ask, no, we didn't steal anything. So there I was, feeling antsy, sitting and wishing I had Oathbringer. Remembering my friend's escapade from yesterday (you can read about it above), hatched a plan. I figured I'd let my friend in on it, combining my optimism and his luck (any time he's in the car with me, green lights all the way). "So," I say, "We should go to the bookstore downtown (the one from yesterday's story was a different one. They already knew our tricks) and...and just see if they have it. Maybe we'll at least get to hold it, and page through Part One for art. Yes I'm desperate." "Okay," He said, "Pick me up at 3:50." He was clearly only into this for my benefit, but I didn't care. I really was desperate. So the time comes and he gets into the car, and off we go to the bookstore. We knew it probably wouldn't work, but there was at least a chance, and we were gonna take it. We get our stories straight that we are just two average young adults who heard the book was coming out this week, and do you have it in the back? That story wasn't necessary. We arrived at the bookstore to find that the book was ON THE SHELVES! We took a minute or twenty to look through at a few things, like art, and who has the chapters in Part Two (yenno, nothing spoilery), just in case this was the only chance we had, and we met the fate that my friend did yesterday: Walking out book-less. Then my friend realized: He didn't have his wallet, and we only had half an hour 'til closing! We left, trying not to think of the fact that that may have been our last experience from Oathbringer this week, and trying to look as innocuous and nonchalant as possible. We get to his house, grab the wallet, and practically race back (that is, until we were followed by a police car, and couldn't speed). Looking at the time, my pulse quickened even more, and I started shaking. Would we make it in time? Getting to the store for a second time, hoping they didn't recognize us from before, we promptly walked over to the books. They were blessedly still there. As we only had time to go back for one of the wallets (and the fact that I have no money), my friend paid for the book while I wondered the stacks, stroking another copy of Oathbringer, ready to hide it in case they came to put them away, having discovered the release date. It all came down to this moment. Would they notice, or was our blessed book free? I heard words spoken, but I was too far away to make them out. I heard the beeps of machines, but that could have meant anything. Then I saw my friend, my dear friend walking down the aisle of novels towards me, with a grin on his face, Oathbringer in hand. He'd done it. Trying our hardest to look innocent while shaking, we left the store. It was nearly impossible not to skip and whoop for joy, but as soon as we made it to the car, whoop we did. Pinging my friend @RandyD6 likes
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Sanderson is good at writing complex motivations for his antagonists. Look at Warbreaker (massive spoilers for Warbreaker below the spoiler tag) It’s entirely reasonable to suspect that Rosharan Humans are, or were, ‘in the wrong’ but that doesn’t justify Odious actions in the part of the Listeners. War crimes are not justified as a response to historic injustice. My evil against you is not justified by your past evil against me, or my hope of a righting of past wrongs. Journey before Destination. As posted in my thread discussing the ‘girl who looked up’ story, it is likely that the Listeners were in the right and that humanity broke a deal/committed grave injustice against them. But then Odium swept in and used that righteous anger to create hate, great evil, and Desolation.6 likes
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Shout out to all the Sharders who made these past Tuesday's something extraordinary. As much as I plan on burning through Oathbringer once released, I'm going to miss these weekly discussions. Journey before destination indeed.6 likes
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This pre-release review is specially approved, and contains no Oathbringer spoilers for any of its pre-release materials. It does contain some Words of Radiance spoilers that are also mentioned in the Oathbringer synopsis. Oathbringer is my favorite book. I know this will seem like an empty statement. We are on 17th Shard, after all. Loving a new Brandon book--especially a new Brandon cosmere book--is par for the course. But, with that said, I've thought about this for a long time, and I truly cannot think of a book I've read that has made me feel the things Oathbringer has. It has the highest highs, the lowest lows, and moments where your eyes go wide in amazement. "Is this really happening right now?" you'll say. Yup. It is. This is the third book of the Stormlight Archive, Oathbringer. I don't think I can overhype this for you. This is the best thing Brandon has written. It isn't even close. I imagine it might just be your favorite book, too. Expert Craftsmanship Oathbringer is a colossal 450,000-word book, longer than Words of Radiance. (Remember when Brandon said Way of Kings was long because it needed to be long, and the next books would be shorter? Bwahaha.) Is it too long? No, there's absolutely no fluff in this book. It's jam packed with so many things. Oathbringer is all killer and no filler. Every scene feels like it belongs. I'm a guy who loves a tight plot--even more than I love worldbuilding--and this book is beautifully crafted. You won't be bored at all. Brandon walks a fine line of things of having events feel natural, but also doing some very unexpected things. There are things that happen in Oathbringer that I didn't expect we'd get until the back half of this ten book series. It's shocking what all happens in this book. Things vaguely referenced that many casual readers probably missed become absolutely central. Brandon explains these elements carefully, so even if you aren't up to speed on the craziness of Stormlight speculation, you won't feel lost here. There's still a depth to the book if you are heavily invested (get it?), and it holds up on a reread. It's astonishing that Brandon crafts something that feels so natural and effortless, because there are a ton of characters in Stormlight. Brandon juggles viewpoints really effectively and we see new viewpoints that add to the world a lot, but we never forget about our main characters. It's probably for this reason that this book feels so tight, because you'd think there's so much space in a book this big, but there's so much to do. Every viewpoint is precious and there's a huge amount to explore. You might even say it is almost too fast, maybe! This book is Dalinar's book, and we get a large flashback sequence from him. It has a lot more flashbacks than Kaladin and Shallan, and honestly I feel like we could have had more than we got, but Oathbringer is a lean story and everything has its piece in the grand story arc. Even though it's huge, when you read this book you'll see it really is one book. Everything is connected. Even though this could really be three shorter books, it's one connected whole. It cannot truly be split. It's one glorious, beautiful whole. Worldbuilding Of course, Brandon has always been known for his worldbuilding. He's been introducing us to the world of Roshar slowly, which sounds hilarious to say considering The Way of Kings had a big learning curve. But seriously, Roshar really has insane depth. Ten Orders of Knights Radiant, Ten Heralds, Ten Oathgates, who knows how many Desolations that happened millennia ago, the Recreance, the Voidbringers, and three Shards on Roshar. There's so much, and those are just the highlights. That alone is enough to keep us going for ten books, but wait there's so much more. How foolish of us. Oathbringer changes so much about Stormlight Archive. We get killer lore in Oathbringer. Things you've wondered for many, many years will be answered. You can really tell Brandon has been worldbuilding this for a long, long time. Things are insanely complex, but also, everything makes sense. There's so much clever, subtle foreshadowing that few have picked up on. Roshar is huge, deep, and you really can get lost in it forever, now more than ever. The beautiful thing is even though we get crazy lore in this book, there's new, absolutely freaking insane puzzles that we never could have expected. Seriously. You all have no idea. It's bonkers. How deep will the lore be just by book five? Words of Radiance ended with the summoning of the Everstorm, which would bring back the ancient enemy of Roshar, the Voidbringers. If you were worried about the Voidbringers being boring or one-dimensional villains, worry not. There's a huge amount of depth to everything with the Voidbringers. Nothing is quite as it seems. It's hard to explain how crazy Roshar is after everything we learn and everything that happens in Oathbringer. Simply put: it's bigger, more epic, and crazier than ever. But Oathbringer never is self-congratulatory on its lore; it is all in the service of this amazing story. Speaking of amazingness... The Avalanche One of Brandon's signatures in his writing is the Brandon Avalanche at the end of his books, where pacing gets very fast, and everything happens all at once. It makes for some amazing endings. You might thinking that you know Brandon's tricks. You'll know how this book goes down. Hah. That's funny. No, you haven't seen an ending like this one. If you were to compare Words of Radiance and Oathbringer's endings, it's not even remotely close which is more awesome: Oathbringer by a mile. The crazy thing is that this book has three separate climaxes. Part One alone has a completely satisfactory conclusion that you could read and say, "Yes, I got my fill, that was awesome." It has another. And then it has the grand finale. Let me try to explain: It starts with us finally seeing [REDACTED] go [REDACTED] the [REDACTED]. Then it turns out [REDACTED] didn't [REDACTED] [REDACTED] the [REDACTED], but [REDACTED], and [REDACTED]. You get [REDACTED] and it's immediately time for [REDACTED], and it's this epic [REDACTED] right away. Oh, and not only is it [REDACTED] [REDACTED], but just [redacted for swearing] [REDACTED] is [REDACTED]. It turns out [REDACTED] was the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] was [REDACTED] to be [REDACTED], and for a moment you [REDACTED]. All in [REDACTED] [REDACTED] was so [REDACTED], and [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] makes [REDACTED] [REDACTED] the [REDACTED]. All the while, [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED] are in [REDACTED] (because of [REDACTED]) at [REDACTED], fighting [REDACTED] and trying to get [REDACTED], but the [REDACTED] refuses to [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] tries to get [REDACTED] to [REDACTED], but [REDACTED] keeps [REDACTED]. All the while there's [REDACTED] [REDACTED] the [REDACTED]. Oh also there are [REDACTED], because why not, clearly more needed to be happening. But then, [REDACTED] (the actual chapter title), [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [redacted for swearing] [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] just [redacted for swearing] [REDACTED], or [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] faces [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], and it is so [redacted for swearing] [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED], reaches [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED] to [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED], and they are [REDACTED] into the [REDACTED] and it's so freaking amazingly awesome. You see [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Oh, and that's just the first half of the avalanche because then [redacted for swearing] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with [REDACTED] and it's just insane. The most intense thing ever. Hmmm... something tells me that isn't going to come across well with me needing to redact all of that. I did actually write that paragraph, but there was so much happening that it's just a small snippet of how crazy it actually is. Despair. Triumph. The feels are so real in so many ways. It's amazing and perfect and ties everything together brilliantly. Get Hyped This is by far the best Stormlight book and the best book Brandon has ever written. I'm sure there will be some characters’ paths that some will not exactly love, and stuff will definitely break your heart, but I think all of it is necessary and fit perfectly. Brandon's learned so much since Mistborn and The Way of Kings, and it shows. Was it worth the wait? Damnation, yes. I know it's so painful to wait, but given how ludicrously complex this book is, I think Brandon should take his time to outline these. (He's said recently he's outlining Stormlight 4, which he said could take a year and a half, and I do not doubt that.) These are colossal undertakings and I can definitely see why Brandon would get exhausted writing them, even if he loves what he does. I have some worries about the Stormlight Archive as a whole, but they are good problems to have. With Words of Radiance improving on The Way of Kings, with so much more happening, and Oathbringer bringing it to a whole new scale, will the next book be even better? Well, I didn't think it was possible to top Words of Radiance, and that was totally foolish thinking about it now. So, let's consider the alternative: what if the next books are so amazing that the first book is the weakest one? All in all, many of you are here because you loved The Way of Kings, but I imagine some were turned off from that one, and it could be hard to introduce our friends to this amazing series with The Way of Kings. Still, I suppose if our biggest problem is that the later books are so incredible that the earlier ones pale a bit in comparison, that's a pretty good problem to have. I'd happily take that over a beginning that has all the good stuff there, and then have pointless sequels afterwards. Things are looking really great here, both this book and the series as a whole. Oathbringer is, I daresay, a masterpiece and I can't wait for you to read it.5 likes -
Night 8: *considering this was a very close vote, we don't have a write-up prepared, so come back tomorrow* HH was lynched! He was a Spy Worldsinger! HH(3): BR, Sami, Drake Arinian(2): HH, Arinian PM's are open. Player list:5 likes
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When you see a license plate with the word "RADIANT" on it, and spend the next five minutes arguing with yourself about whether it's a Sanderson reference or not. I mean, it's a nice adjective all on its own, right? RIGHT?? But why would they choose that specific adjective, one that isn't used that often? It had to have been Sanderson. Probably. Okay, just kidding, I apparently have spent more than five minutes arguing about this. When you're writing a paper, include the phrase "wax and wane" and, at first, misspell it as "wax and wayne". I had to think really hard about the actual spelling of "wane".5 likes
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Of all the WoBs to show as an example, you picked that one?5 likes
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I just wanted to quickly say for a moment how awesome all the Arcanists are. They spent MANY hours and evenings going through plenty of audio, hunting down random things on Twitter and Reddit. They are really the rock stars. They are also rock stars for dealing with me being a grumpy manager and pestering them about tasks The Shadowdays of finding WoBs and researching are done, friends. We did it. This changes everything. This is so surreal to me, because I obviously wanted a system like this for so long. There's nothing on the internet quite like this system, to my knowledge, so designing how it should function, along with its look-and-feel, was terrifying. It's brand-new! This is also the largest project 17th Shard has ever done, to code something from the ground-up. It's crazy. Not only was coding intense, but on the input side of things, we basically redid all of Theoryland. How crazy is that? It's finally here for you to see and browse, and it will be around for the duration of the fandom, I assure you. There's still a lot to do. I'll be posting an Upcoming Features topic pretty soon, explaining what we still have left to do. We'll be very open about everything with Arcanum. But it's here, in time for Oathbringer, and that's incredible. Special thanks to Mestiv, who is the true hero. Without him, this would not exist. He changed this entire project and coded this all. What a boss. He's also the nicest guy ever (second to, I think, Brandon Sanderson himself), so you should pour a ton of adoration his way. He got all this audio stuff working. It's incredible. I hope you like it <35 likes
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When you see an ad for a book named "Shadowborn" and you think "Did Sanderson surprise-write a book again?" and then you realize that other authors are also allowed to use words such as "shadow" and "born" in their titles. It looked like Vin on the cover, okay?5 likes
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I do think this will be significant. They may well march to war, but they are going to remember, his kindness, and realize that they really do have an alternative. In the future, I expect some will chose to live among humans and others will choose to live in the Shattered Plains. In The Hobbit, the most important event was not fighting the dragon, or the Battle of Five Armies. The most important event was when Bilbo had the opportunity to kill Golem, and had the right to, but instead had mercy on him and his miserable condition. And it made all the difference later. This may not happen straightforward, but it will happen before the end. If you are going to fight the Shard of Hate, you can't fight in his own way.5 likes
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Day 8 The remaining bridge crew sat grumpily around the barracks, looking despondent and bored. And yet many discussions happened quietly. Tenodin was once again debating whether he should kill someone. He pulled out his knife, and... No. Yes? Maybe? Someone different? Maybe tomorrow? Tenodin sat in indecision as he walked outside, continuing to think upon whether he should kill his target. Screams in the distance. Soldiers shouted. "WHITESPINE! SOMEONE LET THE WHITESPINE OUT!" yelled a voice in the distance. Soldiers were obviously mobilizing to take the creature down. But the screams were coming from a different part of the camps, so he was safe. He heard rustling behind him. Tenodin didn't even have a chance to scream as the whitespine ripped through him. The whitespine then pounced on Melb, who just stood there, doing nothing. As the whitespine devoured the two, the bridge crew ran. Soldiers soon mobilized to the bridge crew barracks and recaptured the whitespine. Its cage had been opened, somehow. The other bridge crews whispered of the sudden bad luck of Bridge 11. A chasmfiend, and now a Whitespine only really attacked THEIR camp? What was going on? --- Vendel glared at his spy. "A whitespine? Really?" The slave shrugged. "I felt a bit of excitement was required. I used pheromones... very convenient, really." "Don't pull something like that again. Draw too much attention to my operations, and I will end your pay, and you may find yourself as the subject of one of my experiments, at the hands of the others," Vendel threatened. "Whatever." The spy returned to the crew, unnoticed. Randuir was killed! He was a Unlucky Assassin! Shqueeves was killed for inactivity! He was a Unlucky Surgeon's Apprentice! PM's are closed. There is no Unremarkable vote. Player list:5 likes
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I like to imagine Jasnah walking into the throne room of some monarch, not speak a word, activate the oathgate, and walk out the door to Urithiru. All while the monarch and his retinue go from asking why she is here, to asking what just happened.5 likes
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You mean fusing?5 likes
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Kaladin and the Stormfather:
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I just go done reading Warbreaker, and decided to make something to translate text into colors. I can't figure out where to put it, so I will just leave it here. (Spoilered for length) For those of you who want to run it, you will need python 2.7 and nltk installed. It works bes on a web server, but will run fine on a computer.4 likes
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That moment when you realise Jasnah's cousins are actually her step-brothers4 likes
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So, to link link this back to "No Mating" and Syl's dating advice to Kaladin, does this make Syl a cougarspren? Or, seeing as, per the quote below, is she a bondagespren? I know she's actually an Honorspren, but still - it fits the discussions regarding the spren curiosity about human mating habits and bodily functions....4 likes
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Maybe Part 2 is told from the spren POV. How awesome would it be to see Syl, Pattern, Ivory, Stormfather, Glys, and Spark interact and commentate what's going on in Urithiru?4 likes
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The full preface of Part 14 likes
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All right guys. We can finally tell you about the WoB Archive we have been working on for a long, long time. It has a name, too! It's Arcanum: the Brandon Sanderson Archive. We've been very hard at work with Arcanum. Our team of Arcanists have done great work on it, and we will have things from the Words of Radiance tour to the present day in our system in our launch. In addition we have annotations and a variety of things prior to 2014 (though that stuff isn't finished). It's been much more time consuming than you'd expect, as we've painstakingly gone through the Shadowdays of WoBs to find all sorts of audio files, and then transcribe them in our system. There's a bunch of new stuff we've acquired that's never been seen before, too! As the Ideals of the Edgedancers say: I will remember WoBs that have been forgotten I will listen to audio that has been ignored I think that's how they went, I'm pretty sure... Of course, you all want to know when Arcanum launches. That will be November 8th, 2017. We said it was going to be before Oathbringer release, and it is! You'll be able to upload all your audio from the Oathbringer tour into Arcanum. It works, and it is glorious. Stay tuned, and we'll finally get to show it all to you on November 8th.
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The fact that Sanderson didn't include any details about the group that arrived with Jasnah makes sense. For one, Shallan wouldn't care about anyone else but Jasnah, so from her POV it makes sense she wouldn't notice specifics amongst the others. It also makes for a crappy cliffhanger if the sentence reads, "At the head of the group of two squires, the Queen of Alethkar, Vivenna, the King's Wit, a girl who was clearly awesome, and a couple of random kandra, was Jasnah Kholin." That being said, I have a feeling that at least one important person has joined Jasnah on her trip to Urithiru. I have a feeling that the group with her will end up being some of her Squires. Post a thought in the comments if you agree or disagree!3 likes
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Have a flow chart of the subject: From Brandon(Oct 10, 2015): From Brandon(Feb 1, 2017): From Brandon(Feb 3, 2017): From Peter(February 6, 2017): The status of the subject is still very much up for debate, and will likely remain that way until Brandon puts Shardblade vs Aluminum into a book.3 likes
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I don't disagree. I think that the racial divide is what Odium wants. It's the main distraction that has to be overcome.3 likes
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Day 10: A Knife in the Dark Waern crept down the corridor, fearful of being seen despite the fact that it was his own building, and he had every right to be wherever he chose to be within its grounds. No, tonight was not a night that he wanted to be seen. Before him at the end of the corridor, the sound of footsteps approached. Waern paused, pressing himself up against the wall to avoid being seen. A figure went past the turning. While he couldn’t make them out, he could clearly see that they were determined to achieve something this night. Considering it looked like they were headed towards Cyfna’s room, and he could make out the metal gleam of a dagger, he had a good idea what it was. He thought about following them, but shook his head. He had more important things to take care of tonight. The second thing Locke did, after locking the door to his room (you never could be too careful), was to light the candle beside his mirror. The light illuminated the area around him faintly, just enough to do a little reading in the darkness of the night. He reached into his pocket and unfolded the letter that Armina had left him. It was perhaps the seventh or eighth time that he had read the note since it fell into his possession, but he was far from bored from it – in fact, it seemed to get more and more enjoyable every time. Locke couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as his eyes skimmed the words again. “Something funny, Obligator?” Locke looked up and froze. In the reflection of his mirror, he could see Waern stepping out of the shadow like a wraith, into the dim glow of the candle. “Sir!” A hand containing a set of keys clamped around his chest and held him in place. “I would tell you that I’m not going to enjoy this, that this is nothing personal...” Waern muttered into his ear as the knife plunged in-between Locke’s ribcage. “But we both know that would be a lie.” He twisted the knife around, before removing it and letting Locke fall to the floor under his own weight. As he hit the ground, Locke tried to crawl away, further back into his room, one hand clamped at his side to stem the flow, but it wasn't long before he started to falter. He knew that moving away was a pointless endeavour that would only delay any further attack and risked making the wound worse. It wasn’t as though there was any way for him to try and escape either; Waern was blocking his only exit. He gave up, knowing he couldn’t escape, and pushed himself over, bloody handprints marking the floor where he pressed down. “S-sir! Why?” He managed to choke out, in between breaths. No, why wasn't what he truly wanted to know - How, was what he wanted to know, how had he found out? “You don’t think I could tell you had something planned?” Waern asked, his voice surprisingly calm and quiet. “The handwriting on that note looks like that pathetic skaa girl's. Considering your mirth, I think I can guess what it says... After all that happened between you, I’m surprised she gave you that information, but I knew that you were planning something big regardless…” “I was hesitant, I admit. It was a bit of a risk to assume your plot was to do with me, but I was willing to kill you for potentially no reason. Just in case, you understand. But no, I am entirely vindicated.” He smiled down at Locke, stepping forcefully on his foot and pressing down. “This is clearly an attempt at blackmailing one of The Lord Ruler’s officials, a crime punishable by death. Not that anyone will know it was me here, anyway. We still have a few murderers around here that I can pin it on…” “But...” Locke said, trying to push himself up. His palm slipped, slick from the blood, and he dropped down onto his back again with a painful thud. “What if-” “What if you’d told someone?” Waern grinned. “I know you, Locke, better than you think. You're similar to me in my youth. You're too clever, too power-hungry for your own good. You would never have given anything away to other people that you could benefit from yourself. You would have kept it close to your heart, perhaps making a few careful arrangements once the game began in earnest, but you'd still wait until the last possible moment… And of course, it seems that I was right. Unfortunately for you, I simply know you too well, and I started making my move before you were ready to even begin playing.” He crouched down and picked up the letter from where it had fallen from Locke’s hands. “Don’t feel too disheartened. It all comes down to experience, really. I’ve been involved with politics for far too long, and I know when someone’s becoming ready to make a power grab.” He went over to the candle Locke had lit, and held the paper over it. It started to singe, and give off a faint plume of smoke, before it caught alight. Waern waited until all of it had burnt to cinders except for the part he was using to hold the letter, and then let the rest fall onto the wick. He carefully stepped around the pool of blood, and the expiring Locke, as he left the room. “Goodbye, Locke,” he said, pausing on his way out of the door, “I’ll see you in hell.” He believed it too. Cyfna was a Seeker! Day 10 has begun! It will end at 21:00 PM GMT on Friday. There is no longer a Tineye alive, so PMs may not continue. Players Quick Links:3 likes
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No image, but with Kaladin riding the storm (especially towards the end) I couldn't help but think: "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."3 likes
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Well Syl and Pattern needed their bonds to regain sentience in the physical realm. Shallan notices that Re-Shephir isn't completely cognizant, and Taravangian writes as well that most of the Unmade are mindless. Perhaps if they are able to bond a human they would gain sentience? Another possibility I've been toying around with is that maybe Re-Shephir is a corrupted artform parshendi. Shallan wonders if Re-Shephir used to be human, but I think it's just as likely she used to be a parshendi. Shallan might not make that leap right away as she's used to thinking of dull parshmen, and I don't think many, if anyone, on the human side knows that the parshendi change forms by bonding spren. Anyway, we know that the parshendi can take on artform by bonding a creationspren and Shallan mentions that Re-Shephir is creationspren-like in some ways. Plus Rlain says that their gods are "the souls of those ancient. Those who gave of themselves to destroy." I've always thought that the voidspren as whole were the parshendi gods, but Rlain's quote makes it sound like the gods are more than just sentient pieces of Odium's investiture. Perhaps the Unmade were the original parshendi who were corrupted by Odium to fight against the humans. I imagine if humans were colonizing/conquering Roshar, Odium might have offered power to the parshendi to fight back.3 likes
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The question of the Parshendi being the Voidbringers was already raised in WoR. The stormform were noticeably enslaved there. Add in the Parshmen here... And if you think for a moment this will be a war between humans and listeners, then you haven't been paying attention.3 likes
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I'm not one for long winded posts or deep thoughts like those above. I love them, but I just can't reproduce them as I'm a simple uncomplicated person. As such, I agree with many of the points above by Bard, Seonid, Steel and El. Edit: and Sart. I liked what Sart said too. He just added it when I wasn't looking. Sneaky, sneaky Sart. I would quote them and go into more detail but then my first sentence would be moot and we can't have that now can we? Instead I'll just say that if you want to join the meta, then it's fairly easy. Just create a character and play them. Make up a backstory and see how it plays out over a game. None of my characters set out to last more than one game but those that did are the ones that I really connected with. Each one of my living characters embodies a part of me. For example, Ratel is my scientific side that developed when I was young and Spock was a huge influence in my life. He also contains my more curious about magic side that formed when I was a teenager and studied dark rituals like demon summoning and raising the dead. It's an interesting mix. Alv is my mischievous/pranking side. I mean he did board up all the latrines and put laxatives in the chouta. I think we all know which part of me Edaan holds. Add a part of yourself to your characters and you will be surprised at how they come to life. Once the game is over, if you liked how they turned out then bring them back, either for another game or even just a cameo in your next characters origin story. Weave your own meta and it will join the big mess that everyone calls the narrative. Seriously, it's just a big mess that many see as a whole instead of parts that fell on the floor together and look like something. If you want a more direct line, then PM someone and work on a story together for a future game. Heck, if you want, I'm more than happy to provide a list of unplayed Collective members that someone can use for themselves. Or even help set up a RP meeting between one of my characters and someone elses. Or even just help flesh out a character or two. Now then, on to the part of having fun. The tough part is that there is no correct way to have fun. Some players love the part where they get to hunt down elims by analyzing posts and patterns. Other just enjoy RP or being part of a group involved in the hunting. Some elims enjoy trying to con the other players while others enjoy making plots and plans. Even others just like to kill folks. Everyone has their own definition of fun and every single one of them is correct. The hard part is when they conflict with each other. Those that like to go over every word looking for hints have a tough time with those that just want to RP. There is no hard and fast way to correct this. Instead everyone just needs to remember that there are other people on the other side of that screen you're looking at. If they want to RP, let them. Sure it might be a trick to hide their evilness but that's a risk you should take. Nothing is more important than having fun. Typecasting, heh, type, get it? Eh, you got no sense of humour. Typecasting is a problem. Some players are known for their long analyzing posts but when they try to do something different like RP or just have a different kind of fun or just not post as often, even when they say so before the game starts in the sign ups, players tend to think that means they are evil and try and lynch them. Or the elims themselves try and use it as an excuse for their votes. That ruins the fun for that person. I admit that even I am guilty for doing that both as a villager and an elim. Even if it's a player known to be erratic, any time they try and become more serious and help the village, they tend to be ignored. We had a player long ago Lightsworn Panda, who played the same character in every game. Jain and his stuffed Panda. He was by his own admission erratic like someone on crack. He was great fun to play with and his RP was fantastic but he never really did any serious analyzing. Until LG8, where he really stepped up and had the elims pegged. Sadly though, he was completely ignored by the village which let the Kandra win. We didn't even kill him until the last round as even with tagging us, he was no threat because no one took him seriously and joined his votes. It's hard but the best each of us can do is treat each player as if they are new. No preconceived notions or expectations. No added weight to their words just because they've played a pile of games or found all the elims by themselves once long ago. A clean slate for all players each game. And finally, comradery. Docs are a great place to talk to each other and really, really, should be used as such. Over the years I have seen a sad decline of Doc use. Spec and Dead docs used to be full of stories from both the game itself and about players lives. Sadly these days the Docs are less lively than a graveyard during a thunderstorm. Two games are running at moment and both Spec docs only really have the GMs and Mod talking in them. There is the occasional part from a newly dead but it doesn't last long until they are sucked away to the Beyond. Discord is part of the problem but it started before then as many became friends and started talking elsewhere either in PMs or over social media sites. Sadly that lead to a big decline to Doc use and those that come in later find that after death, there is nothing. If we really want to be welcoming to new players, we need to use the resources we have already. I'm not suggesting getting rid of your PMs or anything, just be more active in the Docs. Check in at least once a day and make a comment about the game. It's not that hard is it? Well shoot. I only really wanted to comment on a couple of things but I seem to have rambled a bit. That's alright though. I'm sure no one is going to call me out on it and how it completely contradicts my first sentence. Right?3 likes
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Yes. We poor unfortunate souls In pain In need Damnation where can I find a sea-witch to trade my soul er voice to for an early OB copy?3 likes
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If you buy it full price, it will be around $35. If you have Amazon Prime it is $21. If you are a member of the Barnes & Nobles club it is ~$21. If you require help on hw assignments/projects then message me. I already help my cousin on a ~twice a month basis so I am happy to help out. Or, even better, start a thread in the General Discussion forum, tag me, and the whole dang Shard might help!3 likes
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What if you did a twitch stream where it was literally just you sitting in your chair, reading silently and reacting to the amazing things that happen?3 likes
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Part Two gonna be:3 likes
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The number of babies screeching into recording devices and fire alarms going off I've listened to for this archive... I swear, you better be all happy with it, or the ghosts of my bleeding ears will haunt you for eternity!3 likes
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