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Not sure if this would be the right place for WOB discussion but: Comatose Originally, Kaladin and Moash were essentially the major darkeyes who were in a position to criticize the nobility and lighteyed culture. Now that Kaladin has kind of (if not emotionally) bought into the system to some extent, by outranking most lighteyes, and Moash has gone full villain, are we going to get another character playing that role of a darkeyed or lower class individual who is critiquing the system? Brandon Sanderson Yeah, I've been looking at that. One of the questions is whether Lift can justifiably fulfill that role, as someone who considers herself a bit of an outsider even among the Radiants. But let's hang a little bit of a RAFO on that, ask me after you've read book five. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/518/#e16188 Do we think the RAFO in book 5 could be referring to plans for a Moash rehabilitation arc to serve in that role?

I feel like that this should be obvious but I haven't figure out where to find it. Where are the correct places, formats, and schedules to ask Brandon a question for a WoB? Particularly for his spoiler streams, I haven't figured out when and where to ask my questions.

I just read this WOB, and it got my brain churning. is there a potential for us to be seeing gunslingers with the express intent to shoot peoples invested abilites right out of their soul in combat? we know that being spiked is already seriously damaging to a person, and i just can't stop thinking about how utterly devastating this could be in combat. and if this is the case, i could see it being a pretty efective method against some of our top teir invested type peoples (Higher oath surgebinders, Compounders, Fullborns) while i doubt it would be enough on its own, if combined with other abilities, even if they could heal their soul, I can't imagine it would be immediate. it would certainly make characters on these power scales far more vulnerable. Do yall think this stuff is popping up in era 3? or 4?

Hi everyone, I'm a longtime lurker on this forum, and it's where I go to get my in-depth Cosmere insights. I know a lot of people prefer the 17th Shard forum over using Reddit. However, Brandon has a much larger presence on Reddit. To make things easier for you (and me!) to find Brandon's Reddit WoB's, I recently made a bot on Reddit that collects all of Brandon's comments and copies them to one easy subreddit. Over the last few months it's collected just under 400 comments and update posts from Brandon. It's really interesting to see all the areas he posts outside of Brandon Sanderson-centric Subreddits -- especially in writing posts and elsewhere in the fantasy world. I hope you check it out! It can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Elendel_Daily/ (If you prefer the old Reddit format) https://www.reddit.com/r/Elendel_Daily/ (If you prefer the new Reddit format) I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions as well! -DeJeR

Watching the newest WoB shardcast made it apparent to me that there differing views on Shard/Planet Interaction. I want to get people's opinion on how I view it. I would post some of the WoBs supporting but I'm new and can't do links. WOB: asmodeus You've said before that a lot of the magics we see across the cosmere come from an interaction of Shards and their Investiture with the planets they Invest in. What does this mean practically? If Scadrial explodes tomorrow, will Hemalurgy stop working across the cosmere? Brandon Sanderson Hemalurgy wouldn't stop working, most likely, but it could. There are ways that you could make it stop working. I kind of mean that the Shards are an innate part of physics in the cosmere, and the magics that arise are an innate part of physics because of that. Like atium seeped out into the Pits of Hathsin, in the same way, these magics are just gonna leak out, and different places are going to affect them. You'll see Lightweaving happening in different places, and the way the Shard is interacting with the local... The way the Shard is is going to affect how Lightweaving is administrated in the various magics, but it's still gonna be there. Hemalurgy is kind of a similar thing to that. You will see Midnight Essence, you will see some of these recurring ideas popping up, and these are like natural parts of the physics, but they're influenced by the Shards on the local planets. I don't know if that answer, that's gonna be a really fun one for them to transcribe into the Q&A thing, because I go around in circles on that question a ton. Put this part in when you do it. Footnote: It was a really fun one. YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022) Other Known things: Rosharan Magics Ashyn Uses similar surges as the Rosharan magic system does today. The magic is now sickness based. The magic was not always sickness based. All of the rosharan system was specifically set up by adonalsium for a specific purpose. Shards can have investiture in parts of the cosmere that they are unaware of until they look for it. When aware of it, they can shape it in a way. "Shards influence and tweak certain Investiture, giving it a kind of spin or magnetism, but all Investiture ever predates the Shattering--and in the cosmere matter, energy, and Investiture are one thing" Scadrial was created by Ruin and Preservation but they didn't create the atoms themselves. My Interpretation: I think my interpretation is much like Argent's was in the recent WoB video, but I don't think he had all of the main points readily available to push this idea forward. While I don't think it's totally accurate, I think it helps understanding to think of all investiture and magic as particles for the sake of this. In any given spot you may have matter, light, gravity, magnetism, electric charge, magic (such as midnight essence or lightweaving particles), ect. With these raw materials from a location, magic systems are formed. I would liken it to how different communities would use stone vs wood vs clay as base building materials for their civilizations based on the materials available and the weather forces they see regularly, except on a galactic scale. While typically not cognizant, the shards (either the power or the vessel or a mix of the two) bring magic systems into being based on what is available in that vicinity and how those magics interplay with the shard. It may be possible for a shard to intentionally bring more materials to in area to allow a specific interaction between themselves and the materials to come forward, but probably don't do things more than that to create a magic system. For Roshar, we know that Adonalsium created the entire system for a specific purpose. While we don't know what that purpose is or how it works, if we think of the system as a singular thing it would make sense that the system has a specific set of raw materials. If all investure is just a part of physics then these magics would be part of the raw materials of the system. That may explain why pre-sickness Ashyn, post-sickness Ashyn, and Roshar all powers relating to those surges. There's something about the area that makes those magics more prevalent. I think it would explain it better than the surges are of Honor/Cultivation. That would mean that Honor/Cultivation had a hand in the creation of the unchecked surgebinding that destroyed Ashyn, and then also mimicking/forbidding it on Roshar. We know that Ruin and Preservation very intentionally made Scadrial by jointly gathering and arranging atoms in a way that subfused every atom with thier... attunement? We know that Lord Ruler and Fuzz at times have tweaked the world to have the magics play in their favor (creating mistwraiths, forming the Pits, or changing the metals used to include Atium). But it makes sense that it would be outside of their abilities to have it be "if you burn iron you can now lightweave", because lightweaving particles don't seem to be one of the materials that are readily available in that system. One of the talking points in the stream was that it could be inherent to the shard and that endowment would likely do breaths wherever she was, but that breaths may look different. I would agree with this based on this model. The breath, the magic endowed to each person at birth and the possibility to come back and be endowed with extra life, is likely an effect of how that shard's essence interplays with the materials around it. We may think of Nalthis as a place with a lot of the magic particles that power Tin at scadrial, and other magic particles that can bring awareness/ect for awakening. If endowment was instead on a planet with a lot of gravitation surge and connection surge maybe instead your breaths would help you fly and you could use them to forge a connection between things, but the mechanic of being born with a little and being able to pass them around would likely stay. Let me know what you think. Feel free to add ideas if you think you can support it or bring up some counter arguments. I just was listening to the podcast and I couldn't help but feel the ideas weren't fully fleshed out when Argent was talking about it, and it didn't sound like the other people that disagreed were necessarily disagreeing with the key points. Thanks all!

ok so here is my very informal theory about the prolouge in stormlight 5 so i think that the prolouge might be from gavilars perspective or at least should be. If you think about it, this will probably be the last gavilar assassination prolouge and having it be his perspective would be a great way to introduce more about the heralds and gavilars intentions to the reader while technecally giving a big info dump but at the same time making it engaging for the audience.

Not sure if anyone already talked about this since this was said almost a week ago now, but in the most recent Q&A with the Dusty Wheel show, there was a question about time dilation and investiture: ------------ Jeremy If vast amounts of Investiture can distort time in a similar manner as a black hole, [...] does that include Shards? Would time dilation be greater on Roshar than on Nalthis? Brandon Sanderson No, because the Shard is contained almost entirely in the Spiritual Realm. In the Spiritual Realm, time and distance have no meaning. So, what this means is: Large piles of Investiture that somehow make it into the Cognitive Realm or the Physical Realm are going to cause time dilation, but the Spiritual Realm—where it belongs—it's not going to do that. That's gonna make some exclamation points raise above the heads of some people. The Dusty Wheel Show (June 17, 2021) ------------ I think it's clear that the "exclamation point" has to do with the Dor on Sel and how, after the shattering of Dominion and Devotion their investiture was trapped in the Selish Cognitive realm creating, as we've known for a bit, some odd things about Shadesmar there and making it a dangerous place to be. Knowing that Brandon likes to use science to a certain extent, what possible effects could time dilation have on the cognitive realm of Sel - is that what makes it dangerous or is it that in combination with raw investiture just flying around? Is there anything else we know about the cognitive realm on Sel that this information helps?

So in a re-read of mistborn I was struck by the fact that a-copper doesn't just mask rhythms but also makes the user immune to emotional allomancy, and to me that strikes as something very interesting. I went through the archive trying to see if there was anything about copper messing with various forms of Invested magic, and I found that it would mess with singers and spren, but what about Radiants? For example, would a Smoker very near to a Lightweaver be able to dispel an illusion? Or perhaps be resistant if a Windrunner/Skybreaker tried to lash them to the sky? My line of thinking is that copper burning makes the smoker themselves act like a heavily invested object that's difficult to manipulate. Other types of allomancy don't directly affect another person except for bronze, zinc, and brass, (and possibly nicrosil/chromium but we have no confirmation of that, do we?) and copper blocks all of that. Along that line of thinking, a Smoker would also be resistant to surges directly affecting them, right? It would be difficult to target them with a surge, and if copper flaring (which has been RAFO'd repeatedly) extends that ability to those in the coppercloud, that would be very interesting. So in the end my question is: Do we have any WoBs or information concerning Smokers being able to interfere with surges? Or any WoBs or information about Smoker's allomantic immunity to brass/zinc also applying to nicrosil/chromium? Because I can't find any in the archive myself.

The Wiki Page https://coppermind.net/wiki/Nahel_bond starts with: But I remebered this: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452/#e14509 I came to this Topic when i wanted to mention, "This Character has a Nahel Bond" in a WTCC Question but checked the Wiki to not confuse everyone. Can we change this in the Wiki? I know that WOBs are only secondary canon but the quote is from December 2020, so it is pretty recent and past RoW. And he literally said, that it is the definition. It does not just change "human or singer" to "being from the Physical Realm", but also "sentient spren" to "spren".

I was looking up details on Releasers, and came up with a post (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/373-skyward-chicago-signing/#e12048) However, there were no new Releasers in RoW. Instead, we got [Dawnshard Spoilers] Therefore, we were lied to in a WoB. What does this mean? The best thing I can think of to sum this up is, "Mmm... lies."

I would like it if people could give some links to some WoBs that give information about the order of Dustbringers. I'm thinking about making a mini-Stormlight fan-fic about the order, and want as much information as is accessible to me. Please help!

First, is this the right subforum to post this? I'm not sure, but for now I'll put it here. Please point me to the correct place if this isn't it. Anyway, the PM: Non-screenshot below: I guess I should add this to the Arcanum database, right? Would I put this post as the source, or what? Honestly, kinda a shame. If Shards did have beads there, then that combined with this WoB could have some weird (and probably very very bad) results.

We need to talk about the silver plating on Vin's earring! Somewhere between the moment Vin's mother drove this little bronze spike through Vin's sister into Vin's ear, and the moment we first see Vin in Book 1, this bronze earring became plated in "silver" (which must negate its Hemalurgic effects for reasons I'll explain) and then locked away inside of a box. Even ignoring the larger implications of Silver throughout the Cosmere, and isolating our attention only at Scadrial's magic system... We know that silver on Scadrial has no known Allomantic, Feruchemical, or (most importantly) Hemalurgic properties at all. If the earring were silver-plated before spiking through Vin's sister, then that silver would have nullified the spike's ability to behave as a hemalurgic spike and accept a hemalurgic charge. In contrast, if the earring was silver-plated after receiving a hemalurgic charge, then the silver would have blocked the earring's effects on the wearer (much like Nightblood's sheath blocks his power). If this bronze earring was plated in silver, then it's logical to infer that even if Vin wore it like that (fully silver-plated), then Ruin wouldn't have been able to reach her, nor would she have been able to tap into the extra seeker properties with which the spike was charged. Interestingly enough, that silver plating was notably wearing away throughout Vin's story. From Well of Ascension - Chapter 33: "Vin stood quietly. Absently, she pulled out her bronze earring—her mother’s earring—and worked it between her fingers, watching it reflect light. It had once been gilded with silver, but that had worn off in most places." From Hero of Ages – Chapter 54: "Silver. Useless, unburnable silver. Like lead, it was one of the metals that provided no Allomantic powers at all. “An unpopular metal indeed . . .” Yomen said, nodding to the side. A servant approached Vin, bearing something on a small platter. Her mother’s earring. It was a dull thing, Allomantically, made of bronze with some silver plating. Much of the silver had worn off years ago, and the brownish bronze showed through, making the earring look to be the cheap bauble it was. “Which is why,” Yomen continued, “I am so curious as to why you would bother with an ornament such as this. I have had it tested. Silver on the outside, bronze on the inside. Why those metals?" I figure that neither Reen nor Vin could've done this silver-plating to the bronze earring. They wouldn't have been concerned in the least with having it silver-plated while they were poor and had a hard enough time staying [relatively] safe and fed. I think someone who was cosmere-aware or, at the very least, was "Ruin-aware" was responsible for having the earring silver plated. I doubt Hoid would have done this, as well. My imagination says that he would have sooner destroyed or stolen the earring if he really wanted to interfere with Ruin's plans. Hoid wouldn't have preserved the earring so carefully. The fact that the earring was neutralized/silver-plated rather than destroyed... and the fact that it was placed in a box and that box was kept rather than disposed of... well, I would guess Preservation was behind this silver-plating. I think he did what he could to influence people and events around Vin to protect her while keeping in line with his own will to 'preserve' above all else. From Hero of Ages – Sazed's final Epigraph (just before the epilogue): "Vin was special. Preservation chose her from a very young age, as I have mentioned. I believe that he was grooming her to take his power... I believe that she must have drawn some of the mist into her when she was still a child, in those brief times when she wasn’t wearing the earring. Preservation had mostly gotten her to stop wearing it by the time Kelsier recruited her, though she put it back in for a moment before joining the crew. Then, she’d left it there at his suggestion." If the earring had been placed while Vin was an infant and left in her ear, then it's a safe assumption that Ruin would have had her entire lifetime to work his influence... if, of course, it hadn't been for the presumed efforts of Preservation to buy her as much time as he could. I asked Brandon Sanderson "Who was responsible for getting Vin's bronze earring plated in 'silver'?" and apparently that question was good enough to award me an RAFO card. :-) I will be framing it. Don't judge me. Who plated Vin's bronze earring in "silver"? When did they do it? Why? Is the plating on Vin's earring really silver (or just perceived to be Silver by the Scadrians)? ...is it the same metal as Nightblood's sheath? It seems to me that the silver plating on Vin's earring and Nightblood's famous "silver sheath" were essentially there to perform the same job. What do you think?

There was a discussion in the Discord about the time gap between Warbreaker and Stormlight, so I decided to PM Brandon about it. The messages: Or as copy-pasted text: Not sure if this was already known or not, but I didn't find anything on the Arcanum about it, so I figured I'd ask him. Not sure why Elantris affects this. Unless he just means it as an example of timeline things being subject to change.

Brandon has previously said that Darro would be appearing in the Nightblood novel. However, the answer wasn't clear whether it would be as a worldhopper or transplanted character, so I PM'd him on Reddit to ask. His answer was that he's not sure yet, as a lot of things about the Nightblood novel are still undecided. However, he's leaning towards Darro being a native Nalthian, because (while "things in Stormlight" have canonized it, presumably meaning Mraize's gem) he's not finished with the worldbuilding for the Aether world yet.

So I was browsing WoB's and I found one that I haven't ever seen refrenced on the Shard: Question 15 http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1179 I've seen lots of people offhandedly say that we suspect that Hoid has breaths, but we aren't sure. I think we can count this as a fact now though, with that example in the context of the question. Edit: Slightly related, I found this other one that seems to indicate that Awakening has been used off Nalthis.

So what?! I've personally never heard of anyones shardblade changing in anyway. The lengths are all meticulously measured and are literally stuff of legend. People would notice a change and comment on it for sure. So what did he mean by the blade sometimes does under circumstances. The only thing I can think of is the theory that Adolin is going to bond with Maya but that doesn't sound like what they're talking about. Plus this was back in 2017. Do we know answers? and if not I'm accepting of theories.

Didn't he tell us elsewhere that the only Shards were H&C???

So I found this interesting WoB. Questioner What happens if you burn duralumin while Compounding? Brandon Sanderson Duralumin while Compounding. So, what duralumin does is it burns out of all of your metal in one burst. So it doesn't necessarily gain you power, it makes it all happen at the same time. The same thing would happen. Questioner Could you turn into a baby? Brandon Sanderson Oh, you could totally turn into a baby. That is within the power of using that, doing <health wrong>, yeah you could totally... You'd be really dangerous. Wth does it mean ? How could u turn into a baby by compounding gold. I know it stores like ur manifestation in space-time at the current moment and releases it back to recover from injuries by replacing ur current manifestation in space-time with ur old healthy , stored one . Your spiritual identity plays a role too. But I was under the impression that gold couldn't affect age . If it did , tlr would be running naked in luthadel ,drunk on joy. Tlr did know about duralumin right ?? So what does it mean ? Is it a joke ? A misquote ? Or is Lord Sanderson referring to some other metal ? Also yeah would happen if u burned duralumin while compounding atium ?

"Yes" because we've seen a version of them and "No" because they've been altered from their original form. My wild guess is Unmade. There were 10 Dawnshards and 9 became Unmade. The one that is different from all the rest is the one Odium hasn't altered. Here is a link to the rest of the Dawnshard tagged wobs. https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?tags=dawnshards

Ok so I have seen 2 different quotes one that says Hoid is stuck on roshar and another that says he's not. And then So I'm confused. Also why would you be stuck on Roshar while bonded to a spren. They're part of the cognitive realm right? , or was that only because he was a Cognitive shadow. Feel free to RIP me apart on this I've read all the books except White Sands but in still trying to catch up on all things cosmere

What are your favorite WoBs? Note: These don’t necessarily have to be funny WoBs, they can be ones you like because of the content, or because of the troll level. This is one of my favorites:

I was reading the more recent wob and someone asked if Hoid had a black haired counterpart. It was RAFO'd which I thought was pretty interesting, and this was something I never really considered. Is Hoid having a counterpart a common fan theory around here? If not, what do you guys think of the idea that there's an anti-Hoid out there?

I haven't been paying as much attention to Cosmere stuff lately... but Kaladin is supposed to DIE in book five? When did Brandon say this? Since when does Brandon "RAFO" Sanderson spoil things like that anyway? Is this some sort of fandom in-joke I'm missing?

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/370/#e11875 In this WoB, the "inaudible" is core truth of her identity. The line reads ... Not that I agree with this, mind, but I thought some clarification might help.