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School starts in two days. It hasn't started yet. AND I'M ALREADY GETTING EMAILS ABOUT ASSIGNMENTS. WHAT THE STORMS. Anyways, my English class made me read 1984 over the summer. I'm probably going to have to write a bunch of essays on it. But it was really good. I liked it a lot. It also gave me nightmares Ironically, the nightmares were all about writing essays. I've had multiple dreams where I was forced to write essays for the Party, and if I wrote something wrong, they arrested me. This might be a metaphor for my dread about the approaching English assignments, but that's just a guess. It's definitely not a sign of me going insane. Nope. WAIT. I JUST REMEMBERED. Since I'm already mentioning weird dreams, I had the weirdest dream a while ago. Basically, I went to a taco restaurant, and the main character of my fantasy novel (Vashkril) was over there too. He and his group of friends were eating at a table. Then they invited me to eat with them. Well, umm, the entire dream was just Vashkril becoming increasingly suspicious that I was the writer who wrote his tragic backstory. Every other character was oblivious. It was terrifying, though. He sat there eating a taco and glaring at me the whole time. He was trying to interrogate me like, "Are you sure I've never met you? You seem really familiar." So, yes. Treat your characters nicely. Otherwise they show up in your dreams and threaten you. Okay. That's it. This was all over the place. It was supposed to be only the first two lines about assignments, but then I got carried away.

I'm not so sure this bot does, acutely, care for it when it has those next sentences in the same post...like, are you trying to advertise or not And then the rest I just left in because I thought it was funny. (I did rearrange the order to put absolutely random statements together and the negative statements together.) Anyway idk how the quote is relevant but I'm happy to see it XD

I can post again!

So I went on vacation. Some other things happened, like meeting Fadran, chopping most of my hair off (again), and eating lunch in Cuba, but the thing I wanted to ask is does anyone else have Call to Adventure Stormlight? 'Cause Fadran had it, so I want to buy it so I can play both with him and with my siblings, but I think we could put together a thread of sorts with anyone who has it and play via Shard.

That's not a good point because we don't even know if it's true. First off, who says that spren don't go to the Beyond? We know nothing about the Beyond and never will, so we also don't know what makes a Beyond soul. Which means that there's nothing that indicates that sentience alone isn't enough for a being to have a Beyond soul. Spren might as well have one. And on the other hand, since, as I said, we don't know anything about the Beyond, it might just be nothingness anyway; humans might just vanish when they die. If there is no Beyond, neither is there a Beyond soul. Which means, not only don't we know if spren dont have a Beyond soul, we also do not know if humans do have one. Both premises of the statement are actually assumptions about things we don't know (and will never know). Therefore, this is no basis to make statements about the value of lives.

I can't believe I forgot to post this here

It has evolved since then. So far, the story goes that a baker and his wife were making classic idris desserts, cookies. The wife was killed by assassins because she was collecting too many breaths, she gave those breaths to her husband as she died and he didn’t want them so he put them in one of the cookies. Because of how invested it was, it wouldn’t go bad. He put it in a locked box and told his children that their mother’s soul was inside. After generations, the investiture molded into what people thought of it as (as investiture does) making a sapient cookie with the mother’s personality. Eventually they discovered hemalurgy blah blah blah now a cookie with the power of the lord ruler leading and army made from a cult of her descendants is trying to become a shard Dont worry, a very bad San-fic will eventually be released about her

Stormlight archive meme dump! Not my best but i still think they're foony heh if you dont know who one of them is about, i'll put the names in order in the first spoiler box.

First off, with this, you only answer to one of two complaints I had, the "maybe humans have no soul" one. You ignore the "maybe spren have a soul" one. Second, feelings of living beings are facts. Negative feelings have to be prevented if possible, because it feels bad to have them. I don't see why we need anything outside of that for humans to have good reason to place value on those lives and feelings, necessarily.

Lmao, it IS the rocking A-C-Dalinar-C, ding ding ding! I almost expected someone to guess Gavilar first since we got most of the other Kholins already Last clue was going to be "Its A Long Way To The Top"

Gotta stay in the family... Dalinar? Anyway, great idea with the clues!

Not the focused Jasnah Kholin. 1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 2. Burnin Alive 3. Witch's Spell 4. Thunderstruck

Signing up as Peggy 'Pegleg' Flamingo, who has a bad habit of falling head over heels... in love.

WoK

Well I'm back from a week long trip that I told almost no one about. I bet nobody noticed I was gone also school starts tomorrow and I have no friends and I forgot how to people and I don't really want to *sigh* A lotta stuff seems pointless now

"Astarte or Ashtaroth, where?" I believe that the linguistic drift in the so-called Biblical languages was no less pronounced than in the tongues of Roshar. Why yes I enjoyed that pun why do you ask.

WAIT WAIT WAIT. WHAT?! EXPLAIN THIS. The storms do you mean, "sprens' lives have no value"????

I am midway through reading the cosmere. I have read 1st Mistborn series, Stormlight Archive, Elantris and am in the middle of reading Wax and Wayne. What do you guys think I should read next?

Apologies if it has been discussed or I've forgotten something. What would happen to a sapient spren if it was captured in a gem? We've obviously seen lower spren be captured and we've seen Unmade like the Thrill and Ba-Ado-Mishram (kinda seen) be captured, but what about the in-between? Could you manifest some effect from a fabrial made with a Sapient spren? What would happen if the gem was broken and the spren escaped (would the spren experience a loss of function, cognition, etc.). (I think this has been somewhat discussed in some Shardcasts about Ba-Ado-Mishram.) Does this affect bonds (thinking Nahel) in strange ways?

I mean, the whole deadeye/mental issue arc in the book shows how people devalue life if people are having those type of issues. Also with the power of magic you could probably make spren have souls, given certain experiments....

Oh god Faile's here. This means Perrin is here, which is a good thing, but also Faile is here

1) Double(triple!)-posting is frowned upon in the Shard; if you've made a post and think of something to add (I do this all the time), you can edit your previous post. 2) I LOVE your profile pic! Stick, of course, is a legend... but what first looked to me like a solar eclipse "diamond ring" became a dilated eyeball, THEN I saw the detail in the iris is actually Alethi script. Brilliant! Is it your work? 3) I don't have any speculation about Radiant spren or fabrials thereof (I don't feel I know enough yet about how fabrials are made and why they work), but I will say that I think we've already seen sapient spren trapped in gemstones - all the Fused initially got to the Physical Realm contained in gemstones. Don't Sja-Anat's Enlightened "children" get smuggled into Urithiru inside gemstones? She also gives some to Taravangian, if I recall. Seems if they enter the gemstone voluntarily, it's just a convenient way to travel, and when the gem is broken, they are released with no ill effects.

My personal standpoint is yes. If it goes in a gemheart, Nahel bond or Fabrial, it goes in all three, theoretically. Spren would escape, possibly being somewhat traumatised, otherwise fine, I think. Possibly forcibly severing it, at least de-powering the Radiant if they got too far away, but I think option one or something close to it most likely. No, bonded spren don't provide extra investiture in the same way as a Breath and barring potential Fifth Ideal shenanigans nothing should be lost by the Radiant in that way, were the bond removed. Ehh, I'd guess an honorial would primarily deal with direct expressions of the Windrunner Surges. We do however need more information, we don't know if emotionspren (or conceptspren) can be made to manifest their corresponding emotion like a phenomenonspren like a flamespren can. I don't think that'd work, again, we need to see if emotionspren even work like that and I'd think something like "calmspren" would serve such a purpose much better. Add to that that even if all your soldiers were nudged to be more hounorable, it'd depend in their personal concept of honour, so some might be more likely to cause trouble out of their personal sense of honour. And it would presumably be a lot like emotional allomancy, you can make people more amenable to what you want, but push too hard and people will notice. Oh, and a tip, at the bottom of your post you should have a button labeled "Edit," you can use that to avoid multi-posting in the future. ¤_¤

Jasnah?

Not the glowing Evi Kholin 1. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap 2. Burnin Alive 3. Witch's Spell

Adolin.

It's been fun, people. But... ...I'm tired and worn out. Running around the cosmere like an aviar without a head has taken a lot out of me. It's time... ...I think that after thousands of years of fulfilling my oath to be there when I am needed, I need a break. Permanently. So I have three choices. Either I can eat bacon, or I can hurt someone, or I can soulcast bacon, not hurt anyone, and be a storyteller. ...So I have one choice. I'm going to still travel the cosmere, but at my own leisure. I'm reinterpreting my oath. I'll be there when needed... ...to tell a story. Here's a rough draft: Once upon a time, i bought a banana. Then, I peeled it. Then, I ate it. Then, I threw out the peel and I'M KIDDING! THAT'S A HORRIBLE STORY! Anyway, I also need to buckle down and study. So it's been real. Thanks for being there when I had questions, Hoid the Former Drifter

It's mostly accurate, but I think the letters with the double lines should be the medium height instead of the biggest.

Alright, with way of kings prime finished I think it is time for me to read my leatherbound copy of the published version for the first time. Stormlight reread here I come!

He is just used to the Roughs, where it is pretty empty. He doesn’t like not being able to see every person in the vicinity, it makes him feel unsafe.

In the real world, AI is not sentient. We don’t know how sentience works nearly well enough to copy it, and if we did, we have no reason to build a sentient AI beyond proving that we can. In sci-fi, on the other hand, futuristic AI is sentient more often than not. (Sorry if this is super obvious. I thought it was an important point to clarify for the discussion.) I’m interested in why you were surprised that someone placed the same moral value on a fantasy talking sword as a human character? I’ve always assumed that other readers saw fantasy talking swords, aliens, AI, magical creatures etc as having personhood and value just as much as the human characters. Maybe I’m wrong and I’m the weird one?

Fully sentient AI can be consider alive. Also, Spren are not artificial creation.

Status: sad The Water Clan just left my house We had a pretty fun sleepover though! Played lots of board games (including Call to Adventure: Stormlight edition).

This one was pretty funny.

This is an interesting aspect of the OP’s argument that the thread hasn’t really talked about yet. I think we should be suspicious of Honor and Cultivation’s motives. From what little we know of them, Honor doesn’t understand basic things about humans and doesn’t care about individual lives. Cultivation is manipulative and unpredictable. Whatever Honor was doing, whatever Cultivation is still doing, we have no reason to trust them or assume that they have the humans’ best interests at heart. Having said that, I still don’t see any ethical issue with the Radiant bond. The possibility for spren to become deadeyes is an issue, but that’s presented as a fixable problem, not something inherent to the Nahel bond. Normally, when deadeyes aren’t a thing, anyone who wants to can break the bond with no consequences except the former Radiant losing their magical abilities and the spren taking a nap. Also, the only character we see involved with a Radiant bond who isn’t fully on board with what it entails is the Stormfather, and he’s kind of an edge case.

I don't think that is necessarily true. While the bond system is designed to encourage progress, it does not force it. As @Frustration mentioned, plateauing was not unheard of, so if Radiant is comfortable at some level of Oaths, and feels they cannot/should/will not progress, they are free to do so. In Navani's example she willingly accapted first ideal (although you could argue it was under duress) and now can either progress if she will want, or stay (or safely break the bond). I don't agree, because I don't think there is any evidence that there is something supernatural making Radiants keep the Oaths. While yes, the Radiants are restricted in some of their freedoms, it is a restriction they chose and if they for some reason decide that the trade-off is not worth it they can break the bond (as Kaladin almost did, and as Shallan did). In the past it was probably more common, simply because breaking the bond would not dead-eye the spren involved. For the Dalinar example, that is a good example, but I think the issue is not the Oaths themselves and restrictions resulting, but the fact that Radiants treats Oaths as a moral system (which it is not necessarily). I think that some future Bondsmith could hold the same oaths as Dalinar, but also to think that sometimes breaking a promise is a moral thing. Radiants were not created to fight Desolations, Heralds were. Surgebinders (and their organizing into orders) was a side-effect that came from spren and other humans mimicking what was happening between Heralds and Honor. Due to social pressure they most likely were mostly fighting Desolations at first, but for vast majority of time of existence of orders no Desolation was going on, and so Radiants were effectively more strict monastic/martial order. EDIT: To be fully clear I personally believe that greater power should come with some enforceable restrictions, so to me Oath system is particularly nice in this regards. I.e. I believe that if you wish power greater than other humans, you should accept some restriction on how you can act in a trade-off.

Michael’s ready. Are YOU??

Well of Ascension

As I go: pg 1. Oh we have a little pyromaniac on our hands. Let's see where this goes. pg 2. This is really good but I think it could use more setup. She was always selfish and scheming but I didn't imagine her as being the type of person to burn everything to the ground, especially when she might have to deal with the consequences pg 3. The medicine thing is a good note and I think it has a lot of potential as a conflict source... though how much of that is just me personally being on like five separate very important medications and constantly worrying about not being able to afford them in the future (yep, I'm American...) is up for debate. pg 5. Man, this is getting real. Even if D goes along with it, she has leverage in case E tries to weasel out of his side of the deal pg 7. Yay E gets character development! Though it does feel a little like a 180 turn. I feel like deep down, this shouldn't be a surprise to him. pg 8. I'm half wondering if this is another one of her ploys, and also half hoping that C just leaves her. -Oh cool realization that ashen things can't burn. But I feel like it should have taken some deliberation 1. Nope! Though again I was expecting them to have left town by now and this all feels like distractions. I think this is what V's conversation with C about how she should leave them all behind was trying to foreshadow, but I didn't quite get that. 2. Mostly! I think we need a bit more on G-M, what she's trying to accomplish, and why.

When a cognitive shadow is created the persons original soul is essentially replaced with a pure investiture copy from a Shard. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/183/#e3895 The Intent of the Shard that their souls is now made of influences how they act over time. (per Zahel in RoW Ch. 16) Kelsier's soul is now made of Preservation investiture which reinforces the importance of survival. He was The Survivor in life as well, but if anything Preservation investiture will reinforce it. Like other people have said I don't think he'll be too bad off yet. He hasn't died over and over and been tortured like the Heralds and it's only been ~300 years for Kelsier versus ~7,000 for the Heralds and Fused.

Good twist at the end of this chapter, but I feel like this one is still lacking an arc just a little. GM's revenge seems to come out of nowhere. I don't remember any fascination with fire, but I could be misremembering. I guess this would come under #2, as GM isn't completely making sense to me. I feel like the story is losing some direction here, because we've switched between trying to escape, to V going to the ashen house, to Gm starting a fire here. Still a very interesting story, and I think the second editing pass will really bring this all together. notes while reading: pg 1: GM is starting to sound like a pyromaniac pg 2: "She has wanted this for years. This is her revenge." --She's wanted to burn down the workshops for years? Did we know this before? GM's part seems a little plotful, as I don't remember hearing about her pyromania. However, the E section has some good character building to it. I'm glad to see E finding some courage. pg 8: The "ashen things can't burn" revelation is a cool twist!

Me after rereading my post for the 10th time hoping someone responded.

(another) Cosmere character portrait, but this time it's Shallan Let's just ignore the fact that I covered the other eye.

I was writing a letter to my brother, and I was using my fountain pen. Since it had an old timey feel to it, I added the date at the top, like I was writing a letter during the Civil War or something. And to be specific, I labeled the date AD, and well you can see the rest. I think it's rather diverting.

Willshaper. She’s one of the most flamboyant and individualistic characters you’ll ever come across. And she consistently encourages her class to think for themselves and explore and experiment with everything. She also loves to travel.

There's a couple ways to address ambiguity in your arguments. The acceptable way: Use your "I feel" statements. Like "I feel Kaladin needs a Snickers" or "I believe everything will be resolved through the introduction of fan fiction into the Cosmere." It flows better and communicates that you know you could be wrong, but right now based on evidence available to you, this is what you adductively think. The right way: Just proclaim your wildest theories as gospel truth (Kaladin is 4 sperns in a trenchcoat!) and question the most obvious facts (Is Syl really a spern? Maybe she's the only human on Roshar!)