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  1. I think that is actually the point that Sanderson is making. The religion isn't evil, just some of the practices and leaders are. I mean, his choice to show Hrathen as ultimately a hero, to me, shows that he's trying to say, No it's not evil, but much of what happens under its aegis is evil right now.
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  2. Voidus looked up, a sad smile on his face as he stared back at the Stranger, at the multitude of spikes that were now visible, at the cold eyes, and at the man that lay beneath it all. They'd known each other for a long time, far longer than most people would be able to. They'd forged a new path for the denizens who followed after, conducted countless experiments throughout the years. But throughout it all they rarely talked of how they had changed, or of who they had been to begin with. When they'd met, both had already been changed by Hemalurgy. It had been a shared interest that inspired their interest in each other, but it also meant that neither of them knew what the other had been before making those changes to themselves. Since then they'd both trodden the same path, they'd both changed so far that most people didn't even consider them human anymore, not physically at least. But for all their similarities, they were still different. The path was the same so was it their origins that had caused them to arrive at different destinations? Voidus didn't know of the Stranger's ultimate origins, but he could speak to his own at least. If there was any place to talk about it, it would be here after all. "Family can cause a person to make strange decisions." He replied quietly. @Fatebreaker
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  3. The Stranger looked into the eyes of his friend with a gaze that could shatter minds. The world around them seemed to fade for a moment, and time stood still. There they were, a man and a monster. The Stranger cold and alien, a detached shadow of the man he had once been. Voidus tired but hopeful, an image of the best and worst of humanity. Their limitations, and their capabilities. When did I start thinking of humanity as them? He dropped the lightweaving that he constantly maintained, and his form changed. His spikes were visible now. All of them. He was a mosaic of spikes, some large and intimidating, but many of them were needle thin. He looked down at his hands, at the innumerable small spikes running through them, forming an intricate pattern. The weight of them pulled him down with every movement, but he had always remained unbowed, unbroken. This was eons of sacrifice, of loss and triumph. He should feel nothing but pride for his unparalleled triumphs! But all he felt was cold. Standing in front of his only friend, he felt like he was a galaxy away. Voidus had held on to his humanity, could the Stranger say the same? Had he become exactly that: a stranger to the universe? "How do you do it?" He whispered softly. "How do you hold on to that which makes you human? I feel the pull of oceans of power, of the song of the stars and the screams of stolen souls. I am stretched and expanded beyond the ken of mortals. I have become the embodiment of the pursuit of Science. How to you regain that which I once lost? How do you do it, Voidus?" @Voidus
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  4. Voidus stared back at the Stranger, locking eyes with him with equal solemnity. He didn't answer immediately, waiting a moment for the weight of the suggestion to hang over both of them. The consequences of what they discussed would affect the entire world and everyone on it. Is that what I want? He pondered. To remake the world anew? It was what good scientists did wasn't it? Even when an experiment was a success you had to repeat it to be sure. And if it wasn't a success then you ran multiple trials, altered the variables and tried again. But was the entire world simply an experiment? In a way it certainly was, that had been their original goal after all. But time had let it change and grow. It had surprised him at times, disappointed him at others. But mostly it imply weighed down on him, an immense responsibility, one that constantly fought for its own destruction even as he sought to preserve it. To most people of the world he was either deified or vilified, sometimes both in equal measure. But for those few who did not, perhaps it was worth it. This experiment had brought many people flocking towards it from a dozen different worlds, creating a melting pot of culture, information exchange, invention. Could they remake it and still keep that? If they meticulously made things the way they wanted them to be then would the world be able to surprise them any more? "Our problem has almost never been whether or not we could do something." Voidus replied, his face seemed almost to age as he dropped any facade and allowed his weariness to how in expression and tone. "Our problem has always been whether or not we should do something." He glanced once more towards the Worldspike, giving a tired and nostalgic smile towards it. "I've thought about destroying it many times before." He continued. "When I was released and saw how everything had changed. Or when I was trapped here while an army marched on the city. When you left." He gave a soft sigh, dropping to the ground, leaning his back against the Worldspike and bringing one knee forward to rest his arms on. "I thought about it many times. But I never did." Part of it had always simply been his stubborn nature, a refusal to allow it all to fail, to admit that this experiment was flawed. Part out of camaraderie, he hadn't been the only one to create this after all and so one-sidedly destroying it didn't seem fitting. But there had always been another reason as well, something that had kept him focused on this world, dedicated to this unceasing experiment and his refusal to end it. As far as Voidus was aware it was one of the only secrets that even the Stranger didn't know.
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  5. The Heralds whenever they come back for a Desolation:
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  6. Elend’s men had performed a near-unceasing vigil during the night, eyeing each of their neighbours with suspicion and keeping daggers underneath their pillows; another murder was anticipated. It was a tired and haggard force which therefore awoke the next day to the shocked realisation that the customary whittling of their number had not been effected; indeed, had not been attempted in the first place. Far from banishing the calls for collective action against a killer, however, such an occurrence only strengthened the resolve of the gutted inner circle which surrounded Elend Venture that one of their number should be held responsible for unmitigated treason against their leader, and the lack of a killing seemed to confirm the worst fears of a quieter group of advisors, which rose to protest the vocal role that Aname Plees had taken of late. What had before been seen as a necessary continuation of her influence in finding and subduing Vin had soured into suspicion that an elaborate ruse had been practised on them all. So it was that Ford Prefect, along with Snip and Abe, rose against Aname, seeking to quickly dispatch her before serious retaliation could be considered. However, as the day had grown long in the midst of the heated debate, the snowy owl with which Aname had a natural affinity woke from its long slumber in the dark recesses of the room, sensing the approach of night. Upon viewing danger to Aname, Heer Kilyal II sprang from his perch, alighting on Ford’s head and driving his claws into his skull. Abe sprinted towards Ford, attempting to rescue him or drive away the feathered ball of fluff which was beginning to crush Ford’s head in between its talons, but tripped and landed facefirst on the long, trailing carpet which spanned the length of the room, which Aname had kicked into his path hurriedly. Two coins fell from his pocket, landing on opposite sides, and Abe sensed...disappointment?...coming from the object. Meanwhile, Snip, standing nearby, reacted instinctively; his instincts as a Hazekiller, honed from decades of training, had him snatch a nearby spear and ram it through Aname as soon as the owl began attacking Ford. Spinning, he pointed the spear at the white-feathered creature, but it had already released Ford’s corpse, and appeared to be hopping around with a paper in its beak. Snip snatched it out of the dull bird’s mouth, and read it to the quieted room. “I, Jastes Lekal, hereby allow these four men: Ford Prefect, Senn Conrad III, ‘Zane the Mad,’ and Doma, to access any aid within Luthadel which they should require in the process of handing me the city. If you see this letter and obey me, keep silent at my command. I am coming soon.” Dropping the paper, he crumpled to the ground in front of Aname’s freshly killed corpse, in remorse and relief. The threat was over. Now to rebuild. Lumgol was lynched! She was a Elend’s Loyalist Tineye 2! Furamirionind was lynched! She was a Lekal’s Subordinate Rioter 2! Lum (2): Fura, Snip Fura (2): Coop, Lum All of Jastes Lekal’s men have been driven out of the city, and with Zane and Vin neutralised, Elend’s Loyalists have won the day. My apologies for a slightly rushed aftermath writeup. Joe is busy working on something very large; meanwhile, I’m in need of sleep, and the dead doc is distracting me. (Not that I’m complaining, it’s fun. ) A more complete writeup, along with a general reflection on how the game went, will be coming within the next few days. Until then, a few special thanks, and the doc links: First, to @Alvron for IMing, as well as @Elbereth who helped me make a few calls on balance and was generally wonderful to discuss the game with until real life prevented her from checking in as much. Both were fun spectators, and you can find our discussion here. Second, to my co-GM @A Joe in the Bush. His help was invaluable with writeups, and though work and busy-ness also took him out of the picture later in the game, he continued to pitch in where he could. He deserves all the upvotes you can find to give him. More importantly, however, he served as the Gatekeeper of the Dead, Kelsier, and the largest of the four secrets in the game. His role was mainly to be able to pass on short messages from the dead, and to troll and make people paranoid. He accomplished both wonderfully. You may access his realm, the realm of the dead, here. (Said realm also describes the final two secrets, Alv’s Carpet and Kelsier, for those interested.) Third, to the Mistborn. @_Stick_ and @Mailliw73 were both highly active and committed players, and though they were caught early, the silver-tongued speech of Maill and the ingenuity of Stick’s plans bought them a few extra turns. While they were ultimately unable to clinch victory, I thank them both for their dedication to the roles I gave them, and admire the guile they demonstrated in their use of actions, especially with Maill’s pet OreSeur. Here you may find their conversation. Fourth, to the Eliminators. As with the Mistborn, they were all active and driven, and made the most of their circumstances despite a few poor turns of fortune. Particularly, the work which @Steeldancer put into finding Zane, the stalling efforts of @Devotary of Spontaneity and @Rathmaskal which denied the Mistborn their victory, and the distancing and perseverance of @Furamirionind towards the end were a joy to watch unfold and brought the Subordinates to the cusp of victory. Their planning is every bit as good as the Mistborn’s, and I thank them for their consistent activity and dedication to the game, even when dead. Here is their doc. Finally, to the village, congratulations and thank you for playing. While I shan’t tag all of you, I ought to make note of @Araris Valerian for tolerating being the first person lynched (again...), @Elandera and @Lumgol for being active voices towards the end of the game after many of the more active villagers had died in the first few cycles, and @Cadmium Compounder and @Amanuensis for sticking with the game consistently despite IRL obligations cluttering up their time. To close off, I’d like to say that it’s my hope and pleasure as a GM to provide a fun game for all of you, and that it’s my wish that I followed through on that commitment here. Final Player List:
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  7. Have some Warbreaker memes!
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  8. Introduction It's just about time for another extra-long Blightsong theory after the latest few waves of new WoB; the nature of the Parshmen and what was done to them has always been one of my favorite mysteries in the series and Oathbringer brought us to the very edge of it. After reviewing some related WoB I'm pretty sure I can fill in at least some of that mystery with some pretty plausible ideas. Let me know what you guys think! Abstract Melishi First lets start off with what we already know. The event that transformed the Singers into what we saw at the beggining of the series took place at the end of a conflict between the last generation of Knights Radiant and a group of Singers lead by the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram. Innovation on the side of the Unmade, an ability to Connect to the Parshmen and facilitate forms of power, pushed certain scholar's within the orders of Knights Radiant to devise a before unheard of strategy to defeat the forces of Odium. They planned to trap Ba-Ado-Mishram in a gemstone like the one that Dalinar used to trap Nergaoul in an attempt to break the Connection she had to the Singers and ensure an easy defeat of the enemy forces once their leader and powers were incapacitated. This almost as far as our knowledge goes, but an epigraph in Oathbringer implies that maybe some unintended consequences of this imprisonment is what destroyed the Singer, read it below: While this may be the case, I have become certain that this is a red herring due to the little bit of history from this time frame we do have past the above point, read the below epigraph from both the in-world and real world Words of Radiance: This is interesting not only because there seemed to be a change of plans from simply imprisoning Ba-Ado-Mishram and defeating the Singers in battle, but also because we can say for certain that trapping an Unmade is not a Bondsmith specific power as evidenced by Shallan's view of Re-Shephir's past. If this was not what Melishi did to defeat the Singers then what could he have done to destroy them? Lets take a look at how the Stormfather describes Bondsmith powers to get an understanding of what could have taken place here: The wording here is interesting to me. What Melishi did seems to be the opposite of what the Stormfather is describing, he cut the Connection the Singers have to each other and destroyed an entire people with them. Syl had something very relevant to say about the restoration of the Singers in the below quote: It seems as if whatever Melishi did to destroy the Singers was seriously destructive in nature and I have some ideas on what exactly he did to them realmatically. Nature of the Singers A recent WoB tipped me off as to what exact function of the Singer's was destroyed by Melishi, read it below: It seems as if a Singer's Identity is malleable and that their system of trapping a spren with their gemheart is how they change it. Also interesting to note is that Hemalurgy is also able to do something similar. After thinking about it a bit, I realized we have seen something extremely similar to the Parshmen before using that very system. Read the below WoB: This is pretty much a matching description of what we see with the Singers, only missing the whole magic physical object component... or is it? If you think about it, gemhearts and the Hemalurgic spikes responsible for the Kandra blessings seem to be very similar in nature with one very slight difference, gemhearts are a natural phenomenon resulting from a leak of Investiture from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical one. Read the below WoB and passages to get a quick understanding of Singer gemhearts and their nature: This whole WoB is very interesting to me, particularly the connection to Dragonsteel and that last sentence. First let me touch on the Dragonsteel bit here is a passage from the released sample chapters that details the main character encountering the bones of the Dragonsteel equivalent to the Parshendi while in the caverns of the Shattered Plains: This makes me more certain that gemhearts are more than just gems that allow a singer to transform, I think that they are tied to their other Cognitive abilities as well as the race in this world are also able to communicate telepathically similar to the rhythms. I also find the color similarity between these bones and a gemheart very interesting. For my second point about the above WoB, why would there be an assumption that Singers dont have gemhearts among humans. Wouldnt some physician be able to find it in a Parshmen at some point? This is even more confusing when you consider that this seems to be a lost knowledge, read the below quote from Venli: All of this together leads me to believe that the pieces of a Singer's soul that Melishi ripped away (ones that seems similar to what gives a Kandra's sapience and blessing) are the ones directly tied to the Singer's gemheart and that on top of the physical change wrought to their bodies that made them more like dullform they also had their very gemhearts taken from them like a Kandra losing its second spike. While I cant tell you exactly how Melishi did this all, I can say it did still likely involved Ba-Ado-Mishram seeing as how the Last Legion, Singers that had abandoned their Connection to their gods, were left unaffected. Consequences of Division My emphasis on how similar this all is to Hemalurgy should tell you just how evil what Melishi did to the Parshmen is. The very nature of this act seems to spit in the face of the Bondsmith oaths, leading one to question how his spren managed through this. I'm sure you all know I'm about to suggest the Sibling was involved because of how obvious it is but let me back up this point with a few more WoB pointing towards its involvement: A strain between Melishi and the Sibling's bond also makes sense within the context of the degradation of Urithiru and the Sibling's apparent "withdrawal from men" described in the gem archive. Conclusion So what do you guys think, is there a relationship between what happened to the Singers and their gemhearts? Did Melishi end up harming the sibling in the process? Feel free to poke holes anywhere you see them. Have a good day folks!
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  9. I made two different versions of this, because I wasn’t sure which one would be better. Or
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  10. Day 7- I Must Take My Newfound Light to New Lands Steel watched the lifebuster retreat. They hadn't managed to destroy it, but they had managed to drive it away. And thank goodness for that. There also hadn't even been enough krell forces to get anyone shot down, which was a plus. And now... they had a rebel to pull out by their roots. The question was, who of the tiny group of pilots left was it? Steel looked at his tiny flight. Everyone else had been shot down or kicked out of the military. Even his Flight Leader had been shot down a few fights ago, which had left Steel in charge. He still wasn't sure how he felt about that. The flight landed back in the hangar, and Ironsides was there again. And she looked angry. Angry at Llerk. "Why in damnation did you think it was a good idea to sit around and do nothing when there was a LIFEBUSTER ATTACKING US?" Llerk looked up in terror, but said nothing. He was a quiet man, and never had said much. "You're coming with me. If I have my way, you'll never fly again. And Steel?" "Yes Ma'am?" "Don't bother stopping me. You know how much of a problem this is." Steel just nodded. Llerk looked at him for help, but Steel just shook his head. "You got yourself into this. Now get yourself out of it." Doomslug could see it. She fluted, and began to move towards the goal that would change the fate of life and death on the planet of Detritus. _______________________ No one was shot down! The Lifebuster was driven away. PMs are closed, and the lynch is open. Xinoehp (1) The turn will end in 24 hours, at 8:00 AM EDT, 6/9/19.
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  11. Okay, so it seems that I'm not the only person who's come up with a version of this idea (hi, @Truthless of Shinovar!), but I presented the theory at JordanCon during the Cosmere Speculation panel, and it seems as though I should codify it in some sort of organized fashion so that all my crazy details can be seen. And also so I can go on record with this thing so when it actually happens you can all hate me. We all know Brandon has been moving the plot forward faster on Stormlight than most of us expected. So I think that Stormlight 5 is going to be the Knights Radiant vs. Rayse, final round. Rayse has freed himself from his entrapment on Braize and is ready to wreak some havoc on Roshar to make sure nobody there can challenge him (and root out Cultivation in the process). Ultimately, he will be defeated. I think he won't be re-trapped, though; I think he'll be killed. However, there is one important detail when it comes to killing Shardholders: Dropped Shards will Splinter naturally if not picked up. (Correction here: It's not an automatic given that a Shard will Splinter when dropped. There is a WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/132/#e1877) that states a voluntarily dropped Shard could Splinter, or become self-aware, or any number of other things. None of them if applied to Odium are going to create Super Happy Fun Time for Roshar.) Imagine the chaos that would inflict upon Roshar's entire Investiture biome. That much Hatred Investiture (and no, I do not believe Rayse's nonsense about Passion) spreading out throughout the planet, loose, leaking into everything? It'd be a disaster. Cultivation has more than enough knowledge to be aware of this; certainly the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and the Sibling are as well. I'd bet money that most, if not all, of the Radiant spren have a pretty good idea of it. So it's reasonable to expect that the KR will be aware of this danger when they take on Odium. They may even have a plan in place to try to re-trap him, but I expect that ultimately to fail. They'll have to kill him. There will be no other choice. What then happens when the Shard of Odium drops, ready to Splinter into a million pieces of Hatred and leak into the planet's Investiture irrevocably? Or become a self-aware monster spren? Or get absorbed by one or more of the Unmade? Or any number of other potentially apocalyptic results? Dalinar picks it up. He doesn't do it to gain power. He does it to protect his friends and family. He does it for Honor (though his decision may involve his bond with the Stormfather being broken) - because humans brought Odium to Roshar; it's only proper for a human to fix that mistake. Most of all, because he has managed to deny Odium's power before, he does it because he believes he's the best person to do so. He believes that he can resist the Shard's intent better than any other person on Roshar. He might even be right. So he picks up Odium, rips every last shred of power that Rayse Invested into Roshar, and leaves. There are several reasons why I think Brandon will take this route: 1. It's an interesting full circle to take for the character. He starts out life as the perfect scion of Odium, though he doesn't know it at the time. He's ruthless. He's violent. It's through a huge amount of experience and development that he learns to control and reject that side of him. He becomes a better man. Then as a result of becoming that better man, he takes on the embodiment of what warped his past in an attempt to shield others from the evil that tainted him. That's some serious heroic tragedy. 2. Brandon likes to hurt us. 3. So far, our experience of the "negative" Shardholders has been pretty after-the-fact. We never saw Ati before he picked up Ruin; likewise we don't know exactly how awful Rayse was before he picked up Odium. We've seen Harmony, yes, but he's been pretty Light Side so far. It will be much, much more interesting to take a character that the readers have a strong emotional investment in and have him take up an "evil" Shard. The impact of seeing our hero Dalinar slowly corrupted by Odium's influence as he becomes an overall Cosmere Big Bad will cause internal reader conflict, and that's a good way to tell a story.
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  12. Well folks, it's long past time to close this game up. Many thanks to Steeldancer for running the game and Droughtbringer for helping keep Steel from going insane. Congrats to Team Two, especially Sart, for their win. If only I had seen your message earlier. /sigh Everyone did very well with the body/account swapping going on. I hope to see either this game run again of one very similar in the future. Though perhaps not give phones out to the killers. If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of Wilson, Orlok, Fifth or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can.For those wanting to play, Long Game 56: Discord in Elendel is still accepting signups for the next little while. Sign up while you can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret or are self conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be, while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, and Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private.Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!
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  13. “Ember! Please catch her! I wasn’t done being emotional with her!”
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  14. Posted this in the Meme thread and had to repost here. “Star? What’s wrong?” Butt says letting go of her. “You’re healed! Thank you for saving me from the pain.”
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  15. *Ethan leaves* Good ridDANCE
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  16. Memes. And a cute cat one because it's cute.
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  17. Coffee shop at the symphony serving up that Radiant blend
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  18. So, I've been thinking, and I believe I've come to some accurate conclusions about Roshar's ecology and Arcana. Hopefully some of the following makes any degree of sense. 1. The spren don't matter Let's start this off with singer physiology and Rosharan ecology. As we know, the fauna of Roshar has evolved to take advantage of the large amount of investiture lying around, namely spren, skyeels fly, greatshells don't square-cube themselves, ryshadium super-horse and singers attain forms. Now, the interesting part, the forms, bond to a spren, change your physiology and mentality, sure. But why do the forms of power work? Because investiture is investiture. I have seen the forms of power caller a hack, but it's honestly just inserting something new into the system. The system has a response, it still returns valid, as it were, and voila, a new form. Next up, spren and gems, we know that spren can be captured in gems. We know that voidspren can be captured in gems. We can extrapolate that voidspren could be used in fabrials. As support for this notion one might look to that fabrials can be made with enlightened spren, though they work differently. Thirdly, the Nahel bond, where we've yet to observe the commonallity I'm espousing, however if we extrapolate: Renarin's Glys is enlightened, and must reasonably have been when the bond formed, as one thinks Renarin would have noticed his spren changing. From Glys' situation we learn that not being a "regular" true spren does not preclude bonding, being partly of Odium does not preclude bonding! What I'm trying to show here and imply by the title of this section is that the type of spren doesn't matter, the systems will just plug-n-play as it were, just with a modified output. I posit that any sapient spren could theoretically enter into a Nahel bond, just like any spren (save perhaps the "Greatspen," the Stormfather, Nightwatcher and other unique and massive spren) can presumably be bonded symbiotically by a singer or used in a fabrial, you'd just get a non-standard, but valid, output. So when I say the spren don't matter, I mean that it seems that any spren can hook into any system that accpts spren, regardless of type, the kind of spren juat acts as a filter. 2. Powers that we have been forbidden to touch Now, let's look to the Eila Stele From this fragment we can learn several things. At the time of the Ashynite exodus the singers were aware of some form of manipulation of the Surges. At the time they had at some previous point had access to this power themselves, as you do not forbid that which can not be done. At the time they knew the powers were dangerous, which can be read as the powers themselves being the dangerous part, rather than who wielded them. I've long had a pet theory that the original Rosharan surgebinders bonded the cousin-spren of the true spren (eg, windspren being cousin to honorspren) and that the true spren evolved later. According to my speculaton these proto-proto-Radiants would only have had access to one surge each, because of the nature of the spren, so proto-proto-Windrunners would only have adhesion, Skybreakers gravitation, etc. I'm not quite pushing that theory here, but elements of it are present, so it's good for context. I now think that the original Rosharan surgebinders were pre-shattering (or at least pre-shardic) singers who either bonded the cousin-spren or the true spren as part of the regular symbiotic singer-spren relationship. I believe that this bond granted them surgebinding, though possibly with a single surge only. On a more baseless note I speculate that these early "forms of power" allowed them to draw stormlight directly from the spiritual, a-la Honorblades. These singer-surgebinders would then have existed until Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar and, knowing or seeing the danger such powers posed, forbade their use, possibly also telling the true spren to not bond the singers. 3. Low-fat, imitation surgebinding Now it's time to look at everyone's favourite genocidal surgebinders, the Fused. Building on my earlier speculation, I believe that the Fused are a twist on the first Rosharan surgebinders. They are the souls of ancient singers, who are invested by Odium and act as both spren and host. They are already a perversion of the symbiotic system of Roshar, as they are parasitic, but also kind of a perversion of my idea of early surgebinders. I believe that the extra investiture in the soul of the Fused is meant to mimic part of the early surgebinder forms, but obviously voidish in origin instead. So, void imput, surge output. We may also assume that being the Fused has twisted them, because they are permanently wearing a form of Odium. See Eshonai in stormform as a comparison. If we also accept the admittedly baseless speculation above, that also solves the problem of how the Fused, with their relatively low level of investiture can draw power from Odium directly, while, say Kaladin needs spheres, in that it'd be an inherent function of the form. Now, for the capstone argument: there are nine forms of Fused, lacking Bondsmith, if we assume they are imitations of early surgebinder forms this makes sense, as there wouldn't be a Bondsmith-equivalent. The Bondsmith spren are presumably too much to tuck into a gemheart. 4. Knights Enlightened? And here I'll put my thoughts on everyone's favourite voidbinder, Renarin. There has been a lot of talk about Renarin and the nature of his powers, with several people concluding that his Progression is normal and his Illumination voidish. I'd contend these assertions. My first reaction to this line of thinking was "Why? Why do people think it's so clear cut?" and thinking that his powers might be a mix, both Surges being semi-voidish. However, now I'd rather argue that Renarin is fully voidbinding, though powered by stormlight, something of an inverse to the Fused. If we assume that Renarin's future-flashes are a product of Illumination, then it seems to be expressed in a highly spiritual aspect, and I'd argue that the same is true of his Progression, Adolin gets a flash of his ideal self as he's healed, which I don't think happens when Lift heals people, but I don't remember if we've seen Lift's healing from the perspective of someone being healed. Another point of contention for me is the "his lightweaving don't work right" argument. Here I'd argue that he's a TRUTHwatcher (or close enough) and propose that they are not supposed to weave illusions, but rather show what IS, zoom, enhance and all that. So I propose that the problem is with philosophy and approach, rather than the power being weird. And I can't resist throwing my pet term for Renarin and potential future characters like him in, Knights Enlightened, it uses the same kind of terminology (Knights Radiant) while still evocative of light and using Sja-Anat's own term (Enlightening) as the light word. Thanks for reading my semi-coherent ramblings, hopefully I'll have brought something new or interesting to the table. ¤_¤
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  19. Haha, I actually just bought some Oreos! Rebecca stared in horror at the haphazard mound of books before her. After all that hard work... Rebecca sighed. “I can see that.” It did. Rebecca wasn’t near as upset anymore. Extreme emergency. “Yay s’mores! We can make them with my Oreos!” Storms guys. I can’t leave to 2 hours without something insane happening...
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  20. Luna was sad but started roasting a marshmallow anyways. Just realized that Marsh needs his own brand of marshmallows- he could call them “Deathmallows” or something like that.
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  22. Why? What did my instrument do to you?!
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  23. The inspiration for this action was a 1987 studio recording of a band of the same name, which they'd heard being played at the bowling alley once. As an experiment, this contribution was composed before I read the previous post. The sad thing is, if I hadn't mentioned it, you probably wouldn't have noticed. I love this thread.
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  24. It's always hard to tell, with glyphs. I like your method though - clearly isolating each phoneme, and then trying to match them against Nazh's page using rotation. I think the first one (your T) resembles an N more closely. I am not super sold on the Y, but none of the other vowels match any better, and I think a vowel is very likely after either a T or an N. D seems the most likely for the third one, though it could be a rotated B too, I think. It's hard to argue with the TH, but I really don't like how awkward it makes the word sound... The next one is weird. I don't think it's an O, I think Os are going to have 4 distinct strokes, and this one has at most 3. A rotated E could work. An I with an extra flourish could also work. I actually think the closest match is a P, but that really doesn't work if the previous two are consonants... The M seems solid to me. One thing you can do, actually, is post on Reddit (r/Stormlight_Archive probably) too, but also ping Isaac (u/izykstewart)/ Given that you are not outright saying "what does this say?" and are instead showing some work, he might offer some thoughts (assuming he is not busy, which he often is these days...).
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  25. Alright, I guess now that I've made my account a little less obviously something created by my edgy thirteen-year-old self, let's give this a shot and see how it goes. Ainm Lathair, a rookie officer with no idea what's going on, at your service.
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  26. *does random fortnite dance* *uses asterisks to indicate what I’m doing while also using them as a footnote*
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  27. Pip pip is now my new favourite thing to say And to that Final Countdown parody by Herowannabe, I say pip pip. If you all vote for me, I swear I will: Edit: Pip pip to the person who just went ahead and upvoted every Yomen rap I’ve done. You get a special shoutout
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  28. From the album: RP Doodles

    The four faces of Lita's Coin. Smaller version with motto, because why not?
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  29. Yay! Just nine days left! If you can write the great stuff you do, I know you can do this. *hugs too* I'm not really supposed to talk about my family to friends, especially complaining, but yesterday was...not a fun day. I mean, I survived it, I guess? First time ever running out of the house in unhappiness (that I can remember)! At least crying on the wall of the church building helped me stay sane...r, HAHAHA. I just wanted to type this. Thanks for reading
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  30. Hi anyone who bothers to read this, I'm gonna be on a cruise ship sometime from in the afternoon of the more Western-US timezones (idk how this will work, I think we're crossing one?) to around nine or ten days later. I should still have WiFi, but if it cuts out unexpectedly, I will be a very sad Ene then that's something anyone talking with me at the time should be prepared for, I guess. Sorry in advance about that.
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  31. Project 75192: Update 1 - Inventory Step 1: I've opened the box... I can't actually see the instruction manual from where I'm standing There are 63 packets: six labelled '1'; five labelled '3'; four each labelled, '4', '5', '6', '12' and '16'. There are three bags not labelled at all. And so it goes, up to '17' (three bags). Non-Lego aficionados may think this is strange, but it makes perfect sense!! Honest! Step 2: Re-pack all the bags into the four sub-boxes in the right order for assembly, leaving out the bags for Stage 1, of course: Pages 20 to 76. Are we having fun yet? (Yes!!)
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  32. Favorite scene, eh? (I don't know if spoilers are allowed here, so I'll mark them) Hmmm... I always liked the chapter in Hero of Ages where Other good scenes are, from Warbreaker, From The Final Empire From the Hero of Ages From Oathbringer From Words of Radiance And from Elantris Also, just about any scene where Kaladin says Words. They're all awesome. (Also I really wish there was a way to preview messages, I don't know how this is gonna turn out, so if it looks horrible, my apologies)
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  33. That a Shard's ability to see the future depends on how well they understand their own investiture, how astute the vessel is, and the very nature of their investiture. So more dynamic or "hotter" investitures like Ruin would by default see more in the near future, whereas "colder" shards like Preservation would see better further. Moreover, as realmatic investiture is the substance of matter and energy, the means of this future sight is their own investiture - so Ruin's futuresight would focus on possibilities motivated by Ruinous investiture. This directly leads into why Endowment is less concerned - the Returned on Nalthis are beings entirely invested with her investiture, and they only ever feed on Breadths, which is still her investiture. This forms a net of much more accurate and detailed futuresight in her own domain. Everytime someone dies, she (or an automated mechanism) determines what would happen if that person would be brought back. They may have some high level goals in mind - for e.g. looking for a way to fight against Odium, or spread knowledge of awakening. If the person can potentially accomplish some of this, she brings them back. This is why the Five Scholars were all Returned - Shasharra's entire Returned existence was to study Nalthis' magic, get inspired by Rosharran magic and try and duplicate that - directly creating Nightblood. Once she had done this and told Vasher how to do so, she had served her purpose. Vasher, however, may not have fulfilled all his purposes yet. Similarly, Vivenna may also be slightly more invested with Endowment, if only because of her Returned lineage. Not only this, but Odium's own perception of himself as Passion may mean he has a slightly flawed futuresight. Fortune and Destiny are opposites - like pulling and pushing on the same spiritual attribute/force. Fortune makes less likely things more likely to occur, in a way increasing randomness, whereas Destiny acts like a pin or some sort of tack, "pinning" a certain set of events, making them more likely to occur, but at the cost of decreasing the chance of anything else happening. Destiny was how Preservation insured the roles of Vin and Sazed in his plan, whereas tapping Fortune is what burning Atium does - it doesn't show you just one most likely set of events. It shows you all the likely things that could happen. Maybe this is also how Hoid's Oath works - he taps Destiny, always insuring that events where his help was needed and he was there are the ones that occur in actuality. The Central Pillar in Uruthiru (the one which housed Re-Shephir) was originally meant to serve as housing for the Sibling. Every Godspren has a home - The Stormfather has the Highstorms, the Nightwatcher has The Valley. So maybe, the Sibling, as a younger Godspren, was fashioned specifically to power an extensive and complex fabriel - one that channeled all 10 surges in various ways to accomplish many functions at Uruthiru.
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  34. I think these are all answered with the same vague response: RAFO. He has a plan that concerns uniting all the magic systems and visiting the individual planets. I've always imagined his conversing with certain individuals akin to Jacob from Lost in that every interaction is not a coincidence and is instead part of a larger plan that we are unaware of at the time.
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  35. @Gderu it's nice to see someone taking an interest in Shallan! If there's one thing that draws me out of the woodwork, it's discussion about my favorite character. That said, there are a couple of misconceptions here in the thread that I'd like to clear up. Keep in mind that I am at heart a character analyst, and not only is Shallan my absolute favorite character in all of literature, but I've done a lot of analyzing of her, specifically, over the course of all three books. To the first point, the WoB you're referring to is actually from a long time ago (back in 2014) but it does indicate as you surmise that as of the end of WoR, Shallan was at the equivalent level of the fourth oath of knight radiancy. I say equivalent, because Shallan, as a Lightweaver, doesn't speak one Truth per oath level--she speaks a bunch of lesser truths to approach a level (threshold) of self-awareness, which level I gather is achieved with an ultimate Truth or pinnacle-like revelation. And this is absolutely vital to our understanding of Shallan and her progression, because she's absolutely nowhere near ready to speak that fifth-level truth yet. I know that there are many here who will disagree with me on this point--to that, I will counter you with the fact that Shallan never accepted the Truth she spoke at the end of WoR. Since WoR ended, Shallan hasn't progressed in the slightest. In fact, she's done the opposite. All of her problems in OB stem from the fact that she spends the entire novel finding ways to hide and run away from the Truth she spoke--and all of those Truths spoken up to that point were approaching the threshold she crossed there. By all knowledge we have regarding progression, Shallan should have Shardplate by now. She doesn't, because she's done the Lightweaver equivalent of what Kaladin did in WoR. Because of this, I think that rather than asking what her fifth threshold might be, the better question would be to ask what steps she needs to take to progress from four to five. Moving on, you bring up a couple of interesting quotes from the text that I actually think are related to her fifth threshold. Rather than a Truth about the Unmade, my proposal is that her fifth threshold is an admittance that the things that have happened aren't her fault, that she isn't the horrible person she thinks she is. Not only is this more integrally tied into the Lightweaver's progression being tied to self-awareness and understanding, but it's also much more organically related to her plot thus far. Could an Unmade have been a part of why things fell apart? Certainly. There's even a WoB, I believe, that says that there was something abnormal about the state of things in the Davar household. Thus, our proposals are very similar; one of the big differences, however, is in the focus of the Truth itself--being about an Unmade puts the focus on an external source, whereas being about Shallan accepting that there was an external cause and therefore she isn't at fault...that puts the focus on her, which is much more narratively consistent. As I've just explained, this isn't accurate either. The point isn't that her truths change with age, it is that she has a journey of self-awareness and discovery that she is in the process of. The ultimate level, that "fifth" Truth, will be the final one she has to utter because it will be the one that is closest to the heart of not only who she is, but the truth buried beneath the mountain of lies she's lived under. EDIT: Also, the WoB Gderu referenced directly contradicts the idea that she'll never stop speaking Truths: One of her truths approaching her fourth threshold was "I'm terrified." They're not all about things in her past, just things that are integral to understanding who she is, at the core. And I'll explain why that's the case later if necessary--but "I'm terrified" is a very, very deep admission for Shallan, as the Cryptic says in WoK: Granted, this scene can actually be used to support Karger's argument because at the moment, she actually is terrified! But it goes a lot deeper than that, which is one of the reasons it's a suitable Truth to be mentioned (though not a "threshold" Truth). It is a truth (for many people), but it isn't a Truth. I have to be careful how I say this, because this is a tricky passage in the text--but as of yet, "I can be happy" wasn't spoken as a revelatory truth--it was spoken as a means of convincing herself that she was making a good choice. And that makes a huge difference, especially to our dear Unreliable Narrator. The last "Truth" she spoke was at the end of WoR, in the scene where she was forced to remember that Pattern was the shardblade she used to kill her mother. I can go way further down this road, but for the level of discussion here, I feel it's sufficient to say that Shallan's Truths are much deeper concepts--accepting she can be happy is certainly an important development and for once I actually agree with @CrazyRioter when they say that it might be related to that fifth threshold. But Shallan has a lot of work to do before a statement like that can even approach being a Truth with the necessary gravity and power.
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  36. For my 5000th post, here is my second meme(ish) thing!
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  37. Don't forget the Vorin Radiant ideal: Oaths before making out, so we would need at least 20k of wedding preparations. Also it's at 19% now. IDK what that man is doing, but it must involve black magic.
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  38. We know very little about dustbringer personalities. We've got Malata, who is vaguely sinister but we really know nothing about and have barely seen her interact with others, though I believe Shallan expressed some distaste for her. And then we have the dustbringer quotes from the epigraphs: Honestly these quotes - particularly the first one - make the dustbringers seem like awesome people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all of the thoughts Lirin would record for posterity would be about his family.
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  39. There's split and part versions. Words of Radiance is rare to get in one volume (if anyone can link it in the UK, that'd be amazing) and Oathbringer parts 1 and 2 are out in August.
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  40. Welcome back to the land of the living Snipexe! : ) This post explains why I am suspicious of Lum: I redirected her to herself last night, however, there was no kill to redirect. As she knew I was redirecting her, she would have died if she had submitted the kill... Hence why there was no kill. I have not been able to do a thorough reread of Lum's interactions as I was intending, however, if I am able to today, I will post what I find.
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  41. Alright James, keep your cool. keep your cool he told himself mentally to no avail. "Do you have no heart!?" James burst out "You know what we dealt with in there!" And just like that, the long fuse on James's temper finally burned out. "Ben can hardly walk for the Almighty's sake!" his voice rose slightly, gaining in intensity "Show some empathy for once in your life! Perhaps then, you'd understand why we need this!" in the heat of his rant, James had hardly noticed that he had begun shaking from emotion, a feeling now become all the more strong and apparent after his finishing remarks. He left Luther standing there, as he strode intently to his room, as hot rage cooled into cold disdain.
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  42. I’m on the Keanu Reeves is awesome train, but the man is just too old to play a ~20 year old Why not just get an Asian actor to play him? A young Ken Watanabe or similar? There are plenty of young men in Korea, Japan, and China that can act and speak almost flawless English. Heck, there are loads of young men in the US that fit the bill. Then the casting would make more sense
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  43. The entire fandom in a shellnut
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  44. Brother Kabsal: "Now, not that I doubt your word, Brightness, but I'm rather intrigued how Dandos Heraldin could have trained you in arts, as—last I checked—he's suffering a rather terminal and perpetual ailment. Namely, that of being dead. For three hundred years." Shallan: "My father had a book of his instruction."
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