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ftl

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ftl last won the day on November 21 2020

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  1. Looking forward to Maya and the rest of the deadeyes hopefully coming back and giving their perspective! Also looking forward to the Heralds hopefully being repaired.
  2. Or she might still be on Braize! If she got sent to Braize by the time all the voidspren and Fused were in the everstorm or were preparing for it, they might never have captured her or even realized she was there. Lots of possibilities.
  3. I like the theory that he's talking about the art. That is in fact something he can do in his books that is very hard for other authors to do, because generally authors don't get to direct artists like that. I think if it was just the internal wiki and the outlining, well, any author who wants to can set up a worldbuilding wiki or document, or outline far into the future of their series if they want, I don't think Brandon would consider that something that he can do that others can't. (He is quite good at it, but he doesn't seem like he's the type of person to consider a writing strength of his "something that would be very hard for other people to do".) And the art that we have... well, we've got art of the Heralds - and he's said the back 5 books will focus on the Heralds, maybe there's foreshadowing in that art. And of course the voidbinding chart - it's got an obvious similarity to the surgebinding chart, and it seems like it will be important later, so I think that's an exellent candidate for "subtle foreshadowing that other authors can't do."
  4. So, picking a good question is tough. Thing is, I wouldn't want to ask a question that just gets RAFOed because it's going to be addressed later, and I don't actually want spoilers. So I think any questions about Adonalsium or Hoid are better held until we've had Dragonsteel, any questions about the Recreance or the migration from Ashyn to Roshar or the backstory of a bunch of Stormlight characters have to wait until after 6 more Stormlight books, etc. I also don't want to ask for confirmation of stuff that the fans can figure out anyway. So the best questions would be ones from the stories that are already done, things that are interesting and unanswered but might never be answered or even relevant in books. So things I think could be good would be maybe: 1. In Warbreaker, what's the political situation like between Hallandren, Idris, and Pahn Kahl another few decades after the end of that book? 2. On Sel - how was the magic different before Odium splintered the Shards there? [edit] I had more questions but realized they were about SP3 which can't be discussed outside of that forum yet even in spoiler tags oops
  5. Huh. You know, that's plausible enough. As good a theory as any!
  6. Well, they did say that those areas looked the same from above, since the shroud let light in one-way. Chapter 40: So that particular thing wasn't due to un-thorough surveying, that was the machine messing with things. It could have made other pockets of habitability if it wanted, I think. Though in this particular book we don't see any indication that it would have, who knows...
  7. OK, I was actually thinking of this one, from chapter 21: Design thinks the whole planet is covered in shroud, and they did survey it. It certainly leaves open the possibility that she didn't pay close attention and there could be gaps in the shroud elsewhere on the planet, but I think it rules out the idea that the shroud is only right around this one tiny square (because if the planet was mostly un-shrouded and just this tiny element was covered in shroud, that would be pretty noticeable!)
  8. Pretty sure it covers the whole planet. Either design or Masaka says so at some point, I think.
  9. Yeah, the interesting thing is that for them, there's really no need to expand. The energy they get comes from Hion - they're not out there searching for more fertile land, or for more resources, they're just finding ways to exploit Hion more and more. ...I personally think that it's a bit of an odd worldbuilding choice. The scale of the story, to me, doesn't feel like it matches up to the scale of the worldbuilding. It's a machine that created a planetwide shroud of Investiture! ...out of the humans that lived in a 50x50 mile area. The resulting civilization reached for the stars and advanced to the point where they can do technological space travel! ...without really ever leaving the tiny area of the planet's surface that they've explored. Idunno. It certainly works, the worldbuilding is solid, but I think it all would have just felt better if both civilizations, both pre and post-machine, had been implied to have been all around the world, and not just one tiny corner of it. Even if none of that other area was plot-relevant.
  10. It's standalone, but IMO it has enough references to Stormlight that it should be read after RoW. Not required though, just an opinion.
  11. The tone of the books doesn't have too much to do with the death toll of the backstory, TBH. Brandon's books are always about how good people, when they try, can make a difference. They can grow and change if they were bad before, they can overcome their challenges, and they can solve whatever problems the world has no matter how impossible they seem. That's what makes the books hopeful and positive. And, interestingly, the worse the situation is at the start, the more hopeful the story can be. The worse things are for the heroes, the more AWESOME it is when they fix everything.
  12. He got his spren at the end of oathbringer, but as far as we know he doesn't leave Roshar during the Stormlight Archive story, he stays there and has time to be with Jasnah.
  13. There is - the Shroud is basically a bunch of raw Investiture, Yumi is stated to be extremely invested (far more Invested than a Returned, more like an Elantrian). I think Realmatically, the part about how Yumi got a body again is not unique. Because she's super Invested, she persisted in the Cognitive realm for a while, not being pulled to the Beyond very quickly at all; in that time, Painter and Yumi formed a body for her out of all this Investiture around (her will and his painting), using their Connection to each other through their weird bond to pull her into it. That's basically all you need - somebody who's Invested enough to persist in the cognitive realm while you do your thing, and a boatload of investiture to make them a new body, and some way to pull them into it. The main blocker for it is the Investiture required - it's a lot. ...we still don't know why exactly Endowment takes the memories of the Returned, but as far as I can tell it's not that becoming a cognitive shadow stapled back into a body inherently removes memories, it's that Endowment is specifically choosing to remove the memories of the cognitive shadows she creates with divine breaths, for some as-of-yet unknown reason.
  14. Both of those might be true for Spirits, too? We don't know when they arose, I think? Though throughout most of the story it's easy to kind of assume that the start of all this was Virtuosity splintering herself, as it turns out that event basically has little bearing on the story. The spirits might have been around before that too, like spren on Roshar. (Or they could be way different, but I don't see a reason to think that, with what we know.) Yes, that's true. I wonder if this process that is used to make spirits into something useful is similar to how the old-style fabrials are made, the ones that are a spren in the physical realm rather than a spren in a gemstone. The part of attracting them is the same, though. Well, they're ex-people but it's Virtuosity's investiture that makes them into these weird shadow things. (What else would it be? Not some other shard's investiture, and they certainly couldn't do that without investiture.) Ah, yeah, good point. Might mean that the Midnight Mother and the Midnight Aether aren't as related as they seem. I could buy that. So, I don't think we know the timelines at all. The Machine was activated about 1700 years ago. But we don't know how long before that Virtuosity splintered herself, or even how long Virtuosity was in this system before splintering herself. The plants of this world could have had quite some time to adapt to the presence of Investiture, such as the floating trees. I suppose the adaptation of the plants and animals to the shroud would have to have been quick, if such adaptations happened; but, well, the presence of a lot of Investiture speeds up things like that. And losing flight might be easier than gaining it.
  15. Makes sense to me. They're splinters; Spirits are to Virtuosity as Seons are to Devotion, (speculation) Skaze are to Dominion, Rosharan spren are to Honor/Cultivation, etc. That reminded me of how to attract spren on Roshar. It's basically the same process as Shallan attracting creationspren. Yep Not yet, but I suspect as fabrial science on Roshar continues to advance we'll get something like it. It's basically the magical equivalent of electricity. Also reminds me a lot of Nightblood! I think the spirits are used as the permanent power source, whereas the souls were temporary. I think the answer is in the middle. Investiture everywhere is affected by perception - Rosharan spren have some of the form they do because of human perception, cognitive shadows are affected by how they're viewed. But the extreme nature of it (how Painter is able to convert a shadow into a bamboo, or something else, in one quick painting on demand) seems fairly extreme - if I had to guess, I think things made from Virtuosity's investiture are extra-susceptible to having this done to them with art. Interestingly, I got the impression that this tells us quite little about Midnight Aether - it seemed to me this whole world was entirely unrelated to midnight aether realmatically. This planet had virtuosity's investiture being used to create shades of formerly living people, with those people's souls being destroyed and converted to the shroud. I don't think this really says anything about the midnight mother or midnight aethers, which seem to be quite different - no formerly living people involved, unclear if it's related to a specific investiture or is general, etc. Seems like an evolutionary adaptation to me. Just like on Roshar, animals adapted to having a lot of Investiture around (lots of Rosharan fauna interact with spren to help them out), same here. The trees probably get help from spirits to become lighter. It's a major shardworld, like Roshar. The Shard is splintered and there's lots of Investiture around, also like Roshar.
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