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Rasarr

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  1. Sup! I'm Rasarr, your other Polish mod. I joined the 17th Shard team after spending some time as a staffer of the Coppermind, where I still occassionally handle minutiae and take care of my personal obsession: collecting international covers of Brandon's books. Ever wondered what the "vampire Vasher" is? Which Sanderson book has Terminator on the cover? What body horror lurks in the original Mistborn release? I've got all these answers, for some reason. Other than that, you'll most often find me in gaming and writing discussions. I will talk your ear off about lore, of both my own made-up worlds and of my favourite games, if you let me.
  2. Dragonsteel 2023 is behind us, leaving in its wake plenty of Words of Brandon, a whole new book release (have you finished Defiant yet?), and, unsurprisingly, a ton of news. If, like me, you haven't been able to travel to the lovely Utah this year - or if you were there, but lost your memories to the con flu - here's a summary of all the announcements. Of course, you can watch most of them in the Defiant release event. A quick housekeeping note before we begin - there will be great many pictures in the article, of somewhat small sizes. You can zoom in by clicking on them. New Stormlight Archive 5 Reading Yes indeed, we have a new Stormlight Archive 5 reading! It's an unnumbered interlude, and if you're wondering what happens in it, let's just say... it's weird. If you wanna check it out, you can look it up in the Arcanum, right here. You can also watch it here; the link should take you to the right time stamp, but if not, skip to 1 hour 25 minutes. As for the overall book, it's about 90% done - which puts it on track for release on December 7th, 2024. New Releases and Re-Releases The con also saw the release of a new Cytoverse short story, Hyperthief. Co-written by Janci Patterson (who, of course, wrote Bastille vs the Evil Librarians as well as the Skyward novellas, and is writing Skyward Legacy at the moment), Hyperthief was distributed during the second day of the con. It's not widely available just yet, unfortunately, but you can purchase a bundle that has it on Brandon's site. Presumbly, there will be a digital release sometime, but there's no info on that currently. The Words of Radiance Leatherbound Kickstarter launches on March 5th 2024; almost exactly ten years after the book's original release. The design for the leatherbounds is apparently all done now - in fact, the books have already been printed. And as for the rewards? Well, for one, we'll be getting Dragonsteel Prime. This very, very old book of Brandon's has so far only been available for those who'd visit the Brigham Young University over in Provo, Utah. It's the origin of the Shattered Plains, the Bridge 4 plotline, and cosmere dragons, so it should be quite a treat. For the other stretch goals... feast your eyes on this beauty: Yes, this is in fact concept art for a Syl plushie - and it won't be alone. The plan at the present is to let the backers order plushies of spren from different Radiant orders. I don't know about you folks, but I'm real curious what the Bondsmith ones will look like. White Sand prose will be getting an official release. Or, well... re-release? Remake? Re-edition? Whatever we call it, this is, if you're keeping count, the fifth version of White Sand that we will be getting, after the original prose (still available by signing up for the newsletter), the graphic novels trilogy, the Graphic Audio adaptation, and the omnibus. This prose version should be the final one, though. Maybe. Possibly. Probably not. After all, there is always another White Sand. And finally, a bit of bad news to wrap this section up: there's no Cosmere movie coming up. The odyssey of trying and failing to adapt the Cosmere to the big screen continues, and once more, the news is that there is no news. Although Brandon and his team have apparently reached a point where people in mistcloaks were having script reads together, between the actors' strike and the writers' strike, the adaptation has been postponed yet again. So, if you're hoping to see Mistborn on screen in the near future - don't hold your breath. Future Writing Projects So what's the release schedule for the next few years? Well, White Sand the Final Definitive Prose Edition is the project Brandon will start working on as soon as he's done with revising Stormlight 5. And after that? Mistborn Era 3, semi-officially titled Ghostbloods. While writing that, Brandon also intends to write Elantris 2 and 3 - all before the first book of Ghostbloods even comes out, so the White Sand re-re-re-remake might be the last Brandon cosmere project for a little while. The wait will be even longer for Stormlight Archive 6, as Brandon does not intend to work on that until both Ghostbloods and the Elantris sequels are complete. I said "Brandon cosmere projects," as other than Brandon's stories, there will also be books coming up in both Cytoverse and the cosmere that won't be written by him. There is, as mentioned already, Janci Patterson's Skyward Legacy, the sequel to the main Skyward series. In addition to that, Isaac Stewart is writing a Nikki Savage book (that's the character from the newspapers from Mistborn Era 2 books). This one's apparently pretty far along already, though Brandon has yet to see the manuscript himself. Dan Wells is also working on his own cosmere project, though this one is in very early stages. Stormlight Roleplaying Game If you've been following Brandon news recently, you are probably aware that Brotherwise Games, the company behind the Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive game and the Stormlight miniatures Kickstarter, is working on the Stormlight Roleplaying Game. This tabletop RPG is based, naturally, on the Rithmatist... no, not really. It's the Stormlight Archive game, of course, and folks attending the con had the chance to watch it be played live, as well as see some of the art that will be present in the final rulebook. So, what do we know about the game so far? It's a d20 system (for the unfamiliar, this means you roll 20-sided dice and have to roll higher than a specific threshold to succeed), a touch similar to the perennial classic Dungeons & Dragons, albeit instead of classes, characters follow paths, with each path having its own skill tree and each character being able to freely spec into as many paths as their heart desires. The system so far encompasses only Roshar; it's not compatible with the Mistborn Adventure Game, the earlier cosmere RPG (which was developed by a different company, Crafty Games). We've also learned a bit more about the team behind Stormlight Archive RPG, which includes people who worked on the Star Wars RPG (the Fantasy Flight one), Legend of the Five Rings, Dungeons and Dragons modules, and MCDM rulebooks. You can see the full announcement below; you might notice a few... familiar faces there. The game is still some ways off from release; its publishing will be funded by a Kickstarter campaign, which will launch sometime in the latter half of the year 2024. If you're looking for more details about the game (and more cool artwork from it), plenty of outlets far more knowledgeable than myself about the world of tabletop RPGs have covered this topic, so for in-depth reading, I would encourage you to check out articles by Comicbook and Polygon. Other Games If you thought that the Stormlight Roleplaying Game will be the last cosmere tabletop game, think again. There are no less than two other projects coming out in the future. First up, we have the as-of-yet unnamed Mistborn deckbuilding game, set to release in late 2024. Little is known as of yet as to the exact mechanics; you will be taking control of Mistborn Era 1 characters, and "purchase" cards (in-game, not with actual money) to conduct high-speed Allomantic battles between them. We also have another card game coming out, titled Shards of Creation. It's based on - you guessed it - the Shards of Adonalsium, with each suit of cards representing one Shard (though it's possible that not all the Shards will be represented). It will be a trick-taking game; if you're unfamiliar, trick-taking games are ones where each round (or "trick") each player plays one card, and one player wins, "taking" the trick. That's about all we know about Shards of Creation for now; no release date has been given at the moment, and the only artwork out there is what was shown during the announcement: Other News Dragonsteel 2024 date has already been decided: December 5th through 7th, 2024. That's Thursday to Saturday, which should hopefully be easier to attend for people. Like this year, it will be taking place in Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, and will coincide with a new book release - that being, of course, Stormlight Archive 5. Finally, Dragonsteel is using all that money we're throwing at them to build itself an HQ. Known so far as "the DS project", "the Dragonsteel construction project," "Dragonsteel village," "the castle," and probably a few other names, it will be a mix of corporate headquarters, Sanderson bookstore, and a "destination for fans". Who knows, maybe the future Dragonsteels will be held there instead of the Salt Palace - but that's still in the far future. For the moment, the castle exists only as a bunch of sketches and 3D mock-ups. And that's all! Lots of news, lots of announcements; sufficed to say, between the upcoming books, games, cons, and Kickstarters, being a Sanderson fan is going to be a busy job over the next few years. I'm certainly excited for what's to come (particularly, not gonna lie, the Stormlight Roleplaying Game), but what about you all? Anything you're looking forward to?
  3. Rejoice, Cytoverse readers! The full release of Defiant, the finale to the Skyward series, is coming up soon - just two weeks away, can you believe it? But if you absolutely can't wait those two weeks, don't worry; the publisher's got you covered. Penguin Random House has released a new Look Inside feature for Defiant, which includes the prologue and the first eight chapters of the book. You can read it right here! Keep in mind, though, if you're on the phone - for some reason, the Look Inside is not available in the mobile view of the site. You will have to switch to desktop view in order to open it. Since the previews are out and the book releases so soon, we are getting our spoiler channels and forums up and running. Here, you can discuss the preview chapters (and the full book, once it's out) in the Defiant sub-forum. On Discord, you can do so in the #defiant-spoilers channel. Happy reading!
  4. Hey, sorry it took so long. I've been sending out Aether every Sunday, around evening Europe time, so normally you shouldn't wait more than a week. Unfortunately, I've been on vacation since last Saturday, and didn't have the mind to take care of it while abroad; I was planning to ask another staff member to do it, but I forgot in all the vacation preparation, so all the last week's requests ended up delayed. Regardless, I just finished going through the requests thread, so the copy should be in your DM inbox; let me know if you haven't received it.
  5. If you’ve been with us for more than two years, you might recall that once upon a time, we ran a poll asking you, the users, to judge us, the staff. The original plan was to make the Staff Review an annual event, but, well, 2022 ran away from us. Still, the Staff Review has returned for the year 2023 - so how about we look at some charts? We have so many charts to look at (and some of those charts are rather small by necessity, so if you have trouble reading, you can click on the image to zoom in). First off, let’s talk demographics! During the first Staff Review, we received 146 responses; this time, it was 157 - a small increase, especially compared to the rise in the Sharder population. We also asked you to declare which of our two main platforms - forums and Discord - you most commonly use, so let’s start with that. While we expected the majority of you to be Discord mains, I do admit that this majority was not as large as we expected. A third of you still prefer forums to Discord - something we will definitely have to keep in mind, as most of the current staff is primarily active on the latter, and from your other answers… well, it shows. With this said, let’s move on to our regular questions. Quality of Moderation The first is quite simple - on a scale of 1 (awful) to 5 (amazing), how do you rate the quality of moderation on the 17th Shard? And it seems like the majority of you rate us quite well indeed! More than 70% of you gave us the highest marks at 5, with less than 4% rating us below a 4. This is a notable improvement from the last poll, where that number was almost 8%. Interestingly, there is almost no variation between ratings given to us by forum and Discord users, with the average rating being 4.67 for Discord, and 4.66 for the forums. With that, let’s move on to the next topic: do you think the staff members are in tune with the general 17th Shard community? Here, "1" means we are completely out of touch, while "5" means we are just like the rest of you. The response was a bit more tepid this time around, though still overwhelmingly positive. It is important to us that we’re active members of the community, so that we can accurately tell what you want to see from us. And much like with the demographics question, it’s obvious we should focus more on the forums side of things; while both Discord and forum users rate us highly, the forum ratings are visibly lower than the Discord ones, with an almost 0.2 difference in averages. Moving on, we have a returning question from last year: how strict do you think the mods are as a whole? For this chart, "1" means that we are too strict, and a "9" means we are too lax. As was to be expected, you consider us to be more on the stricter side of things, with around 40% of you voting on the "strict" side, while another 43% believe we’ve attained a happy middle. This being said, compared to two years ago, the needle has moved marginally towards the "lax" side. This might be thanks to greater participation of forum goers, who have, on average, rated us as less strict than Discord users. Next up, let’s talk conflict resolution. This is something we have been thinking about recently, so we’ve decided to ask: what do you think about the way Staff members resolve conflicts and problems on the Shard. In this case, "1" means we suck at it, while "5" means we always resolve all conflicts perfectly. The results are, overall, quite good, with over 90% of you rating us as either very good or excellent at it. This being said, this is obviously an area in which we could further improve, as you have made clear in the next two, open-ended questions, in which we asked you to talk about any particular incidents or staff members that have caught your attention. While we will not cite the exact answers here, there has been plenty of valuable critique that will, hopefully, help us improve in the future. There were also several compliments! It seems you rate us highly when it comes to transparency and communication - an improvement compared to your opinions the last time we ran the poll. Plenty of you have appreciated our efforts towards inclusivity, and making the Shard a safe, welcoming place for everyone - a commitment we very much intend to uphold. Spoiler Policy Our spoiler policy is something we spend a lot of time on, hoping to ensure both veteran and new Sanderfans have a good time, so we obviously want to hear what you think about it. Here, the differences between Discord and forums are definitely beginning to show clearly. While the vast majority of you believe that the policy is fine, it seems there is a difference in how we enforce it on each of our platforms - on Discord, people lean more towards calling us overzealous, while on the forums, we’re more likely to be considered overly lax. The percentage of people who don't understand the spoiler policy on the forums is also concerning, and something we should definitely look into. Communicating with the Staff We also had two questions for you regarding the way you communicate with the Staff. As a reminder - if you have something to report to us, we always welcome a ping, a report or a private message! It’s not bothering us; we can’t be everywhere, so we have to rely on user reports to assist us in moderation. With that being said, let’s get to the first of our two communication questions: what is your preferred method of contacting the Staff? Once more, the discrepancy between forums and Discord is readily apparent. The number of people unaware they could contact us in the first place is worrisome - especially on the forums, where over a quarter of responders stated that they did not know it was allowed. Likewise, a fifth of forum users would rather not interact with us at all, as opposed to only 8% of Discord users. At a guess, this is another effect of the staff having increased presence on the Discord, making us more visible (and, perhaps, more approachable) there. Onwards to the next question, this one exclusive for Discord users: have you ever used @Staff to ping us? Here, we gave you a list of pre-made responses, as well as an option to write your own. It is quite encouraging to see that almost 80% of you have either pinged us before, or felt no need to do so. It is a little less encouraging to see that almost a tenth of you are scared to contact us. Again - nothing to be afraid of! If you have something to report, ping away! What about those “other responses”, though? Without quoting the exact statements, there are three trends we’ve noticed: You are unaware that pinging us is an option (which comes back to the problem we’ve noticed in the last question) You prefer DMs over a public ping (which is perfectly valid!) You use the function to report spam bots (which is appreciated!) The next two questions let us tell us what you think directly and anonymously, and it was quite nice to see all the positive messages for us - we really appreciate you. Likewise, we appreciate the people who took the time to point out what we could improve on; we hope to put those lessons into practice. There were also a few… interesting responses, such as: “Ramen noodles are delicious” “Brownies make your day better.” “Actually, this form is written by six people, and we’d rather not explain it (it involves a Kickstarter and a Splintered group).” The People’s Mod Awards Finally, we’ve reached the question you’ve probably been the most curious about, and the one that inspired the whole concept of staff review in the first place: who is the people’s favourite moderator? Once more, Argent snags the top spot, followed closely behind by Ene! In third place we have Chaos, as well as Feather, who rose an entire sixteen spots since the last poll, pushing Rasarr down to fourth place (or is it fifth, if two people hold the bronze medal?). But wait, there’s more! Now we can sort the results by platform! In the forums category of People’s Mod Awards, Ene wins by a landslide, racking up 30% more votes than Argent; on the Discord front, Argent keeps his overall first place, followed closely behind by Feather. So, what next? Well, that about does it for Staff Review 2023. We certainly learned a lot, both in terms of what must be done (it seems we all agree the #cosmemes channel over on Discord needs another look), what you think of the staff (I do need to get my TTRPG schedule in order, for sure), and in other matters (why were there six people filling in the poll together, anyway?). Hopefully, by the time we come back with Staff Review 2024 (and hopefully, we will remember to make Staff Review 2024…), you will see tangible improvement on our part. Until then, thank you for being part of the Shard! We might be the ones tasked with herding this pack of giraffes, but it’s you, the users, who make this place great.
  6. Can you believe it's April already? Yep, it's been three months since the start of the year (of the Sanderson), and that means two things for us Sanderson readers. First of all, Tress of the Emerald Sea has received its wide English-language releases from Tor and Gollancz, so if you've missed the Kickstarter, now you can properly purchase the book in all places where books are sold. Unfortunately, that might put you ahead of some Kickstarter backers, as the physical copies of Tress are still being sent out - a consequence of a start-of-the-year bottleneck in printing that continues to haunt the Dragonsteel team as we roll into the fourth month of 2023. Per their own website, they have now sent out 72% of Tress boxes; hopefully, those last books will arrive soon. The Kickstarter backers do have something to tide them over, though, as the unwieldily-named The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England has now been released for backers, with a new cover and a whole new slew of interior art. That's all courtesy of Steve Argyle, whom you might know for his illustrations in The Way of Kings leatherbound and the Kickstarter Knight Radiant posters. The physical copies of Frugal Wizard are only now beginning to depart the Dragonsteel warehouses, but if you have backed the project, you can find the digital version waiting for you on the Backerkit website. As always, remember that the spoiler period for the Secret Projects is six months; we have created the Frugal Wizard forum here on the Shard, as well as a spoiler channel in our Discord, so if you've read the book and wanna share your thoughts, come and join us!
  7. One of the formats you get out of your purchase is .epub; you can get an .epub file onto kindle in a bunch of different ways, it is a format Amazon can understand. From what I'm hearing, Dynamite apparently decided not to give digital versions of the book to people who purchased the physical. I have heard that some folks who backed for the ebook version have had trouble claiming it from the website, but honestly, I'm as confused as you are.
  8. It has been... a few months since we were supposed to get the White Sand omnibus, but at long last, it's here! The digital edition, at least - as of today, you can purchase the ebook from Dynamite here. The full price clocks in at 40 USD; here's what that money will give you: All three volumes of the original White Sand, with adjustments to lineart and colouring (rest in peace, boombox my beloved), as well as a few new scenes inserted into the original chapters A brand-new prologue following Khriss Ars Arcanum pages scattered throughout the entire omnibus, discussing not only sand mastery, but also astronomy, culture, and even (a little bit of) Darkside magic You might fairly be wondering what happened to the physical editions of the book, and the answer is, they are coming soon-ish. In an Indiegogo update from December 15th, Dynamite has revealed that they've received the first shipment of the softcovers from the printer, and will begin sending them immediately. The hardcovers, meanwhile, are still awaiting their printing; as such, it is impossible to tell when they will arrive. Finally, a quick note about our spoiler policy here on the Shard, both the forums and Discord. White Sand is not a new book, and a scattershot way in which the various editions are distributed makes it difficult to establish when to start and end a spoiler period. As such, we are not establishing any spoiler period for the omnibus - you may discuss it untagged in all spaces where the plain old White Sand can be discussed. As for the Ars Arcanum, we are fine with people posting pages or fragments of pages when it is pertinent to the discussion at hand - however, we will not allow posting the entire AA in bulk or single pages without context.
  9. Yep, both of those came up after the article was posted; it's now been updated!
  10. If you wanted to own figurines of Stormlight Archive's main characters, now's your chance, as Brotherwise Games began their Kickstarer for the Stormlight Premium Miniatures set of minis. If you were ever at any point concerned that the Kickstarter may fail, you may lay those worries to rest: it has been an hour and the Kickstarer has already made more than six times its projected goal of 50,000 dollars. So, what does the Kickstarter have for us? Well, first of all are the character miniatures themselves. Those were designed in tight collaboration with Dragonsteel, and their depiction of characters is considered canon. They are sold in sets of six, and sorted by book. To wit, we have: The Way of Kings pack: Blackthorn Dalinar (i.e. in full Shardplate), Eshonai, Bridge Four Kaladin (i.e. dressed in Parshendi corpses), Syl, Assassin Szeth (in his iconic pose), and Shallan. Words of Radiance pack: Shardbearer Adolin, Captain Kaladin (i.e. in Bridge Four uniform), Pattern, Taravangain, Veil, and Wit Oathbringer pack: Bondsmith Dalinar (i.e. in uniform), Jasnah, a generic Heavenly One, Lift, Renarin, and Skybreaker Szeth (i.e. with Nightblood) Rhythm of War pack: Shadesmar Adolin (i.e. in uniform), Shardplate Kaladin, Maya, Navani, Vyre, and Venli Unfortunately, there is no way to purchase individual figurines. If you want that one Maya on your shelf, you will have to shell out for the full Rhythm of War set - which is not to be mistaken for the Rhythm of War tier, as in the now-updated FAQ for the Kickstarter, Brotherwise explained that you will be able to choose between any of the four book sets regardless of which of the first few tiers you've selected. If that is somehow not sufficient to you, however, Brotherwise has more to offer: Four larger-scale, painted figurins of Jasnah, Shardbearer Adolin, Captain Kaladin, and Skybreaker Szeth (the regular minis listed above are unpainted) A set of Stormlight Archive-branded paints A large figure of a Chasmfiend A set of two generic Alethi soldiers and two Parshendi warriors for your tiny plastic commanders to lead A digital pack of STL files for various generic Rosharan troops and a chull, for the 3D-printer-blessed among us "Clashing Storms", a massive, fully-painted statue showing the clash between Kaladin and Szeth from the end of Words of Radiance, which you can take as a individual add-on for a breezy 350 dollars, or alongside everything else for an appropriately-named "All-In" tier of 475 dollars or more Additionally, Brotherwise is set to add more figurines as add-ons, to be revealed as the campaign continues to blow past the stretch goals. The first of these has already been revealed to be none other than the Herald of War, Taln. Before you decide to buy him, however, check your pledge level on Brandon's last Kickstarter, the one for Secret Projects, as users who pledged to it at Year of Sanderson levels will receive the Taln mini in one of the swag boxes. Brotherwise has confirmed that they will not be releasing STL files for any of the named characters, unfortunately, out of concern for piracy. They have, however, stated that they intend to sell the miniatures later through more traditional retailers, so if you cannot afford the minis now, do not worry - you will have the chance to get them later. If you are interested, though, it is probably the fanciest set of Stormlight collectibles out there, and if you can paint them, they will undoubtedly look stunning in your home.
  11. After a two-year hiatus, we’re back with another round of Coppermind Objectives! We know that The Lost Metal isn’t too far off, and we’ll be releasing a series of Mistborn objectives when the release gets closer to prepare for that. But for now, there are plenty of other pages that need work, including Cytoverse, Stormlight Archive, and even the Reckoners. There are tons of ways to help, so we hope you’ll join in! We’ll happily accept any assistance we can get, so don’t be shy. If you're new to editing the Coppermind, don't worry; we'll help you out with guides and plenty of assistance. You don't need experience or expertise, just the will to help out! We'll also give you Coppermind awards, because there’s nothing more fun than fake internet points. Without further ado, here are our objectives for June and July. If you find something you'd like to help with, claim it here, and let us know if you have any questions! If nothing in the list below catches your eye, there are leftover objectives from previous months up for grabs in the claim spreadsheet. If you sign up for something, please say hi on Discord so that we can offer support and touch base with you! Larger Projects Let's start with some larger projects. These objectives will definitely require some research and a good bit of writing. Anyone is welcome to take them - we just don't want you to feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew. 1. Superiority First up is the Superiority, the giant multi-species nation that governs most of the known universe in the Cytoverse books. This page already has all the information from Skyward and Starsight on it, but needs to be updated with Cytonic and the three Skyward Flight novellas. 2. Detritus The Detritus page barely has any information on it right now, despite all we know about both the planet and its platforms. The page needs info from all the Cytoverse books, including the novellas. If you’re confused about how to organize the information on such a broad topic, we’ll be happy to help! 3. Shallan’s Rhythm of War History Despite being one of the main characters in the Stormlight Archive, Shallan’s History section is very lacking when it comes to info from Rhythm of War. It only has a few short paragraphs, but her actions in the book need to be explained in greater detail. This job is straightforward, but will require a good deal of reading and research. 4. Earth (Reckoners) Reckoners isn’t Brandon’s most popular series, but it still needs plenty of work! There is plenty of information to be unpacked about the world itself, but right now there’s not much on the page besides a list of the different Fractured States. This one will require a good deal of research, but it badly needs some work. 5. Morriumur Morriumur is part of the main crew in Starsight, yet their page is quite lacking. They don’t have a history section or a relationship section at all. They have an Appearance and Personality section and an Attributes and Abilities section, but even those need more filling out. This page needs a bunch of info, but it also has the advantage of Morriumur only appearing in one book so far. 6. Vapor Similar to Morrimur, Vapor is an important character who only appears in Starsight, but needs lots of info. She only has about a paragraph in her history section, and not much else. She’ll need all the various sections filled out with info from Starsight. 7. Trackt The Trackts are a fairly important element in White Sand, serving as the law enforcement in Lossand. Their page barely has any information as of now, but there’s a fair bit to be unpacked from the books. This would include their organization and how they operate, as well as their notable activities. Smaller Tasks These are objectives that won’t take as much heavy research and writing, and won’t take as long to do. Many of these may take some more careful digging, which can be made a lot easier if you have the ebook for the relevant book. 1. Rock’s Relationships Rock is a popular character from the Stormlight Archive, and most of his page is pretty well filled out. However, he doesn’t have a Relationships section, despite having a full family, and close bonds with various members of Bridge Four. This project will require a decent amount of research, but should be fun to do and not take super long. 2. Shu-Korath Shu-Korath is one of the major religions on Sel in Elantris, and already has a decent amount of information on its page. However, it only has one citation on the entire page. The page could use a bit more filling out, particularly about their beliefs, and it needs citations for the whole page. 3. Teshav Khal Brightlady Teshav Khal is the wife of General Khal, and the scribe for both him and Dalinar. She appears several times in Oathbringer, and has a few appearances in Rhythm of War, where she accompanies Dalinar to Emul. Her history section just needs updating from both books, and should be fairly straightforward. If you have Oathbringer or Rhythm of War in ebook form, using the search function will make the job a lot easier. (And if you don’t, many of our staff have the ebooks, and would be happy to help) 4. Stoff Stoff is a Vice Admiral in the DDF, and an important character in Evershore. He currently only has one sentence on his page, despite there being quite a bit to cover about him. He’ll need an Appearance and Personality section and a History section, though likely not Relationships or Attributes and Abilities sections. He only appears in Evershore, which is only a novella, so his page won’t take super long to complete. 5. Peg Peg, a pirate in Cytonic, is an important character for most of the book. She has her early history on her page already, but will need the rest of it filled out, as well as the other usual sections. 6. Rinakin Rinakin doesn’t do a whole lot for most of ReDawn, but is still a fairly important character to the story. He already has well written Appearance and Personality and Attributes and Abilities sections, but is lacking both History and Relationships sections (though the latter will likely just need to include Alanik). This one will be pretty short, and again, having the ebook will likely make the job much easier. 7. Nedd Strong’s History Nedd is one of the original members of Skyward Flight, and still quite active. His other sections are quite good, but his History section needs updating with info from all three Skyward Flight novellas. 8. Arturo Mendez’s History Like Nedd, Arturo is one of the original members of Skyward Flight, and is still quite active. His other sections are fully filled out, but his History section needs updating with info from all three Skyward Flight novellas. 9. Matthew Cobb Last but not least, we have Admiral Cobb, another Cytoverse character. His other sections are fairly good, but his History section needs updating with info from Starsight, as well as all three novellas. Four books is a lot, but he doesn’t do a lot of active things in those books like he does in Skyward, so it shouldn’t be too big of a task. What’s in it for me? We want to motivate people to help, so we will be giving out Coppermind awards for the users in the coming months with the most edits, and we'll also give out awards if you contributed to one of these items. They'll be on your user page for all to see. How do I start? The most important thing is to be bold! Content is hard to write, but we can always format your stuff if it doesn't quite match conventions. MediaWiki notation may appear scary at first, but the best way to learn is through experience. If you're interested, we have lots of guides to help, which you can find here: Help:Contents. It does very much help to have ebooks so you can find instances of a specific word or person (this is extremely helpful for minor characters). If you have physical books, ask us and we can help you pin down chapters so you don't need to reread the whole text. We can also direct you towards some good articles to use as a go-by. Come join us on the dedicated Coppermind Discord, or chat in the #coppermind channel on the 17th Shard Discord. We are really happy to help!
  12. Two weeks ago, we started an anonymous poll where we asked you, the users, to judge us, the mods! Now that two weeks have passed, we have pored over the results to discover the answers to what are clearly the most pressing questions we could have - who's the people's favourite moderator? Who's the most terrifying? And what did anonymous user #78 have for breakfast the day they filled out the poll? (it was a turkey sandwich, apparently) All in all, 146 users have given us their answers over the course of fourteen days that the poll was up - assuming we didn't have anyone answering the poll multiple times. Two people have decided to leave their polls blank for some reason, so: here are 17th Shard's opinions on the staff as represented by 144 people. Quality of moderation on the Shard The first three questions were focused on general opinion on the staff: in short, are we doing a good job? Well, in your opinion, it seems that we are! A 1 here meant we were doing terribly; a 5 meant very good. Almost 70% of you gave us the top marks when it comes to general moderation on the Shard, while no-one said we're horrible at it - nice! There were, of course, responders who believe we could do a better job of it - this is valuable for us to know and we will work to improve and hopefully raise these responses in the next poll! In this question, 1 indicated that the mods are too harsh; 9, that we are too lax. As perhaps could've been expected, it seems you find us to be on the harsher side of things; only twelve people answered on the lax side of the poll, while almost half believe we have attained the happy middle ground. Here, 1 indicated that the mods are too scary to approach, while 5 meant that you felt you could be casual with the mods. It seems like almost a quarter of you are at least somewhat wary of mod interactions, which is probably tied to the prior result naming us somewhat harsh. This is something we can improve on in the future. The People's Mod and the Scariest Mod The next two questions were mostly fuelled by our curiosity: who do you think is the most approachable mod? Who do you find the scariest to talk to? When it comes to question number 1, the race for the top rank was close, but the results were clear: in Excel, because Google Forms wouldn't let me sort the answers The People's Mod award goes to Ene! Rasarr (it is I!) comes in second place (thank you, thank you), while trailing close behind are Argent, Overlord Jebus and LadyLameness. While the race for the most approachable mod was somewhat close, especially in the first few days, you folks never hesitated when it came to the scariest one. Yep! The Scariest Mod award goes to Chaos by a landslide. No less than 53% of the responders found him to be the most fearsome; the next mods (Argent, Grey, LadyLameness and Ene) trail far, far behind. Conversely, the Least Scary Mod award goes to Paleo, Mestiv and FelCandy, whom no responder found scary. I would also like to shout out the anon who found Argent to be both the most scary and the most approachable of the mods, and another anon who thought the same of Chaos. I do not understand how this works, but I respect you. Preferred ways of contacting the mods Our next question concerned itself with how you would go about contacting the mods, and I'm happy to see that most of you would not shy away from contacting us in some way, should the need arise. Only 7 of you found us too fearsome to summon (I must wonder if it's the same 7 who found us too scary, though I admit I did not look into that). I will say, there is nothing to fear! If you have any issue with something happening on the forums or on the Discord server, do not hesitate to contact us! If you don't want to speak to the specific mods directly, the forum's report and Discord's @Staff ping will summon any mod currently online, and we will absolutely not begrudge you for using it. The open questions Questions 7 and 8 were open text fields, letting you folks tell us what you think in plain English. We will not be inserting a full list of them here - first of all, it doesn't graph well, second, some of those answers might be used to guess who the speaker was. For question 7 ("Is there something you particularly like or dislike about 17th Shard's moderation, or think we could do better?"), the answers were roughly half praise and critique. While the former was very nice to hear, the latter in particular is extremely useful to us; we will strive to improve on the points you have raised. Question 8 was a bit more freeform ("Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?"), and so were the answers. The bulk of it was outpouring of love and affection for the mods, which we are very grateful for, as it feeds our egos quite well indeed. There were several more serious issues raised, and we will be looking at them in the future. There were also comments of other nature, such as: culinary advice (I'm not a fan of pickles myself, but I'm sure someone will make use of it) "Today I had a good day" (good to hear! Hopefully, you had more good days since) "Hi" (and hello to you as well!) "I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now." (good for you, buddy, good for you) A picture of a cat (aww) There was also an assumption that we are all beta readers, which I feel needs to be clarified: no. At least half of us (myself included) are not part of Brandon's writing process - and the part of the staff that are beta or gamma readers are absolutely forbidden from telling us anything. We do not have any knowledge you don't have. The Shard's Favourite Mod Now that I've talked your ear off, let's get to the real question, and the one that inspired this poll in the first place: who is the Shard's favourite staff member? The answer is clear: you have no idea. On a less facetious note, ignoring the "all or none" answers, the Favourite Mod crown goes to Argent! In the second place we have Ene, while the third is shared between Rasarr and Chaos, followed by Lady Lameness. So, there you have it - a look into the minds of the Shard members. I would like to sincerely thank everyone who responded, and doubly so the people who praised and critiqued us. Knowing what you feel we're doing right and wrong is extremely helpful, and we promise we will try to learn from what you've told us. And if you've missed the poll, or feel like we should need more data - do not worry. We definitely intend to run it again in the future, both to see if we're improving and to hear more of your honest thoughts.
  13. Hello there! I know I'm not around here as much, but many of the mods are, and we'd like to hear your opinion: how do you think we're doing moderating the forums and the Discord server? Is there anything you'd like to say about or to the mod team? Who is your favourite moderator? If you have a few minutes to fill out our anonymous survey, we'd love to hear your thoughts: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvAbLhn3QqwLtcYEp1uOC5h-EPIPfb4oELwGlgJukME2c9ug/viewform
  14. This post will contain spoilers for both Skyward and Starsight. Skyward 3 cover and title reveal As announced by Brandon himself, The Book Formerly Known As Nowhere now has a real title, description, release date(s) and no less than two covers, as Brandon's American and British publishers decided to announce them both at once. So without further ado, here comes Cytonic. Alongside it we have the UK release; if you've been following the leaks, you might've seen this one pop up before, but now it's official! As with the previous books in the series, the American cover was created by Charlie Bowater, while the British art is the work of Sam Green. Preorders for both versions are already up on your bookseller website of choice; per Brandon's tweet, the book will release on November 23rd, 2021 in the US, and on November 25th in UK. To round up the Cytonic goodies, we also have the description for the book and it's... not very heavy on the actual plot. Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell—the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home. Now, the Superiority—the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life—has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator. Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy. The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return. To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying. We actually did a predictions podcast for Cytonic (though we didn't know its name then) back in March which might interest you: Skyward novellas Alongside Cytonic, we will also be getting three Skyward novellas! They're co-written by Janci Patterson (who is also collaborating with Brandon on the final Alcatraz book), and they will be released as ebooks and audiobooks simultaneously, with maybe a physical release later down the line. While we have no date for any of them yet, two of those novellas have popped up on Brandon's progress bar on his website already, and they are definitely coming along nicely. Sunreach: the final draft for this one has been completed, meaning it's basically done as far as writing is concerned; of course, there's still much that has to happen before it's ready for release. This one will be written from the perspective of FM, one of the Skyward Flight pilots who survived the first book to later be largely absent from Starsight. ReDawn: As of this writing, the second novella is sitting at 43% of its first draft. We don't know whose point of view this will be following, but ReDawn is the home planet of the comatose alien Alanik, so... Wax & Wayne 4 progress update and Warbreaker leatherbound giveaway Yes, we do have non-Skyward news for you today. First: Wax & Wayne 4, or The Lost Metal, is currently sitting at nice round 30%. Second: to celebrate two hundred thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel, Brandon will be giving away a signed copy of the Warbreaker leatherbound. All you have to do to participate is send an email to [email protected] before Firday 28th of May - so there's little time left. For more information, check out the video on Brandon's channel. So, what do you make of it all? Would you rather the title of the book remained Nowhere? Which cover do you prefer? Hyped for the novellas? Tell us in the comments below!
  15. Oh, there's a ton of moments. If I were to pick my favourite-favourite... "You cannot have my pain", and the entire scene surrounding it. Shallan apologizing for apologizing. The Tower, all of it. Lift and Nale's hug and the conversation that follows at the end of Edgedancer. "Dalinar knelt beneath a fracturing sky, holding his son." Szeth's and Kal's battle at the end of WoR. Hm... there's a passage, I think early in OB, where Kaladin thinks about his depression and how on bad days, it's hard to remember there are good days. I can't remember it right now, but I remember really loving it when I read it.
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