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  1. 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.
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  2. 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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  3. We have a scoop for you today. Recently, a few of us at 17th Shard got to talk to Brandon, and he had a serious bombshell: he secretly wrote a book. Okay, none of us are shocked but that after the announcement of Bands of Mourning, but what we didn't expect was that the project was actually a fully formed Stormlight novel. Not Stormlight 3, but Stormlight 8. "I've been working on this for a long time," Brandon had said. "I have all the Stormlight books plotted, and it was always the plan to skip certain books. We will get back to Stormlight 3-7 eventually." We questioned further, and discovered the answer was time travel. "Time travel has always been a strong component in the science fiction and fantasy community, and I wanted to do it justice. Temporal magics have a role in the Cosmere, as you've seen with cadmium and bendalloy. I've actually seeded this into the Stormlight novels, if you looked closely." "The Truthwatchers watch every time period," he added. But if this was truly the eighth Stormlight book, how would readers who have just read the first two avoid massive spoilers to the fifth book, which will still be a decisive climax, splitting the Stormlight Archive into two five book series. "Since we are following specific characters into the future, they don't know what happens in book five either," Brandon said. When asked on how it would avoid spoiling who lived and died in books 3-7, Brandon just said, "Yeah, it's a fun first few chapters, when they find it all out." It all makes sense. We're insanely excited to see if Brandon can pull this off. There's no release date for the 500,000 word tome, as it requires rewrites. Brandon joked that Tor may need to invent time travel to develop a machine able to print the massive, door-stopping book. "I want to keep everyone guessing," Brandon said. "The fans, my characters. And now Tor can be added to the list of people guessing what will happen next." When asked if he was simply going mad with power, Brandon cackled and did his best Emperor Palpatine impression. It was comparable to Eric's terrible impression, at least a 7/10. But we are sure that Stormlight 8 will be a 10/10. Though, technically, depending on how you count, it would be a 3/10 or 8/10.
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  4. Yesterday, at a signing at JordanCon, Brandon read out something that was very old, which he said we had been waiting for "for a long time". He thought it was about eight or nine years old. It is crazy, and very exciting. It's a piece called The Traveler which is quite cosmere-aware, which Brandon thought he could now reveal. We recommend you just read it with no further introduction, but if you want some analysis, scroll on down. Get hyped. All of this is transcribed on Arcanum, and you can listen to the audio from the man himself at the links below. Here is Brandon's introduction to this piece: And so, here it is. Note, again, this is a very early draft from a long time ago. The Traveler A focused southern breeze made the trees sound like they were chattering. Tiny crisp leaves spreading the news of the Traveler’s return. Pure white leaves, clustered along branches like skeletal limbs. Even the bark clinging to the trees was white. In some lands, white meant purity; in others, it meant death. Here, it didn’t mean a thing. It was simply, normal. The Traveler sat on the mossy white ground, back to the tree, legs crossed idly as he picked at a pomegranate, eating the seeds one by one then spitting out the pits. They fell on the stark moss-covered ground, leaving red juice like blood running across a sterile white floor. To say he wore rags would have be an insult to many a goodwife who kept her washing rags in much better shape than the Traveler's costume. Ragged brown and black canvas, tattered cloak, and scruffy beard, rubbed dark with a black material that might have been soot — or ash. The leaves suddenly fluttered excitedly behind him, and a strange puff of wind blew across the trunks. A moment later, a figure in simple gray robes walked into the clearing. Clean-shaven and silver-haired, he had the look of an aged scribe, not haughty, but tired. “So, you’re back,” the elderly visitor said. “Did I leave? I am the lingering odor you can never quite locate, my friend. Just when you think I've faded you open your cupboard and find, in an overpowering reveal, that I've merely been… ripening.” “Hmph, that’s a new look for you.” The Traveler looked down at his ragged clothing. “I’ve been learning to blend in. Hard to do that in one of my normal costumes.” “I doubt you’ll ever be the type to blend in.” “You’d be surprised!” “Is that soot in your hair?” “Maybe.” The elderly man sighed, walking across the short clearing and settling himself down on a large protruding tree root. “You can’t keep doing this.” The Traveler continued to eat his seeds, though he had started to chew them up rather than spitting out the pits. “You will just make things worse.” “Ati and Leras are dead,” the Traveler said, picking a piece of seed out from between his teeth. The elderly visitor said nothing, and the Traveler eyed him, leaning in closely, studying the man's eyes. The pupils were rimmed with a silver far too metallic to be natural, at least for a human. “You sly old lizard!” the Traveler said, pointing. “You already knew! You were watching! And here you were chastising me.” “I did NOT interfere,” the elderly man said. ”You meddle in things we promised to leave alone. Things that we—” Traveler held up a finger, interrupting him, then slowly he pointed at the older man. ”I. Made. No. Promise.” “You made your choice. Why now seek for things you so eagerly denied? My friend, it’s the dangerous desire, the lust for power best untouched, that created the situation in the first place.” The Traveler did not reply. The two sat for a time, listening to the winds through the garrulous trees. “Did you… find what you were seeking?” the elder man finally asked. The Traveler shrugged, picking at another seed and nibbling on it. “You will not find a way to restore what you have lost, old friend,” the aged man said softly. ”It is impossible.” “You don’t know that. The old rules no longer hold.” The Traveler turned the pomegranate over in his fingers. ”Besides, I’ve heard of a place… It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. This isn’t about the dead… or it’s not JUST about the dead, at least.” He dropped the fruit to the ground, wiping his fingers on his riding coat. “So it’s a simple vendetta, then,” the aged man said, sighing. “How many years have you lived, and you still can’t learn the wisdom of just letting go?” “A simple vendetta?” the Traveler said. He rose, stalking up to the older man, holding out a finger and touching the man's chest. “You saw what Ati nearly did.” The Traveler leaned down, face even with that of his older companion. “I would not think it MY vendetta that should worry you, old friend.” Isn't that crazy? It's obviously set right after Mistborn Era 1, right after Hero of Ages, with Hoid (the Traveler) talking to Frost. Not only that but it really sounds like they are on Yolen as well. Remember in The Way of Kings, the part two epigraphs were a mysterious letter of cosmere significance? That was sent to Hoid, from Frost. Then, in Words of Radiance, Frost sent a reply. This is crazy. What do you think? Also note, there's lots more JordanCon to transcribe in the JordanCon event in Arcanum. Come help out by signing up for an account, going to the Sources page, and hitting Edit. Come into our Discord in the #arcanum channel and we can help you out, or go here for a guide on how to do that.
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  5. Hey everyone, guess what! Our very first Coppermind Commission is ready to be revealed. After our patrons voted last month to see the interior of the honorspren stronghold, Lasting Integrity, we reached out to friend of Shardcast, Connor Chamberlain. And as always, he knocked it out of the park. If you want to have a hand in our next poll, act fast. Just two days left on it! If you are already a patron, check back soon for a fun behind-the-scenes look at the creation of this piece! Thank you to all the patrons for all of your support in getting us to our $500 goal, which allows us to do awesome things like this. We hope you love it.
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  6. (This special prerelease, spoiler-free review is specifically approved by Team Sanderson.) It's safe to say that Words of Radiance has the most pre-release hype of any of Brandon's solo works to-date. And it makes sense. The Way of Kings was Brandon's best work at the time, and so everyone is wondering, will Words of Radiance live up to the high bar set by book one? This is a sequel that has a ton riding on it. After all, despite the first book's length, there's still so much more of Roshar to explore. There's so many places that The Stormlight Archive can go from here, that it has been hard to predict what would happen in this book, much less a few books down the line. Words of Radiance could fall on its face. So, does it live up to the hype? Storms yes it does. "Of course you'd like the book," you immediately say. "You're a 17th Sharder, you'll love anything Brandon writes." I'd say this is somewhat true. None of us would be here if we didn't like what Brandon's done, but when you are a hyper fan, you set these books up to a high standard. You can see flaws that no one else sees, simply because you are so invested. For a while, I worried that Words of Radiance would end up like The Well of Ascension, which I have some problems with to say the least. I loved Well's ending (which made it entirely worthwhile), but rereading it is a slog for me. Well of Ascension was Brandon's first true sequel, and it shows a bit. Obviously, Brandon has grown a vast deal from almost a decade ago when that book came out, but it was still a worry. Sequels are not easy, to say the least, but it looks like finishing up The Wheel of Time really honed Brandon’s sequel chops. I also worried because--and this may sound like absolute heresy to many of you--I didn't immediately love The Way of Kings when it came out. I've come to love it after rereading it, but the first time I read it, well, while the Battle of the Tower was awesome, I had expected Part Five to be more. In all the Mistborn books the final part of the book contained even more awesomeness, but Way of Kings's final part was admittedly more of an extended prologue to the rest of the series. It took me a while to adjust to The Way of Kings and learn to love on its own merits instead of comparing it to Mistborn, which is a very different type of novel. I say this to convince you that no, we don't believe Brandon Windruns on water. So when I say Words of Radiance is absolutely phenomenal, an amazing achievement, and my favorite Brandon book to date, I'm not being a hyperbolic fan. It really is that good. It takes everything that was great about The Way of Kings and takes it up at least five notches--maybe ten or fifteen notches, even, depending on how you measure your notches. No matter which way you slice this massive tome with a Shardblade (in which case, can I have your Blade? Actually, that might be a bad idea), Words of Radiance is incredible. And when I say that everything is taken up a level, I'm again not being hyperbolic. Did you enjoy the interludes in book one? They are better and more plot important now. The epigraphs here are similarly more awesome and terrifying. The interior art? When you hold the book in your hands and see the gorgeous Shallan endpapers, you'll fall in love. Dan Dos Santos (artist extraordinaire, who did the beautiful US Warbreaker cover) does some art work and it is oh so excellent. You might think that Words of Radiance, being longer than The Way of Kings, would be a chore to get through, but you couldn't be more wrong. The plotting is so much better here. You'll be amazed by how much actually happens in this book. Every part of the book is focused and tight, and it has incredible, thrilling moments all along the way. Do you want to see more magic? Oh, we see more. Words of Radiance expands on the world and characters in such a natural way that you'll be thinking, "of course this is how it should have been. There was no other way." Brandon weaves together character development, tight plotting, and the world and magic of Roshar in a way that I can only describe as masterful. Brandon reveals so much in Words of Radiance. Things I expected to have to wait at least two or three more books to find out are explained in full by the end of the book, which leaves me to wonder "If he’s giving us this information now, what is he holding back?" Not only is the story great, it also has some of the most beautiful writing I've read--I teared up more than once, and that's rare for me--and it also has some of the most haunting writing I've ever read. And it manages to be hilarious, too (let me say that two characters meet in a rather unexpected way and leave it at that). It pulls at your emotions the entire way. It's relentless like that. You can tell how much he has grown as a writer in the years since he wrote The Way of Kings. And then, that ending. That ending. Guys, I'm not trying to deliberately hype it up for you, but you haven't seen anything yet. I had thought of giving you a summary with the spoilers heavily redacted, as in: "Then REDACTED REDACTED with REDACTED, because why not?" But I decided even that was too spoilery. All you really need to know is that there were four separate moments where I screamed "REDACT YEAH!" (insert your favorite storming swear here) in my empty apartment. Note, this was at Very Late O'Clock. So, to my poor neighbors, I would say that I'm sorry, but when you read it, you will understand the awesomeness. It was totally justified for me to scream and wake you up in the middle of the night. Pinky swear. And when the storm passes, after you think days, weeks, and months after you finish as you try to sleep "Wow, that was incredible" (I did this five times that I'm aware of), does Words of Radiance still hold up to a less hyped up mind? It really does, and there's so much depth in the book to dissect. There's also a deeper reason for why it has stuck with me. I love The Stormlight Archive for a lot of reasons, like its deep world and extensive magic. I'm a sucker for that, as many of you on 17th Shard are. But there's something more. As a genre, fantasy, with George R. R. Martin and others, has been trending towards darker, more "realistic" worlds. Stormlight Archive is not that. One criticism I hear about Brandon's works is that his characters aren't gritty or real enough. Well, you know what? I like heroes being heroes. Brandon writes about heroes. When you think about it, that's what the Knights Radiant and the Stormlight Archive are all about. What does it mean to truly be a hero? Having people try and struggle to do the right thing is fascinating, and allows for opportunities where you literally scream with joy (as I did) and just stand up and cheer. I'm so glad Brandon bucks that dark fantasy trend and gives me something to love. Wrap Up Words of Radiance is truly an achievement. It expands on its predecessor, fulfilling the promises it sets up, and manages to surpass it. There is no question about it: this is my favorite Brandon Sanderson novel. When I read The Way of Kings, I had thought that while it was (at the time) Brandon's best written novel, it wasn't my favorite, but that The Stormlight Archive series absolutely had the potential to be Brandon's best series. Well, that was entirely right. There's no doubt about it. Out of five stars, this book is ten heartbeats, with a 2:1 stars to heartbeats ratio. If you adored The Way of Kings, you will be blown away by Words of Radiance. Even if book one didn't thrill you, however, I can't see how you won't be enthralled by this volume. It really is that good. You'll be sold on the entire series with this. Fire and hammer forge a sword; time and neglect rust it away. And the same is true for The Stormlight Archive. Yes, we have seen the time and maybe even felt some neglect, but what Brandon was out of sight doing tempered his skill as a writer, and this book is the reward. The Knights Radiant will stand again, and this book is proof that they will stand for a long time. Thanks to Josh for his contribution to this review. Words of Radiance comes out in the US on March 4th, 2014, and in other territories on March 6th, 2014. Talk about the book in our Words of Radiance board.
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  7. After our last major site update all the way back in 2016, we're excited to announce that we'll be updating the forums and everything else to the latest available version of the platform we run on. We picked Saturday, October 21, as the big migration day. This means there will be some disruptions in service you'll have to expect on that day, but we will do our best to get the site back online as fast as possible. At 06:00 UTC (2am Eastern Time, 11pm Pacific Time) on October 21, we'll be putting the site in "Offline Mode", which means regular users won't be able to use it from that point onward. In the background, we'll be performing a move to an entirely new server to host the site so we can modernize and clean up the environment everything runs in. We estimate this migration to take several hours as we'll have to perform some manual steps as well - plus, you all talk a lot on our forums, so there's lots of data to copy! As soon as all that's done, we'll flip the switch and allow you back into our gates. Immediate Changes The update will not be purely technical in nature. The most obvious change will be a new design that you'll see all across the site. We unfortunately won't be able to bring over the existing theme to the new version as there have been a lot of changes to the underlying software in the meantime and it's unfortunately not sustainable to customize the look and feel as much as we did for the current version. Regardless, we made some changes to give the site some character and to hopefully make the move ever so slightly less jarring. In order for you to get an impression of what the updated version looks like, here's a sneak peek of our homepage when you're logged in: The topic view will also change a fair amount with an at-a-glance overview of some interesting statistics about the topic in the sidebar: Another change is that custom member titles have moved a little bit in the user interface. They will be a regular profile field, but everything else about them should stay the same! Planned and Potential Changes You'll also notice in the topic screenshot above that the regular upvote button is gone! Instead, the new forum version allows us to define custom reactions! We'll keep this limited to an "upvote" reaction for now, but will definitely be exploring this and several other new features in the future: Additional reactions that might affect reputation differently Achievements for performing certain actions, e.g. posting enough or having very successful posts These can also be rewarded with fancy badges that show up on your profile page! Updated Social Connections: While some of our older members might still remember ICQ or MSN, we hear that these aren't as hip with the kids anymore, so we'll likely be updating those to reflect the current social media landscape Pronouns Profile Field: Asking for gender (sex, really) in your profile is kind of outdated and unnecessary for the most part, so we'll be replacing this with a pronouns field that should prove more useful and allows for many more options Dark Theme: With the move to a less customized default theme and thanks to advancements in how configurable a theme is, it will be much easier for us to hopefully introduce this at some point We can't give any concrete timelines on any of these and won't promise we'll implement all of them, but with everything else up-to-date, we should be able to iterate on new things a lot more! Future Update Schedule We aim to track updates of the software we use much more closely in the future, which will likely mean an increase in the update frequency. Rather than performing a big disruptive update every few years, there will be more minor and gradual rollouts of new versions. This is very much in the spirit of the books, as I think a wise man once thought
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  8. Shortly ago, late this night, Brandon has completed the first draft of Oathbringer, the third Stormlight Archive novel. This draft weighs in at a tiny word count of 461,233 words--which, as a comparison, is longer than Way of Kings (which was 387,000), Words of Radiance (at about 400,000), and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (at 455,000 words). So, you know, it'll fit right in your pocket. Brandon says, of course, there is much work to do and that it will be out November 2017. In the process of editing, generally the word count is trimmed quite a bit as prose tightens. What's next for Oathbringer? Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon's assistant, explained on Reddit the process: So that's the process! There really is much to do still. (An unrelated, but interesting fact in that Reddit thread is that Brandon sells twice as many ebooks as print, which is pretty insane, I think.) Needless to say, after Edgedancer I can't wait to see what is in store in Oathbringer. If it ends up being longer than Words of Radiance--which I imagine it easily will--I can't wait to have an even bigger epic doorstop. Er... I mean, blunt force weapon. Er, I mean... paperweight! All of those things and more. It will be very multifunctional, I'm sure.
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  9. After several months of intensive work, we're happy to finally announce our interactive map and timeline of Roshar! Use it as a refresher on the events of the books before Rhythm of War is released or simply explore the world of Roshar. If you have any issues using the map or have suggestions for us, feel free to comment here, use our feedback thread, or approach us on Discord. Read on to find out more about the map's creation, its features, and what the future holds! Watch this trailer to get a visual overview of things instead: The project came about when our amazing staff member @Jofwu approached me, Paleo, about creating something similar to Netflix's map of The Continent for their Witcher series, based on his detailed timeline of events in The Stormlight Archive. We promptly set out to get the basic map and timeline functionalities done, while coming up with additional neat features to implement along the way. User @Stoneward13 kindly let us use his HD map remakes of both Roshar and Shadesmar, which made the detailed map feasible in the first place. A huge thanks to him is in order! We worked out how we wanted to display which information, gathered art for the various entries, and then integrated it all into the web application. We'd like to thank all the artists who granted us permission to use their works for this endeavor at this point. Thanks also to our own @Otto Didact for helping out with his cartography expertise. Once we felt confident enough to share our work with some more people, we entered a closed beta phase with our Patreon supporters, who provided valuable feedback and helped iron out some leftover kinks. Additionally, we approached @Ysondra of cosmere.es about translating all the information into Spanish. She, @Vanahian, and @Bea did so in a monumental effort over the course of only a few weeks, all the while identifying and fixing issues with the original English text as well! With this and finishing touches done, we were ready for release. Features This of course leaves us with the question of what features the map and timeline actually bring. The following list gives a rough overview: Fully labeled, explorable map of Roshar—including Shadesmar Detailed timeline of the history of Roshar, spanning from pre-history to current events in the published books upto Oathbringer Summaries of events, locations, and characters including links to related items and further details on the Coppermind Wiki Localized content, currently available in the following languages besides English: Spanish Layers on top of the map that can be enabled at any time, displaying useful additional information Overlay the borders of the historic Silver Kingdoms Show color indicators of the allegiances of various nations Map out the ten Oathgate locations Powerful filtering and customization capabilities Filter timeline events by tags Display a timeline separately from the rest to identify a single character's or book's events Lock navigation controls to a separate timeline to follow only its events Upcoming We do not consider this project finished by any means! We'll be delivering improvements as we come up with them and will of course fix any bugs that have found their way into the code. Translations into more languages are forthcoming, albeit with no ETAs as of yet. We appreciate any kind of input and actually have ways in which you can contribute. The project is open-source and hosted on GitHub, so feel free to have a look at the code or report issues there. You can also submit bug reports and suggestions through the forums or Discord in the #17s channel, of course. If you'd like to help out with translations you can also approach us for some pointers at where to start. Artists who want to help out with filling in some of the gaps are also invited to contribute, but please come talk to us for coordination first! It should be noted that the timeline is only current with the events of Oathbringer right now and will stay so for at least a few months. Once timelines for Rhythm of War and Dawnshard are finalized, we'll be updating the app and will release the new content—with a note about upcoming spoilers published ahead of time. We hope you'll have as much fun with this map as we had developing it! If you'd like to support our work and want to get early access to projects like this if they come up again, consider becoming a patron.
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  10. “Beautiful destroyer. Blunt and effective. Of all those I've claimed over this brief thousand years, you are the only one I think just might be able to understand me.” -Ruin, Hero of Ages, ch. 57. [CONTAINS OATHBRINGER SPOILERS] I once listened to a speaker presenting on the story-telling potential of role-playing MMOs. The thesis was that, through the mechanics of the open-ended game play, the players became story-tellers, crafting unique collaborative narratives through the actions and interactions of their created characters. The presentation was very well done, and I was pleased to see alternative forms of story-telling (focusing on fantasy!) getting some of the spotlight. However, I wondered about the boundaries of this story-telling model: which stories were allowed in, and which were barred at the door? “What about stories of non-violence?” I asked. While there were options available for those stories, blacksmiths or farmers, the presenter admitted that it would be difficult to advance in the games without violence of some kind, and the story-telling potential would thus be limited. Violence is often a staple of fantasy. One of the escapist attractions of the genre is that feeling of power you feel when witnessing a character you identify with have a moment of awesome. While some of us may be martial arts experts or hardened soldiers in our daily lives, many of us are not, and reading about epic heroes laying waste to their evil enemies can be an empowering and gratifying experience for those of us with frustrations we are unable to take a fist or bolt of magical energy to. There's a reason The Emperor's Soul is about Shai, and not the simple life version of her that would be created if she used her final Essence Mark. One of the reasons we read fantasy is to see extraordinary characters doing amazing things. It is important, however, to question the violence we see when reading. Is it realistic? What do these moments of awesome cost the characters? In my opinion, the cosmere books do a good job of providing diverse moments of awesome, unlike the MMOs from that presentation: Raoden reviving Elantris in a burst of light by scraping the chasm line into the ground, Sazed ascending and recreating the world with the knowledge in his metalminds, or Shallan discovering the secret of the Oathgates through scholarship and ingenuity. On the other hand, many moments of awesome in the cosmere are moments of great violence. So where does this leave us as readers? Are we, like Re-Shephir, creatures “of instinct and curiosity, drawn to violence and pain like scavengers to the scent of blood” (Oathbringer, ch. 30)? I don't think so, and furthermore, I don't think Brandon wants his readers to be mere spectators of blood sport. In particular, Brandon's characterization of Vin and Dalinar, arguably the two most violent figures in the cosmere, displays a sensitive and nuanced approach to depicting violence, thrilling readers with incredible fights scenes, without glorifying killing and death. Awe and disgust may be opposites, but they are brought together in Vin and Dalinar: the beautiful destroyers. The Mistborn Trilogy is known for its gorgeous fight scenes. Mistborn possess a grace that few cosmere killers can match. When Vin sets out with Zane to attack Cett, she doesn’t just go to make a dent in Cett’s forces. The killing is secondary, while Vin’s primary purpose is to awe Cett with her power: While we see men screaming and falling in this scene, Vin captivates the majority of the reader’s attention. She is the “terrible weapon”, a Mistborn at the height of her power. Even without atium, in this scene, Vin demonstrates to Cett’s entire army that none can stand against her. In many ways, this should be a triumphant moment for Vin. After being trapped between two armies, fearful and paralyzed with indecision, in this scene she is unleashed and allowed to stretch her abilities to their full potential. And, after patiently waiting for this moment, it is difficult not to be in awe of her. But at what cost? After decimating Cett’s forces, Vin comes across Cett and his son, one of whom she is convinced is Mistborn. Vin seeks to solve her problems with Cett through violence, but when she finally reaches him, she finds she cannot. Though she commands him to fight her, neither Cett nor his son, Gneorndin, can respond to her challenge. Brandon excites us by setting Vin loose to use her powers, but even the incredible, dazzling violence Vin unleashes is not an answer to her problems. The next morning, when Elend finds Vin, she is consumed with regret, confessing that while her old crew leader, Camon, was brutal and terrible, she likely killed more people in a single night than he had in his entire life. She goes on to say: “My entire life has been death, Elend. Death of my sister, the death of Reen. Crewmembers dead around me, Kelsier falling to the Lord Ruler, then my own spear in the Lord Ruler’s chest. I try to protect, and tell myself that I’m escaping it all. And then…I do something like I did last night” (The Well of Ascension, ch. 44). Following her massacre, Vin struggles to come to terms with being both surviving and causing great violence. This personal conflict is eventually resolved in Hero of Ages, when Vin uses the power of Preservation to destroy herself and Ruin, but along the way Brandon is careful to remind his readers of the human cost associated with his awesome fight scenes, both for the victims, and for the destroyer herself. Brandon continues his discussion of the relationship between beauty and destruction in Oathbringer. Like Vin, violence gives Dalinar a sense of purpose: Dalinar, and the reader along with him, fall under the Nergaoul’’s seductive spell. This moment is one of many where Dalinar is described as being more than a man. Here, he is judgement, sent by the Almighty to test the skill and worthiness of his enemies. While fighting with Blade and Plate might lack some of the otherworldly elegance of Mistborn or Windrunners, Dalinar’s fight scenes in Oathbringer remain captivating, even in their brutality. After hearing about the might and power of the Blackthorn in his prime, the reader is encouraged here to indulge as they enjoy watching Dalinar be awesome (sorry Lift, but you can’t hog it all to yourself). The way Brandon describes Dalinar in these fight scenes resembles how he describes Vin: both come to think of themselves as concepts or roles, rather than as individual people: Vin as Mistborn, and Dalinar as judgement. And yet, even the Blackthorn, who, despite his later redemption is likely the most brutal character in the cosmere, retains enough humanity to recognize the horror of what he is doing: Dalinar’s Shards and incredible fighting skills give him great power to defeat his enemies, but Brandon is quick to point out that there is a cost to getting lost in the glory of battle by emphasizing the destruction Dalinar has caused, and by highlighting that some of Dalinar’s own men also fell to his onslaught. After defeating the enemy general, Kalanor, Dalinar struggles to feel satisfied with his victory: It is this voice which drives Dalinar to continue his killing spree beyond what is necessary to win the battle. He wonders, “Shouldn’t the strongest rule? Why should he sit back so often, listening to men chat instead of war?” (Oathbringer, ch. 26). It is only after the Thrill almost drives Dalinar to kill his brother Gavilar that Dalinar stops and realizes what he has done. Gavilar’s celebration of Dalinar’s great victory is undermined by Dalinar’s feelings of guilt and shame for almost killing his brother. Despite Dalinar’s aptitude for war and fighting, and his oft emphasized disdain for conversation and politics, his great skill and power are not enough to satisfy him. Like Vin, Dalinar’s power and might leave him unfulfilled and unable to solve his problems. When he finally remembers burning the Rift, the voices of Evi and the children he killed haunt him: “Hypocrite, they said. Murderer. Destroyer” (Oathbringer, ch. 100). As he remembers his past, the actions that made Dalinar a fearsome warrior are a source of torment, rather than triumph, for him. Throughout Oathbringer, Dalinar often remarks about how difficult it is to adjust his thinking and unify people with politics and persuasion rather than by brute force, and how ill suited he is to the task of brokering peace. Both Hero of Ages and Oathbringer end with their respective destroyers overcoming inner turmoil to find some measure of self-acceptance. Vin determines that she can destroy to protect and is able to use Preservation in a way Leras never could. In doing so, she overcomes destruction incarnate by defeating Ruin, arguably the greatest destroyer the in the cosmere. Faced with a seemingly unstoppable force in Odium and the Fused, Brandon makes the reader think Dalinar may succumb to his past of destruction and violence and become that which he set out to defeat: Odium’s Champion. Armed with a book and, more importantly, the convictions it has taught him, Dalinar refuses to be a destroyer any longer. While Vin conquers destruction, she does so through continued violence. With Dalinar, Brandon takes his examination of violence further. Despite all of the breath-taking fight scenes in Oathbringer, the most awe-inspiring scene in the novel, and the crux of the epic climax, is the moment Dalinar, surrounded by gloryspren, refuses to give Odium his pain and opens the perpendicularity. In that moment, Daliner bests Odium, not with force, but by taking responsibility for his actions. Similarly, Dalinar overcomes Nergaoul with understanding, rather than a contest of force: While his history of struggle and violence is what allows Dalinar to capture Nergaoul, the capture itself, and the subsequent defeat of Odium’s forces, does not come about through violence on Dalinar’s part. Instead, Dalinar embraces the Thrill, thanking it for what it did for him in the past, and drawing it in close. He convinces it to rest in the gemstone. Like Vin overcoming Ruin, in this scene Dalinar, the destroyer, overcomes a divine force of destruction in a captivating way, but he does it without resorting to violence himself. In both Vin and Dalinar, Brandon sets out heroes who struggle with their self definition in the face of the violence they have committed against others. Brandon juxtaposes the hauntingly beautiful action sequences against the emotional impact those acts of violence have on the human soul, allowing his readers to enjoy the display while still being critical of that enjoyment. In their greatest moments, Brandon shows Vin and Dalinar overcoming violence and destruction, despite their status as destroyers, demonstrating that the ‘moments of awesome’ fantasy is known for do not always need to be violent ones, and that the beauty of destruction comes at a cost. _________ Post Script: As it turns out, Brandon himself has commented on the concept of beautiful but terrible violence in the Well of Ascension Annotations. Unfortunately, I did not find this quote until after I finished the essay above, but it has probably been bouncing around in the back of my head since I originally read it way back when. Enjoy Brandon’s take on the violence in Well of Ascension: Image Credit: "Vin in the Mists" by Xenia de Vries. You can also find her work on Instagram! Used with permission.
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  11. If you're out of the loop, Brandon always planned to write a Stormlight novella between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, which is now a Kickstarter reward. It was going to be Rysn novella, and it was going to involve traveling to Aimia. The name that was floating around for it was Wandersail, but Brandon didn't like that title since that wasn't what the story was about. Well, what is the story about? A freaking Dawnshard. Cover by Ben McSweeney and Isaac Stewart. Art and design are not final. Maybe check out our Coppermind article on Dawnshards, but I'll give you a quick rundown. Dawnshards are mythical objects to modern Roshar. In Jasnah's notes on the Voidbringers in The Way of Kings, she noted that talk of Dawnshards were prevalent in early mythologies. The Poem of Ista said: "Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above." As far as powers go, that's most of what we know about them. Honor, in the vision at the end of book one, worried how mankind would survive the struggle against Odium without Dawnshards, which sort of suggests they were inaccessible. Then there's this quote from the Stormfather in Oathbringer: In other words, we know so little about Dawnshards, but they are very important, and subject to intense speculation. There were theories like that a Dawnshard broke the Shattered Plains, and much more, some involving the Unmade. There was a Dawnshard in Aimia in the past, which was why it was protected so well. And in Shardcast, we sure joked a Dawnshard was in the undersea caverns of Aimia. Maybe we'll get to just see that. I'm hyped, let's go.
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  12. Hello everyone! We have some pretty exciting news for you today: we are going to change the logos across 17th Shard, the Coppermind, and Arcanum! These new logos are made by Raul Chaves, who we hired based off a brand identity for Allomancy that he did. We've wanted to make our logos more modern for quite a while, and I hope you'll agree that they turned out awesome: We have had the same logo for 17th Shard since 2016, the iconic glass shard with the 17 broken into pieces over it, and that 2016 logo wasn't very different from our original 2010 design. Both were made by Will Raboin (Shivertongue on the forums, but he's been out of the fandom for some time), and I have always been fond of them. But, we wanted to make the 17th Shard logo flatter and more modern. We also wanted a simpler silhouette, which has a few advantages, in particular, future merchandise possibilities. The old look was quite poor for merch as it did not work well in monochrome, and required a pretty specific color scheme to be visible. You couldn't exactly put the old logo on a dark background! Also, the wordmark (that is, the text on the logo) was a bit too complicated, with a gradient on the word "Shard." We still wanted to try and evoke some of the same feel of the old logo though, with a similar shape that also evokes a bit of shattering. Another benefit to this logo refresh was that it allowed us to start the process of unifying the design of 17th Shard, the Coppermind Wiki, and Arcanum, so that all our three sites feel more cohesive together. Now we have the common silhouette on all sites, with the same accent gold color. The Coppermind logo was... very old, and actually based off of the 2010 17th Shard logo, which had a green glowing gradient around the broken glass. Yikes, that was old. It's a huge improvement to get this updated, since realistically, even in 2010, we didn't love the Coppermind logo. We wanted to evoke a symbol from the Steel Alphabet, but also not use that icon directly. Arcanum's logo is the most recent of our three logos, coming out in 2017. This logo is my favorite of our three, and actually inspired the designs. The old logo was made by KChan--another retired staff member who was on some earlier Shardcasts, and who helped with a lot of colors on 17th Shard--who had the great idea of putting an A inside the cosmere logo. I love the Arcanum logo, but there are some problems with doing that. The cosmere symbol isn't easily scalable to a small icon, and also, having the art directly from the books in the logos would lead to issues in future merchandise. We still wanted to keep that A symbol very visible, as that's the defining feature of the current logo. One other advantage to a flatter design is that it allows us to adapt the logo to fit with various background schemes, such as a dark colored shirt vs. a light colored shirt, or an eventual "dark mode" on our websites. In particular, Arcanum will still have a solid dark color in its header, but you can still immediately recognize this as the Arcanum logo: We will be updating our logos on these sites, as well as our social media icons and Discord server icons, within the next week or so. Arcanum, in particular, will be refreshed with a green aesthetic over its current blue, as 17th Shard will have a blue theme and we want each color scheme to be distinct. Here are some screenshots of how they might look on the sites themselves (but know these are subject to change): Let us know what you think in the comments! Having our three main websites use a similar design language will really help tie them together, but the logos are just one part of that process. You can expect as things move forward that 17th Shard, the Coppermind, and Arcanum will start to have their overall designs change as well so things feel cohesive, but that's going to be a while away. Another long-term goal is to have some merchandise to sell eventually. But, in the meantime, we loved how these logos turned out so much that we want to unveil them now, and bigger redesigns will come much later. Thank you to Raul for some truly fantastic work! Every penny spent on this was well worth it.
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  13. Brandon had some important news to share with us today, as he alluded to in yesterday's Weekly Update. If you haven't seen the news directly from him, we encourage you to watch this video first, and then we'll break it down: Did you watch it? No really, did you? Last warning... I'm guessing your face looked something like this too? So... Sanderson started to feel a bit bogged down, overbooked, and overwhelmed in 2019, mostly on account of the amount of traveling he was doing. When Covid forced Brandon to skip the traveling in 2020, all of that freed up time created an opening for unscheduled writing. And he seems to have loved it! He wrote a book in secret that year, and as the reduced traveling continued in 2021 he wrote four more. One is a middle-grade story that will probably be a graphic novel (but it's still a bit of a work in progress). The other four of them are full-length, adult sci-fi/fantasy novels with three of them being Cosmere books. And here they are, with tentative covers and titles hidden: Sanderson also announced a Kickstarter campaign that is open NOW. This will essentially be a monthly subscription box program for 2023, including one of the four books every three months and swag boxes on the months in-between. The different tiers give you some options on what formats you'd like the books in and whether or not you want to pay for the swag boxes or just stick to the books. The themed swag boxes will contain one featured item and two supporting items. It sounds like t-shirts are likely to be included, though we don't have any other details on what they might contain at this time. They currently have no plans for stretch goals. In any case, here's the schedule for this "Year of Sanderson": Please note that these books WILL ultimately be available for those who did not participate in the Kickstarter! So if it's not something you can afford at this time, or if you've missed the Kickstarter altogether (and somehow found your way here), you will certainly have a chance to get your hands on them. The ebooks and audiobooks should be released shortly after the Kickstarter deliveries, and print editions will eventually be available as well! So what do we know about the books so far? Brandon had a few things to say during his video, mentioned a few more on the Kickstarter page, and just finished a surprise livestream in which they gave us some more crumbs. Here's what we know: General One of them is written in first person. (we don't know which) They are all around 100,000 words in length. (roughly the size of Alloy of Law) The worldbuilding/setting of all the Cosmere books is crazy -- more like Roshar than the other published Cosmere worlds. Secret Project #1 Set on a new world in the Cosmere, and has references to other things in the Cosmere. Works as an entry point for new readers. It has the craziest worldbuilding of the four novels. Secret Project #2 The only non-cosmere book of the bunch It contains excerpts of something else Brandon wrote. Works as an entry point for new readers. Secret Project #3 Set on a new world in the Cosmere, and has references to other things in the Cosmere. Works as an entry point for new readers. This one is Brandon, Emily, and Peter's favorite. Secret Project #4 Set on a new world in the Cosmere, and has references to other things in the Cosmere. This one is NOT a good entry point to the Cosmere. It's focused on a character we've seen before, who hasn't had their own story and whose backstory is relevant to this book. The plotting of this one leans hard on a specific style and that makes it a bit polarizing. That's all we know so far, but there's more to come! Starting on Thursday, Brandon will be posting weekly readings from each book. It sounds like we can expect the first 5-6 chapters of Secret Project #1 on this Thursday, with readings from the others coming on subsequent Thursdays. Brandon will also be doing weekly livestreams on Tuesdays for the duration of the campaign (which is for the next 30 days). The first segment of these livestreams will be no spoilers, but the second half will get into some more details about the books and for questions that address the readings released on Thursdays. So stay tuned! WOW! It's a lot to take in. What do you guys think? Let us know what your reaction was in the comments! And if you've got any theories for what these books might be about, we'd love to hear them!
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  14. Hey everyone, earlier this month you voted on our next Coppermind Art piece and it is officially ready to share! Your choice was a scene from Part 1 of Rhythm of War where Renarin saves Kaladin from Moash. We reached out to rspixart (who fans of the podcast may remember as the artist for the glorious depictions of Rlain and Renarin we fawned over in our Rlainarin/Corrupted Truthwatcher episodes earlier this year). Unsurprisingly, she did an amazing job and we are so glad to be able to share it with you! Check back this Thursday where we will have another poll for you, featuring the Nine (as last month's runner-up) and several other fun choices. Once again, thank you for your continued support. Not only have you maintained the $500 goal so we can continue doing this, you have pushed us over $600 for this month! This is truly mindblowing to all of us and we are grateful.
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  15. Exciting news! The Stormlight novella--with Lift--that is coming out this fall with the short story collection, Arcanum Unbounded, is now complete, according to comments on Brandon on Reddit. This short story collection is sounding more and more awesome as time goes on. It will contain Mistborn: Secret History, and every published cosmere short story, like Sixth of Dusk, The Eleventh Metal (which was seen in the Mistborn Adventure Game), and The Emperor's Soul. Someone asked on Reddit if it would have more Marsh viewpoints and Brandon responded that it probably would not. It already had stories from Scadrial, and it was really missing Roshar. A few people asked if there would be a Nalthis short story in the collection, and Brandon's responses have been: "If I can squeeze in something from Nalthis, I will." and "It's on the list of 'things to do for the collection if possible' but I need to get the Stormlight story in first." So, maybe? But don't be disappointed if not. Also in Arcanum Unbounded will be something amazing for cosmere buffs: Khriss (the writer of the Ars Arcanums in each book) will have an introduction to each planet, and it will contain a map of solar systems in the cosmere. Hype. Of course, Brandon has a ton of other things on his agenda, like this little thing called Oathbringer, the third Stormlight novel. Well, it's past the halfway mark now on its first draft! UPDATE: Moshe Feder, Brandon's editor, has finished editing the Lift novella. He reveals the Lift novella's length: 40,000 words! To compare, that's longer than The Emperor's Soul, and the long Lift interlude in Words of Radiance was about 10,000 words long. This means Arcanum Unbounded is going to give you a ton of value for your money, especially if you haven't read The Emperor's Soul yet. Moshe only has glowing things to say about the novella, saying it "glows with 'awesomeness'" and calls it a "new mini-masterpiece." So, get hyped. The article above also has been changed to indicate that, according to many sellers, Arcanum Unbounded does contain the Emperor's Soul.
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  16. Huge spoilers for Rhythm of War! Aaah, friends, there's no beating around this bush, we've got a real winner on our hands here. We knew we could really step up our game if we threw twice as much money at these commissions, but our artist of choice, Nozomi Matsuoka (whom you might remember from this particular piece of horror), really outdid herself - not only did she finish this in... hold up, there's a message history somewhere here... 8 freaking days, she also nailed the mood of the piece right off the bat, and was able to split it into two pretty standalone parts. What else is there to be said? Everything is great, down to the inclusion of the agonyspren and anguishspren on the wall, which almost never show up in fanart, unlike their much more common (and also present here) angerspren and fearspren counterparts.
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  17. Rhythm of War is fast approaching! If you’re like me, you’ve been obsessing over every tidbit of information that Brandon has released about the book. If you’re not as crazy as I am, you’re in luck because I’m going to share with you everything we currently know about Rhythm of War. The book is going to open with a Navani prologue. Brandon has shared the beginning of that prologue with us. It cuts off right when we start getting to the juicy stuff, but it looks like we will see more of Gavilar’s secrets from that night. It’s not shown in the chapter, but we can also assume that (spoiler alert) Gavilar will die at the end of the prologue. Before we get into the nitty gritty details, here’s a quick overview of the structure. This book will have three arcs that take place in three different locations. Arc one will contain five point of view characters, two of which will have fewer chapters. Arcs two and three will both have two point of view characters. Arc two’s characters will be in a narrowly focused but very involved plot while arc three just touches on what the two]characters are doing. The structure is going to be more similar to The Way of Kings than Words of Radiance or Oathbringer. Each arc will have it’s own climax that will be spread out throughout the book, so the ending won’t be quite as compact as Oathbringer’s was. The main plot of the book is going to begin one year after the end of Oathbringer. We’ll get to see the benefits of our heroes having a year of training in the time jump. The characters are going to all begin in the same location before splitting off to three different locations. With the implication that Kaladin and Jasnah will share a scene, this is a likely location for it to happen. Szeth is going to start the book in jail at Dalinar’s orders. Based on Brandon’s outline, arcs one and two will have point of views in this part. We have a part of a Lirin chapter and part of a Venli chapter released. The Lirin chapter takes place in Hearthstone and the Venli chapter takes place in Kholinar. With those locations both in Alethkar, could they be part of the same arc of the book? I think it’s very likely. The man Lirin is searching for in his chapter is the Herdazian General from the Sheler interlude in Oathbringer. Brandon has confirmed that he will have an important role in the book. Fans who got Brandon’s November 2019 newsletter will have received the full version of the chapter. The flashbacks in Rhythm of War are going to be a combination of Venli and Eshonai perspectives. Venli’s flashbacks will have more of the behind-the-scenes details and cosmere mysteries, while Eshonai will likely be the character more people enjoy reading. We have a prototype Eshonai flashback that you can read. The content is not necessarily canonical; Brandon wrote in to get Eshonai’s voice down. As the outline shows, the flashbacks will not begin until part three of the novel. Why is unclear but is certainly an interesting question to consider. Along with Venli and Eshonai, there is going to be another character that has a major role in the main narrative. This character is not one of the ones with flashbacks, which only narrows down the possibilities slightly. Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, and Szeth will all still feature prominently, though Dalinar will not have as large a role in this book as in Oathbringer or Stormlight 5. Brandon has given us a few details about what Hoid will be up to in this book. He and Jasnah will have some interaction. Brandon’s favorite scene in the book takes place in part 4, when Hoid tells a story to someone. The point of view character for this scene has only one chapter in the book. Hoid is going to have an extra special soliloquy in the epilogue, and it’s something Brandon has been planning for a long time. While we don’t yet have the in-world back cover for the book, we do have a description from the Amazon page. This description indicates that we will learn more about fabrial technology and the Sibling. Brandon himself has confirmed that we’ll be learning more about how fabrials work. Fans who received the newsletter exclusive chapter mentioned earlier will know that the part 1 epigraphs will be Navani’s notes on fabrials. We also know that Brandon plans to answer what spren look like in Shadesmar when trapped in a fabrial in this book. Of course we also have some odds and ends when it comes to what’s been said about Rhythm of War. We're going to see a new Dustbringer appear. We’ll also see Maya at some point, though whether that’s just her Shardblade form or something more is unknown. Rhythm of War is, of course, an in-world text. Lift is going to have an interlude, the beginning of which is available to read. And of course we can’t forget to mention the infamous shameful ribbon that appears somewhere. The text isn’t the only thing that makes a Stormlight book awesome. We’ve also got some incredible art to look forward to. We’re going to get more Herald art like the endpages in Oathbringer. We don’t know which Heralds yet, but a Taln image in that style has been revealed and it’s incredible. We’re going to get two more of the lovely fashion folio pages. We’re also going to get illustrations of every Order spren except the Bondsmiths'. Could this be the best batch of art in a Stormlight book so far? If you read all this and thought “Wow, that’s a lot”, then I have some exciting, or maybe terrifying, news for you. What we know only barely scratches the surface of what’s in store for us in November. THere are characters and arcs that we know nothing about yet. So hold onto your gemstones and get ready for another epic story. Special thanks to @Pagerunner, whose Stormlight 4 Readings and Info post made this a lot easier to research and write.
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  18. Two weeks ago, we started an anonymous poll where we asked you, the users, to judge us, the mods! Now that two weeks have passed, we have pored over the results to discover the answers to what are clearly the most pressing questions we could have - who's the people's favourite moderator? Who's the most terrifying? And what did anonymous user #78 have for breakfast the day they filled out the poll? (it was a turkey sandwich, apparently) All in all, 146 users have given us their answers over the course of fourteen days that the poll was up - assuming we didn't have anyone answering the poll multiple times. Two people have decided to leave their polls blank for some reason, so: here are 17th Shard's opinions on the staff as represented by 144 people. Quality of moderation on the Shard The first three questions were focused on general opinion on the staff: in short, are we doing a good job? Well, in your opinion, it seems that we are! A 1 here meant we were doing terribly; a 5 meant very good. Almost 70% of you gave us the top marks when it comes to general moderation on the Shard, while no-one said we're horrible at it - nice! There were, of course, responders who believe we could do a better job of it - this is valuable for us to know and we will work to improve and hopefully raise these responses in the next poll! In this question, 1 indicated that the mods are too harsh; 9, that we are too lax. As perhaps could've been expected, it seems you find us to be on the harsher side of things; only twelve people answered on the lax side of the poll, while almost half believe we have attained the happy middle ground. Here, 1 indicated that the mods are too scary to approach, while 5 meant that you felt you could be casual with the mods. It seems like almost a quarter of you are at least somewhat wary of mod interactions, which is probably tied to the prior result naming us somewhat harsh. This is something we can improve on in the future. The People's Mod and the Scariest Mod The next two questions were mostly fuelled by our curiosity: who do you think is the most approachable mod? Who do you find the scariest to talk to? When it comes to question number 1, the race for the top rank was close, but the results were clear: in Excel, because Google Forms wouldn't let me sort the answers The People's Mod award goes to Ene! Rasarr (it is I!) comes in second place (thank you, thank you), while trailing close behind are Argent, Overlord Jebus and LadyLameness. While the race for the most approachable mod was somewhat close, especially in the first few days, you folks never hesitated when it came to the scariest one. Yep! The Scariest Mod award goes to Chaos by a landslide. No less than 53% of the responders found him to be the most fearsome; the next mods (Argent, Grey, LadyLameness and Ene) trail far, far behind. Conversely, the Least Scary Mod award goes to Paleo, Mestiv and FelCandy, whom no responder found scary. I would also like to shout out the anon who found Argent to be both the most scary and the most approachable of the mods, and another anon who thought the same of Chaos. I do not understand how this works, but I respect you. Preferred ways of contacting the mods Our next question concerned itself with how you would go about contacting the mods, and I'm happy to see that most of you would not shy away from contacting us in some way, should the need arise. Only 7 of you found us too fearsome to summon (I must wonder if it's the same 7 who found us too scary, though I admit I did not look into that). I will say, there is nothing to fear! If you have any issue with something happening on the forums or on the Discord server, do not hesitate to contact us! If you don't want to speak to the specific mods directly, the forum's report and Discord's @Staff ping will summon any mod currently online, and we will absolutely not begrudge you for using it. The open questions Questions 7 and 8 were open text fields, letting you folks tell us what you think in plain English. We will not be inserting a full list of them here - first of all, it doesn't graph well, second, some of those answers might be used to guess who the speaker was. For question 7 ("Is there something you particularly like or dislike about 17th Shard's moderation, or think we could do better?"), the answers were roughly half praise and critique. While the former was very nice to hear, the latter in particular is extremely useful to us; we will strive to improve on the points you have raised. Question 8 was a bit more freeform ("Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?"), and so were the answers. The bulk of it was outpouring of love and affection for the mods, which we are very grateful for, as it feeds our egos quite well indeed. There were several more serious issues raised, and we will be looking at them in the future. There were also comments of other nature, such as: culinary advice (I'm not a fan of pickles myself, but I'm sure someone will make use of it) "Today I had a good day" (good to hear! Hopefully, you had more good days since) "Hi" (and hello to you as well!) "I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now." (good for you, buddy, good for you) A picture of a cat (aww) There was also an assumption that we are all beta readers, which I feel needs to be clarified: no. At least half of us (myself included) are not part of Brandon's writing process - and the part of the staff that are beta or gamma readers are absolutely forbidden from telling us anything. We do not have any knowledge you don't have. The Shard's Favourite Mod Now that I've talked your ear off, let's get to the real question, and the one that inspired this poll in the first place: who is the Shard's favourite staff member? The answer is clear: you have no idea. On a less facetious note, ignoring the "all or none" answers, the Favourite Mod crown goes to Argent! In the second place we have Ene, while the third is shared between Rasarr and Chaos, followed by Lady Lameness. So, there you have it - a look into the minds of the Shard members. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who responded, and doubly so the people who praised and critiqued us. Knowing what you feel we're doing right and wrong is extremely helpful, and we promise we will try to learn from what you've told us. And if you've missed the poll, or feel like we should need more data - do not worry. We definitely intend to run it again in the future, both to see if we're improving and to hear more of your honest thoughts.
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  19. Update 7/13: Tonight Brandon put out Stormlight 4 Update #9 which says much of what we say here, elaborating that Isaac and Peter have "months" of work left to do on the book. He also said the Stormlight novella's title will be announced tomorrow, and there's a livestream Thursday. He reiterated plans we've reported here: Songs of the Dead revision this week, then after, Skyward 3, and Lost Metal starting January 1. After that, then it's Stormlight 5 time, which will be roughly the halfway point of the cosmere. Last night, Brandon finished his work on Rhythm of War, the fourth Stormlight Archive novel. On a screenshot saying "The End," you can see the word count is 459,629 words, which is a bit longer than Oathbringer's 454,000 words. Brandon shared in a Facebook comment that there are 112 chapters, plus interludes, and the prologue and epilogue. Brandon also said in his post that though the book releases in full on November (specifically, November 17th), preview chapters are coming before then. His tweet says "preview chapters soon." Hooray! Now, in previous news posts, some commenters have asked why they can't just read the ebook of this next week, so I thought I'd explain some things to the best of my ability as to what is happening next for the book. Please, anyone in the comments who know more than I do, comment away, I'd love to know more! Though Brandon is done, there's a lot more work to be done from people on Brandon's team as well as Tor. First up will be typesetting the Word document to look like an actual book. Then there's proofreading that needs to be done. There are Tor proofreaders, Peter (Brandon's assistant), but also there is a "gamma read" which is a proofread pass to a bit of a wider set of people, similar to the beta read. These books are really long, and even with so many eyes on the book, there are still typos in the final result. This is a super important phase. Nowadays, with Dragonsteel Entertainment being a reasonably big operation, Brandon doesn't need to micromanage this step, and Peter can deal with this. So while Brandon is done, the text isn't quite done yet. What else? Well, we need the art to all be finalized. I'm not exactly sure when the art needs to be turned in, but with every Stormlight book, there's tons of in-world art. Art takes a long time. I imagine plenty has been started already, but it might not be done quite yet. After all, we still don't have the US cover art. But I imagine the sheer weight of interior art takes a long time. Next up, there's the audiobook. Over half of Starsight's sales were audiobooks, if I recall correctly, so this is likely a large fraction of the audience. Oathbringer's audiobook is 55 hours, 5 minutes. I have to imagine actually recording it, doing multiple takes of sections, and editing it takes a very long time to record these mammoth audiobooks. Coming off editing Shardcast taking triple to quadruple the time for me to edit those, I have to believe the audiobooks are a huge undertaking. Of course, the audiobook can be recorded once the text is finalized, and once the art is done, printing can begin. You might still ask why you can't read the book after the text is finished. That's a fair question! But it occurred to me: the New York Times Bestseller list is a huge deal for advertising a book. From my understanding, you want to release all the editions of the book at the same time so they all count to the bestseller list. It would be a bad look to have the fourth Stormlight book not be a #1 bestseller. So, there are some important economic and industry reasons why we can't read it immediately. It sucks, but it is what it is. I know the wait has been brutal, but this is actually very fast for us to get the book out by November, and lots of people are putting in a lot of effort to get it to you. Still, we'll get preview chapters soon, which will be great! In Brandon's recent newsletter, he released a brand-new chapter of Rhythm of War, and if you sign up for the newsletter, it'll be sent to you! You can discuss it in our Rhythm of War spoiler board! Article image: the Gollancz cover of Rhythm of War, by Sam Green.
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  20. Hi everyone! Eric with 17th Shard here, and I'm here to talk to you about Rhythm of War, by Brandon Sanderson, the fourth novel in The Stormlight Archive. This review is completely spoiler free! There will be no spoilers for the preview chapters, or other cosmere stuff, so if you haven't read anything about Rhythm of War, this won't have any information other than some non-spoilery info Brandon has discussed about the structure of the book. Of course, all of us at 17th Shard are mega-fans, so you can take us with a grain of salt that, yeah, we really like Brandon books and his writing style. But if we didn't like a thing, we'd tell you, and that'd hold some weight. So, in this review, these are my opinions here, but you'll hear from all our other staff members about the book soon enough, too! If you'd prefer to watch a video instead, check out our video review! So let's talk about Rhythm of War! This book is the longest of the Stormlight books, even longer than Oathbringer! Overall, this works really well. I didn't think Oathbringer had fluff, but this book is even leaner. It's just that the world of Roshar is so big, and the number of characters is so big, that there's a lot to do in this. Plus, stuff happens! A lot of stuff happens in this book, and it will really surprise you in many ways. Rhythm of War has some absolutely killer moments. There will be joy. There will be a lot of pain and suffering, too. I think a lot of people will tear up on more than a few occasions. Character Character is a massive focus in Rhythm of War, moreso than Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. This book is a character study for several of our characters, and the character moments are the best moments in the entire novel. Mental health and struggling with mental health takes center stage in the book, and it personally affected me more than it has in the series. As someone who struggles with depression, this book spoke to me fantastically. Now, this might be controversial in the book, because the mental health stuff could be hard to read for some. It gets deep, and it gets dark, darker than Brandon has taken characters before. That might turn you off of the book. And there may be readers who don't find characters dealing with their mental health to be important, and yeah, this book might not be for you. I think it was done really well, I think it really spoke to me, and I think mental health is always a good thing to thoroughly explore in books to continue to destigmatize it. There are tons of characters in The Stormlight Archive, and as always, Brandon has to juggle a lot of different characters and plotlines. I've always felt Brandon deals with this well, with some characters getting less in some books but more in the next, and that continues in Rhythm of War. It focuses on the right characters for the book, but we still see from all of our main gang of protagonists, and they are all important. There is a main character who gets less viewpoints than others, but there is another character who really comes into their own here, which was lovely. There are new characters, too. One new character is one I can't wait to talk to you about, because they really steal the show. We also see more viewpoints of characters we didn't see as much as we should have before, and it's lovely to see more from these more minor characters be fleshed out. Plot I can't really tell you too much about the plot, honestly. But this book doesn't go where you'd expect. After Oathbringer I didn't really know where the story would go, but... I didn't quite expect this, I don't think you'll expect it either! It is really cool and awesome, as you'd expect from Brandon. There are three groups of characters and after Part One they do split up. Some of these interweave a bit, others don't. It's more that Way of Kings vibe, where in that book, we had Shallan in Parts One and Three and Dalinar/Adolin in Parts Two and Four. Rhythm of War is like that in many way with its three groups, and only one of the groups is in all five parts, with the other two alternating after Part One. But each plotline is engaging, and they all get extremely intense. This book will definitely keep you at the edge of your seat. Now, The Way of Kings is not my favorite Stormlight book. Words of Radiance and Oathbringer had plot structures I more preferred, and the endings of those books, where absolutely everything comes together, man... that just really speaks to me, and I love that so much. Rhythm of War has a great Brandon Avalanche. The highs are REALLY high, but it's not going to be like the ending of Oathbringer where everything comes together. So I liked the ending less so than Words of Radiance and Oathbringer, but I know there are people who thought this was the best Stormlight book, with the best ending. I think it may come down to how character focused you are. I'm more plot based, so I liked it a bit less, but I think this structure is done better than it was in The Way of Kings. There's a ton of awesome here and it's really cool. I quite enjoyed the plot and the ending, it's just the different plot structure Brandon went for here was not as in line to my personal preference. You may well be different! I do want to say, though, that where the book is meant to have a big impact, Rhythm of War absolutely executes incredibly. There was a moment that confirmed something I figured, but the way it was portrayed makes it easily one of the best and memorable scenes in the book. When there's suffering, you feel it, and when there's a "hell yeah" moment, it's just the best. Probably one of the weaker parts is the flashbacks. There are both Eshonai and Venli flashbacks, and it's cool, but it's nothing as impactful as Dalinar's flashbacks were. But I mean, Dalinar's were so good and so impactful for the main story, and we just can't have every flashback sequence be as awesome as those. But if I had to get a criticism, it may be these flashbacks. They are fine, but not incredible. This book has a one year time jump from the end of Oathbringer, which is different for the series thus far. All the other books have happened immediately after the previous novel. So how'd this go with this one? The time jump worked pretty well for me. I felt like we've gotten enough hints of what happened in the interim that it was fine. The time jump allowed the world and characters to progress, and sets the stage for the real action that's happening in this book, and I think made the plot better. Lore and Worldbuilding Let's talk about the lore and worldbuilding of the book. Every Stormlight book has tons of worldbuilding. Remember Oathbringer, where it widened the world so much? Rhythm of War expands things way further than I ever could have imagined. I don't think you'll expect where the book ends up, because some of the things we learn are so crazy, I don't know how you'd guess them. The door is open for so many more things by the end of this book. It's insane. We are all going to have so much to talk about once you're all done with this. I didn't think a Stormlight book could expand the world more than Oathbringer did, but this one sure as storms does. The connections to the greater cosmere increase in this book, even more than Oathbringer had. This might be controversial. Brandon has said in some comments on the Part One chapters (which you can read for free) that Brandon is phasing things more to "things are intersecting more in the cosmere" now, which is a bit different than how he's done things before. It's hard for me to comment on this effectively, because I am so deep into the cosmere books, but I don't think references to other cosmere books ruin your enjoyment of Stormlight if you are a Stormlight-only reader. It's more, "hey, there are some things that are mysteries in world to our characters, but you can learn more by reading some other books if you want." It is less subtle here, so I do think pretty soon Stormlight-only readers may want to start reading the other books. That said, if you're already deep in the cosmere, all of this is JUICY! It is so, so good. Final Thoughts Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There are some of the best moments in the series here. Its very character based, but also expands on the lore a lot. It's just for me, I like the ending of Oathbringer so much, and though the Sanderlanche is awesome as you'd expect, I just like the Oathbringer and Words of Radiance style of book more. So for me, Rhythm of War is not my favorite Stormlight book, but I think it's really excellent! I imagine this will be a lot of people's favorite, of the four books. Maybe the worst part of the book is just the wait till book five. If you didn't know, The Stormlight Archive is ten books but split into two five book arcs, and Brandon has always said book five will have a big climax for our cast of the first half. After Rhythm of War, yeah, I really need book five now, please! But of course, I want book five to be as good as can be, and I can only imagine what it's like going through this massive 470k book for several drafts. I understand Brandon needs a bit of a break from Stormlight, and I do want Skyward sequel and that final Wax and Wayne book. So I'll wait! This book has tons to tide people over to through the wait for book five. And for the cosmere fandom, there's going to be plenty to talk about. We'll definitely have spoilery reactions on our podcast, Shardcast, and I can't wait to talk to you about it all!
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  21. After Brandon teased the completion of the cover art for Rhythm of War in one of his recent Kickstarter livestreams, it was only a matter of time for Tor to officially release the full cover for the US edition of the fourth instalment in The Stormlight Archive. Without further ado, take a look at this gorgeous cover and read on for some background information: As always with The Stormlight Archive, Michael Whelan is responsible for the beautiful US cover art. Brandon is a huge fan of Michael, so he wanted him to do all the covers for the series, which so far has always worked out. As for what is depicted on the cover, we're getting another interpretation of Shadesmar and Shallan, as has been the theme for some international Rhythm of War editions so far, including the Bulgarian and UK ones. It's quite striking to see all the artists' takes on this scene and every one of them has captured the strange world of Shadesmar a little differently. Whelan has opted to portray the teeming vegetation more organically, with geometric shapes strewn in, while Yasen Stoilov shows an almost barren Cognitive Realm with more abstract tree shapes. We of course didn't only get the front cover, but also the raw dust jacket art, which additionally shows a white-haired man in the mid plane: What distinguishes Whelan's piece from the other depictions we've seen so far is that there's an ominous black cuboid visible in the background. As the scenes portrayed on the covers all have happened in the books in some way, I can't wait to find out what this might hint at! The white-haired figure appears to be Whelan's take on Adolin, as was confirmed by his assistant. This agrees with the Bulgarian cover, where we also see Adolin accompanying Shallan. Feel free to share your thoughts and theories about the cover in the comments below! Please mark all Rhythm of War spoilers appropriately, as not everyone might want to know details yet but still wants to take in this gorgeous art!
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  22. Back in September Brandon went to Salt Lake City Comic-Con, and 17th Shard went as well. Josh and Mi'ch were able to get recordings of over 12 hours worth of signings. Unfortunately for copyright reasons we couldn't share the audio publicly but finally the transcription is done. It's a Koloss Head-Munching Day miracle! I would like to apologize for this taking so long and I hope the rest of you are as excited as I am! Special thanks again to Josh and Mi'ch for making this possible. Also thank you to Windrunner for proofing everything. There's some very cool stuff in here, so let's get started! Q: I heard once that Robert Jordan had like 10GB of just pure text… B: Yeah, now most of that was the sort of stuff that ends up in the glossaries... Most of it you wouldn’t want to read, ‘cause most of it is very boring stuff. They’re putting a lot of that into an encyclopedia that will be coming out next fall, they just released the date on that. Not this November but next November. Q: My one question is how do you make it so writing isn’t work, because if I’m writing for work I don’t write as well. How do you get in the mind set? B: You know for me, taking a walk before hand, listening to some awesome music, and just imagining why this scene is going to be awesome and the emotional impact of it really helps. But at the same time writing is always going to be a little bit work and there is no getting around that. I mean, it’s hard sometimes and so-- I don’t know. For me I’ve enjoyed it more as it has become work and I can devote more time to it and things like that. But… Try that. Q: Just get in the mood… B: Listen to music and put myself in that scene, what it feels like, what it sounds like, smells like. Just put myself here and think about what is going to make it incredible and I’ll get really excited about writing it. Excitement translates I think at least for me onto the page. Q: What were these Szeth things for... B:Those were little plastic things you snap out and he stand up. So he’s a little figure to have at your cubicle or something like that. Q: I just saw you post about leaving them in places on twitter… B: We will be doing things like that for other books as well so keep an eye out for that. Q: I actually have a weird question. From the Mistborn series it says there are 16 allomantic metals but then you go into Alloy of Law and the 16 are listed there, minus the atium and another one, so are there really 18 metals? B: Well, you see those two were not really metals. Those were pieces, fragments, of a god. Q: I thought that might be it but the symbols are the same above them from-- the atium symbol is the same as-- B: No, it’s a different symbol, it might be reversed though. Q: So was The Emperor’s Soul before Elantris? B: It’s after. Q: So are you going to write a book that explains what happened to the empire then? B: You will find out more about it eventually, yes. But it’s not my main project right now. We’ll see how it happens eventually. Q-f: Is Dalinar clean shaven or does he wear a beard? B: It depends on the day, and the time. Dalinar is clean-shaven through most of the books you have seen. Q-f: That’s what I thought but he [man with the woman asking the question] thought not. Q-m: The audiobook reader just gives me an impression of a wizened person with a well-kept beard. B: Let’s see if I’ve got… if I’ve got enough internet… Q-m: I get the impression that Sadeas has a creepy mustache from the audiobook as well. B:Beards are not in fashion in Alethkar right now. Q: Which is why Kaladin shaves it off. B: Let’s see, Way of Kings, I’ve got the artwork I used as-- [shows secret canon drawing] So there is the concept art we used for Dalinar. Q: The magic in The Emperor’s Soul, is that the only magic you’ve written that there is a spiritual part to it in your magic trio? B: Umm… All of them have some little dabbling in it, it is the most related to the Spiritual Realm-- Of the ones I have shown, certainly it is the most related. Q: How many of the Mistborn do you plan on writing still? B: Mistborn, when I pitched it to my editor, I pitched it as a spectrum running from an epic fantasy series eventually arriving at a space opera, with Allomancers on spaceships. So we have several hundred more years of history. So right now I’m doing a few more Wax and Wayne books, the Alloy of Law era. Then we will jump forward, I’ve got a modern trilogy that’s going to be like 1980’s level technology. And then maybe near-future and then full-blown science fiction space opera. Q: I had a question about White Sand, we both read the draft of it, it’s going to graphic novel. What’s your involvement with that? Are you kind of passing over the draft? B: We passed the book to the writer, the writer is sending us scripts, and we are commenting on them and things like that. There are a few big changes I’ve made to the story, that it needed, and things like that. But we are letting the script writer write the scripts and then we are reading them over. Q: What were the allomantic metals based on? B: The allomantic metals were based on two main concepts, magic that feels one step science one step superstition so I was reading things like alchemy and I wanted something that was one half chemistry, one half alchemy. The idea of eating the metals and metabolizing them was really interesting to me because it’s kind of almost scientific but not really. That mixed with me wanting to have a thieving crew have different powers that would help different members of a crew and I built the powers to match people like Ham and Breeze. Q: In Warbreaker how did you come up with the idea of using colors for magic? B: You know it’s the goofiest story. A lot of them have really awesome stories and this one is just goofy. In this one I had written Elantris and written Mistborn and they are both kind of dark and my editor said to me, I kid you not, “Your next book needs some color to it” and I said “Oh I’ll do a color-based magic system then”. And that’s where it came from. Q: I just started Part 3 and I actually went over to your booth to ask them because I was confused. There are different symbols for the allomantic metals but I only recognize one of them here. Why are there different symbols you don’t know about at the begining of different parts? B: Part of it is they don’t know all the metals yet, in the books, and so that’s a hint. Part of it is because that their writing system is more than 16 letters and so there are symbols that do not represent a metal, necessarily, or an allomantic metal so they can-- They write with them as well. It is both a writing system and each symbol is a metal. Q: I love that book [The Rithmatist], the world, I’m looking forward to those… B: The sequel is going to be very fun, it’s called “The Aztlanian”, it’s taking place in South America. Q: Where in South America? B: Well, I’ve rebuilt South America so it’s kind of weird. The Aztek empire, which is the main name the Northerners have for it, they call it something else. The problem is I shrunk the planet, so I had to smash South America and Central America a little bit into each other so the islands that they are is it South America? Central America? What is it? Q: So is it Spanish-speaking? Or… B: No, the Spaniards got fought off, they actually speak Nahautl. Q: No Portuguese or Spanish? It’s all… B: There are a couple Portuguese/Spanish islands but-- They grabbed a few of them but the main empire speaks Nahuatl. Q: My background is twenty years of military, and as I’ve been reading your Way of Kings, I’ve found that your insight into what it like to be a member of the service, all the mental trials including post-traumatic stress disorder is all very well thought-out and I’m curious how you came across that knowledge. B: Lots of interviews and lots of reading on forums. People who post their hearts and souls on-- if you find the right forums, where people are among like-minded individuals, you can watch like a fly-on-the-wall and see what people are saying and how they are feeling. Because I strive for authenticity, that’s what I-- whenever someone is feeling I want it to be authentic, and the more far removed from my own experience the better it is, if that makes sense to me, to get it into my books. So I try very hard for that. Q: In fact I’m going to be suggesting to the Veterans’ Administration to use the series for treatment for PTSD. There are literally some things in there I’ve never seen anyone actually understand or get before. Some of my military friends have just been in absolute tears after reading your book. B: That is an honor to hear. Q (different from above): Did you do the same thing with Kaladin’s depression? B: Yes I did but that one is a little closer to home, [several people in Brandon's life have depression]. Q: I have depression as well, it’s pretty inspiring to me B: I had never seen a hero who had depression and I was like “I need to do a real, legitimate that it’s not about their depression, they just have it” Does that make sense? Like whenever I read a book it is all about them having depression. And I’m like “No, your life is not about you having depression, your life-- that is part of your life but--” So it was very important to me that I get that one right. Q: I just, yeah I just find your book so inspiring so I just really appreciate you doing all this for us. Q: Hemalurgy, does the person having the metal shoved through them have to die? B: It has to rip off a piece of their soul. That normally results in death. Q: Because I’m thinking you’re going a bit into the future, surgery, precise things like that… B: It’s plausible but-- I mean it would leave the person like-- it’s ripping off a piece of their soul. But the same thing happens when you give up your Breath. So you’re giving up a piece of your soul. There are-- It’s plausible you could take off pieces of a soul without killing the person. Q: And all the different powers kind of run off the same type of power? Like Breath is the same as Stormlight. B: Yeees, they have their own different sort of layers to them. It depends on the Shard that is there and things like that but yes there are little differences but it is more like the differences between alternating current and direct current, they’re both electricity. So if you know how to use them. Q: ‘Cause Szeth’s not going to be getting any new Breaths on Roshar so I was thinking about that. Q: I do have one question, A Memory of Light couldn’t be better, except for the Padan Fain thing. B: Yeah, the Padan Fain thing is that I have a little bit of regret on that one. That’s the one thing-- You see he didn’t leave anything about Fain at all. Just completely blank. That was worrisome to me. The only thing he said was “Padan Fain cannot be Gollum” actually, he wrote that in the notes. So I was left with trying to figure out what to do and in the end I feel it just ended up feeling tacked on because there were so many other things *I* was interested in doing and Padan Fain I had never really enjoyed as a character that much. You are seeing my biases come through on that. Looking back at it I’m like “I really should have done something more with him”. That’s the big one that I feel I would change, if I could change something. Q: Cause it’s kind of a threat that goes away… B: The other one is I would’ve liked for the viewpoint chapters from Demandred to be in the book instead of separated out and put in that charity anthology, but I didn’t have any say in that one. Q: How did you come up with Shardblades? B: Here’s the thing, I’ve seen a lot of fantasy art-- I love fantasy books, right-- and people often depict these enormous swords, which are completely impractical. So one of my pitches for Stormlight was “I want a world where they had to have weapons like they depict in this fantasy art” and I retrofitted it, what would they need these to actually fight? So that was the pitch for myself on Shardblades. And I was also annoyed that the coolest magic swords were in a science fiction story, Star Wars, I want cool magic swords that are not in a science fiction story. Q: How did you come up with the idea for the cosmere? Because I just think it is the greatest idea ever and the more I learn about it the less I realize I know. B: It was partially me wanting to do a big fantasy epic that also had room for standalones, I wanted to do both and so the idea of the hidden epic behind the scenes was really appealing for me ‘cause it let me do everything I wanted to do. Q: What differentiates a minor Shardworld like First of the Sun? B: The amount of Investiture, and whether there is actually a Shard in presence. Q: I’m assuming there is not one there? B: There is not one there. Q: So it’s like a Splintered one from something else? B: No what you’ll find is that the worlds were all created with a level of-- a little bit of sort of ambient magic. What you’ll find in worlds like that is things like, Shadows for Silence and things like this, the magic, it’s not necessarily “people with magic” it’s you can interact with nature... Q: So there is inherent investiture... B: There is inherent investiture in every world created but you are going to see-- You aren’t going to find Mistborn on a world like that but what you might find is a way there are magic aspects to the setting. Spren could exist on a world like that but they would be like the minor spren, you wouldn’t find Syl, but you would find something like lifespren. Q: Do you have other minor Shardworlds? B: Yeah I have a bunch of them, and which ones are worth telling a story in will depend on when I get around to it whether they’re worth it. Q: Who is Wit? B: He is a character who has been in all of the books so far and is somehow getting between all of the different planets these are taking place on and is somehow surviving the fact that these books are hundreds of years apart. Q: I have a good idea that he’s a Mistborn. B: Well he did steal a bead of lerasium. Q: And he has extra breath because he said it was easier with perfect pitch B: He did indeed say that didn’t he… I will eventually write a book series that is about him, but it is a ways off. Q: Stormlight, I know it heals wounds and stuff like that but can it heal illnesses like colds? B: Yes it can. Q: So if Kaladin suddenly contracted brain cancer... B: It’s plausible-- it depends, see what it does is it takes your body and makes it align with your spirit, and partially through the filter of how you view yourself. So if you view yourself as sickly, then you won’t. Q: Who is your favorite character you've written, if you had to pick one? B: That’s a hard question, I can’t pick a favorite character. Dalinar is what I normally say, just because I’ve been working on him the longest. Honestly, I don't know. It’s whoever I’m working on at the time. Q: Dalinar is a good character, I like Kaladin a lot too. B: Kaladin has really worked out well. It’s interesting because Kaladin-- the first time I wrote The Way of Kings, in 2002, did not work and I had to rip him out and try a completely different personality and things for him. So it’s cool to see it finally working. Q: So there is one part in Alcatraz where he notices that Bastille has red hair and goes “No that’s important I can’t tell you until later” Is there any significance to that? B: Yeah, her dad has red hair so it’s a clue that she’s the princess because she’s the daughter of the king and she dyes her hair because she doesn’t want anyone to know. Q: Where do you come up with your leaders, because they’re phenomenal B: It takes a lot of reading and thinking and coming up with who the character is. I don’t know how do any of the characters-- they just kind of come, but there is a lot of hanging out on forums where people are talking about leadership positions in the military so I can kind of get a view on how they’re thinking. Sun Tzu was very helpful as well. Q: What’s your inspiration? B: It really depends on the book. If you want to know the inspiration for the Mistborn books, you can google Sanderson’s First Law. It’s an essay I wrote about how I came up with the magic system. That’ll help you see where some of the ideas came from and how I take them and use them. Q: What about The Stormlight Archive? B: Stormlight, the original inspiration was the storm of Jupiter. The big storm that rotates around Jupiter, and I wanted to do something that had a perpetual storm like that. Q: So I’ve been told there is one character who is in each of the series. B: Yes there is. Q: Is that Wit by chance? B: It is. Q: Does he show up in some of the others? B: Yes, in this [TFE] he shows up briefly, Kelsier meets with a blind beggar at one point who is introduced by the name Hoid and that is the name Wit uses through most of the books. If you read Warbreaker he’s in that one, there is a storyteller who uses dust and sand. He’s in most of them WoK is where you see him the most he's not in the other ones nearly as much but he’s mentioned by name in most of them. Q: What is your favorite color? B: Maroon Q: My brother and I disagreed, at the very end of WoR, the sword that-- Is it the same as in Warbreaker? B: Yes it is, in fact Vasher is in the book. Q: Is that Vasher?!? [Presumably referring to Nale] B: No, look for somebody making color metaphors and when they are waking up they feel like they can sense other people’s presence and things like that. There is one character who is Vasher. He doesn’t go by that name anymore. Q: Do you have a definite number of how many worldjumpers there are? B: There are not a set number, I know all the main ones though. Q: But you are not going to [audio obscured] B: You’ll know them all better by the time you have read more books. Q: So at the end of Words of Radiance, was that Nightblood? B: It is Nightblood! Vasher is in there too if you look for him. Q: Are they going to be in the next…? B: You will see a lot more of Nightblood, you’ll see a little bit more of Vasher. Q: Miles Hundredlives, is he possessed by a svrakiss from Elantris? B: *long pause* That’s a RAFO, you are onto something… I wouldn’t say possessed, but influenced by something is definitely a possibility. You are not 100% on. Q: How does Nightblood work on Roshar? B: Well Nightblood feeds on Investiture, which is the general life-force/magic-force in the cosmere and so he can feed on basically any source of magical energy. Q: And do other magics work on other worlds? B: I’ve been describing it lately more like you see DC current and AC current, where they’re similar things but slightly different. It is possible to make magics work on other planets, some it’s easier than others. Q: I’m not sure if it was duralumin or something but the Feruchemical ability to store connection, is that how Hoid worldhops? It stores Connection to another world? B: It’s a good question, it doesn’t have anything to do with worldhopping *but* what it does do is once you have worldhopped you can change your Connection to which planet you are on, which helps you with magic systems. Q: So do Inquisitors, when they use Allomancy, have to actually ingest the metals? B: They actually do. So what is happening is Hemalurgy rips off a piece of one person’s soul and spikes it somebody else and so it is basically taking off the piece of someone’s soul that makes them an Allomancer and adding it to someone else instead and so then they act as an Allomancer just as it would happen. Q: So Stormlight and Breath are both just different manifestations of Investiture. B: That’s correct. Q: So Nightblood and Shardblades are both kind of powered by Investiture? B: Yes, in fact you can call Nightblood kind of a miss-made, evil Shardblade… more miss-made than evil but yes. Q: But a Shardblade wouldn’t shear through Nightblood. B: Yes a Shardblade would not shear through Nightblood. In fact a wrote Way of Kings first and then I wrote Warbreaker and Way of Kings came out after Warbreaker but in my mind Warbreaker is a prequel to Way of Kings, where I was telling Vasher’s backstory. Q: Oh really, so the Warbreaker we know takes place after Way of Kings? B: No, it takes place before, it’s a prequel meaning I wrote WoK and then I went back in time and told Vasher’s backstory but Warbreaker ended up coming out first because Way of Kings wasn’t ready yet. Q: Dragonsteel, where in the universe is that going to take place? B: It’s actually first. Q: Oh really? So it’s like a prequel to everything B: Yes, to the cosmere. Q: So is it going to do the breaking of the Shards? B: Yep. Q: Is Odium mad about Sazed having two Shards? B: Yes, and scared. Q: Can Shallan be my best friend? B: You’ll have to ask her, just somehow get to the planet and you can hang out. Q: Okay, tell me how to do that? B: Well… you’ve got to get one of the magics or find one of the Perpendiculars-- the Perpendicularities… Q: So I’m reading AoL right now, do you have a date for the sequel? B: Yeah November next year. Q: Is that one going to be a trilogy as well? Or just two books? B: It’s probably four. Q: Oh four, okay, wow. B: But it depends, that’s what I’ve plotted right now. But it depends on how long it takes me to write The Stormlight Archive, because I want to do them in between Stormlight Archive books. Q: For the space Mistborn are we going to have more elements? B: The base 16 are basically it. But the interactions between them and things. And there is one more metal, there is harmonium, so you will hear about that later on. Q: In The Wheel of Time at the end when they start to use Gateways to spy on the other battlefields, was that your idea or Robert Jordan’s idea? B: I had for years wanted them to use Gateways for things like that, because I’m kind of a magic system guy, right and it’s like I’m writing these books now, they are going to use Gateways smart. Q: Aether of Night, aethers also show up in Liar of Partinel… B: yeah, that was... Q: Was that cannibalized… B: That was a cannibalization, it’s an attempt at repurposing and I didn’t like it so it probably won’t go forward that way but it was an attempt because it worked so well to mash Allomancy and Feruchemy into the same system and I didn’t like how it went but… Q: Is the level of burning a continuous distribution, can I burn 0.1 level of steel all the way up to flaring? Or is it just I burn or I flare? B: The more skilled you are, the more you have the ability to moderate that. For most people it is burn or flare. But you can kind of burn up to a flare, does that make sense? Going below is really hard. Q: Can you push a flare? B: yes Q: I asked a question at the panel, I asked if the person you refuse to say who he is, I was trying to talk about Taln B: Oh! Q: Not Hoid B: So what about Taln? Q: Is there anything you’ll tell us about him? B: What do you want to know? Ask me a specific question. Q: Is he Rosharan? B: Is he Rosharan? Taln is Rosharan. Q: [audio obscured] B: Define Rosharan, how about that? Q: Native to Roshar. B: That I have to RAFO Q: Are the Heralds… B: The Heralds are from the same place that Taln is from. Q: What’s lerasium? B: That is the bead of metal that Elend finds at the end of Book 2, that Vin finds and gives to Elend. Q: Oh so there were only two and the Lord Ruler kind of left it there? B: There actually were a bunch of them, and the first Mistborn came from people who ate that. The Lord Ruler took one for himself and he left others there to use if he needed them. Q: Is there anything in the works right now roleplaying-wise for any of your other works? B: Not yet, the response to the Mistborn rpg has been good so I do think we’ll do something eventually but right now we just want to support that. It takes a lot of effort to keep one of these supported, because they make it but we have to read everything and talk about continuity and stuff. Maybe eventually. Q: Is there any reference material for doing cosplay? B: It depends on the costume that you want to make. We have lots for Stormlight Archive, less for other books. So if you want reference material for Stormlight costumes you can write us and we’ll send you the concept art we are using. Q: What are the other books in The Stormlight Archive going to be about? B: Well each one is going to cover a flashback sequence for one of the characters and each one will focus on a different order of the Knights Radiant. And that’s not always the same, like the flashbacks for the first one were Kaladin and it was also Windrunners, but we won’t always have them be the exact same Q: How much involvement does the other planet in the same system as Roshar have with Roshar? B: *long pause* Your question has a fundamental flaw to it. Q: And that is? B: That there are multiple planets that have an influence on Roshar. Q: I thought there were multiple planets in the system that B: There are, but you said “the other”, there are more than one so the phrase, "the other" doesn’t make sense. Q: How much influence do the other planets have? B: A great deal. Q: How many different kinds of magic does Hoid know how to use? I know you can’t tell me exactly but is it hundreds or like dozens? B: It depends on your definition of types of magic, in some ways you could say they are all one. He knows multiple varieties, but not hundreds. Q: I assume I’m going to learn a lot more about this in Stormlight 3 but Nightblood, is he more dangerous or less dangerous now that he-- obviously he needs Investiture that is why [???] any investiture? B: I’d say more dangerous, a little bit easier to get the Stormlight. Q: I assumed I’d learn a lot more about him… B: You will, and he’s pretty dangerous, but he is also less dangerous because other people have Shardblades, if that makes sense. Q: Have we seen a physical personification of Odium like how Vin was… B: You have not. Q: And does he control the Voidbringers through the spren in the same way that the Inquisitors were controlled by Ruin? B: There are definitely-- In fact what you have just seen with Eshonai shares an awful lot with what happened in Mistborn. Q: Will we ever find out the when, how, and why Vasher and Nightblood moved to Roshar? B: Yes, but I don’t know when it will happen. I will get around to it. theravenchilde: I have one question from Feather, she’s one of the mods on 17s, and she’s dying to know what Renarin’s eye color is, probably so she can write poetry about him. B: Right, right, right, right, right. Send me an email, I can’t say because it might be different in the wiki. theravenchilde: And I was trying to figure out how jazz could possibly develop on Scadrial in Alloy of Law. B: How what? Q: How Jazz could develop on Scadrial. B: Jazz? Okay. theravenchilde: [audio obscured] Would it be appropriate to compare the Steel Ministry to the Catholic Church? Not so much in doctrine but... B: Sure, that would be appropriate. I mean when I’m writing Alloy of Law era they are only hitting big band stuff. theravenchilde: That’s what I figured. B: Their music would lag behind ours. theravenchilde: ‘Cause big band stufff started around the 1920’s B: There not even quite there yet. In the second or the third… anyway one of the Alloy books Wax hears someone and they’ve added to a band brass and he’s like “that’s not right” he’s expecting violin concertos or a pianoforte and he’s hearing brass.
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  23. Hey all, I'm Windrunner, and welcome to your regular theory update for this month! Once, a long time ago, I had a featured theory column, but I kind of lost steam, and it died a slow death. Now, it’s being revitalized and updated with more info. I have three primary goals with this column. I want to keep you all updated on all the new quotes and info from Brandon we’ve gained, talk about expansions and areas that need work on the Coppermind, and tshine the spotlight on cool, accurate, or interesting new theories. Major Calamity Tour Information: We’ve had a lot of really interesting questions tasked during the Calamity tour that provide all sorts of insight into the cosmere, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight some of the exciting new information. I’ve gotten all of this from one Calamity tour report or another in our Events subforum. In the future, I’d like tp spend more time talking about cool new theories or ideas that have recently cropped up, but there’s a huge amount of stuff from the Calamity tour, so I thought focusing on this would be a simple way tget this column started. If you guys think I’ve made an error or misrepresented a quote, let me know. I want to be clear though, these questions contain some spoilers for Calamity, Secret History, and Bands of Mourning, so if you are worried about that, steer clear for the moment! Forthcoming Book Information Mistborn: Secret History sequels Brandon is toying with a couple different ideas, but is not planning on putting out any of them immediately. Demoux’s story may be a part of one of these. Not all future ones will occur in the Cognitive Realm. Future stories will always focus on behind the scenes things events, filling in the cracks between the books, and on characters that are more cosmere-aware. Legion 3 Brandon has one more Legion novella planned Brandon would be more interested in writing a full-length novel if Legion was actually being turned into a TV series Apocalypse Guard Will dig into the place that Calamity is from. World Information First of the Sun Aviar like Kokerlii that hide minds from predators would also hide someone from an Awakener’s Life-sense. Brandon has notes for other Aviar abilities, one of them is navigation Sel Gretgor, the sword of the first Wyrn is enshrined in Fjordell somewhere, perhaps at the palace. Brandon calls the sword a “he,” but this may be a simple misstatement. If someone were to make an Essence Mark for themselves where the history of their other self “split-off” before they gained a Shardblade, they would not be able to summon their Shardblade while they were using that Essence Mark. It is also possible to create a stamp where a different version of you bonded a Shardblade. According to other previous signings, this would be tricky and probably need an external power source. Threnody: There are shades of animals Cognitive shadows that travel to Threnody do not automatically become shades, but the two are very closely related “breeds”. Threnody was named in memorial of someone or something. Roshar: Roshar’s three major magic systems are Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrials, with the Old Magic being its own weird thing. Roshar is special in some way to Shadesmar. (The audio here is confused) It is theoretically possible for there to be a Nahel bond with a spren that grants two Surges that are not paired together among the Radiants. Brandon would term any heavily Invested weapon a Shardblade, and there are many methods that can be used to create one, with varying effectiveness. The Bands are close, but are not Invested enough to be considered one. Scadrial: More god metal alloys will make appearances There are hard limits to how fast a Steelrunner can move In Brandon’s mind, burning pewter approximately doubles your strength, while flaring triples it. He has not canonized how much either of these things enhances reflexes or healing. Scadrial mostly uses biodiesel for gasoline, but Brandon won’t rule out fossil fuel deposits being placed by Harmony. There was a concept of hell in the theology of the Lord Ruler. It was the punishment for the souls of people that had failed or disobeyed the Lord Ruler. Even the skaa were aware of this aspect of theology. Allomancers can burn metals from places other than Scadrial. Hemalurgic decay in spikes containing Feruchemical attributes leads tless efficiency when they tap metalminds. Kandra can have children with humans if they recreate the appropriate organs, although if the kandra is in a woman’s form, it would have to remain in that shape until the child is born. The Lord Ruler had several children, but they mixed in with the population. Many people are related to them, and some may claim heirship, but in truth they may not be much more closely related thim than anyone else. The fandom is giving this fact undue attention. The Bands of Mourning are not even close tbeing Invested as much as Nightblood. When someone uses aluminum or chromium, the metal in an Allomancers stomach is “transferred” somehow. It has to do with energy, matter, and Investiture all being one, but a person who has had their metals removed by aluminum or chromium would not get metal poisoning. A Connection medallion could be used to translate the Listener’s Rhythms, but it would not be perfect and something would be lost in translation. Nalthis Nightblood is one of the most heavily Invested things in the cosmere that is not a Shard. Yolen It is not unreacheable from Shadesmar due to a total lack of cognitive activity there. Cosmere Information Despite initial reports, Threnody and Sel are NOT in the same planetary system. All cosmere planets are relatively close together in their dwarf galaxy, current estimate is within ~50 light years or so, although that may later change. Seons and spren are more bound to their own worlds, but they can travel elsewhere. Subastral is Hoid’s term for a specific region in the Cognitive Realm The process by which people die, moving from the Physical Realm to the Cognitive and then to the Beyond is the same throughout the cosmere, although people stick around for different lengths of time depending on their Investiture. It is widely assumed that Adonalsium is the creator of the cosmere. When Wax remarks that souls and metal are the same thing, he is seeing that energy, matter, and Investiture are all the same thing. Things that drain Investiture, such as larkins, Nightblood, and Leechers, all have something similar going on among them. Shard Information The Vessels of Shards can have children, although in a way their created humans are already their children. Brandon specifies that we have not “seen” any Shards that have been Splintered reform as of Bands of Mourning. Odium is more aware than Harmony of the various happenings in the cosmere because he is both older and because there are forces purposely attempting to limit Harmony’s knowledge. There is some connection between Odium and Trell. Someone who’s never been to Scadrial could be Connected to Ruin and Preservation because Connection is not binary, it can be stronger or weaker. If Odium were to go to Scadrial, he would have difficulty seeing metal. If Honor and Odium hadn’t been held by different personalities, the two Shards have the potential to be a natural pair and might have attracted one another. Character Information Brandon refuses to explain why ReLuur’s spikes are made of pewter, although he does agree that it doesn’t seem to “make sense”. Ironeyes will probably make an appearance in The Lost Metal, but Brandon is not sure if he’ll be back in time from where is currently. At some point, Wax drew upon the mists. Vasher actually discovered Roshar while attempting to research an easier method to get Investiture than via Breath. Demoux has gotten less idealistic since his initial appearance in Mistborn. Nightblood leaks Investiture, but his sheath helps prevent that. Coppermind I’d also like to use these theory posts to shine a spotlight on the Coppermind. Every month I’m going to point out a well-done article, and then challenge you guys to work on a specific area of the Coppermind for the next month. If we’ve also put up any really awesome new fan art on the wiki, I might point that out here too in the future. Featured Article: Cosmere Our admin Chaos recently retooled the Cosmere article from scratch, really bringing it up to date with a lot of the cosmere’s foundational happenings. If you have any questions on how the basics of how the cosmere works and the background events, definitely give it a look. It is also incredibly well-cited, so there is plenty of digging you can do into various sources if you want. Featured Fix-Me-Up: This month, I’d like to challenge you all to work on Reckoners articles. With Calamity just out, many articles can now be truly completed, as the main sequence has come to a close. There of course can be additional information from the Apocalypse Guard in a few years, but we have a chance to get the Reckoners stuff all in order before that happens. I’ll be the first to admit that Reckoners isn’t my forte, so I can’t help very much and oftentimes it’s just Weiry working on them by himself. Even if you only have an interesting fact or two, every little bit helps. Any member of the wiki staff (Me, JoeSt, WeiryWriter, Chaos, and KalynaAnne) can answer questions you have about wikicode, and if you have any other questions, there is also a tumblr page you can use to contact us. Random Little Known Fact: I also thought it would be fun to close these theory articles with a little known fact of the month, something interesting that I think a lot of people might not know. Here’s this month’s, from a signed copy of The Way of Kings! This was news to me, and definitely shines a new light on Hoid and Odium’s enmity. Next time, I’m going thave a new Cosmere 101 guide prepared, updated with all the new information we’ve gained in the past couple years. Have a good month, and happy theorizing!
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  24. Shadows of Self is the latest Mistborn novel and the sequel to The Alloy of Law, which came out all the way back in 2011. It's been a crazy long time. There's been plenty of Brandon Sanderson to read since then, but my first love is Mistborn, so I've yearned for this for... well, four years. Fortunately, it's fantastic. If you liked The Alloy of Law--particularly the idea of an urban fantasy thriller set in the Mistborn world--you'll love Shadows of Self. This time, Wax and Wayne continue their hunt for the Set, the shadowy organization seen in The Alloy of Law. Then, the murder of a huge portion of Elendel's criminal elite--including the governor's brother--pushes Wax onto the case, where he discovers that the person responsible is insanely dangerous. They need to find out what this person's plans are, before Elendel collapses in on itself. It's hard for me to talk about Shadows without comparing it to The Alloy of Law. Alloy was a pretty good urban/western fantasy thriller. Not fantastic, but the nostalgia of the Mistborn world made it quite good. For a standalone, though, the ending was unfulfilling. Alloy demanded a sequel, and now that we finally get it, it is so very satisfying. Shadows is quite similar to Alloy in style. They are both set in Elendel, both have a particular "case" to focus them, and are urban fantasy novels. For this reason I often compare these books to the Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher, the gold standard of urban fantasy. Shadows takes the good elements of Alloy and makes them better, while cutting out some of the flaws that Alloy has. The result is a novel that is as awesome as Dresden books. I don't think it's hard to see why Shadows turned out better than Alloy, and it comes down to what Brandon does best: planning. Alloy was a short story that turned into a novel and it showed. In the time between writing Alloy and Shadows, Brandon fully planned out what he’s going to do with this time period. No longer are the Wax and Wayne novels only a bridge between the fantasy Mistborn trilogy and the 1980s Mistborn trilogy. With this extra planning, the Alloy era has become important to the world of Scadrial. While Shadows is still about the length of Alloy of Law (making it about half of the length of the books in the original trilogy), there’s a feeling of a grand design that Alloy didn’t really have, while maintaining the fast pace that Alloy set. Brandon knows with razor-sharp focus what this era of novels are supposed to be doing in the grand scheme of everything now. And boy, Shadows does it so well. I've always been a reader who loves a tightly crafted plot. It's one of the reasons I love Brandon’s novels. Well, Shadows not only has a tighter plot, but also a more interesting one than Alloy. The worldbuilding of Scadrial is important to events, and for you cosmere buffs, there will be plenty for you to love here. And Shadows' villain is terrifying for so many reasons that make Miles Dagouter look tame by comparison. One thing with Alloy and Shadows is that, like many other of Brandon's novels, there are multiple viewpoints. A lot of urban fantasy is written in a single first person viewpoints--like Dresden--and I felt that in Alloy, though it was fun to be in multiple characters' heads, it didn't make that book incredible. Not so with Shadows. Multiple viewpoints really enhances the book, and raises the overall tension. This tension is key, because it raises Shadows from being just another case file to something... more. Something legitimately awesome. Surprisingly, one way Shadows raises the tension is through politics. Sometimes Brandon goes way too in-depth of political intrigue, like with Elantris. Considering how bad politics can be in a story (cough, Star Wars prequels, cough), you realize how well Shadows does it. The political intrigue truly heightens the threat level. It's never distracting, and is always important. Elendel is in serious danger, so it makes sense that it is so essential to the plot. As much as I love plot, the soul of stories are the characters, and all the characters you love from Alloy have progressed in reasonable ways, with new levels of depth. Wax and his relationships advance in unexpected, but interesting, fashions. Wayne, hilarious as always, has a ton of depth that I did not expect. Marasi also really comes into her own. And speaking of Marasi, I've often seen people who dislike either Marasi or Steris. After Shadows, I've loved both. You really do need to read Alloy before Shadows, as there is critical character depth you'd miss without it, but Shadows is such a good sequel. It's crazy to think that before Words of Radiance, Brandon had only written one other epic fantasy sequel in his own worlds: The Well of Ascension. In my opinion, that’s the weakest book of the original trilogy, and Brandon's learned so much about writing sequels since then. Brandon takes the best of the series' predecessors and makes the sequels even better than one could hope. Shadows is faster paced, better plotted, and its worldbuilding more important and grander than Alloy. The characters advance in great ways, and the multiple viewpoints enhance this book substantially. Really, Shadows of Self perfects the formula of Alloy in every way, and is a truly wonderful novel because of it. Score: 17 metals out of 16. Note: Brandon actually used to call the original trilogy and the 1980s trilogy as the "first Mistborn trilogy" and "second Mistborn trilogy," with a third science fiction trilogy. Alloy didn't really have a place. Now, the different time periods are called eras, so the first trilogy is Era 1, and Alloy and Shadows are Era 2, with Era 3 and 4 set to be published in the future. Early copy provided by Dragonsteel Entertainment. Posted with their permission. Shadows of Self comes out on October 6th, 2015.
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  25. Did you know it was five years ago this month that 17th Shard and the Coppermind were made? It's been a crazy time. And so, without further ado, Joe and the Coppermind staff decided to do something special to celebrate! It's simple: contributing to the Coppermind in the month of June results in gifts! That is, any contribution, however small, on any day in June means you get a gift. The larger your overall contribution, the larger the gift will be. To receive a gift for your contribution, you must have a registered account on the Coppermind, so we can track your edits and hopefully get back to you. Once June is over, we will be going through and attempting to contact all contributors to arrange your gifts and the best way to deliver them. This will be easier if you add some way we can contact you to your user page. Things that you can win: Gift certificates for Brandon’s store (this includes choosing things from Brandon’s store and us sending you a gift certificate to cover the cost, including shipping) Amazon gift certificates, or any other site which allows us to buy and distribute gift certificates digitally Purchases from amazon wishlists, or any other site which allows us to buy things from wishlists such that both parties stay as anonymous as possible--steam games perhaps! Commissioning of fandom (or other) artists/creators with your wishes (as long as the creator in question is ok with this) Any other sensible suggestions for plunder that we are able to arrange Some combination of the above Once the giveaway is complete, we will be in contact to ask you to select which you would prefer. The prize quantity is inevitably going to be fairly subjective, but it’ll be mostly Joe_ST organising the delivery which means you will be pleasantly surprised If all you do is edit a page or couple for spacing/punctuation/spelling your contribution is still appreciated and you’ll probably be offered ~$5 gift certificate or equivalent. If you improve a short article by rewriting it or adding a few new facts or references you’ll be compensated more for it. If you substantially improve or rewrite one of the longer articles on the wiki, or if you complete a stub article, that will get you even more. If you add lots of facts to lots of articles, or add lots of references, or end up rewriting an article so it becomes exemplary, then hats off to you, you’ll be showered with our affections and receive a literal ton of gifts. If you end up enjoying contributing so much that you decide to stick around and help out regularly, you will inevitably never stop receiving gifts and praise from us and from every user of the coppermind. Really though, we plan on being as generous as we possibly can be to hopefully reward your efforts in helping make our wiki a better resource for Brandon’s fans and to encourage you to stick around and continue to help. If you come to try your hand at wikiying and have any problems or questions we would be happy to help. If your question is a general one, others likely have the same question, so please send us an ask here or post in the 17S forum so we can clarify things for everyone. If you would prefer to ask something privately, feel free to note this in your ask or send a pm. Oh and for those of you who want to help but really don’t want any compensation, that is totally ok, you can add a note to that effect on your user page or to out-right decline when we come to organise things with you after June. This is just part one of 17th Shard's birthday extravagapalooza. Stay tuned for even more awesomeness!
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  26. Today Brandon replied to some Reddit threads about his 2020 plans after he finishes Rhythm of War, and talked about the timeline for The Lost Metal! Hooray details, hooray Brandon being transparent with us. Please note that these aren't surefire things, and this is the "perfect world" sort of scenario. First up: looks like Rhythm of War is taking a week or so longer than planned, with its turn in date now being July 10th (it was originally July 1st). The Stormlight novella, which will part of The Way of Kings leatherbound kickstarter tiers, will be up next. Brandon plans to write it mid-July to mid-August, beta read it late August, and then do revisions in early October. Lastly, the copyedit done mid-October, to get to people a month before Rhythm of War. To me this is a pretty tight timeline, and Brandon does admit things can slide and he'll try to be up-front about it. The novella may not be called Wandersail, as that is the ship's name, but this novella doesn't have to do with Hoid's story in The Way of Kings. Later in the year, he will work on Skyward 3, then with the goal to begin The Lost Metal, the fourth Mistborn Era 2 story, on January 1st, 2021. After that, it's the fourth and final Skyward book, with a target for starting on Stormlight 5 the following January. Also, Brandon wants to fit in a "quick draft" of Songs of the Dead (formerly Death by Pizza), and probably will push back a revision of The Apocalypse Guard a bit later. So, you know, I'd say that after Rhythm of War finishes, fitting in a novella, Skyward 3, Lost Metal, Skyward 4, that's pretty productive for the time in-between Stormlights. That doesn't even include any of the other projects, like Apocalypse Guard, Songs of the Dead, Alcatraz 6, or whatever else that might pop up. Sounds good to me. In case you missed it: Brandon posted a large blog post on The Way of Kings leatherbound Kickstarter, which has updated tiers from what we previously reported. The Kickstarter goes live July 7th!
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  27. Alas. We suspected that this would be the case for some time now, but it has finally be confirmed: Stormlight 5 won't be coming until 2024. Though the reason why certainly isn't quite what we expected... Brandon Sanderson did a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) with subreddit r/books last week, and u/VeryNiceName16 asked about the plan for the "Stormlight 4.5 novella" (tentatively titled Horneater) amid everything else going on in 2023. Which, if you've give a moment of thought for Brandon's release schedule for 2023, is a darn good question! We've got four Secret Project books, Defiant (Skyward 4), AND supposedly Stormlight Archive 5? Not to mention the Words of Radiance leatherbounds and several other smaller projects that might be coming along. I don't know about you, but I'm already sweating thinking about how much work it will be just to keep up! Progress on Stormlight 5 has been slow of course, and Brandon finally confirmed what we all expected: the Stormlight 5 release just isn't going to happen in 2023 after all. While some people might be bummed by this, I have to say that I'm honestly a bit relieved. With so much content coming out, I'm more than grateful that we're getting a bit of extra time so that we can properly digest it all. This delay should come as no surprise. Brandon's fastest turnaround time on a Stormlight book was Rhythm of War, which he started writing in early 2019 and was able to finish by the end of that year. Sanderson's plan was to start Stormlight 5 at the beginning of this year to hit the November 2023 release... Well, we're currently a little over halfway through the year and the first draft status bar is sitting at a mere 7%, with a few more weeks of Secret Project 3 revisions still on his plate first. Keep in mind Brandon will still have to work on revisions for Secret Project 4 and Defiant at some point as well. All of that to say, it would seem that he's roughly 6 months behind schedule as it stands, and that could slip a bit further. Brandon stressed at JordanCon 2021 that he will allow Stormlight 5's schedule to slide back if necessary. It's the "end of a sequence," as he called it, and he needs to make sure that sequence sticks the landing. Brandon went a step further though to clarify why Stormlight 5 has been a bit slow-going, and it's not primarily due to the Secret Projects or any other writing projects: it's movie and television stuff. It was ALSO at JordcanCon 2021 that Sanderson gave one of the biggest teases about about potential adaptations in quite some time: saying that if we "read in between the lines" we might be able to put some things together even though he couldn't announce anything official. In the recent AMA, he opened up a bit more on this saying: "This is the year that Hollywood came calling." With the success lately of various fantasy properties proving that Game of Thrones wasn't a fluke, streaming services, execs, and producers are on the hunt for more. Guess whose name shows up as the top bestselling author with no adaptations made? Brandon Sanderson has been getting a lot of their attention, and the recent Secret Project Kickstarter success only added more fuel to the fire. The result? Lots of phone calls and lots of meetings with several major streaming services and studios. (Netflix was one he named in particular.) Brandon explained earlier in the AMA that he's doing everything he can to earn a relatively high level of involvement and creative control over any adaptations that come about, and the bargaining power that he seems to hold is sure to be a big help. Apparently Hollywood doesn't know what to do with someone who doesn't need their money? It's important to stress that we do NOT know the status of any movie or television deals. While it's possible that something in particular is in progress, it's also possible that Sanderson is still working through negotiations to make sure they get the best deal they can. And let's not forget that even from the time of an announcement, it's a long road to seeing an adaptation on our screens. One thing seems clear however: it's a question of when, not if. The same is thankfully true of Stormlight Archive novels. While Stormlight 5 is expected to be delayed, we at least know that we can trust Sanderson to get it done as soon as he is able. As for u/VeryNiceName16's question that sparked all this? Brandon did confirm that Horneater is very much on his to-do list after Stormlight 5 is written. So perhaps we'll get a little something extra to tide us over in the months before the next novel? Which I say as if half a dozen other books in 2023 aren't already enough to do that!
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  28. So, on Brandon's weekly update, he said Wednesday there would be an announcement we would expect, which turned out to be the title and cover reveal of Cytonic. Then he said Thursday there would be an announcement none of us would expect, and indeed, I am surprised! Apparently, there will be some sort of promotional event involving Mistborn in Fortnite? Okay, Brandon, you are right: we did not expect that. We have absolutely no information on to what extent or details Mistborn (or the cosmere) will be in Fortnite. I feel like it's likely there will be new skins of some kind, but besides that, there's no info so far other than this cryptic image with a Mistborn symbol and a Fortnite logo: Update: Brandon posted more about this on Reddit. The short version is that Kelsier is going to appear in Fortnite, but it is not going to be a huge crossover event: Many of the replies on the Fortnite tweet have no idea what Mistborn is, so let me explain! Mistborn is a fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson, and there are currently six books in that series so far, with a few novellas as well. The series started in 2006 and Brandon's currently writing a seventh novel which comes out (hopefully) in 2022. Don't worry, though, the first three books are their own very satisfying trilogy. The pitch for the first book is essentially, "So what if the hero of prophecy failed, the dark lord won? A thousand years later, we need to try and overthrow the dark lord by robbing him silly?" There are main characters of Kelsier (who is the Survivor mentioned in that image) and Vin, who are both Mistborn, which have all sorts of magical abilities, but the primary one is pushing and pulling on metals. I might be a bit careful Googling details on these characters, though, as spoilers are abound. This isn't the first time Brandon has worked with Epic Games. Long ago, there was an iOS game called Infinity Blade, which Epic made, and Brandon ended up writing two novellas, Infinity Blade: Awakening, and Infinity Blade: Redemption, and that was the core of the worldbuilding for the second and third Infinity Blade games. It's not terribly surprising that there would be further collaboration with Brandon and Epic, so sure, why not? Needless to say we will be converting our YouTube channel to be 100% Fortnite for the rest of eternity, so make sure to check that out!
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  29. Today we have an interesting, unusual giveaway. We are giving away a special alternate dust jacket of Oathbringer to celebrate its launch! This dust jacket was put together by beta reader Darci Cole and graciously donated to the 17th Shard by the group. It features a minifig Dalinar and Roshar created by the wonderful and talented Rick Martin. Also included are fun, candid pictures of Brandon and Peter, plenty of inside jokes, and the signatures of the members of Dragonsteel! Included are memes like maladroitly, [REDACTED], Peter's many "i" adjectives, and more. It's perfect to cover Oathbringer just before you are about to bludgeon someone with it with the book's enormous weight. To enter for this giveaway, all you need to do is register a 17th Shard account (if you don't have one) and comment below, saying that you'd like this, for a chance to win. Due to shipping costs this can only be sent to residents of the United States. Apologies! The contest will end 12:01 Eastern time, Monday, December 4th. We will then PM the winner for their shipping address. Here are the full pictures of this dust jacket: Exterior image, with signed by members of Dragonsteel Entertainment Sketch by Ben McSweeney on the interior of the jacket Special thanks to Ravi for his contributions to this article, and thank you to Dragonsteel and betas for this wonderful giveaway!
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  30. Feels like we haven't had one of these posts in some time, doesn't it? In reality it's only been ~3 weeks but it feels nice to get back to something resembling a normal schedule. Nothing lasts, unfortunately, as we have something like 8 commissions in the works right now (many of which are simple, but still), but that's a problem for future mysterious-author-of-these-posts, not present mysterious-author-of-these-posts (this sentence makes a lot more sense on Patreon, where you can't check who is writing the posts, just go with it here). That should be enough padding, let's look at some art! For the month of May our patrons wanted to see the Lightwoven story of The Girl Who Looked Up, but as it is told to us in the Oathbringer chapter 82: The Girl Who Stood Up - when Hoid finds Shallan hiding in a Kholinar house, and helps her finish the story beyond the earlier version we got, the one where the moral is that the wall was there to keep the girl's people in. In the Hoid-assisted version, the girl ventures out, steals some of God's Light, and brings it back to her people so they don't have to live in darkness... and in the process brings the storms as well. For this piece we decided to work with barlydoodles on Tumblr. They have some truly excellent (fan)art, including this silly comic about Shallan wanting to do a Bridge Four sexy calendar and Kaladin absolutely perishing. You can see the exquisite work yourselves, but what is not immediately obvious is that they threw in the additional, standalone portrait of the girl for free, and without being asked to do - just for fun! Barly (?) was great to work with, and you should expect more from them in the future when we land on the right prompt.
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  31. Today, we got the cover for the third Stormlight novel, Oathbringer. It's also by Michael Whelan, featuring Jasnah being totally awesome. This scene is quite evocative, so maybe you can glean some plot details from this. We also get the scheduled release date for the book, and an Oathbringer update on Reddit. Here's the cover: Whelan describes the scene in the Tor.com article: "We’re centered on a scene where Jasnah confronts the invaders. A giant has smashed a breach in the city wall, and Jasnah is called upon to restore it. After dispatching several invaders with her Shardblade sword, she covers the gap with a brassy wall of magical metal. It’s a very visual scene, in which I saw a lot of possibilities for good images." I will say that the expanded cover looks quite a bit cooler than the zoomed in part on the front cover: So we see Jasnah with her Shardblade (uh... spoilers if you haven't read Words of Radiance?). There's a city under attack, and in the background we see a number of cool things. First, we see a lot of red lightning, probably the Everstorm. I would rate the situation as being "quite bad" by the looks of it. Then there's a giant thing in the breach. People on forums suggest its a thunderclast, and that seems like a reasonable assumption. If you look closely, Jasnah isn't actually floating , but is on some stairs of glass, probably Soulcast. On Tor.com you can see more of Whelan's sketches of this scene and how it proceeded. What do you think of the cover? What city do you think it is? Tell us all your thoughts. We also get a release date: November 14th, 2017. Astute readers already knew this from Amazon, but we wanted to wait to a more official source. Tor says that is when it is scheduled, so that isn't definitive, but it seems quite likely. One more bit of Oathbringer news: Brandon posted another Stormlight update on Reddit. Oathbringer 3.0 was finished, incorporating feedback from Team Sanderson and Tor, and he recently wrote the epigraphs and epilogue. The length of the book is insane, at 514,000 words, which is 100,000 longer than Words of Radiance. (Hey, remember at Way of Kings' release when Brandon said the future books would be shorter? Hahahahaha.) I expect revisions might cut this down a bit, but it's still huge. Brandon says the US hardcover release will be in one single volume, but for the paperback, there may be two volumes released at the same time. That's about it, though Brandon does finish with: Comment below on this exciting Oathbringer news, or discuss the cover on the forums, too!
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  32. Happy Koloss Head-Munching Eve! Or... eve of the eve? We're getting State of the Sanderson a day early this year! Look for it on Friday the 18th, around 9 or 10 am Mountain Time! Yep, it's that time of year again folks. The Christmas trees are decorated, the menorahs are polished, the koloss are looking for some heads to munch... And with birthday cake in one hand, Brandon Sanderson is using the other to type out his annual State of the Sanderson address! Stay tuned for more on that... Oh, and sorry of this post title got your heart thumping. No, nobody knows exactly when the Sander Claus will come to leave his update in our inboxes. But you can bet that when he does it will be all the buzz in every corner of the fandom. In the meantime, I've got something for you to do before begin your furious CTRL+F5 mashing... STATE OF THE SANDERSON 2020 BINGO! Why just read State of the Sanderson 2020 when you can compete to be the 2020 State [of the Sanderson] Bingo Champ!? That's right folks. We've got bingo boards. If you want to play along, you can get your own board here. There are two options: Click the link under "Play Online" and then choose "Generate Card". It will open up a unique, interactive Bingo board for you to play with. Alternatively, use the "Print" button to print out a PDF copy of a unique board to play with. The center square is a free spot. As you're reading SotS and encounter one of the items in a box, cross it out. Get five in a row (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) and you win! Well, okay, many of the squares on these cards are likely to happen so you probably won't be the only one getting Bingo tomorrow. If you're a competitive type, maybe keep track of how many Bingos you can get! There's not any awards for winning, but we'd love to see how you did! If you play, send us a screenshot/picture of your completed board, along with how far in to the blog post you were when you got Bingo! Have fun!
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  33. So, you've read some of Brandon Sanderson's books, and you liked them enough that you want to talk about it with other fans online.... But it doesn't take you long to realize that you have no idea what everyone's talking about. Shards of Adonalsium? Realmatic theory? Worldhoppers? "I don't remember any of this in the books I read!" Fear not! This article is for you! What is the Cosmere? The cosmere is the fictional universe in which many of Brandon Sanderson's novels take place. Stories set in the cosmere share an underlying theorem of magic, a creation myth, a cosmology, and a few other key concepts. Characters and cultures can (and do) cross over between worlds. The connections in Brandon's earlier publications merely consist of a few scattered Easter eggs, but these become more obvious and meaningful with each book. Seeing and understanding these connections can add an extra layer to your experience with his books -- there's a reason we can't stop talking about it! We've designed this page to point out all of the main things you may have missed, or that Brandon has said in interviews with fans, so that you can discover the secret world hidden in Brandon's books and be ready to participate in some of the more complicated discussions as quickly and as effortlessly as possible. For a more in-depth answer to this question, keep reading. For Brandon's own short answer to this question, see the FAQ on his website. For the complete list of works set in the cosmere, see here. A note on spoilers: This article contains minor spoilers for some cosmere books--particularly Mistborn and Stormlight Archive. Links to the Coppermind wiki often contain many spoilers. If you haven't read all the books, we would encourage you not to read beyond the Reading Order recommendations section! Does it matter? Knowledge of the cosmere is generally non-essential to understand and enjoy Sanderson's work as each story/series stands on its own. That said, understanding the cosmere can enhance your experience and give you something extra to chew on if you'd like to dive deeper into Sanderson's universe. So if you start looking into the cosmere and find all of this to be overwhelming or uninteresting, that's totally okay. Take your time, or just don't even worry about it! Maybe this will help: You can think of the cosmere like Marvel's Cinematic Universe, but without the Avengers movies overtly tying everything together. You can watch all of the Thor movies without watching Guardians of the Galaxy, but Thor: Ragnarok is certainly a bit more fun with that extra interstellar context. And you can totally watch Guardians of the Galaxy without caring why a talking duck showed up after the credits, but if you want to be like one of the amazing nerds who gets a chuckle out of scenes like that… this article is your starting point! Sanderson ultimately has plans for some books that will involve the overarching story of the cosmere more directly. At this time, experiencing the cosmere primarily involves connecting the universe's basic concepts and identifying characters who show up in unexpected places and seem to know more than they let on. Reading Order Before we get into the weeds, let's talk reading. There is no “right order” to read the cosmere in. Publication order is a common suggestion, which allows you to experience the books as if reading them from the start, but you should read the cosmere in whichever order you most enjoy. If you want to try something new, branch off to a different world or series. If you really like the series/world you've been reading, then keep going down that road. Most reading orders will point out a few books that can be considered “starter” books. From these you can dive deeper into a particular series or branch off to something new. Some commonly recommended starting points include: Elantris — If you like the idea of reading in publication order, this is where you should begin. This is the first book Brandon published. Mistborn: The Final Empire — The original Mistborn trilogy (Era 1) is the most frequently recommended place to start. Warbreaker — This is a standalone book that's available for free on Brandon's website. The Emperor's Soul — This Hugo Award-winning novella is a great way to experience Sanderson's strengths with very minimal commitment. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) — This epic is far from complete and requires the reader to place a lot of trust in Sanderson--it opens with a lot of worldbuilding and a slow start. But if truly epic fantasy is your thing and incomplete series don't give you pause, this is perhaps Brandon's finest work. For an interactive reading guide, see this page. Brandon's own recommendations can be found on his website. Two final notes on reading order: We highly encourage reading Warbreaker sometime before Words of Radiance. We highly encourage reading Mistborn: Secret History after The Bands of Mourning. Adonalsium, Shards, and Investiture Adonalsium and the Cosmere A long time ago, there existed an entity called Adonalsium. Very little is known about who or what Adonalsium truly was. Adonalsium's touch suffused the cosmere, and many worlds, such as Roshar, were grown by it and bear its design. It was the source of all of the cosmere's magic and was said to control the powers of creation. One day, Adonalsium broke into sixteen fragments in an event that became known as the Shattering of Adonalsium. Why or how Adonalsium was shattered remains a mystery. The Shards of Adonalsium Sixteen of those who were present at the Shattering took up these fragments, or Shards, and became godlike themselves. They went their separate ways, (well, some did) creating worlds and seeding the cosmere with more life. The magic of the cosmere continues to stem from these Shards. Each Shard has an "intent" that it strives to fulfill, which gradually molds and warps the holder of the Shard, the Vessel, until they are absolutely incapable of acting against it. This nature is so dominating that both the Shards and the Vessels are usually referred to simply by the Shard's intent. Note, however, that the intent of a Shard cannot be precisely conveyed in a single word, and there is some room for interpretation as to what each Shard's intent incorporates. Some Shards include Ambition, Autonomy, Honor, Ruin, and Devotion. Though these demigods may appear godlike to mortals, they are neither all-powerful nor all-knowing. Shards may be Splintered--a process which leaves the Vessel dead and the power of the Shard dispersed. Shards are also able to subdivide themselves into avatars, each with a distinct identity, though the exact nature of these entities and how they relate to the Shard and its Vessel is unclear. Investiture, Splinters, and Slivers Investiture is the catch-all term for magical energy in the cosmere. Investiture, which comes from the Shards, is the power source for all of the cosmere's magic systems. Most beings in the cosmere have some innate Investiture, which makes up their soul. Magical powers are sometimes obtained when one's spirit (sometimes called a spirit web) becomes suffused with a larger amount Investiture. A Splinter is a portion of a Shard's Investiture that has been severed from it, either willingly or unwillingly. Sometimes, these Splinters will develop sentience and sapience, and they can become highly intelligent beings. (Note that non-Splintered Shards can still have Splinters.) A Sliver, on the other hand, is a person who once held a significant portion of a Shard's power. Holding that much power stretched and expanded their soul. The Worlds There was an original world named Yolen. Yolen was home to three intelligent species (human, dragon, and Sho Del), and is the planet that the original sixteen Vessels came from. All human life in the cosmere either came from Yolen or was modeled after it. After the Shattering, the Shards spread and settled down on many different worlds throughout the cosmere. These include: World Stories First of the Sun Sixth of the Dusk Nalthis Warbreaker Roshar The Stormlight Archive Scadrial Mistborn Sel Elantris, The Emperor's Soul Taldain White Sand Threnody Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell Worldhoppers and Notable Characters A small number of enterprising individuals in the cosmere have learned how to travel between these worlds. These worldhoppers have a huge variety of backgrounds and motivations. Some worldhoppers are acting individually while others are part of an organization, like the Seventeenth Shard. Hoid Among the cosmere's worldhoppers, there is none so prominent as the ever-mysterious Hoid, originally of Yolen. Hoid, which isn't even his real name, is thousands of years old, having been present at the Shattering of Adonalsium. Whatever happened to Hoid in his past, he's no longer exactly human, at least in the traditional sense. He has a way of knowing where he needs to be at the right time, and he uses this to subtly influence events behind the scenes. Hoid's true motives and goals are as hidden as his real name. Hoid has appeared in nearly every cosmere novel so far, though he is often in disguise and will occasionally use pseudonyms, such as Dust, Topaz, Cephandrius, and Wit. Trying to spot him in every book is part of the fun of the cosmere. He seems to prefer disguising himself as a beggar, an informant, a storyteller, or a jester, so look for him to be playing one of these roles. He is also often, though not always, described as having white hair and an angular, hawklike or arrowlike face. Among many other things, Hoid has the ability to Lightweave (create illusions), he can heal from extreme injuries, he doesn't age, and he has a way to dilate time so that he doesn't have to wait as long for important moments. The planned series Dragonsteel will tell the story of Hoid's origin and the Shattering of Adonalsium, and Hoid is planned to be a main character in the final Mistborn trilogy. Khriss and Nazh Khriss, from Taldain, is the worldhopper who writes the Ars Arcanum at the end of each book, and she's the most knowledgeable of anyone—including Hoid—about the cosmere as a whole. Khriss has been described as dark-skinned, with her hair woven into tight braids. Nazh is her assistant, a worldhopper from Threnody, tasked with collecting various maps and drawings from throughout the cosmere. They are often included in the books with his personal notes to Khriss in his distinctive handwriting. One of his most identifying characteristics is his tendency to use Threnodite swears, such as "shadows". He has also been described as lanky, with a narrow face and sand-colored hair. Organizations Famous individuals aren't the only ones to keep track of, however, as there are several notable organizations at play in the greater cosmere. We know of at least one entire city that exists "between" worlds, called Silverlight, and it harbors the university that Khriss is associated with. Also headquartered in Silverlight is the Seventeenth Shard, a mysterious organization with an aggressive non-intervention policy where the Shards are concerned. Not every group shares these same opinions about not interfering with the rest of the cosmere, however. Significant among these are the Ire, an ancient order of Elantrians, and the shadowy Ghostbloods, who currently seek to use the True Desolation on Roshar to their own benefit. While their goals may be a mystery, their influence on the cosmere cannot be underestimated. The Three Realms Almost everything in the cosmere has a body, a mind, and a soul, and each exists in one of three Realms. The Physical Realm is world of the body, where physical objects exist. This Realm is the only one that normal human beings consciously perceive. The Cognitive Realm, also known as Shadesmar, is the world of the mind. The Cognitive Realm is strange and alien: Water is solid, land is fluid, and shadows point backwards. Thoughts and ideas take on real form in this Realm. After a person dies, a leftover impression of their mind, their Cognitive Shadow, will linger shortly in the Cognitive Realm before passing on. The Cognitive Shadow can sometimes persist for longer periods of time, however, by various magical means. The Spiritual Realm is the world of the soul. Once you reach the Spiritual Realm, there's no such thing as space or distance anymore, just Connection between people and places. Those who peer into the Spiritual Realm can see all the branching possibilities of the future. The power of the Shards resides mostly (usually) in the Spiritual Realm. Large amounts of Investiture can pull the three realms close enough together that perpendicularities form—junctions which allow worldhoppers to cross between the Physical and Cognitive Realms. Often, these perpendicularities can be found where the power of a Shard is concentrated into a pool of liquid. The Cognitive Realm is of particular interest to worldhoppers because distances are compressed there in places where there is little or no mental activity (such as outer space), meaning worldhoppers can use the Cognitive Realm to actually walk from one planet to another. Depending on the Shardworld, the Cognitive Realm can be an extremely dangerous place. Chronology While in most cases we don't know how many years take place between books in different series, we do know the chronological order of most of them. In order, they are: White Sand Elantris The Emperor's Soul Mistborn Era 1 Warbreaker Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell Stormlight 1-5 Mistborn Era 2 Stormlight 6-10 Mistborn Era 3 Sixth of Dusk Mistborn Era 4 For more information, see this post. More Resources The best way to dive into the cosmere is to find a fan community to interact with. While you may see a lot of confusing conversations going on, just ask questions and you'll be caught up before you know it. The 17th Shard offers both forums and a Discord chat server to this end. The other two important resources to be aware of are the Coppermind wiki and Arcanum, both operated by the 17th Shard. But beware that BOTH of these resources include heavy spoilers for all of Brandon's books! The Coppermind is a wiki covering all of Brandon Sanderson's works, with an emphasis on the cosmere. Just dive right in by searching for pages that interest you, or by browsing through the page categories. Arcanum is an archive of everything Brandon has said publicly about his stories, drawing from interviews, social media, book signings, and more. There's a LOT to learn about the cosmere just by hearing directly from the man himself! Search for specific terms or browse entries by tags. We could always use help adding more information to the Coppermind or transcribing audio on Arcanum, and you don't need to be an expert to help. Stop by the #coppermind and #arcanum channels in our Discord server to help out. There's no better way to learn more about the cosmere than by helping improve these resources! So that's it for now! We hope this has been both informative and helpful. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them here!
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  34. This month, we are beginning a brand-new initiative for the Coppermind. The Coppermind is a living, breathing thing, and there's so much to write that it's impossible to have the wiki succeed without your help. But often, people are interested in writing for the Coppermind but don't know where to start. To this end we are going to have monthly objectives to help guide people towards what should be done. Our plan is to have a mix of larger tasks as well as smaller tasks that are much less of a time commitment. If you're new to editing the Coppermind, don't worry; we'll help you out with guides and plenty of assistance. You don't need experience, just the will to do help out! We'll also provide awards, because everyone loves fake internet points. So, here are our objectives for July. There's still so much from Oathbringer and Stormlight to do, so we're focusing on that this month. (And, let's face it, probably for the next little while, too.) We're going to try and make things fairly focused. Larger Projects 1. Kaladin's History in Oathbringer Part Three Kaladin's article needs a lot of updating for Oathbringer, but let's start by just updating the events in Part Three and getting that up to speed. 2. Siege of Kholinar Behold, one of the worst articles on the wiki! Yeah, this needs vast expansion. For subsections that should be here, you can look at the article structure for battles. 3. Lopen We know there's Lopen fans, and if you're a fan of Lopen you should hate this criminally short article of his! 4. Hesina You know, a lot of people worry when they start on the Coppermind, "oh no, I'll screw something up!" And I can understand that, especially for big character articles. But if you just look at Hesina's article you'll quickly realize that you cannot possibly screw this up, because it is so short and so bad. It is criminal that no one has given this one more attention! 5. Update Rysn for Oathbringer Rysn just has one interlude, but it's pretty meaty. Let's update her article with all the Oathbringer stuff and call it good. 6. Roshone Oathbringer Stuff Similar to Rysn, Roshone doesn't have a big role to play in Oathbringer, but there's still stuff to add in all of his sections. 7. Mraize's History from Words of Radiance If you look around the Coppermind, you'll see that in most character articles, the longest section is the History, where the events of their lives (and in turn, events from the books) are chronicled. Well you know who doesn't have a history section? Mraize. Literally none! Let's start by writing down what he did in Words of Radiance first. 8. Celebrant How about a location article to mix things up? Celebrant is cool. Let's get everything down about this place from Part Four of Oathbringer. For guidance, see our article structure for cities. 9. History of the Refounded Windrunners So on the Order of Windrunners page, there's a lot of stuff on what's going on with them magically, but we should also have some information about the refounding of the Windrunners. What happened there? Obviously, if we learned more about the history of the Windrunners before the Recreance, that would go on this page too, but we don't have too much on it at the moment. 10. Wax's History in Alloy of Law And for a non-Stormlight bonus, there's Wax's article. The history of his literally ends when he arrives back in Elendel. Let's start with working on his history during what happens in Alloy of Law, to say nothing of Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning. Smaller tasks These are tasks that are much shorter and involve characters that are minor. But hey, minor things are important to have done too! Most of these articles are so short that they will not require separate sections. For short articles, include as much as you can possibly think of about them. 1. Skybreaker acolytes Szeth meets a lot of Skybreaker acolytes in Oathbringer. None have too much on them. They are: Warren, Joret, Cali, Zedzil, Ty 2. Lunamor's family Of course, we get Rock's family in this one, and his family is big! This includes: Tuaka, Gift, Cord, Rock (junior), Star, Kuma'tiki, Beautiful Song 3. Kaladin's singer squad Kaladin meets various singers in Part One of Oathbringer. Let's complete these up: Khen, Sah, Vai, Hesh, Jali 4. Wall Guard squadmembers Another Kaladin squad (Kaladin getting another squad, what's new) from Part Three of Oathbringer. This could be really good to do if you're also doing Siege of Kholinar or Kaladin's Part Three History. These are: Deedanor, Noromin, Alaward, Beard, Hid, Hadinar, Vaceslv, Vardinar, Ved 5. Fladm This is a minor guard who dies in Rsyn's interlude. 6. Insah This article refers to a character referred to once in Oathbringer Chapter 50. Include as much detail as possible, but there's not much here. 7. Mara Mara is Lirin's apprentice when Kaladin returns to Hearthstone. 8. Fullnight Fullnight is a bit harder than the last two. It's Dalinar's gelding in his first flashback, but there still isn't much about him. 9. Helt This is a master-servant to Elhokar in Urithiru. This should be a fast one. 10. Hariel This is one of the Fused, who took over Demid's body. There's some to expand on here but again, very little. When you are totally done with an article, change the text at the bottom from {{stub}} or {{partial}} to {{complete}}. What's in it for me? We want to motivate people to help, so we will be giving out Coppermind awards for the users in July with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most edits, and we'll also give out awards if you contributed to one of these items. They'll be on your user page for all to see. Okay, I'm in, how do I to start? The most important thing is to be bold! Content is hard to write, but we can always format your stuff if it doesn't quite match conventions. MediaWiki notation is not the easiest to learn. If you're interested, we have lots of guides to help. It does very much help to have ebooks so you can find instances of a specific word or person. (This is extremely helpful for minor characters). If you have physical books, ask us and we can help you determine this so you don't need to reread the whole text. Come join us on the dedicated Coppermind Discord, or come chat in the #coppermind channel on the 17th Shard Discord. We are really happy to help. Lastly, but certainly not least, we have something pretty special that's happened on the wiki that we would like to spotlight. Through a lot of effort, people have been able to figure out where the continent of Roshar is on the planet, and look what the user Otto didact has made: sweet, sweet maps highlighting locations on Roshar. For example, Alethkar: Emul: And for bodies of water: How awesome are these? They are just spectacular. Give Otto a big round of applause!
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  35. Today we're taking a look at a really special thing. It's a Stormlight Archive album called Kaladin, by a group called The Black Piper. This is quite a huge project that has been worked on since 2015, and consists of three producers and several Hollywood composers and orchestrators. About half of the album has been recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. In other words, this is a very legit and awesome project. The Black Piper has given 17th Shard a look at fourteen tracks--half of the album--and we're here to tell you about all of them to try to give you a feel for what these are. We're going to talk about the people involved with the project, and also, we're going to talk about the Kaladin Kickstarter they have. So who's working on this? The Black Piper was formed by producer Sae Sae Norris, film composer Michael Bahnmiller (who has done music prep on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and La La Land), and videogame composer Richard Williams (two-time Student Emmy winner). These aren't newbies to the industry at all. The Black Piper also has a desire to support artists and composers, and there's a lot of other composers on the project, which you can see at the bottom of the The Black Piper's About page. All of these composers have worked in the film, TV, or video game industry. In Kaladin you can really feel the influence from films and video games; it'd feel right at home in either. In their Kickstarter, they want to produce Kaladin with the same level of quality as any movie soundtrack. Their goal is to record 95 minutes of music total, 31 tracks in total. and record the remainder with the London Symphony Orchestra. That orchestra has recorded incredibly iconic film scores, some things you may have heard of, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter's soundtrack. You know, just the minor things. They also wish to hire world-class soloists to put in the tracks as well. There's also artbooks that you can get, as well as a number of other Kickstarter upgrades, which we'll talk about soon. But first, you guys want to know what it sounds like. The Music The Black Piper has posted a playlist of excerpts from nine different tracks, which you can see here: We got to listen to complete versions of these tracks and more, for a total of fourteen tracks so far, which is less than half of the thirty-one they want to have in the finished product. Now, most of the full tracks we heard were, computer generated, which means they didn't have the live orchestra sounds in it (except for a few). I'm going to be honest: these tracks were amazing and they aren't even the final versions. It feels cinematic and epic. The unanimous opinion of our staff was essentially: "this is amazing, we can't wait to see the final version." But remember, the tracks might change into their final product, so our descriptions might be off in the long run. So let's go through each of these tracks. I'm terrible at analyzing music, but big thanks to MozyTheHealer, Kaymyth, and FeatherWriter for their musical expertise. They helped a lot in writing this. Also, Kerry, Jofwu, and Botanica helped me here, too! Thanks all! 1. Stormblessed This track is a lot like a "welcome to our story" track. There's a slow, solemn lead-up with bassoons, breaking into a proper battle theme that really evokes the battlefield well. There's big sweeping lyric melodies, with some awesome French horn. FeatherWriter says, "There’s a really incredible bit of time signature change with super interesting syncopation that really caught my attention. Just as you're getting used to the 4/4, it throws you out." This one strongly feels at home in a film. This would work perfectly as the music for a trailer in a Stormlight film. 2. Sas Nahn Shash As the title suggests, this is all about sadness, despair, and defeat. It really captures melancholy, and has a slight feeling of unwanted hope at the end. One of the composers on this album is really into impressionist sounds. It is heavier on the strings and higher woodwinds, and is overall very atmospheric with its long high notes in the violins and sopranos. 3. Sylphrena This one isn't a particular scene from the book, but it tells about Syl's journey as a character. It starts serene, as if she's a mere windspren, then slowly builds into a joyful film score sound. In the middle, it reminded Mozy of Zelda when the track picks up with chimes and violin runs. At the end, we have a big crescendo that hints at the triumphs to come, then fades away at the end. It's a great, hopeful track, which is a nice contrast from the first two. Feather thought the track portrayed Syl as a soothing comfort to Kaladin. It definitely feels like Syl's growth from windspren to Honorspren. 4. Honor Chasm Compared to the joy, happy sound in the last track, this one has a sense of mystery, darkness, and gravitas to it. It feels like the part near the beginning of The Way of Kings where Kaladin goes to Honor Chasm, contemplating ending things. The sound captures a lot of uncertainty with the sparse orchestration and minimal harmonic progression. The harmony sits on notes for a very long time before it moves. It then switches to some motifs from the Sylphrena track, and then ends hopeful and triumphant, as Kaladin has new hope. 5. Alethi Codes of War This song is quite different from the first few tracks. It'd be perfect for a training montage scene, like Kaladin training with Bridge Four. There's a Celtic or folky feel to it. It has a lot of percussion and rhythmic motives in the low strings that makes it feel properly militaristic. The reeling melody that weaves through the percussion is an excellent reflection of Alethi revelry even in the middle of the warcamps. This is one of my very favorite tracks--as well as some others' favorite too--and I think I've listened to it about forty times already. 6. Chasm Kata There's a lot of atmospheric anticipation in this one. Layers slowly build up, eventually ending more triumphant, with a sweet violin solo. It has the feel of a character's self-discovery moment. It's easy to imagine this right in a movie or TV show, and you can feel exactly the scene this track would go into. 7. Highstorm You know exactly the scene a track named "Highstorm" would represent: Kaladin facing the storm. This track starts dissonant and discordant, giving you a feel of unease. Then, the track rapidly builds, like the stormwall is rushing right toward you. The string instruments go crazy, the brass enters, and the bass is literally dropping. Just listening to the track, you can feel your heart beat faster and you're just thinking, "oh crap, oh crap!" This is intense. The song ends more calmly, almost ethereal, as the highstorm passes and you're in the riddens. This one is spectacular and perfectly matches the urgency and majesty of the highstorms. 8. Hearthstone (Tien) This one feels warm and homey. Kerry described it perfectly: "I feel like I’m walking the main character of a JRPG through their hometown, and that’s exactly what a Hearthstone track should feel like. Rich with emotion and nostalgia. I thought I caught a bit of a Shenandoah-inspired melody here and there, which lent an air of homesickness when listening from the perspective of Kaladin reminiscing." At the end there's a snare drum part which made basically everyone who heard this song die. The drum could either represent the drums of war, or the drums before an execution. R.I.P. Tien. 9. Wandersail So, obviously, Wandersail has a flute part in it. Well... we didn't hear this song with the flutes. (I imagine this is one of the "hey we want a world class soloist to do this" thing from the Kickstarter.) What we heard is a sweet underscore of non-flute stuff where Kaladin is seeing what Hoid is making, in between flute parts. In some respects it feels a bit like Pirates of the Carribbean in Stormlight, which is a big compliment. It's strong and cinematic, especially near the end, where it is gets faster and darker, to show the end of Derethil and the revelation about the Uvarans. Still, we really want to hear the flute part! 10. Three Glyphs - Wind, Protection, Beloved This is the scene where Bridge Four is on a bridge run, and Kaladin, in Parshendi armor, distracting the Parshendi from the bridges. You can very clearly hear the transitions between the three glyph themes. Wind is ominous and powerful, Protection is equally powerful but more rhythmic and certain, and Beloved lifts the piece up into a state of joy. The end, though, feels like it pulls at least the second two together into one. It takes a while for this to feel like a cohesive piece, but the payoff at the end is worth it. 11. 16 Seconds Pre-Death The title of this references the death rattles, and as you could imagine, it is quite spooky. It isn't a slow track, though, but more a scene during a battle where things are going very wrong. It's about the part where Kaladin says the Second Ideal, and it is dark and despairing. It has some synth parts creeping through the other sounds, which makes it feel foreign. It gave me a slight bit of a Mass Effect vibe because of it. I'm told there will be some Parshendi chanting added into this song, which will be layered on top of the abstract synths. Considering it already sounds alien and weird, I can't wait to hear the final version with the Parshendi chanting to it. It can only add to the effect. 12. The Tower It's the Battle of the Tower, of course. It opens with an epic, truly film soundtrack feel of a battle, but then transitions to a section that captures the feel of betrayal and sorrow of the moment. Then it moves into with some triumph in it, but also keeps you on edge. It grows frentic and chaotic, as the fighting intensifies. Some of the transitions are so gradual and then others just happen in a split second, that it makes there be a feeling of uncertainty amidst the badassery. At the end, it slows, and you can finally breathe, as the battle ends. The end fades, but it isn't a glorious triumph, instead feeling just like they got out barely, and so many died. It fits the battle excellently. 13. Thath This we heard with the final orchestrated version, and everything I said about the other tracks being awesome are true, but this really feels way more awesome with the orchestra and the vocals. Mozy describes the track as such: "The beginning does some pretty good anticipation IN THREES with the first motive. (Threes are my favorite thing where it takes three times to really hit the moment). The first start is like “ooh is something happening?” and the second one is like “Yuusss something is happening” and then it flakes out. There’s obviously a few different things going on. I feel like the beginning is more war-like, and then it hits a pretty nice lyric section, that moves into the vocal part at the end." A piano joins at the end, building into a true triumphant moment, which feels exactly like would play when Dalinar puts his Blade on the Thath glyph to save Kaladin. Heck yes. It's emotional, stirring, and breathtaking. 14. Shallan's Lullaby So in the description of the project on the Kickstarter, they say this album is about Kaladin's journey through The Way of Kings, but here we clearly get a Words of Radiance inspired track. It has both male vocals and female vocals singing the lullaby in Words of Radiance, clearly echoing the notion that Shallan's father sung this at the beginning of her flashback sequence, but Shallan also sung it at the end, too. It's a sad track that feels despairing, with a soft, mourning air to it. It starts with male vocals, alternates between female and male, and there's a short duet, ending with the female vocals. I enjoyed that it ended on female vocals, as anyone who read the last Shallan flashback would know. The background sounds of blowing winds, dripping raindrops, and lightning add much to the music. Then, silence for a few seconds. It slowly grows into a huge choir and organ part, which would be appropriate in any dark moment, evoking the feel of the horror of either moment where this lullaby is sung. It reminded me more of the end of Shallan's flashback sequence, with the storm outside of the manor, and a corpse inside, as Shallan realizes what happened. This last part was a bit controversial among us, as it was quite a different change in the track, but this is how I interpreted it. ---- And that's all the tracks we heard! Overall, there's a depth and complexity to the music that so wonderfully feels exactly what the scene would feel like. We all felt like this would be right at home in a Stormlight movie, TV show, or video game. If we had one critique, it was that we generally wanted the tracks to be longer--which I'd say is a pretty good thing, to have us wanting more! I have absolutely no doubt that the final product will be spectacular. And this is just fourteen tracks. There is definitely a track called "Bridge Four," but after that, I imagine there will be some other really sweet things here. They want a total of thirty-one tracks, for 95 minutes of music, if they hit their goals. So, let's talk about the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter The Kickstarter is very ambitious. There seems to be three goals, which are not all listed at the moment. There's a $110,000 tier as the first goal, there's a second goal at a money value I'm not certain what it is, and then there's their final goal, which seems to be $600,000, but it isn't fully spelled out. If they hit their second goal, then they will create the second half of the album (which is not created yet), and also record with the London Symphony Orchestra. That means at the first goal, as listed, we wouldn't get the full 31 tracks, but that is their hope to get that many. The biggest goal will involve musicians working on bonus tracks. So, admittedly, that's ambitious. But what we've heard so far is really great, and if it sounds cool to you, consider backing the project! What are the reward tiers for the Kickstarter? $25 or more: a digital download of the album, a Black Piper wallpaper, and a digital art/sketch card. $45 or more: in addition to the lower tier things, you'll get a physical album, which will come with a six page art insert, containing Kaladin art, and a physical art card $100 or more: in addition to the lower tier things, you can be a voice in the virtual choir and actually be in the album $950 or more: in addition to the physical album and those things, you'll receive a page of the score of a given song, handwritten in the composers hand, coated to protect it, and signed. $3500 or more: in addition to the physical album, you spend an evening with the creators over dinner. So... you can spend a lot of money if you'd like to! The physical art card in the physical editions are one of six collectible character art cards. They will be one of these six: Kaladin, Sylphrena, Bridge Four, Navani, Dalinar, or Szeth. There are also a variety of add-ons you can add to your pledge. You can add $2 for a Stormlight character bookmark, drawn by the amazing Botanica Xu, who has drawn tons of Stormlight art, or $12 for a full set of eight bookmarks. You can get a physical album signed for $5. There's an 100 to 150 page Kaladin artbook at $57, containing some existing Stormlight art but also new art too. With pages something like this (though this isn't final): That's Kaladin. It's a big, ambitious project, but these composers are insanely competent and I'm sure if they meet their funding goals, it will be an amazing final product. Hopefully this gave you a huge amount of information into Kaladin so you can decide if you want to back this! Huge thanks to the Black Piper for letting us listen to some tracks in advance! Also, thanks again to MozyTheHealer, Kaymyth, Kerry, Jofwu, FeatherWriter, and Botanica for helping me writing this article, especially with discussing each of the tracks.
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  36. Good morning, Sharders! Things look quite a bit different today, don't they? It gives me and everyone on the staff great pleasure to reveal the new 17th Shard--our fourth major iteration since we launched in 2010. I've referenced this for so long, worked on this for what seems like an eternity, that it feels unreal to finally show it to you. We hope you love it. With this version of the site, we've updated our software to version 4.1, from our previous 3.4. That jump from 3 to 4 is a huge one and a massive overhaul of many site systems. Things will be different, but that's okay! It's different in (hopefully) a good way. Let's talk about what 17th Shard 4 has in store for you. You can immediately tell, whether you are looking on the site on your PC, your phone, or your tablet, that things are really different. That's the biggest feature of this update: we now have a fully responsive design. It's just one theme that expands to the device you are using, instead of having some shunned mobile skin. What this means for you is that when you visit 17S on your mobile device, you actually have all the power of the site, all the time. Quoting multiple people at once? Easy. You'll find the editor on mobile is the same thing as desktop. You can edit all your account settings on your phone. Everything just works the way it always should have. Though I absolutely love having a great mobile site, I also can't stop staring at this glorious art Will, aka Shivertongue, made for us. A new, cleaner logo; a glorious new background; and cleaner iconography. Legend has it that he just appeared in my apartment and left a flash drive there with this art, and then promptly vanished into the mists. In addition to his enigmatic help, Kerry (KChan) and Monica (Moru) helped with a lot of design and coloring as well. Design is important, but what other features are in store for you? Well, there's a ton! We now have a Cosmere Q&A board where people can pose questions, and other members answers. It's like our old "Question and Answer" thread, only it no longer needs to be in just one topic. People can rate questions as well as answers so you are sure to get the best answers. So, if you're new to the cosmere and have a lot of questions, or you are a veteran with complex questions, or maybe you just want to know if this thing you heard actually has a quote to support it, make sure you get right on it over here! What else? There are a lot of reputation improvements. You can, at long last, undo an accidental upvote or downvote, and the color scheme for positive and negative reputation is more neutral. But that's not all. You can now @mention particular people in posts and they get notified (of course, that can be turned off if you like). User profiles are pretty different and now allow you to have a cover photo. The "View New Content" is now "Activity" and is that newspaper on the navigation bar, and it's very cool now. There's a bunch of small stuff, and I'm sure you'll really like it. Some things are in different locations, though. Your account options are on the upper right, under your username. That's where you can edit your sig, for instance. You can also edit some other settings directly on your profile. On mobile, your account options are in the dropdown menu under "Account". The editor is now rather radically different from before. It's a far superior Rich Text Editor, and in my experience, actually does the things you want it to. One important difference is that when you press Enter or Return in the new editor, it automatically creates a new paragraph, with spacing between the two paragraphs automatically supplied. You don't need to press Enter twice for the same effect anymore! Of course, there are times where you'd really like to not have that extra space between lines--perhaps in your signature, for example--so to do that easily in the editor, just press Shift+Enter. Easy! The editor is also quite smart on knowing what spacing you want if you paste text from elsewhere, so that's a plus. Long time users of the site probably input things in BBCode. You can still use BBCode, though the actual post data is no longer stored as BBCode. You might wonder as you go about your merry way on the site today, why on some tabs, there is sometimes a Pause icon on the tab. It's not that 17S is trying to play music, it's that when that pause icon is there, you aren't getting browser notifications for stuff on the site, because you hadn't been to that tab in a while. Known Issues There are some things I am noticing upon this update that I want you all to know about. Some content was just not quite converted exactly as I (or anyone) would have expected, so let's talk about that. We talked about how in the new editor, it defaults "Enters" to automatically put space between paragraphs. This caused no problems on some posts, where the old empty line between paragraphs that you needed before was removed nicely. On other posts, there is still an empty line between the two paragraphs, and because the editor thinks, "hey, you wanted extra space there too, right? Right!?" it puts extra space after that empty line. This causes those posts to look ultra-spaced out (which sounds way less cool than it actually is). I've identified why this is happening and am actively working on removing these extra spaces. Just bear with us a bit, and don't feel obligated to edit your previous posts to fix it. I'm on the case! The line spacing also affected signatures a great deal. The fix I have planned to do on posts might not work on certain signatures for various dumb reasons, so if you have time, you might want to update your sig. (Hey, that's a lot more practical than editing all previous posts!) Remember, in the editor, you can use shift+enter for a line break, if you don't want that extra spacing. Some avatars--for reasons completely unknown to me--totally vanished, leaving users with the default avatar. We're sorry. (Sorry Matt.) You'll need to reupload the old avatar. Should you not have a copy of the file, I could probably find it in the old site files. I've also heard reports on our test site that some people just can't log in on the new site somehow. I'm not totally sure why this happens. But, there is an important distinction to the name you log in with in this new version. Previously, you could have a Username (your log in name) and a separate Display Name. This was deemed as a somewhat unnecessary distinction, so now you only have a Display Name. So make sure you're logging in with your Display Name! If you do that, and are still having log in difficulties, perhaps try a password reset or email me at [email protected]. I am hoping these aren't widespread, but I am happy to help. Myself and other staff will be on hand especially often, tweaking minor things, and helping you all out! So, if something is broken, if you're confused about something, post in our forum topic: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/54790-the-17s-4-discussion-thread/. Also, in addition to suggestions or criticism, feel free to send us some love. We've worked on this for a long, long time, and in particular, it's caused me more stress than you can possibly know. So send us some love if you like it, and of course criticism and suggestions. Discuss the site update here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/54790-the-17s-4-discussion-thread/
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  37. It's finally done, friends. Some of you may have forgotten about this (heck, some of you probably weren't here a year ago when people were voting for this piece), and some of you may have seen it already, but Katie Payne (do make sure to give her Instagram much love) is finally done with this illustration. And, full disclosure, we can't rightfully call it a commission anymore because from the very early sketches it's been clear that this was going to be far larger and more complex than what we had imagined (or planned for). Fortunately, instead of cutting back on the scope, Katie decided she was going to instead work on this as a personal piece, in her free time. We are still paying her, obviously, but given how this is probably an order of magnitude more than what we can afford, it's really just a tip. Those of you with Instagram accounts can follow her journey working on this throughout the past year by visiting this collection of stories. And there isn't much more to be said, folks, the piece speaks for itself. The lighting is gorgeous, the ten unique designs for all the Fused are full of neat little design choices, and even if they weren't, the organic feel of the stone pillars complements the Nine's poses, ranging from elegant to menacing, beautifully. Make sure you give Katie your love, as she worked super hard on this illustration, and make sure you like and subs-- wait, no, wrong platform. Be good to each other, byee!
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  38. Hey all, and welcome back to our featured theories column. Today, I do not want to highlight any specific theory from the forums, but rather create a new and revised beginner's guide to the cosmere. For those of you that frequent 17th Shard, what I say here will not be news to you, but hopefully this will be helpful to those of you that are still trying to get a grasp on the scope of the cosmere. This will contain spoilers for many of Brandon's cosmere novels, (Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker, and Stormlight are the main ones) so read on with caution. Cosmere 102 Introduction The cosmere is a shared universe that many of Brandon Sanderson's novels, novellas, and short stories take place in. These stories take place on a variety of planets in a small star cluster in a dwarf galaxy. The cosmere works along very similar rules to ours, most of the time, but magic is built into it as well. The main stories of Brandon's that take place in the cosmere are The Stormlight Archive, Mistborn, Warbreaker, The Emperor's Soul, Elantris, and the forthcoming graphic novel White Sand. In the beginning of cosmere, there was one supreme being known as Adonalsium. To the best of our current knowledge, this god-like being controlled the powers of creation, a type of spiritual energy known as Investiture. Many planets existed that were populated with people, but one one planet in particular, Yolen, a group of people conspired to destroy Adonalsium. In an event known as the Shattering, Adonalsium was killed, his power split into sixteen fragments known as the Shards of Adonalsium. These fragments of power were taken up by sixteen individuals, called Vessels, who Ascended into what is essentially godhood. Each Shard has a drive, or intent, that it desires to act in accordance with which gives it its name, such as Honor or Ruin. When a person takes up a Shard, initially they remain themselves, but over time the Shard will influence them into acting in accordance with the Shard's intent, until they have little desire or will to take any action in conflict with their intent. These Shards settled on a variety of planets, where their Investiture gave rise to various magic systems, which are referred to as manifestations of Investiture. Shards may also themselves be split into smaller fragments known as Splinters. These Splinters often have a consciousness of their own. In addition to that, people that have at one point held a large portion of a Shard of Adonalsium and given it up are known as Slivers, their souls expanded by the spiritual energy. One of the Shards of Adonalsium named Odium wished to become the most powerful being in the cosmere. He has since traveled from world to world, Splintering and killing other Shards in his quest. The Shard Honor has managed to trap Odium in a single system, Greater Roshar for now, but it is unknown how long this will last. The structure of the cosmere is made up of three Realms, the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. Every object and person exists simultaneously in all three Realms, although typically it has a stronger presence in one of them. The Physical Realm works very much like our own universe, with similar laws of physics, planets and galaxies, and so on. The Cognitive Realm is the realm of thought. Ideas have power here, and every place where life, particularly sentient life, is present is represented in the Cognitive Realm. The Spiritual Realm is more mysterious, it is Realm of ideals, where connections between people and spiritual energy are crucial, and where time and location is far less relevant. Elantris and the Emperor's Soul These stories both take place on the same planet, a world known as Sel. There are two Shards of Adonalsium present on Sel, Devotion and Dominion, formerly held by Aona and Skai respectively. Both Shards were killed by another Shard Odium, long ago, and their power was Splintered, to prevent anyone else from taking up one of the Shards. Some of these Splinters are part of the seons and the skaze. The remaining power of both Shards is mostly present in the Dor, a reservoir of Investiture in the Cognitive Realm. There is technically only one magic system on Sel, but it is expressed differently depending on the region of Sel. AonDor, Dakhor, ChayShan, Bloodsealing, and Forgery are the known variations although others exist on the planet. Mistborn The Mistborn trilogy takes place on a planet known as Scadrial. There are two Shards of Adonalsium present on Scadrial, Preservation and Ruin. They were originally held by two men, Ati and Leras, who actually created the planet of Scadrial themselves. During the course of the Era 1Mistborn trilogy, Ati and Leras were both killed and Sazed took up both Ruin and Preservation. As Sazed holds both powers, they have commingled into a larger power that is called Harmony. There are three magic systems present on Scadrial, Allomancy which is derived from Preservation, Hemalurgy, which comes from Ruin, and Feruchemy, which is a balance system derived from both Shards. There are no Splinters of either Ruin or Preservation. As of recently, a third unknown Shard working under the guise of "Trell" has began exerting an influence on Scadrial, but this Shard is not on the planet itself as of yet. Warbreaker Warbreaker takes place on a planet called Nalthis, which is home to a single Shard named Endowment, held by a woman named Edgli. Awakening, the only magic system on the planet is derived from Endowment's powers. Endowment also chooses to call people back to Return, showing someone who has died a vision of a potential future and giving them the opportunity to Return to life and change that future. To do so, Endowment gives them a Splinter of her Shard, known on Nalthis as a divine Breath. The Stormlight Archive The Stormlight Archive takes place on a planet known as Roshar. There are several other planets in the system, including Braize, which will play a part later in The Stormlight Archive, and Ashyn, which will appear in a story called The Silence Divine one day. There are three Shards present in the solar system, referred to as Greater Roshar, Honor, Cultivation, and Odium. Honor was originally held by Tanavast and Odium is held by Rayse, but Cultivation's Vessel is unknown. Honor has been killed and Splintered by Odium, his power is present in the spren that form Nahel bonds with the Knights Radiant. Cultivation and what remains of Honor's power are on Roshar, but Odium currently resides on Braize. There are a variety of magic systems present on this planet, including Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrial magic. Which Shard is responsible for which magic system is still unclear. White Sand (forthcoming) White Sand takes place on a world known as Taldain. This planet has only a single Shard, called Autonomy, held by a man named Bavadin. Very little is known about this world at present, but more information will become available once the graphic novel is released in a little over a month. Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel (forthcoming) A final, very important planet is Yolen. All of the original Vessels that took up Shards of Adonalsium are from Yolen. Brandon will one day tell the story of the Shattering of Adonalsium, but it will not be for many years. Shadows for Silence/Sixth of the Dusk It is important to note that not every populated planet in the cosmere has a Shard on it. Many may only have a Splinter on it, or may have no influence from a Shard at all. Two such planets are Threnody and First of the Sun. Threnody appears in the short story Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, and First of the Sun appears in the short story Sixth of the Dusk. These planets may still have magics though, they manifest out of background spiritual energy and are less powerful than planets that have Shards on them. Threnody has the shades, which enforce the Simple Rules, and First of the Sun has the Aviar, birds that grant their owners a variety of powers. Worldhopping While one day many of these planets will develop faster-than-light travel and meet one another, they are not yet at this technological level. However, a limited number of people have learned how to use magic to travel from planet to planet. They make appearances in multiple stories and are often participating in behind the scenes struggles that the main characters of the novels know little to nothing about. Many Worldhoppers make use of Perpendicularities, areas on a planet, often in the form of a pool of liquid, where a Shard's power concentrates. They use these Perpendicularities as gateways into the Cognitive Realm, where all the planets are arranged adjacent to one another, divided by mountains. As interstellar space has little Cognitive activity, it is much smaller in the Cognitive Realm, and Worldhoppers may simply walk to another planet. Several Worldhoppers are members of a group called the Seventeenth Shard, a coalition of Worldhoppers with unknown goals. There are several Worldhoppers of a variety of importance in the cosmere: Hoid - A man who often appears in the guise of a beggar, fool, or storyteller, Hoid holds immense power. He makes use of Allomancy, Feruchemy, Awakening, and Lightweaving (not the type of the Radiants, but very similar) and has other powers that allow him to dilate time and travel to other planets. Hoid is ancient, he is from Yolen and was heavily involved in the Shattering of Adonalsium. Hoid hates Odium, and is attempting to counter him. He also goes by Wit, Dust, and other aliases Khriss - A woman from Taldain (a main character in White Sand) that is the author of the Ars Arcanum that appears in the end of Brandon's cosmere books. She studies magic systems scientifically, seeking to explain how they work. Nazh - A man from Threnody, Nazh works as Khriss' assistant. He often collects first hand documents such as maps, and drawings that appear in the books, which are occasionally annotated by him. Iyatil - A masked woman that appears on Roshar, Iyatil is a seasoned traveler, who has been on a variety of planets in the cosmere. Mraize - A man from Roshar who is heavily involved in the Ghostbloods, Mraize is Iyatil's student, who has been taken to a few planets under supervision from Iyatil.[/background] Vasher/Zahel - A Returned from Nalthis, Vasher has traveled to Roshar because it is easier to get Investiture there. He is a master Awakener currently serving as a swordmaster for Renarin Kholin. His Awakened sword Nightblood was patterned after Shardblades and is also currently on Roshar. Demoux - One of the rebels against the Lord Ruler, Demoux has since joined the Seventeenth Shard and traveled to Roshar seeking Hoid. Galladon - An Elantrian and friend to King Raoden, Galladon is also a member of the Seventeenth Shard that has traveled to Roshar in search of Hoid. Felt - A spy in the employ of House Venture, Felt is now on Roshar working in the army of Dalinar Kholin for unknown reasons. There are several other Worldhoppers whose identities are still unknown. There is a third man, known as Blunt, traveling with Demoux and Galladon trying to find Hoid, but his name has not been officially confirmed. There is also a Terriswoman that has appeared in Warbreaker and a female kandra Worldhopper hidden somewhere in the books. In addition to the Worldhoppers, there is a dragon known as Frost that lives on Yolen. Frost is heavily involved in the Seventeenth Shard, although it is unknown if he has ever traveled to a different planet. There is an overarching story to the cosmere that all of these characters play a role in, but Brandon does not wish to bring this to the forefront just yet. Eventually he will write books detailing some of the behind the scenes events, but for now, since Brandon wants his books to stand on their own, they mostly serve as easter eggs and other random pieces of information. I realize that this is a lot to absorb all at once, and we've only really began to scratch the surface. A good next step, if you want to know more, is to check out the Coppermind, where many of these topics are discussed in much greater detail. New Information There has been a plethora of new information since the last article, mostly from a signing in San Antonio and JordanCon. Thanks so much to Paladin Brewer and Ruru272 among many others that reported information, recorded signings, or transcribed information. You guys rock! San Antonio Odium has a lot more knowledge that Sazed because he has had the power longer, and there are forces purposely trying to limit Harmony's knowledge. Kandra cannot duplicate Parshendi carapace Spren and seons can travel to other worlds, although they are more bound to their home planet The theory that Shardplate guards are made from aluminum may be, "on the right track" Sazed cannot communicate with Ati and Leras Hoid didn't take both beads of lerasium for himself because of his innate ability to tell him where he needs to be and what he needs to do Jordan Con Spren can be combined together Khriss knows too much for Brandon to say what she knows about the "red haze" on Scadrial Wax has seen the influence of a Shard that is not Ruin, Preservation, or Harmony Odium's plan always involved not getting stuck on one planet Dragonsteel will now be a trilogy Official cosmere timeline should be out sometime after White Sand is released Lift will have a POV in Stormlight Three, in addition to the novella Brandon is writing Hoid's ability to speak various languages is magical Expanding ones soul is sometimes involved in Worldhopping Kelsier has hazel eyes The Ire's use of the word "fortune" indicates a very similar concept to Feruchemical fortune Felt, the spy from Scadrial, is the same Felt that appears in Words of Radiance Rashek did not create lerasium, he had to "go and get it" Nahel spren and seons are very similar things If a kandra could get a Dakhor monks bones, it would not grant them additional powers, but is a step in the right direction to gaining his abilities All things of deific level power in the cosmere are related to the Shards Highstorms on Roshar predate the Shattering of Adonalsium Worldhoppers have three ways of obtaining immortality, time dilation, slowed aging, or true agelessness The entire continent of Roshar is not crem, there is a real continent with mineral deposits below the crem-covered surface Khriss is very in favor of freedom of information, and willing to share her knowledge with those working for the good of the cosmere Nalthians with a Breath have more Innate Investiture than someone born on a planet without a Shard, but those without a Breath would have less If Brandon writes a sequel to Secret History, it would occur in the time interval between Mistborn Era 1 and Mistborn Era 2. There is a place in the cosmere where a lot of Worldhoppers tend to congregate Arcanum Unbounded, the cosmere story anthology, will contain an introduction to each planet by Khriss and a map of the solar systems in the cosmere. The Coppermind There's a lot of new work going into the Coppermind lately, and I'd like to thank everyone that helps out. Even correcting a typo or adding one piece of information in is incredibly helpful, and we appreciate all you do. Featured Article: Dalinar Kholin Much of the work on this article was done by a Greywatch and Kynan. This article is beautiful, full of art and in-depth information, exactly what we want from an article. There's only a little bit of work left to do on it, and it's a great example of what passionate wikiiers can do with a little bit of hard work. Kudos to everyone who contributed to this awesome article! Featured Fix-Me-Up: Susebron The current article on Susebron, God King of Hallandren could use a little love. It's got a good start, but it needs more information and better division between sections. Portions that talk about important relationships in his life, quotes, trivia about him, and other information of that nature are always a good addition to the regular baseline history and personality descriptions. Random Little-Known Fact: This random fact comes to us courtesy of one of the most foundational Q&As we've had, the Hero of Ages forum Q&A from Timewaster's Guide. This is probably the first time that Brandon's ideas for the overall cosmere began to be truly apparent. Here's the fact! So Hemalurgy was at least a little bit known before even Allomancy was well-known on Scadrial. I wonder if Brandon will ever do much expansion on the Classical Era of Scadrial before the Ascension of Rashek in the eventual Mistborn Worldbook, or if it will forever remain a mystery? Hopefully one day we'll know!Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next month for a more traditional featured theories column!
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  39. Hello hello! The last couple of months saw an uptick in the membership of our Patreon page, in both free and paying members, so if you are one of those - welcome, welcome! (And of you are not, could we interest you?) Either way, hopefully you are enjoying your time here, on the 17th Shard, and hopefully the new year is treating you well. To increase the odds that everything is going peachy, we've got a Yumi and the Nightmare Painter fanart commission for you, coming right up! We bring you an art commission from last year, all the way back from August! Yumi and the Nightmare Painter had just come out in July, and we had decided to dedicate the next commission to the book. It was a close call, but Yumi and Nikaro at the Kilahito carnival beat Nikaro painting Yumi back to life (or whatever actually happened there) by a single vote, so that's what we did! We knew we had to bring Botanica Xu back for this piece, as their distinctive style was a perfect match for this book. Real life obligations made this piece take a bit longer than usual (turns out being an artist, editor, and translator makes for a busy life) but we couldn't be happier with it. Hopefully you like it too
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  40. This one is coming to you all the way from September of last year, so apologies for the long wait but we like to give the artists we work with as much time as they need with these commissions - we are under no deadline, and we don't want to impose one either. In this case - and in all other cases - the wait has been worth it, as this illustration turned out beyond great! Those of you who have read The Alloy of Law will recognize the iconic "tea's poisoned" scene from about halfway through the book. What you might not recognize is the artist, Rixt Heerschop, even though you may have seen their art in this illustrations depicting the climaxes of Oathbringer and Rhythm of War respectively. They have a good eye for color and composition, and happened to be available when we needed someone for this - so, good fortune all around!
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  41. Surprise! As you might know, we met our $1,000 Patreon goal a few months ago, allowing us to do bigger art commissions each quarter, and the first one of those (for Q2) dropped in April - and it was full of Rhythm of War spoilers. Well, so, the thing is, as big and awesome as that piece was, it didn't quite get us up to the double budget we had committed to... so we decided to just commission an extra piece! Local favorite Nozomi Matsuoka was already working on the "main" April illustration, so we gave her the bonus one too (we promise we'll work with other artists too!). The poll's runner-up didn't quite fit our constraints, but the third place - the vision Renarin and Glys capture and replay for Dalinar in Rhythm of War - was perfect. So we went ahead with it, and now it's done, and you get to see it. We've been reliably above this goal, and dancing around the next one, for some time now, so there's more where that came from!
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  42. Hello all, welcome back to Around the Cosmere. Here, I'm going to take you back to the crazy world of the tumblr fandom, and do a different kind of feature this time. I'm going to highlight some of our wonderful fanartists over on the other side of the pond. These are not, by far, the only artists over on that side, but these are a few of my favorites and those who have consistently churned out a lot of art for us over the years. First up, the lovely ExMakina. Maki's art is always so stunning to me, and she's a great person too. I've used one of her Renarin portraits as an icon on tumblr for years, and I just love seeing every new piece she comes out with. Her Brandon Sanderson tag is here, and you can see some of the great things she's made recently! Below the tag are a few of my favorites as well. Maki also has a 17S account, and a thread where she sometimes posts new art. If you like her stuff, go give her some upvotes! Next up, BotanicaXu. Botanica actually lives in China, and helps out with the Chinese translation team for Cosmere books. She's a wonderfully dedicated fan and her art is beautiful too. The intricate details and gorgeous lineart of her works gives her a distinctive style, and it's a style that's captured most of the Cosmere characters, even the very minor ones! You can find her blog here, with her cosmere tag labeled under #CFSBF here. And of course, a few of my faves to share. She's also got a 17S account that can be found here. Third, we've got Silver, who has long been a friend of mine and whose art deserves a mention. Her art blog can be found at BeneathSilverStars, and the thing that always strikes me is the amazing watercolor painting style that she uses to color. She's a big fan of art collabs too, so you might see lineart from others that has been colored over and given the Silver treatment. She loves putting everyone in pretty dresses. Yes. Everyone. Also, her fave character is Tien and she vehemently denies that he is dead. Her art blog is here and her tag for cosmere is #CFSBF. My picks from Silver: Last but not least, I want to shine a spotlight on Rusty, who does some amazing comic art for the cosmere. I always find myself cracking up at the stuff they do, but don't be surprised if you see more serious fanart around as well. Rusty's a great addition to the fandom and I find myself constantly checking the blog PMendicant for more! There's not a specifically cosmere tag, but both #Mistborn and #Stormlight Archive are well populated! And that's a quick highlight of some of the cool fanartists we've got from the tumblr side of things. If you like these artists, please feel free to leave some comments for them, either here or with a message to their blogs. If you leave a message here for them, I'll make sure it gets back for them to see. Thanks for reading, and come back next week to read some more about what's going on with the RPs!
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  43. Hey there, and welcome to this edition of Around the Cosmere. In this post, we’ll go over highlights of this month’s new WoBs and shine on a spotlight on an interesting theory. If you haven’t read Mistborn: Secret History or Bands of Mourning, you should steer clear of the rest of this post! Spoilers for these books and the Cosmere in general abound. Odyssey Con We were lucky enough this month to get a large number of WoBs (Words of Brandon) from Odyssey Con. A huge thanks goes to Blightsong and Kurkistan for grabbing them for us. Here’s some of the highlights: Odium does not change writings on Roshar like Ruin did. (It’s “not really his thing”.) Dragons can take human form. I wonder if we’ve seen any... Shadows are cast the wrong way in Shadesmar (at least partly) because of how everyone is being drawn to the Great Beyond. It seems that it’s not only when you die that you start getting pulled. Aon Omi is "sort of" like a God Aon, as was theorized a while back. Careful of how you interpret this one, though, as it is “partially adopted”. The screams Szeth hears, as widely theorized, are sort of magical. Someone who did the things he did would not hear them in our world, but anyone who did the things he did in the Cosmere would. It has something to do with the Spiritual Realm. We’ll see a Windrunner other than Kaladin speak an Ideal in a future book. Mistborn aren’t really “Invested” when not burning metals, but they have Spiritual connections that others don’t have which make them passively resistant to things like Forgery and Soulcasting. We also see this in Secret History, where Allomancers aren’t immediately dragged to the Beyond. As a bonus, while burning metals an Allomancer is even more resistant. When people speak of Investiture being corrupted, it often (not necessarily always) just means another Shard’s Investiture has mixed with it. (For reference, this likely refers to the Unmade Sja-anat, who “corrupts” spren who then become thunderclasts.) The follow-up question, on whether this means Nightblood is composed of multiple types of Investiture, was side-stepped. Surgebinders don't have gemhearts. Perpendicularities (large concentrations of Investiture) puncture a hole between the Spiritual and the Physical which is what allows you to use Shardpools to go to the Cognitive. It was noted that Brandon used the word “puncture” almost as if they were spikes. Again, careful of interpreting this one too far: we know that Stormlight glows because it is like a lightbulb screwed into the Spiritual. It’s normal for Cognitive Shadows (and other beings) to get stuck to places due to how they exist through Investiture. This happened with Odium and the two shards on Roshar, Preservation to Ruin, and the Heralds. Elantris crumbled after the chasm because its soul changed to accommodate the Investiture flowing through it (like an Allomantic savant) and its soul was damaged when Investiture stopped flowing through it. Ryshadium evolved to have symbiotic bonds with spren, like much of the rest of Roshar’s wildlife. You can take a look at the full signing reports here. ComicCon FanX We were lucky to have another source of WoBs as well this month. Thanks to Doomquill and theravenchilde for their work here. We don’t have the full transcript yet, so keep an eye out for that! You can steal Surgebinding with Hemalurgy. (There’s been some discussion on whether a Hemalurgically stolen spren could break the bond, and this implies they couldn’t.) Quite a lot of crustaceans on Roshar can grow gemhearts. You can read the full report (and listen to the not-yet-transcribed recording) here. Featured Theory: Trell is Dominion The newest Mistborn books showcase the actions of foreign entities on Scadrial. Bleeder had a spike made of a god metal not related to Harmony, Miles speaks of a Trell, Suit ended up being blown up by something possessing a man, and Bloody Tan was influenced by something. Harmony all-but-tells Wax that he is keeping Scadrial safe from an outside force, which Wax sees as a red mist. Marasi resolves to look into who Trell is, and plenty of people have theorized on their identity here on 17th Shard. The original two big candidates were Odium and Autonomy (the Shard of White Sand). But an interesting alternative emerged: Dominion, or perhaps someone using Dominion’s power. The earliest one to propose the theory, as far as I know, was Tarion in this post. But there was a recent re-evaluation with evidence from Bands of Mourning by Dirigible here. Others have certainly discussed this in other threads; I apologize for not including them here. Some points of evidence for the theory: The agents of Dominion on Sel, the Skaze, are a part of the Fjordell Empire. To no one’s great surprise, pieces of Dominion sought to rule over Elantris and the surrounding area. Why not move on to Scadrial in the future? Brandon has stated “The full [Elantris] sequels will need to be finished before I can do the contemporary (1980s tech) Mistborn novels because of behind-the-scenes Cosmere bits.” The mysterious metal spikes that Paalm used have a very similar appearance to the soulstone that Shai uses (red spots). Not that they’re the same - one is a metal, the other a stone, but Dominion’s power may express itself differently on other worlds. Svrakiss, evil spirits which can control men, are part of the legends of Sel. Sound similar to anything that happened to Suit? The “Faceless Immortal” speaking to Suit at the end was very focused on hierarchy and serving, which is reminiscent of the structure of the Fjordell Empire. Dominion, or those using its power, are certainly an interesting candidate for “Trell”. If you’re interested in looking more in-depth on the arguments for/against, I urge you to check out the threads linked above. Random Fact Here’s this month’s interesting WoB: Could be interesting seeing a Dakhor monk with a Skazeblade fighting a Radiant, no?If you noticed anything wrong up above, please leave a comment letting us know. Have a good month, and happy theorizing!
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  44. This week, Brandon posted a large progress report on Oathbringer, the third Stormlight Archive book, on the Stormlight Archive subreddit. To talk about how far he has gotten, he went into a detailed explanation on how he structures Stormlight books, so people understand what his word count means. I'm going to talk about what Brandon said, and do some analysis as well! Long story short, Brandon is 180,000 words through Oathbringer. (For comparison, the first Mistborn book is about 200,000 words long.) 130,000 of those are for Part One of the book. Like the other Stormlight books, this will have five parts, and Brandon said that Part One will be longest. He's also written Dalinar's flashbacks in its entirety. Most interestingly, he's finished a novelette from a new character that we will see in Part Two of the book, and he's partially through the novelette that will be in the vein of Szeth and Eshonai interludes. Confused yet? To truly understand what that means, Brandon talked about the structure of the book, as Stormlight books have a particular structure to them. Each Stormlight book has a central "focus" character which has a big arc with flashbacks. The Way of Kings had Kaladin, and Words of Radiance had Shallan. In the initial work on the flashbacks for this book, Brandon decided on Dalinar--before, he didn't know whether Dalinar or Szeth would get the flashbacks. After he decided on Dalinar, he finished Dalinar's flashbacks in entirety. While Dalinar gets a larger plot in this book, Brandon did say that we will see Kaladin and Shallan on the level that we saw Kaladin in Book Two. The flashback character gets a role in all five Parts of the book, so we'll see a lot of Dalinar. In addition, we of course have the interludes in between each of the five Parts of the book. There are two different kinds of interludes: ones that are short stories, and then a recurring interlude character in what Brandon calls a novelette. The recurring characters in interludes were Szeth and Eshonai. Book three is going to introduce a new viewpoint for the interludes here, which he hasn't finished writing. Brandon restricts the amount of viewpoint characters carefully in this way so he doesn't have the problems of other huge fantasy series--like, say, The Wheel of Time--where we just lose sight of the main characters. In addition to Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan, we'll also see some Szeth, Eshonai (to no one's surprise, she's alive), Adolin, Jasnah, and Navani. What interests me most is that Part Two has a second novelette from a character we haven't seen viewpoints from yet. This person's viewpoints will be across six chapters in Part Two. Because of this, Part Two actually has the least amount of focus on the main characters, though Brandon said that Part Two is shorter than Part One. Like the first two Stormlights, Oathbringer's Part Five is very short as well. If you think this all sounds confusing, so did I at first. My reaction to that sentence was, "Man, it sounds like we really need a spreadsheet to visualize this." Well, the joke's on me, because that's exactly what Brandon did. (And people make fun of me for using a spreadsheet to outline my books! Well, take this!) I have to imagine that in Brandon's actual spreadsheet or outline, these names are actual characters. We have "Flashbacks" and "Primary Character" which of course refer to Dalinar. Secondary Main Character 1 and 2 are surely Kaladin and Shallan, respectively. Perhaps I am reading too much into the coloring (entirely possible!), but considering Kaladin is a Windrunner, associated with blue, and Shallan is a Lightweaver, associated with red, we could say that Shallan is Secondary Main Character 1, and Kaladin is Secondary Main Character 2. It is interesting that Secondary Main Character 2 vanishes in Part Four, and that in Part Two, we only get one chapter from Secondary Main Character 1. This isn't that unusual. In The Way of Kings, Shallan totally disappeared from Parts Two and Four, and Dalinar and Adolin weren't in Parts One and Three. In Words of Radiance, Dalinar had much fewer viewpoints than in Book One. So, don't be concerned that you won't see your favorite character for a while. Brandon's been doing this juggling the whole time. For tertiary characters, this is kind of interesting. Brandon does explicitly mention--as I did above--that we will see "moderate amounts" of Szeth, Eshonai, Jasnah, Adolin, and Navani. That's five characters, but on this spreadsheet we only have four tertiary characters. Perhaps this means one of these five will be people we see, but not get viewpoints from. As for Adolin, Brandon later confirmed that Adolin won't have as many viewpoints as other main characters. He will be in about as much as he had in the first two books. That's about it from the big characters. Brandon did also said there will be "a few surprises regarding other characters who have slightly larger places in the plot," but anyone not on that list won't have more than a viewpoint occasionally. At least, until the second five books, where we will have a different set of main characters--of which Renarin is one of them. So that's pretty cool. Next on the writing agenda for Oathbringer is to revise Part One, which he normally doesn't do, but he wants to make sure continuity is correct before he moves on. From there, he plans to write Dalinar's Part Two segments, mixing in the flashbacks and the Part Two novelette, and getting the rest of Part Two's main characters done. He hopes that this will put Part Two to 70,000 words, which will put the book at 200,000 words--right at the halfway mark! Brandon's certainly got his work cut out for him on books this huge. I am really appreciative of him updating us on his progress, and he's clearly working hard. But seriously, there's so many characters and plotlines that no wonder these books are a massive undertaking! I've also compiled a bunch of things Brandon has said on Reddit and Facebook regarding this. I've integrated a few quotes into what is above, but here are some others: Well. That's a thing. I mean, Brandon has said that main characters can die, and has said this frequently. But "spoilers about the nature of the back five books"? Please let me travel in time to discover this now. Brandon clarified that he means that Hoid hasn't missed a main sequence cosmere book. There were some other writing-related comments, which you can check out by looking at the full Reddit thread. One last thing that I thought I'd mention. An AutoModerator bot on the Stormlight subreddit actually flagged Brandon's post because: "Your submission has been automatically removed because the title does not include one of the required tags." Fortunately, Brandon was able to approve it himself, since he's a moderator of the subreddit. What a cheater.
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  45. Welcome to "Peter Sayeth," a new feature on 17th Shard where we talk about what Peter Ahlstrom, awesome person and Brandon's assistant, teases on social media. We totally don't stalk him. That would be silly and creepy. Ahem. This month Peter has talked about a lot of goodies, one of which is delightfully trolly about The Bands of Mourning's ending. Gah, we want it right now. Send your angry letters of this knowledge to [REDACTED]. Did you forget that Alcatraz 5 was a thing? It is, and is clearly on the horizon: Maybe it's time for you to reread Alcatraz! (Or wait for their rereleases.) Next up, the White Sand comic: Remember that White Sand is a cosmere graphic novel. It was originally one of Brandon's earliest works. I need this right now. Peter is also very happy with how the Shadows of Self ebook turned out, and the images look good. Great to hear! Then, lastly, Peter yesterday began The Bands of Mourning copyedit. We've yet to get Shadows, and yet Bands is just on the horizon! As you can see, we are getting a ton of Brandon Sanderson goodies in the next year. This is going to be awesome.
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  46. Oh, whee, it's been a minute, hasn't it? Since we showed you art? Well, the end of the year is always a little crazy for everyone - between conventions, new books, exams, holidays, everyone is just a little busier, and things take just a little longer. But! Things are still moving along, and what better way to celebrate the upcoming holidays than with our October fanart commission - a piece as spooky as it is spoilery, so proceed with caution! If you haven't read all of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, begone! Come back once when you've done your homework. But for everyone else... ... this is obviously the moment Yumi realizes she, just like everyone else in Torio, is a nightmare. Your artist for this heartbreaking piece is Megan Murphy, aka comiclysmic, whose iconic style you might recognize from a series of meme-y posts (like this Hoid being very upset with Design's stance on spoilers), but also "proper" fanart (like this Sja-anat). Regardless, familiar or not, Megan did a great job with this piece, just like she does with all her pieces (oh, do make sure you check out this Dustbringer OC), and we are all very happy to have worked with her on this, and are very much looking forward to working with her again in the future!
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  47. It's been Spoiler City up on this Patreon, and that's not changing anytime soon (can you believe Secret Project #2 is less than a month away??). We are all mostly hunkered down here in 17S HQ, cooking up things both secret and not, and honestly, recovering from all the content Brandon is blasting our way with some face masks and spas. But you are not here for our morning routines, you are here to see pretty art, and this month you are in for a treat! Our patrons have known this for about a month now, but we got the exceptional Marie Seeberger, aka Lamaery, aka lamaery_in_the_cosmere to work on this piece, and we probably should've expected that we'd get way more than we asked for. Not only was her primary illustration of the Crow's Song surviving the Crimson Sea beyond amazing... ... she also threw in a bunch of variations of of it: A version without the storm clouds: A version without the Crow's Song, just the Crimson Sea after rain: A version with no Crow's Song or rain - just the Crimson Moon over a calm sea of red spores: And a version resized for desktop wallpaper use, because obviously we are all going to want that: So after all this we are absolutely going to try to get her to do something for us again in the future. But until then let's all enjoy this gorgeous painting that could've absolutely been one of the full color spreads in the book itself!
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  48. Deadline has announced some pretty exciting news today about a story Brandon has been wanting to write for years, Dark One. This story, which has slipped in and out of the Cosmere over the years, is about a young man who instead being the hero prophesied to save the world, is the one destined to destroy it. The last we had heard about it was in last year's State of the Sanderson: Well it seems that that interest bore fruit as in their announcement Deadline reveals that not only is there a television series and graphic novel in the works, but there is also a multi-volume book series and a podcast are as well. The tv series is being developed by FreemantleMedia North America with Random House Studio and the graphic novel will be published by Vault Comics. Where the tv series and graphic novel appear to be planned to tell the same story, the book series will expand on it while focusing on secondary characters and the podcast will explore the events leading up to the tv series. Here is the pitch given by Deadline: I for one am always excited to hear about new Brandon projects on the horizon. I know that Brandon's previous foray into graphic novels has been met with mixed opinions, but I'm happy to see that hasn't given up on the medium. Ultimately I'm very interested to see how this story will play out over four different media! Brandon has tried a much more limited version of this before, with Legion (the original plan was for him to write the novellas to tie into a tv series). This however is much more ambitious, but Brandon is also a much bigger deal. There are no dates for anything yet, but I think the future is promising.
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  49. A few weeks ago we posted about the Mistborn board game prototype that Crafty Games planned to reveal at GenCon. I found it quite exciting and was desperate for information, and there were quite a few users who felt the same, so I started work on this secret project. I reached out initially to Tellingdwar, and later to Crafty Games, about collecting and posting information about the game for those of us who could not attend. I hope you all find it as interesting as I do! Final Empire: A Mistborn Board Game The Game Final Empire is a semi-cooperative, resource-manager game set during the events of the first Mistborn novel. Three to five players assume the roles of various factions and must work together to solve the "Problems" facing the Final Empire. In order to solve these problems players must expend a certain combination of resources, but in return they receive Favor from the Lord Ruler. The six factions available to play at GenCon were the Noble Houses of Elariel, Hasting, Lekal, Tekiel, and Venture as well as the Steel Ministry itself. The final release plans to include a total of ten factions. Each round players produce resources (food, money, prestige, skaa, warriors, and atium) in different proportions and combinations based on their faction. House Venture, for example, keeping in line with the books, produces atium, while the other factions cannot on their own. Atium works as a sort of wildcard, you can use it in place of any other resource, and you can convert between different resources to get something that is missing, but in the long run the players must work together, pooling their resources, to succeed. There are 4 tiers of "Problems", at the start of each turn a problem is added to the board in the corresponding column and each pre-existing problem moves up one tier. If a problem passes tier 4 than it is said to "Erupt" (a nice nod to the Ashmounts) and it causes various problems for the players, such as increasing the level of "Unrest" or giving players "Disfavor". The main part of gameplay is the negotiation between players to solve these problems. Getting the right number of resources is only part of the issue, as players also have to decide how the reward of Favor tokens is divided. Anything except Favor gained in previous turns can be negotiated: resources, Personality cards, out-of-game favors, etc. Short-term deals concern the current round (such as Players A, B, and C agree to solve a problem and contribute resources equally and will divide the Favor equally) and are binding, however long-term deals which concern future rounds (such as Player B telling Player A that if they let B help them with this problem they will let A help them a problem on their turn) are not. Which has the potential for a lot of scheming and backstabbing. Another gameplay mechanic is the "Personality" cards. These cards can have a variety of effects, such as altering the number of resources needed to complete a mission or change a problem’s tier. They can also be used to add advisers to one’s faction, or kill the advisers of another faction. These advisers can do things like generate additional resources, or even make long-term agreements binding. The game can end in two ways, either the Unrest reaches 8 or a special problem card (Vin) is resolved. If she is not defeated and is allowed to erupt she increases the Unrest by 4. If the players are able to defeat Vin then the player who has the highest amount of Favor is the winner. If the Unrest reaches 8 then the rebellion occurs and the player with the least Favor (the faction furthest from the Lord Ruler) wins. The Reception The board game seems to have been received extremely well, by fans of the series and people unfamiliar with it alike, I’ve yet to find a negative review or post about it, they’ve all been very positive. Tellingdwar was actually a volunteer for Crafty while he was there and demo’d the game for five hours each day. He enjoyed it so much that one day when his shift ended he commandeered one of the boards and continued playing it with some of his friends. I’d say that is definitely a testament not only to its "fun-ness" but also to its replayability. Plans for Release and Expansion (plus naming rationale) Crafty Games plans on doing a Kickstarter later this year (around Oct/Nov, which would correspond fairly well with the release of Shadows of Self) with an actual release of Quarter 4 2016. There are also plans to release expansions based on the later books as well. These would use the same board and tokens but the cards and factions will be swapped out to match the narrative of each book. These expansions also tie into why the game is not called "House War". I will admit that I was one of the people who greatly preferred "House War" to "Final Empire" but Crafty's reasoning does make total sense. While "House War" does fit well with the base game with its rival Noble factions, the expansions will not have those same factions and will deal with different themes, as such "House War" would not be an accurate descriptor. Mistborn Adventure Game Crafty also talked briefly about what’s coming up for the Mistborn Adventure Game in the relatively near future. Up first is a supplement focusing on the skaa, much like Terris: Wrought of Copper did for the Terris people. The title, Skaa: Tin & Ash, was revealed earlier this year and it’s currently looking at a release during the first quarter of 2016. In addition to that there is a follow-up to their Alloy of Law supplement in the works. With the release of Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning on the horizon they have plenty of new material to work with. Crafty is currently looking at it releasing sometime during 2016. So what do people think of the game? Does it sound like a game you’d like to play? Will you be backing the Kickstarter? Is anyone excited for the MAG supplements? Check out our forum topic here to discuss everything! Photo credits: Mistborn: Final Empire banner from Crafty Games GenCon announcement. Board Game Demo photo from Crafty Games' Twitter. Board Game Playthrough photo from Crafty Game's Facebook page.
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  50. Brandon has begun writing on Stormlight 3 in earnest, and today Brandon revealed that the flashback character for this Stormlight book will likely be Dalinar. This may come as a surprise to some, as the previous working title for this book, Stones Unhallowed, as well as Brandon's initial plan suggested Szeth was to be the flashback character. However, more recently, Brandon said that it could be either of the two, or Eshonai, depending on which information needed to be revealed first. While Brandon hasn't officially decided, he won't know for sure until he finishes writing the sequence, he is definitely "leaning that way". The other flashback characters in the first five Stormlight books will be Eshonai and Szeth. Since the original plan was a Szeth, Eshonai, and Dalinar order, it seems likely that we will have Eshonai for book four, and Szeth for book five. That will be it for the first half of the ten book Stormlight sequence. There's a time jump between books five and six, and Brandon will take a break from Stormlight books to do some other projects, like the Elantris sequels and the modern-day Mistborn trilogy. Update 1 to include info that it is not 100% certain just yet. Update 2: Brandon has further clarified that he is currently writing the book assuming it is Dalinar's book, and that the current working title is Oathbringer.
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