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My younger brother just said, “when I grow up, I want to die,” and I feel that so hard.

I don't think any characters could be described as anarchist. Kelsier - and the Parshendi - are the only ones who have any revolutionary perspective, though I would say it's hard nationalism on the Parshendi question. And if anything I think Kelsier and his crew are Marxist-Leninist Maoists with a strict command structure building coalitions of workers and peasants, even if the criminal element has the veneer of Bakunin's perspective on the lumpenproletariat. Otherwise most of the characters at best represent aristocratic reformers. However there might be hope with Venli in her redemption. A group of refugees that have rejected their god and are swearing oaths alongside fugitive Enlightened spren seems as good a basis as any for anarchism.

I feel like a newb to this series, despite having now read Warbreaker, all of Stormlight and now just finished Mistborn Era 1 I am officially obsessed. Need to talk about these books, dang it. Anyway, I'm Ken and Dalinar Kholin is my king, even if he doesn't want to be.

I was deeply moved by Dalinar's pivotal moment in Oathbringer; this song is the result. Enjoy!

I've been a bit of a roleplaying machine of late, it seems. I've racked up 250 posts in less than 2 weeks, and in just the last few days I've joined about three new roleplays, and upon losing interest in not one but two characters in FotT, I've join successfully with ten. I'm in a total of nine, though a couple of those are super inactive. So today I've updated my About Me with the complete list of all my characters, as well as taken stock of them all. And, of course, I organized them in an Excel sheet by statistics to analyze my tendencies in creating characters (I loooooove statistics). The results... Gender 80% (20/25) Male 12% (3/25) Female 8% (2/25) Other Species 64% (16/25) Human 24% (6/25) Non-Human 12% (3/25) Near-Human Marital Status 72% (18/25) Single 12% (3/25) In Relationship 8% (2/25) Married 4% (1/25) Widowed 4% (1/25) Divorced Age Range ages 0-17.......................................20% (5/25) ages 18-29.....................................36% (9/25) ages 30-49.....................................16% (4/25) ages 50-99.....................................8% (2/25) ages 100 and up............................20% (5/25) So... statistically speaking (from this range), the most common RP character of mine would be a single, human male in his 20s. All known characters fitting these criteria: Stefan (FotT), Kelly (FotT), and Zlatt (FotT). Additionally, one is from the top secret dead RP. And then my Harry Potter character not yet revealed in FotT. He's canonically shown up but I'm not sure I'll even introduce him properly, unless I see an opportunity.

Hello everyone, its been awhile since a was here. One of the reasons it took me so long to get back on the shard was that I was intimidated by all the notification that would probably be there. But I'm not going to bother with them. So assuming there are still any active sharders here that remember me, this is just me letting y'all know that I'll try to be here more often.

Yep! A moderator had cleared it out but I didn't have a chance to deal with it yet. It's done now! We have moved everything either to Cosmere or Stormlight. Some things might be miscategorized since there were over a thousand of them, so if you catch anything, please report it. Thanks!

Depends whats happening there, but generally Yes(?), depending on your definition. Hemalurgy is carving off functional chunks of Spiritweb. As far as I can tell Ishar was manipulating Spiritweb Connections a little more directly (not requiring the Physical (metal) part of the equation. But if Connections are the wires of the Spiritweb "circuit", Ishar is manipulating similar fundamental cosmere forces. The difference that I see is how they get and alter their raw materials. Hemalurgy is donor/splicing system that stores the investiture in a physical object (the spike) and accesses the spiritweb through Bind Points. I think Ishar is starting with a Radiant Nahel Bond, cranking it up to 1000% and/or altering its nature to entirely override the Human with the Spren, making them more like Super-Fused than normal Radiants. They then Die because most of the Sapient spren species dont have native forms that are compatible with the Physical Realm (and physics, etc).

Probably not, because it seems like it would be the most inefficient way possible to go about spiking a spren. We know from this WoB that stealing something from a spren can be done in the Cognitive Realm and that you can't really use a spike to give anything to a spren. If you're trying to get something from a spren, there's no need to try and draw them into the Physical and make bodies for them; we don't know how that works yet but it can't be easy and it clearly doesn't work very well. Much easier to pop into Shadesmar and stab them over there. If you're trying to spike something into them to make a Sprenquisitor, well, apparently that just can't be done.

I looked at the "canonical" MtG colors of the Shards, and tried to fill in the gaps while keeping the color-pie balanced and symmetrical. I propose that one of the unknown shards is Mystery. Obviously, I don't think that Sanderson actually designed the Cosmere with a symmetrical color-pie in mind, but hey, check out the results: Looks pretty neat. 1. The Canonical Shard Colors: This imposes some constraints: 2. The New Rhythm of War Shards: In Rhythm of War, we learn of the Shards Invention, Mercy, Valor, and Whimsy. Whimsy is Blue/Red. It just feels right. Mercy has shades of White, Green, and maybe Black. We're told that "Mercy worries [Harmony]", which makes me think of mercy killings. And hey, there actually is a MtG card called "Mercy Killing". It's White/Green, so let's go with that. Valor feels White and/or Red. Valor means Courage and Boldness. It's about taking action, which is very Red-mana. And it's about heroic self-sacrifice, which is very White-mana. Ideally, I'd assign Valor to White/Red, but it's not possible to have White/Red Valor and Blue/Red Whimsy without unbalancing things, and I feel more strongly about the Whimsy Connection. It can't be Mono-White because I already have Mercy taking up the empty White slot. So Valor is Mono-Red. Finally, we have Invention, which is firmly within Blue's slice of the color pie. The act of invention can be all sorts of colors depending on what that invention is being used for. But Invention for it's own sake? That's Mono-Blue. 3. The Two Unknown Shards: Based on the Choices above, we need a Blue/Black Shard, and one more Mono-Blue Shard to complete the set. Blue/Black is the color pair of Cautious Scheming, Shrewdness, and Ruthless Rationality. Sanderson has mentioned that there is a shard which "just wants to hide and survive", and Blue/Black seems like an excellent fit for that pattern of behavior. There is a popular fan-theory-shard that this 'Survival Shard' has an intent that is something like Prudence, which seems to fit Blue/Black well. Another fitting Intent for this shard might be Perfection. Mono-Blue can be taken many different ways. It's the color of formalized learning and systematic perfection. It's the color of illusions and trickery. And it's the color of the cold dark depths of the sea. Remember that the shards of Adonalsium are fragments of the divine. And the incomprehensibility of the divine to mortal minds is an important part of many people's faith. A Shard of Mystery thus seems like a good Mono-Blue option, representing the ineffability of God, but separated from the virtues which make it worth pursuing understanding nonetheless. One of the shards, which explicitly isn't the Survival Shard, isn't on a planet. Whimsy seems like it could fit that description, flitting about from place to place. But a Mono-Blue Mystery Shard also could have thematic ties to the dark depths of space. Such a Shard might also be called Transcendence. 4. Bonus Material Here, I relax the constraints to allow some of the canonically mono-color Shards to be dual-colored. That way, I can match up one Shard with each mono-color and with each color-pair: And here are some templates if you want to make an MtG Shard diagram yourself:

Hahaha, that's the best way to do it. Become one of the clamoring masses, scraping and clawing for new cosmere content. But really this is the best time to start Wax and Wayne, since the final book for them comes out next year, and you've still got Elantris, White Sand, Aether of Night (technically unpublished, but you can only get it here!), and the stories in Arcanum Unbounded to get through! Plus whatever Stormlight novella releases between now and SA 5 (I think it's supposed to be a Rock novella).

My nemesis "next page" strikes again! Yes, it's my Man Lopen! You're up!

You got it! I had a "half the light of the world" clue, but maybe I'll save that for Sadeas.

Oh, thank you so much @Marukka and @Mist. Both of you are amazing. I just didn't notice that icon on my phone. Thanks to you, now I do.

Absolutely!

Yes! Well done! And spoiler period is over! So no need to hide the truth!

That's

Click this button

Loving it! Apparently Candle in the Wind is a threnody, so I gots to guess Silence

And yet he posits that Dalinar might be a nessecary tyrant. He also doesn't exactly balk at getting himself ever more superhuman powers. Kelsier is the man who set himself up as a god multiple times and who might not have had an actual idea/philosophy for what government should look like, barring that it shouldn't feature the Lord Ruler. Could you expand on this? Yes, Jasnah is a reformer. Why? I just can't see why they in particular would turn to anarchism. He holds actual power from his very position, but I don't think he has any political power. Or do anarchists have a problem with people being differently strong as well? Why, does the anarchist need to justify stars as well? Shards are just things that exist. As for the idea of a justification for the Vessels holding their positions, there isn't one, it's right of conquest. The man who is a king and argues that absolute monarchy is the right way to do things is an anarchist at heart? I also find the ascribing the virtue of questioning yourself to a single ideology to be iffy at best. Most people don't even know that the Shards exist, much less if they are part of any plans of theirs. By what mechanism could this happen? Shards seem to be rather all or nothing. If you leave them alone you risk someone else Ascending to them or them developing their own sentience. You'd need to kill all Vessels and splinter all Shards, somehow. In that case does people being of unequal physical and mental ability not undermine anarchism as well? I feel that this is wrong, there is empirical proof of some objects of worship, not of their actual divinity. Sazed would like a word. And yet Thaylenah is in the coalition. Are they deities though? Power does not make a god. What makes a Shard a god? They are a natural (for a given value of natural) part of the cosmere, one that has immense power, but not one that, by definition, is divine. There is no requirement that these existences are gods, any more than there are requirements that gravity or stars are gods. Thus one can deny the existence of gods while accepting the existence of Shards. Non-belief in a thing's divinity is not the same as denial of the thing itself. For a real life example, I can accept that around the start of the first century CE there was a Jewish preacher who was persecuted by the secular and religious authorities of the time, without accepting that he was the son of God. In the same vein, one can deny the divinity of Shards without denying their existence. I do agree that an anti-Shard or even anti-Invested movement looks futile without some equaliser, but there's also no rule that Invested people must become tyrants. Also, there are Shards that don't actively intervene, Sazed's personal philosophy seems to be one of mostly non-intervention, at the human level. He does not wish to lead the peoples of Scadrial and would presumably allow them to experiment in a lot of ways (society, politics, technology, etc.) before he'd feel moved to intervene. I could see him trying to avert things that are very likely to be a threat to the population of the planet, like all out nuclear war, but he's obviously made peace with conflicts that don't threaten extinction of Scadrian humanity. He allows for self-determination outside of extreme circumstances, even when that self-determination leads to results he wouldn't want happening. Which is amusing, because that would be him asserting authority over other people. IMO it also sounds like an absolute waste of people, as he's responsible for any damage the mob inflicted, as well as any injury by the mob or to the mob from people defending themselves and theirs from the mob. What a disregard for the wellbeing of people! Remind me, what's the definition of insanity? ¤_¤

Ashertmarn!

Word of the day: videlicet. Definition: that is to say Synonym: namely

So, prefacing this that I respect that is your beliefs, and is important to you. You are perfectly entitled to believe as such. Having said that, that is not an argument against spren having souls, or the beyond not existing. It is only a statement that you personally would dislike such an occurrence. Your personal dislike, and perspective of that, does not act as a proof that it cannot be. Simply because as demonstrated by two other individuals here, such a possibility does not seem so fatalistic to them. Basically I can personally dislike a room being over 70 degrees F, but that does not mean based on my dislike of that status, the room cannot possibly attain such temperature. edit: To put it in context. You believe without an afterlife/soul, there is no point to life. And that is fine. You are perfectly entitled to feel as such. But because you believe there is no point of life without an afterlife, does not mean that there then HAS to be an afterlife. It just means if an afterlife did not exist, you would feel life is pointless. While there are others who would disagree with you. Your personal feeling that a lack of an afterlife would make life meaningless, does not preclude an afterlife from not existing. Does that make sense? I can get convoluted when I type things, so I like to check.

We have confirmation on the main characters of all three novellas on the weekly update!

Hi there! I want to get a tattoo of the First Oath and searching for it i have come across this reddit thread. I have been using the search tool in the forum but i didnt see a post asking for the confirmation of this (sorry if it exist and i didnt realize) so here i am, im pretty confident this is accurate but you know, a tattoo is for life xD and seems like a good idea to ask here too. Im posting a picture of the alethi woman´s script but you should really give a look to the reddit thread. Thanks for the help in advance

Wow, thank you so much for listening and taking time to comment. I’m so glad you enjoyed it!! Since you mentioned it, I have completed the melody and lyrics (working on arrangement now) for a song based on Kaladin. should be done in a month or so!!

"You are so used to violence that you consider nothing else. Perhaps not every conflict can be resolved without conflict, but that is all the more reason to try." Brother Sparrow strode closer and turned to Cumulo. "What did you come here for?"

We're all living for the Rock novella. Best character.

Is it plausible that the experiments / torture Ishar was doing to the spren at the end of RoW could somehow be similiar to Hemalurgy and what the Inquisitors does to create new members with specific power filled spikes?

Storms. Need sleep. Can't get sleep, too interesting... *yawn* Shallan?

Lopen?

Stick. No, they're always sticky. Wyndle.

FUN! (No real pinball experience but I'm a mechanical/controls engineer, so it's tangentially my jam) Random thoughts RGB LED's everywhere, with Color-coded play modes based on the radiant Orders (plus some baleful looking Void setting?). Gems with LEDs as the Stormlight meter. Maybe you have to trigger a Highstorm and then hit certain targets to Infuse the gems? "Soulcasting" to temporarily replace the steel ball with a rubber one (is this even a thing in pinball?) Summon "Shardplate" to put a block in the trough temporarily, uses Stormlight Summon "Shardblade" to add an active bounce/kick to the surface of the main paddles (there's a term for this?), uses Stormlight [more to come after coffee]

Nope I hope the next clue is as obvious as I intended... Not Sazed Not Dalinar Not Eshonai Not Silence Not Sja-Anat 1. Losing my Religion 2. Candle in the wind 3. The Unforgiven 4. In the Air tonight 5. Puff the magic dragon

Yep! The spoiler period is done. I am going to lock this thread. You can now use the main memes thread:

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.

Skyward, page 52: we see the depiction of a Poco fighter, the one used by Skyward flight. The one Hurl was using when she died. The depiction is in the book, so I assume it's official. And we clearly see the cockpit in the back of the craft body. Page 341: Spensa and Jorgen are giving burial rites to Hurl. The crash scenario is described. It said that the ship had broken in three parts, rear, middle and front, and that "a small chunk of the front fuselage - with the cockpit - had broken free". It's unequivocally stating that the cockpit is in the front, as close to the "tip" of the fuselage as possible. this is completely incompatible with the drawing of page 51, where the cockpit is in the rear third. There could be some argument if the cockpit had been stated to have been in the middle section, but no. Look at it, there isn't even enough space to break off two segments behind the cockpit. Is this the kind of thing that they would fix in subsequent prints?

Just re-read this scene the other day and had to create it.

Yeah I think that Nale is likely the best warrior Odium has. It seems pretty clear that 1v1 any herald would beat any fused. That is in part why I think the fused were s surprised that Kaladin was able to best their best Heavenly Ones. And for as good as Kaladin is Kalak made them all seem like children. Kalak average, 4/10 chance that Nale is better. But I agree, Mr. T is going to try to be smart, overly smart, so a child is likely to be the champion.

I don't think that we know his exact age, but I'd guess early 20's at the youngest and early 30's at the latest.

I do agree that it seems a little too naive of Honor to truly expect the Heralds to never break their word and let Odium's forces back out of Braize. But maybe it's a case of "a lock with no key is no lock at all" and so there MUST be some condition to unlock Odium's forces, or else Honor could not enforce the binding.

I see it as a mix of burning it away and them having a sort of immunity. It is a handwave, but it is not completely unfeasible to simply not have it react in the toxic manner. According to Wikipedia on Cadmium Toxicity... and according to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312803/ All of the issues with this Cadmium, and many other toxic metals, is the manner in which it Binds to Cells. Therefore, it could be that the cells of Allomancers are able to recognize the structure of things like Cadmium, and refuse to interact with it. This would make sense due to how much Magic Systems deal with ones Spiritweb, which effects the Cognitive Self, and thus the Physical Self. So it is very plausible as I see it that it simply does not undergo these reactions. I do recall it being mentioned that other, non-allomantic metals can be fatal. So yeah, likely just having the Spiritweb make their body not have the reactions that bring about the toxicity of certain metals through recognition of Cadmium Ions. It is a handwave, but it would work with the Laws of the world, and if the cells were made to not react to it, it would indeed bring about this immunity. So not completely unscientific. Another theory, from the same paper, Biologically speaking they could also have chemicals produced against it, as mentioned before, Polyphenolic Substances, Melatonin, Carotenoids, Quercetine, Resveratrol, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, L-Carnitine, Coenzyme Q10, and Beta-Carotene. It is possible that they could produce such chemicals in response to Cadmium. Melatonin in particular is naturally produced by the pineal gland in humans. Coenzyme Q10 is also produced naturally in humans, so they could have a higher level of Coenzyme Q10.

Only on the Shard would this Question be takin seriously... I don’t think a physical animal can gain sapiance unless they have a spren bond So all you need is a shrimp bonded to a [insert spren here] and a few hundred breaths

Brandon has said that some forms of magic like emotional allomancy require a level of sapience to work, so they won't affect animals. I'm guessing that something similar holds in the case of the Breath-transferring Command and you need a similar level of sapience to actually receive the Breaths and an attempt to transfer them to something that isn't at that level would simply fail. Now, assuming it worked for purposes of argument, Brandon has said that his magic systems can handle senses that don't work quite like the average human's. For example, someone who was blind could still 'see' atium shadows and use them like a sighted person could despite the visual nature of the magic. Likewise he's said that synesthesia would have different effects on people vis a vis Breaths (depending on the form it took) but they'd still get the benefits of them. So I imagine that a highly Invested shrimp would gain a better ability to distinguish colors (which they aren't actually good at) and it would probably do funky things to their ability to perceive light polarization. There's a really cool video here where you can see researchers with an underwater camera that's designed to try and capture how a mantis shrimp sees the world in a way humans can process. Likewise I'd imagine that anything able to receive Breath that can perceive infrared or ultraviolet light would get better at distinguishing those spectra.

There's always more. We are forgetting his ruthless edge that crept out after Teft died. We don't know what Odium did to him at that moment, and Kaladin clearly mentions that while he is not shameful of his failures...he hasn't forgotten them completely. I think he's the only character whom Wit has met and told three stories so far so there's definitely Wit's fascination. So far, we never even saw how Kaladin works on diagnosing mental illness in accordance to his own self and there's whole Sylphrena's darkness pending. We also have whole 'Son/Child of Tanavast' thing that is clearly intentional. We have Kaladin to figure his new direction because clearly he can't always end up without jumping out of war. We have the Champion thing which isn't cleared and IIRC, Sanderson would come up with another crazy plot that'd blow our mind. Ex. Were any of us expecting him to become a therapist in this book and start helping people? We have his spidery senses that alert him in a special kind of way. He's even a great spy without Lightweaving as shown when he snuck around a Tower full of Fused. The Honorspren thing has yet to be solved so well, while Kaladin might not get that amount of screentime like RoW in Book 5, Sanderson's not gonna let him become Adolin of all books.

Interesting idea... However, I support the theory that Detritus is a delver corpse. It would make sense because of the caverns. These are like the tunnels that delver mazes have, except without the illusions because the delver/planet is dead. Also, the symbols Spensa saw in the Delver maze were apparently the same ones she saw in the caverns on Detritus.