ftl

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.

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.

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."

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

Huh. You know, that's plausible enough. As good a theory as any!

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...

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!)

Pretty sure it covers the whole planet. Either design or Masaka says so at some point, I think.

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.

It's standalone, but IMO it has enough references to Stormlight that it should be read after RoW. Not required though, just an opinion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, AI stories aren't new - even before the latest hype cycle, there were previous ones. "Skynet" is ancient, "paperclip maximizer" as a concept is decades old at this point. The story doesn't have to be specifically about the latest AI boom rather than the one before that or the one before that.

The parshmen are what Alethi call the whole race - the humanoids with marbled skin. In their own language, they use the more respectful term "Singers". "Parshendi", an Alethi word meaning "parshmen who can think", is referring specifically to the group of parshmen/singers who live in the Shattered Plains. They call themselves "Listeners". So, parshmen/Singers is the race, Parshendi/Listeners is a particular nation/group of them.

It could be a special service hoid arranged rather than a normal thing - "drop me off on this planet, check back on me in 5 years and then in 10", something like that.

Real hard to tell. There's spaceships in both. Hoid doesn't teleport with Aons, but then again maybe teleporting away from the planet with Aons requires more knowledge of exactly where/how to teleport than Hoid has, or maybe it requires a map of the area which Hoid doesn't have, or something else. There could be explanations either way.

Fun read! I enjoyed it. The part I liked least was the way the info about the planet's past was presented; unlike many reveals in Brandon's books, this one didn't feel organic to me. I liked the bodyswap plot and I liked Painter as the stormup who's trying to do better.

Do they exist in Painter's world, or just in Yumi's?

Hah, interesting catch! Wonder if we'll learn more about the details of how or why that happened.

I mean at this point they've had several thousand years to mix

Well, he could only actually control them after he was released at the end of Well of Ascension. Before that he could send them vague messages and hints, like he did with everybody else spiked, but... his attention is limited and he didn't see anything important to do with them. They don't kill, they don't really even plot, they're basically glorified servants... I don't think he thought that would be relevant. After he's released, the Kandra were already his to take over if he ever cared to do so (which he didn't.) Before he was released, the Kandra weren't necessary to get him released (and in fact, with no intervention, OreSeur still played his part just by being a dutiful servant.) He was wrong, of course. But, well, a god of death and destruction overlooking the ways a group of obedient pacifists might be important - entirely in character. I think even after being released, he was held back by Preservation. Yes, Preservation was weaker, but he at least could prevent Ruin from, like, just destroying the world with a snap of his fingers; Ruin was able to intensify processes that were already there (power up the volcanoes and the mists), which would have been enough after about a year or two, but couldn't just be like "and now the oceans boil". It's definitely limited. He can look anywhere he wants (except where there's too much metal, which obscures things) but he can still only focus on one thing at a time, and has a human attention span. If he doesn't know to look somewhere or for something, he won't see whatever's there. If he's distracted by something else, he can miss events happening. The Lord Ruler's misdirection was successful in a few ways. First, the Kandra Homeland was at the pits of hathsin - a place where there's already a lot of atium and a lot of metal. Sure, Ruin could sense "hey there's a lot of metal here". But it didn't look much different than any other metal-rich region. And even if he sensed "hey, there's atium somewhere here" - well, YEAH there is, this is where the Atium comes from! So Ruin spent his time trying to track down where the Atium WENT from there. And was unsuccessful at it. TLR took the "atium" in hidden boxes into other places hidden from Ruin, made it get lost in a maze of transfers. It's not that the Kandra homeland was entirely hidden from Ruin, he probably knew it was there, he just didn't figure out its significance; that all that Atium he was chasing never left the pits in the first place. After he was released, he could have taken more direct routes to investigate the atium-smuggling, that might work better than just spying out the keyhole of his prison... ...but by that point, the atium-smuggling operation was done, died with The Lord Ruler and with the destruction of the Pits of Hathsin. There was just a pit of Atium hidden somewhere, lost among the metal deposits in the area anyway. And Ruin was still looking in the wrong place - led off on a wild goose chase by trying to track down the caverns and break into them. He says he's supposed to be a force of change, but I'm not sure he should be believed on that count. It's specifically some kinds of change - destruction and decay. (Stormlight Spoiler) Huh, good point. Maybe he was behind other rebellions too. Not because they'd release him, but just because he wanted more destruction. Eh... that doesn't seem like it would be within his Intent. He's Ruin, advances in technology don't necessarily seem very ruinous (though some could be.) But I think The Lord Ruler did keep a close enough eye on those dominances so they couldn't, like, develop guns and conquer his final empire away from him. Yeah, I don't think he's a being of change, regardless of what he says. He's a being of destruction and decay. His personality is long since warped by, well, being Ruin. He is pretty malicious, even if he wasn't always such. Fair point. It's always seemed to me a bit arbitrary, what Shards are good at seeing the future and which aren't. You can certainly make up justifications for why a particular Shard is as good or bad as it is based on its Intent, but as you point out you could just as easily make up an opposite "justification" and make it sound convincing even if it's wrong. I don't think we have the full picture for how good/bad all the different Shards are at foresight, though. There's people on these boards that use all the info about Shards that's been revealed throughout all the different books to try to make a table of how they relate to each other, groupings and pairings and such. Like the allomantic table, with metals divided into internal/external, pushing/pulling, etc, but for Shards... ...and with a heck of a lot less information. We definitely don't have the full picture here. Maybe when Brandon writes the origin story of the Shards, the Dragonsteel series, we'll get that table, and we'll be able to see "oh, Shards that are classified as Spiritual Pushing or whatever are the best at futuresight, whereas those which are Physical Pulling are the worst" and it'll make sense. (note - my made-up classifications here are not a spoiler because I literally just made them up for this example.)

If you haven't read them yet, read the two novellas that are part of Stormlight Archive - Edgedancer (available as part of Arcanum Unbounded collection) and Dawnshard. Then Warbreaker. It's almost like prequel for a few side characters in Stormlight. Then Mistborn Era 1. Then ask again! (Or read whatever excites you most - this isn't a strict order or anything.) Brandon is currently 52% done with the first draft, is targetting completing the first draft by the end of the year, with a release date next year, probably november. He has weekly updates on his progress, and typically gets 1-2% done per week (except last week, where he spent the whole week on revisions - he just sent the first quarter of the book to his editor and agent for their first look.) Probably not very much. It gets revealed more and more over the course of many series. You learn most in Rhythm of War, Dawnshard, Mistborn Secret History, The Lost Metal (book 4 of Mistborn Era 2), and the arcanum unbounded essays. You probably understand everything you're supposed to. Though if you do detailed analysis on everything you've read you could probably figure out more, that's not expected.