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I've edited the The Way of Kings Prime cover to make covers for a few other unpublished works, as I thought the cover looked rather nice, and that the other unpublished novels needed covers anyway. The Pimp My Aether thread explains how to convert the Word files to eBook formats and attach covers. White Sand: Aether of Night: Dragonsteel Prime: Liar of Partinel: Mythwalker: Mistborn Prime: Final Empire Prime:

Are we not supposed to discuss the Liar of Partinel? A topic by Lifeblesser was removed, discussing the parts that Brandon had released, in the Unpublished Works forum. We're allowed to talk about Fainlife, even outside of the Unpublished Works forum, in the spoilers allowed forums. Was it because the sample chapters were removed from Brandon's site at the time (due to the new site)?

Do the events of the Liar Partinel take place before of after the Shattering? It's been referred to as Hoid's origin story, but.....is that referring to like his youth pre-Shattering or his origin as a storyteller post-Shattering? One WoB says Cephandrius is the name closest to Hoid's real name, only a few decades off, and this is how the Shards refer to him. So I assumed this was his name during the events of the Shattering. Which makes it seem like he took the name Midius would be after the Shattering.

So my theory of the origin of hoid is. First we will go back to the list of partinel- an unpublished cosmere book, a prequel to the dragonsteel main sequence- there is this man named midius, and his master/teacher is named hoid. As we know from the letter "And do you no longer hide behind the name of your old master?" We can assume that the hoid we know is "hiding behind the name of his old master" midius' master is named hoid. So midius is the hoid we know today. In mistborn: secret history, hoid refers to himself as “Who are you?” Kelsier said. “I?” the man said. “I am a drifter. A miscreant. The flame’s last breath, made of smoke at its passing." The man is hoid. But what does he mean by "the flame's last breath, made of smoke at it's passing" I believe that this "flame" is adonalsium. Before I continue I must explain the background of the liar of partinel: the lore is that they had gods, then they died. Then the fain life (white fuz that grows on everything. It is okay to breath in, but if you eat it it is poisonous and you will die. There are places called trune circles, Where people can live and fane won't come in) grew from their bodies. So I am thinking that midius is slightly different from hoid. I am thinking that midius took up the power of adonalsium saved yolen. Then the 16 came and disagreed with him. “Aaah . . .” Fuzz said softly. “I had thought that when he rejected the rest of us, he would stop interfering” (Fuzz is preservation) “I should know better than to trust an implication from him. Half the time you can’t trust his outright promises” So midius took up the power of adonalsium. Then the 16 came, had a disagreement with him. Made him promise something. Then he broke his promise, then the 16 were forced to shatter him. The 16 got his powers, but a form of cognitive shadow was left over. This cognitive shadow is the hoid we know. And now hoid is possibly trying to reform adonalsium. And get his powers back.

Hello, this is my first theory, so try not to tear it apart too fast . I've looked around and am fairly certain there's not a topic on this, although if there is, kindly point me to it. I do not have a ton of evidence for it, but essentially, I believe that the Evil from Threnody is really just fainlife and I'll explain why. (By the way, there are a few AU spoilers ahead, specifically for the Threnody essay, so beware) I first made the connection when I noticed they were both described as creeping. From LoP: And from the Threnodite System essay in AU: The descriptions here are pretty similar in both wording and feel. They are both portrayed as catastrophic, death-bringing forces laying waste to entire continets. For those who haven't read the Liar of Partinel, as far as I understand, fainlife came as a result of the death of Yolen's gods. It says that the fainlife came from the gods' corpse, implying that it came directly from them, and not that the gods were simply holding it back and when they died, it was left to ravage the land. We know Ambition, a shard, which can be considered a god, died in the Threnodite system. So, assuming LoP is mostly still canon, I think that the Evil is fainlife born from the death of Ambition. Now I know Ambition didn't actually die in the Threnodite System, but was only mortally wounded. However, Khriss says that So it seems fair to say at least a part of Ambition died there and that it definitely had some harmful consequences for Threnody. I know thats not a perfect argument, but it makes sense to me that fainlife could be something that causes the inhabitants of the Fallen World to flee. The fainlife we see in LoP drove the people to the brink of extinction. It pushed mankind into very small pockets of civilization where space was extremely limited and growing food was difficult. And I mean, consuming continents, feasting on the souls of men, that seems pretty reminiscent of fain. I can see how the destructive power of fainlife could cause a contintent wide evacuation in Threnody considering what we've seen of it in LoP. It just seems to fit. There are also a couple holes I'd like to address. First of all the biggest issue I see is of the timing of it. The battle between Ambition and Odium occurred relatively soon after the Shattering, however the arrival of The Evil appears to be much more recent, like within a 100 years of Shadows for Silence, which occurs later in the sequence of cosmere books. The only explanation I can think of is that the effect on Threnody of the battle was somehow delayed. Maybe it took time for the pieces of Ambition to reach the planet, or they somehow lay dormant for a long time, I don't know, I'm just speculating on this part. If anyone does know anything about that, please share. The second thing is why Nazh, being from Threnody, did not explain the Evil to Khriss. The most likely explanation is that Nazh was born long before the Evil started wrecking havoc on the Fallen World. This seems to make sense due to his worldhopping history. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Shadows for Silence takes place after Era 1 of Mistborn. And since we see him in SH, its likely he was around before the events of SfS and the Evil. He also talks about the rituals of becoming a shade, which do not line up at all with what we see of shades in SfS. They seem much more dangerous than the way he describes them, suggesting he comes from a different time period when the shades were not quite so evil. Khriss says he could only talk about the Evil vaguely, and I think thats because he didn't actually know what it was since he was not on Threnody at the time. Anyway, there's my theory, I hoped you liked it. Remember, all of this could be completely invalid if in the canon, fainlife is not the same. Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, ideas, criticisms, and any relevant WoBs. Have fun speculating!

First of all, I don't have Arcanum Unbounded yet, so if there's anything pertaining to this topic in there that wasn't in the publicly available excerpts, I don't know it. Alright, so we know that something bad happened to Yolen, which made all humans who survived it relocate elsewhere and all Shards to go away as well. We also know that Yolen is not reachable through the Cognitive Realm. I think that this has less to do with Adonalsium shattering (though that's certainly a factor), and more with something called fain. Now, for those who didn't read the Liar of Partinel excerpt that Brandon has published on his website (LoP was his unpublished novel about Hoid's origins), fain was a sort-of infection/parasite that turned everything white and inedible to both humans and animals while "Corrupting" living things. The excerpt doesn't really specify what Corruption does, but it's bad enough that one character considers killing children rather than banishing them into fainlands. Of course, Liar of Partinel hasn't been published and isn't really canon in its current form, but in the Google Play excerpt of Arcanum Unbounded (well, I suppose it's in the full version of AU as well), Khriss makes a reference to fain on Yolen, which means that it does exist in canon and presumably has similar corruptive properties. So what if everyone on Yolen decided to abandon ship because fain was overrunning everything? I don't really want to go into the topic of a potential connection between Adonalsium's shattering and fain here, but I have the following theory: the surviving people of Yolen left their homeworld to run away from fain, and the Shards did something in the Cognitive to stop anything from coming to or leaving the planet to prevent some adventurous worldhopper from accidentally bringing fain with them and starting the cycle all over again elsewhere. In other worlds, Yolen has been quarantained. How does that pertain to Mistborn Era 4, though? Well, in this era, the people of Scadrial will have faster-than-light travel. Imagine if it was FTL travel that does not require jumping into the Cognitive Realm. With technology like this, Shards' quarantaine of Yolen would have all the stopping power of tissue paper, which means that some FTL-capable ship could either stumble upon it or deliberately travel there. So imagine this happens. They go to the planet's surface to investigate, find nothing worth seeing - or worse yet, find fain life and decide to take samples - get back on their ship and go on their merry way... with an unwanted extra passenger on board. Then they reach an inhabited planet, go to visit the surface and thus fain spreads again. In conclusion: I think fain and fain-corrupted creatures will be the primary antagonist of the final Mistborn trilogy.