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Panorama of Roshar. Hope you guys like it! I had a LOT of fun painting this one, though I was nervous about accidentally spoiling something as I was only starting the Oathbringer at the time of painting this. I'm definitely painting more of Stormlight in the future. Maybe Jasnah... or Pattern? I'd love to be commissioned for official art for the future books, that would be the dream! I also welcome any feedback and critique, both for artistic execution and lore, but keep in mind that there had to be some liberty in putting together Urithiru so low and close to the Shattered plains and Horneater Peaks, for the sake of making the focal pieces clustered [Urithiru + Stormfather above the Shattered Plains] in the center of the painting as requested, for custom book sleeves with for all 4 books. Their spines, when put together, show the center of the painting. "The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step."

To Morningtide, I wish a very merry Christmas! @Ookla the Theoretical

Merry Christmas @ookla the demon. I can't draw but I can write. And so this poem was born. There you go! You did say you're a Sanderfan (big shocker) and this was what I could think of. I hope you like it

Merry Christmas @Symphematric!!!

Hi Everyone! I'm a screenwriter, programmer, and long time Sanderson fan. Not sure why I haven't joined this forum before, as I've used your resources on past Cosmere related projects. Better late than never though! Looking forward to geeking out with you all and picking people's brains with lore related questions!

*sigh* go ahead.

I think that the reason Taln cannot break is because people saw him as unbreakable. We've seen spren be affected by perception, and we've seen that the fused become more and more set in their ways as they age, so it makes sense that Taln would eventually come to embody everyone's perception of him as an unbreakable hero.

I think my opinion might be highly unpopular, but here goes. To start with, I really loved the character of Taln while reading the four books. I remember being giddy whenever he had a scene. He was my top fav side character. Just one problem. I thought he broke. I took the idea that taln broke as a fact. I am dumb and didn't realise that RoW in particular was hinting that Taln didn't break. The arrival of the everstorm to circumvent the oathpact and taln breaking in the same time frame was a little too wierd. And then Brandon confirmed it in a WoB. Some fans cheered, some fans were surprised and some fans felt vindicated as they already were expecting it. I was less than thrilled. The problem with Taln is he is JUST TOO DAMN PERFECT. I loved Taln when I thought that he tried his best and ended up giving humanity 4500 years of time. He was a very inspiring character. Now he is a freaking god. Apparently, he still has a lot more years of torture he can endure. He is nowhere close to being done. He is basically unbreakable. Taln, as he is right now, is vey antithetical to the themes of SA, and the fact that nobody is talking about it drives me nuts. First of all, NO HUMAN is strong enough to what Taln did. I mean where would you even cultivate the inner strength to endure so much torture? How can you even reach that level of determination? If instead, you think it's more likely that such strength can't be cultivated, you have to be born with it, it still makes Taln an angel who descended to earth compared to the rest of the humans. Because 4500 years is a mind-numbingly long time! A fact that I feel that many people are not giving the importance it deserves. If a random stranger says that he will die for you, you won't be inspired, you would be creeped out! I feel the same way with Taln. No one should be that self-sacrificial. That is not healthy, that is insane and scary. I would stay as far as possible away from him in real life. Can you imagine if a guy like that got angry with you over something? He might chase you to the ends of the earth. Second, he makes the lives of all other characters kinda pointless. The main theme of SA is that 'broken' people deserve to live happy lives (even after making mistakes). Teft deserves love. Shallan deserves love. Kaladin should not kill himself. Dalinar deserves forgiveness and redemption(debatable). But its very hard to say they deserve anything with the presence of an infallible person who has suffered so much more than them. All their conflicts and struggles seem melodramatic compared to the sheer amount of pain that Taln went through without making a mistake. . If the survival of humanity is the highest moral goal right now, Kaladin's life is just not priceless. It's nothing compared to Taln's worth as an 'unbreakable' human being. Because Kaladin just can't hold the desolation back for that long. Example: in tWoK, Kaladin briefly considers abandoning his friends and saving his own life. In WoR he doubts his own friends' love for him in the jail cell. In OB, he gets angry at Adolin for no reason and chides himself. These thoughts are not ooc for Kal even though he is a windrunner poster boy because everyone is fallible and breakable. Everyone makes mistakes and that's fine. Every character in SA has some insecurity about something, even Jasnah. If i must fall, I will rise each time a better man. Finally, he legitimises the oathpact and trivializes torture. The oathpact is a horrible plan and anything else would have been better. No human should be asked for that much. But Taln makes it look like it was the heralds who were insufficient, not the freaking plan. Because of Taln, the other 9 heralds look bad, even though they were amazing people who went through the saddest times possible. SA is a optimistic series, but if you took a herald as the protagonist and went through their life, the desolations alone would put the series solidly in grimdark territory. They really deserve more respect, but who can NOT compare them to Taln? He also trivializes torture. No way around it. Torture is horrific and inhumane. It scars people in irreparable ways physically and psychologically. In a series with realistic depictions of battle shock, Taln sticks out like a sore thumb. If I am right in thinking that the heralds can heal in braize, how many times do you think Taln's genitals were shredded like cheese? Cuz let's be sure, that definitely happened in 4500 years even if the books will never show it happening ( shivers).( I hope I didn't break any coppermind rules with that sentence) I feel like there has to be an actual reason why Taln did not break. I have faith in Sanderson. Every other character in SA feels real to me. Even the evil ones like Sadeas and Rayse. I am just surprised that most fan discourse I see don't seem to question it and seem to think that Taln just weathered it with his own strength, which I find impossible. He must have had advantages right? If the ans is just that Taln is a Super Mega Alpha male chad boy with a golden heart, I will probably keep ranting about it.

Not sure if this makes more sense here or in General Discussion or maybe Creator Corner, but this area gets a lot of traffic so Ima go with it. This is just your all-purpose thread for anything photoshop! Or photopea or gimp or microsoft paint or whatever program you use. (I use photopea myself. It's great). Share thing's you've made, things you've seen/found, anything at all. You can also use this for edit requests, I am bored and would like to make random things for y'all. Here's some thing's I've made in the past, both to share, and so people requesting things can see my approximate skill level. (It isn't very high =P) Edit: Here's a more recently updated place to find crap i make.

Ok, I have no proof of this hypothesis. But seeing the fact that Axindweth is from Terris (Scadrial), and she is the one who brings the voidspren to Roshar from Braize, it makes me think that she is a member of the Set, or that she is someone important in Trell's plans. We know that Odium and Autonomy have a "pact", being possible allies, so it would not be strange that Trell is an avatar of Autonomy, who feels admiration for Odium (like Patji in Oathbringer's letter) and seeks the return of the Desolations to favor Odium. It is not a well-crafted hypothesis, but it is what I think it might be. And furthermore, I also think that the Set itself is a reaction to the Ghostbloods, being rival organizations, like the Ghostbloods and Sons of Honor. What do you think?

There's a lot of thoughts going around as to what new abilities might be gained at the Fifth Ideal of the Windrunners. One possibility I thought of is the Radiant spren is brought enough into the Physical Realm that they can Surgebind almost on their own. For example, a spren could lash an item toward the Radiant, almost acting as a form of telekinesis. I'd be curious to hear what other people think of this idea!

Stick?

Oh I mean backspace, or what you’d usually use to get rid of text

Hemalurgy removes a piece of someone's spiritweb and grafts it onto someone else's spiritweb, and parts of your spiritual DNA can be passed on. So, if a steel inquisitor were to have a child, would their kid have the spiritual, and possibly physical DNA of not just their two biological parents, but also all the people who's souls got stapled on as well? Would certain physical traits of those "soul parents" manifest in the child, such as having a mixed race? Man, if this were the case, and Marsh had a kid...it would be a bit weird for Marsh to have to explain that to said kid that they actually have twenty-some parents.

I was reading through the coppermind, and I found this weird fact that seems to be a theory. On Hoid's page, it says "He has used Allomancy in several ways during his time on Roshar, including to either Soothe or Riot Lin Davar, and possibly to Riot Ruthar before his title's revocation and to a speed bubble during his telling of the story of The Dog and the Dragon to Kaladin.[96][citation needed]". Is this true or is this something like Wikipedia where it is on there and it is plausible and cool so people left it on?

Hello and thanks for mentioning this! Unfortunately, at the moment the Coppermind staff have a bit of a backlog of recent edits that we haven't looked at yet, and this paragraph seems to come from one of those. Looking at it now, the part about the speed bubble definitely seems to be speculation that is inappropriate for the Coppermind and the parts about Hoid's use of emotional Allomancy on Roshar don't seem significant enough to his overall abilities to merit mentioning in the Attributes and Abilities section. I do think the cited WoB is enough to say in the History section that the metal Hoid ingested in the Middlefest Shallan flashback was for emotional Allomancy (though based on when he ingests it, I'm not sure we should say that it was Lin he was influencing) and while I think there's an argument to be made that it would be okay to say in History that he might have been Rioting Ruthar, given how big Hoid's page is and the fact that there's no confirmation, I'm not sure it's worth it. So, short answer, that paragraph is a mix of things that range from "true (but not really in the right place in the article)" to "possible but too speculative for the Coppermind."

hand, knife, string, or nothing (honorable mentions include bats' wings, among other things)

I am skeptical that there is actually an Allomancer breeding program. Post BoM that seems likely to be Wax's flawed assumption. BoM makes it clear the Set uses Hemalurgic spikes granting Allomantic powers, they had to get the Allomancers for that, and we know they kidnapped Allomancers..

Since no one is stopping me and I need to decompress a bit, I’m going to gush about one scene in the often forgotten masterpiece: The Prince of Egypt, by Dreamworks. Some of you might not have heard of it, may have watched it a long time ago, or watched it for religious reasons. I mean, I am a religious person and my dad loves the movie, which is how I saw it; however, I’m not just going to be looking through that perspective, but through my writer’s glasses. And trust me when I say that I could make an hour long––even more––video essay about the individual parts of the movie (animation, voice work, the frickn’ score, etc.), but I’m just going to rein that in and just gush about this one scene that stands out to me the most: The scene where Moses talks to God through the burning bush. If y’all don’t know which scene I’m talking about or need a refresher it’s pitched lower than in the actual movie, so be wary: https://youtu.be/6ds9y3lJGig The first thing I notice about this scene is the score, probably because there are little to no words spoken through the first part of the scene. Now, if you haven’t listened to the score of The Prince of Egypt, you are missing out on some beautiful score music. The person who composed the music is a little known composer by the name of Hans Zimmer. I would say he’s rather unknown, because he worked on the scores of and I dunno if you’ve heard of these movies The Lion King, Interstellar, Kung Fu Panda, and more recently Dune; again, rather unknown. Anyways, the score at the beginning is light, showing curiosity and mystery. But as we go though the scene, it builds as Moses hears and listens to God. It swells when God begins to scold Moses, but grows soft and wondrous again. It doesn’t shy away from being loud and overbearing when God scolds Moses, but it also doesn’t shy away from being soft enough to put someone to sleep. Putting on my religious cap for a second: I love how that is like God in real life, who can––but doesn’t usually––scold us outright, but can also give us peace. Another thing I notice was when Moses asked who was speaking to him and God answered that He was… well, God, Moses immediately believes. He doesn’t have a second thought, because if you were led to a burning bush that started to talk to you, either you’re high off of something or God is talking to you; I’m guessing the latter. Anyways, Moses drops his staff in shock as you do and basically rips his shoes off. He doesn’t need to speak, as the animation does it for him. Those micro expressions speak so much as to the shock, even fear of what he’s experiencing right then. If you were to look at the animation, even with the sound off, you can easily see and pick out those expressions and just know what Moses is feeling. Another thing about that: When God says, “I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, and have heard their cry,” which Moses flinches, then comes into realization as he recalls when he had saved one of those people years ago when he was a prince of Egypt. You don’t need to be told that he still feels guilty for accidentally murdering the man that had been whipping the slave to death. You can see the regret of what he’d done, of why he ran from Egypt and away from the home and family he’d ever known. He looks away from the burning bush, or away from God, because he hasn’t forgiven himself for what had happened. Moses does not think that he should be in the presence of God because of that, so he looks away. Till God says that He’s going to send him to convince the Pharaoh to let the people go. You see and hear him say that he is not the person for the job, but that he was the son of the man who had slaughtered their children and had run away when he was facing the consequences of his actions. Only then did God begin to yell at him, which He never does unless it’s a dire circumstance. And Moses, and anyone else would do, huddles away in the corner and away from the Being yelling at him. I mean, imagine for a second: A God who created literally everything and has the power to kill you right then and there is yelling at you. I don’t think you would be standing boldly against him, but you would also be on the ground, trying to make yourself as small as possible. But after yelling at him, God––like any parent after yelling at their child, hopefully––carefully picks Moses up and comforts him, telling him that He will be with him, even though Pharaoh would not listen to them. And after God leaves Moses, you can see a tear roll down Moses’ cheek. Again, no words are spoken, but the music speaks for them. It’s telling the extravagant experience that Moses went through when he was relating it to his wife. I mean, after that kind of joyful thing happens to you, I’m sure you would want to tell friends and family what you had just experienced. The whole scene is nothing short of majestic, from the score to the animation to the voice work. You can see the care that was put into this masterpiece, and it makes me sad how far Dreamworks has fallen in term of these kinds of movies; I mean, how do you go from his absolute masterpiece that everyone forgets about to… The Boss Baby? Tell me. But that aside, from a religious perspective, this scene speaks volumes about who God is and what He can do for each and every one of us; from a writer’s perspective, this is a beautifully told story of a man who is called by God, or a mentor, to go and free people from unjust slavery. What this scene tells us, or me, is that no matter what you have done that is weighing you down, you can always rise up and strive and become a better person. That doesn’t mean that everything will always turn out great for us, but we need to work on it; help will always be there, whether in the form of friends and family or even from the Internet. Forgiving yourself is never an easy process, especially if that experience is the one that’s keeping you back from being the amazing and beautiful person I know you can be, but I believe that after you have forgiven yourself, things will go a whole lot easier than before. That doesn’t mean there won’t be hardships, but it will be a crap ton easier. This movie is a masterpiece, and you don’t have to be religious to enjoy it. If you haven’t watched it or haven’t watched it in a long time, please go do so. You will not regret every moment of it.

If it can be shown that hemalurgy causes irreparable harm, and it is not necessary to prevent significant loss of life, then I do not believe Jasnah would employ hemalurgy. Utilitarianism is not being a robot. It is doing the most good and the least amount of harm. Based on my reading of the character, she continually examines ALL possibilities, but always pursues the avenue that does the most good with the least amount of harm. I have a thread with an extensive list of quotes taken as it is written that I believe supports that

Frost?

*My life to yours, my Breath become yours* It IS the reluctant rescuer Warbreaker the Peaceful! All the clues were: 1. Waiting On A War 2. The Color and Shape 3. Savior Breath 4. Statues 5. Rope

"There's always another goat."

I think so. Spiritual DNA can alter far too many things for it to not have any Physical effect, imo. If it can alter eye colour, it can alter other genetic stuff too.

Chanarach?

Murder, Xing, it’s all the same to me! X-más! Merry Christmas and to all a good night

If you know, you know

If preservation and Ruin were able to mix, I don't see why Preservation and Cultivation could not.

I disagree that it's impossible. Unlikely, perhaps... but deliciously possible, I think. Is there evidence in the text that the Set has been breeding allomancers for "so long", or indeed, AT ALL? I know it's the conclusion that Wax and the others come to, but do we see any actual evidence? If I recall, the kidnappings were a quite recent development at the beginning of AoL. I recall no reason to think that Push and Pull need to be products of kidnapping and rape; why couldn't they simply have been hired professionals? Miles' crew was certainly not hurting for money, and there are numerous references in Era 2 of allomancers for hire. To my knowledge, we do not yet know how long the time gap is between SA5 and SA6, nor do we know where in that gap AoL will sit. We have only the roughest of guesses at how much time the Set will have to become an organization... but organizations can appear quickly with the right motivation. We may very well see the birth of that organization during SA5. I love the symmetry: the Ghostbloods - an organization founded by Scadrians - is perceived as a shadowy menace on Roshar, while the Set - founded by Rosharans - is the mysterious threat to Scadrial. The question NOT addressed, of course, is: how does Trell get involved?

If Axindweth is from Scadrial (which seems to be the consensus), then I believe she is part of the Ghostbloods. I believe she was sent by Thaidakkar (sp?) to work with/spy on Gavilar and Kelek. We know that Thaidakkar is probably investigating the things going on on Roshar to try to solve is cognitive shadow problem. Assuming the WoB's are true about the timelines of SA5 taking place chronologically before W&W, my latest crack theory is that the Set is a direct response to the Ghostbloods messing with Roshar. I believe that Shallan and Pattern will form the Set in retaliation to the Thaidakkar and Mraize's intervention, regardless of what happens with the whole champion thing. The Set's goals are particularly destructive, which makes me wonder if my Shallan/Set theory has any weight to it. Maybe the Set is run by a bunch of rogue Cryptics and not by any KR in particular.

Here's a quick little WOT comic.

End of an era. What would be the legal status of someone standing by and writing stuff down, I wonder?

Fair, fair. That explanation sounds a lot like "well, each category has to have an internal and external pair." Turns out that the stagnant, oppressive empire might not be the best place for scientific study. I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Steel and iron and brass and zinc are the pairs that make intuitive sense, IMO. The Enhancement metals make at least thematic sense, but might actually be "backward." It can be argued that wiping metal reserves should be a Pushing effect and consuming them explosively a Pulling one. Internal Temporal are... honestly arbitrary, as far as I can tell. I guess gold pulls something to you, thematically? Heh, maybe I should have gone through all the external ones first. External Temporal are really weird. To me they feel entirely backward. The intuitive effect of Pulling on time is that it compresses it around you, making it pass faster. I suppose I can see the idea of "grabbing" time and slowing its passage as well. Hmm... Internal Physical make sense to me, the idea that one lets you more easily affect the world, the other making it easier for the world to affect you. Internal Mental are an absolute mess and makes me think about Investiture fields. I'm sure this is an idea that's been hit upon before, though I have, IIRC, not been involved in any such discussion. (And I wish that I could take full credit for this idea, but proper credit for the basis I'm rambling from goes to my cousin, who isn't on the Shard AFAIK.) So, Investiture fields, or the most sensible explanation for how all this works, IMO. So, Investiture has associated waveforms, this information was seeded in Mistborn, reinforced in SA and ultimately confirmed outright in RoW. Investiure seems to produce a field around the user/holder. This field is related and unique to the nature of the power in question. This field allows the Investiture to affect things within it, either actively (e.g. steel and iron) or passively (e.g. Heightenings, Internal metals.) Gosh, I hope these ramblings make some degree of sense, just trying to phrase this is making my head spin. I think something along the lines of a spherical field surrounding the... do we have a generic term for "Investiture user?" (Or possibly something like a magnetic field, but this is Investiture physics, not proper physics, so who knows.) The exception is fields that only overlap the person and possibly things they touch, not sure how this part works exactly. It might also be that it simply is a field that doesn't propagate beyond the person, one that propagates by touch and one that affects everything within it. (Think the difference between a Soulcaster fabrial and Radiant, which I'd say is reinforced by the fact that something is either in a speed bubble or not, touch brings something into the Soulcaster "bubble.") The field varies in size by the power (and probably things like Allomantic strength, where applicable, given Rashek's ability to blanket soothe all of Luthadel) and determines the range of the power. The clearest example of this is probably the speed bubbles, being clearly delineated. So, in Allomancy, we have four (standard) catgories of metal/power, Physical, Mental, Temporal and Enhancement. Within each category, there are the further divisions of Pushing, Pulling, Internal and External. The above should be known by everyone in the thread, so why bring it up? Why follow the rambling on Investiture fields and waveforms with this? So, there's the interesting fact that all the Internal metals seem to have an Investiture field that only affects the user... except the Mental metals. One creates a field that "silences" Allomantic pulses, and presumably other Investiture pulses as well. The other creates a field in which you can "hear" the same Allomantic pulses, and other pulses if you know what you're doing. (Singer Seeker when Brandon?) Why are these Internal metals so... odd? Why are they the only ones that affect your surroundings no matter what you do? I posit that we have misunderstood Allomancy in yet another way. (Why stop when we're overturning a ton of established theory anyway? ) We know that for every Push, there's a Pull, as it were. All the Mental metals might actually be External and all Enhancement metals Internal. We know that at least Leeching works by touch, Primer Cube notwithstanding. Under my waveform/field scheme the Allomantic pulses and Tones of Roshar are also both expressions of the waveform of the Investiture. Which also leads to some interesting conjectures, like that you should be able to sense a difference between Allomancy depending on the fuel source, even if the base pulse is the same. Bronze is also interesting here (Pushing metal ) because of the mechanics of how it works. Can you sense Investiture being used outside your range/field? Can you sense it if your Investiture fields simply overlap? Does the originator of the Investiture you sense have to be fully within your field? Why can you even sense pulses from Internal metals? This turned rambly, but hopefully somewhat understandable. (Might make a proper writeup if I ever figure out how to phrase it properly...) ¤_¤

Here's some of the maps I've drawn, some of then have stories, others have no worldbuilding. Here's the first one. It isn't quite finished yet, but I plan on coloring it. There is little to no worldbuilding, but it clearly has a tale to tell. Here's another with lots of worldbuilding. And here's another with a decent amount of worldbuilding.

Serious answer: Brandon has implied that Kelsier had a direct hand in how the Church of the Survivor took shape based on things he learned from Sazed. Also, that he has an overinflated opinion of himself, but we knew that. xD Given his own experiences I suspect he doesn't see any of the Shards as gods, at least in the sense of entities worthy of worship. I think he's genuinely trying to keep his promise to Leras but I don't think he sees it as a religious duty per se. Non-serious answer: Kelsier is the Cosmere's one and only practitioner of the Church of the Fist, whose sole tenant is 'Thou shalt punch gods in the face'.

I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but Ishi is real crazy town banana pants, and is also referred to as “the one Odium tempted first” it’s not uncommon a theory that Ishar was corrupt from the get go. The Stormfather didn’t like him for one, and “there is a traitor amongst them” could as easily be applied to the unmade as the heralds. Ishar seems poised to be the villain of the heralds, even going back before the previous desolation.

Hero of Ages minor spoiler This one isn't a spoiler

Stormlight:

tWoK Spoilers, kinda

Major Mistborn spoilers

I haven’t made any memes in a while, time to rectify that I feel bad posting so many alignment charts but I like making them and I keep finding more

WoK:

Thanks for all the responses, I really appreciate your kind words. (Also, omg the profile pic, ah I'm honored!) I haven't been able to do much art because I'm in the middle of moving but I had to spit this one out really quick. Couldn't get the idea of Lady Inquisitors outta my head. Edit: Fixed!

Sorry for spam, Just completed a painting of Talenel

CosMerMay

Thank you kindly! Some more doodles from downtime at Jordancon!

Human beings are driven by stories. Of course, we all know that. After all, isn't that why we're all here? Because we all have a particular love for a particular storyteller and the amazing worlds and characters that he created. We love stories. Reading them, writing them, listening to them, telling them; it's built into the basic building blocks of the human psyche. Our entire understanding of the world is, at its most basic level, driven by stories. What follows under the spoiler tags is a story that I have written and told before. It'll be a little bit different this time, because this is the kind of story that changes with retellings. This is the sort of story that gives a little glimpse of how I, as a human, see reality. Do I believe it? Absolutely. Is it true? Heck if I know.