Elegy

Brandon confirmed in the livestream yesterday that he had started writing it some time before (he didn't specify when), so the WOB I quoted above might actually refer to it - although he also said that it's about 120,000 words, while he talked about 200,000 to 300,000 in that WOB. And we all know that Brandon books never turn out shorter than planned. So I'm on the fence but believe that it isn't what he was talking about there for that reason. Further information from the stream: It's not narrated by Hoid, it's the farthest in the Cosmere we've seen canonically, and it's something he'd wanted to write for a while.

It reminded me of this WOB from some time ago: But we'll see. I still see Grand Apparatus as a good possiblity, especially since he talked about almost becoming a scientist in the video without much of a reason to do so (I mean, it was about Words of Radiance, but it still seemed kinda random), and Grand Apparatus sounds like something connected to Invention. Would be cool, but part of me believes that Brandon's not going to let the chance pass by to have exactly half of the 16 Shards canonized in Stormlight books (the three Roshar Shards and the four name-dropped in ROW)

I've been listening to an immense amount of Tchaikovsky's orchestral music (not the ballets) the past few days, particularly the symphonies. Some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard, but also sometimes just extremely overwhelming. You just need something to come down after it at times ... Which is why at this moment, I'm not listening to Tchaikovsky but to Ichiko Aoba, who's perhaps my favorite folk musician of this day and age. Also some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard, but on the complete opposite end of the spectrum

If you're okay with horror films with a gothic vibe, The VVitch and Crimson Peak are great examples. Also both Nosferatu (the silent film) and its remake from the 80s. Also, in the realms of animation, Coraline and Corpse Bride. Although none of these are television.

Blackbird for sure

This was my thought was well! The payoff of the in-world ketek is basically nonexistent. Especially when the cost is a weak title. Also, hardly anyone who wanted the ketek actually seems to be happy with the in-world ketek situation, so it doesn't even work as a compromise. I really don't see why he doesn't just drop it instead of a title that he literally came up with by going "this is the less bad version of a title that doesn't work and that was only ever considered because of a gimmick that isn't intact in this less bad version anymore". (Especially considering how pragmatic and well-thought-out his decision-making usually tends to be.)

I agree with this and generally the idea that Survive can be the Dawnshard without it being directly important for Kelsier and Scadrial. One possibility: Leras held the Dawnshard once (he seems to be on good terms with Hoid) before he held the Shard, and the Command significantly influenced his spiritweb then and therefore his definition of the Shard - so him using the Command when talking to Kelsier could be a symptom of that. Whatever the case, I'm almost positive that Kelsier has never been a Dawnshard (for a notable amount of time), since there still are no significant changes to his spiritweb that can't be clearly traced back to another reason (him being a cognitive shadow, mostly). I also agree with the implication of Devotion and Dominion (and Honor) being part of Unity and Preservation being part of Survival - and the same I said about Leras could be true about Tanavast, the Command given to Dalinar not being the Dawnshard itself but influenced by it.

We have the answer now: I don't understand why he didn't just put it in the book though

Fresh out of the oven - a WOB that confirms we haven't seen her before:

Just reread Sigzil's chapter in Oathbringer (Chapter 35) ... Now it hits different when Kaladin says: And a bit later, Sigzil says: "First into the sky" is also the title of the chapter. And maybe this was something prophetic for him to say, who knows, maybe he really was "first in the sky" in the sense that he was the first of Bridge Four to walk the stars? Anyway, it's always amazing to go back after a character has become more important and see all the roots of what was to come in little hints. I had a similar experience with Lopen after reading Dawnshard.

I know that this is very nitpicky, but I specifically meant breaking the fourth Ideal in that comment. (If he really gave up being a Windrunner because of something terrible that happened, that would probably mean that he can't accept that there are those that he can't protect anymore - and he really doesn't accept that in Sunlit Man imo. That was the thought process.) If I said that he broke it in another comment, I meant he ended it, because I'm definitely not sure how it happened.

Hoid at the beginning seems to be a Lightweaving, since things go through him, so that could also be added to the list.

Interestingly, I noticed it through a detail in the preview chapters that was then edited out in the published version! At the end of chapter 9, it says: - at least in the preview chapters; in the published version, it's this instead: ... which of course makes sense, that his hair would be burned. Anyway, at first I thought he was maybe one of the Heralds (specifically Nale, Kalak or maybe Taln, but obviously in some form that we couldn't know of at this point), then after a while it became more obvious that it had to be a Bridge Four member, and then that detail with his hair (that isn't even part of the book anymore) made it all fall into place, because his curly hair was somehow a very distinctive thing about his appearance in my head. In the published version, I'm pretty sure that it would have been clear with the clarification of Hoid being his mentor, which happens just after that.

Thanks, I missed that! Wow, that means it's a half Skybreaker, half Windrunner plate, that's interesting. As far as we know, Sig has not reached the fourth Ideal as of ROW, so according to my timeline above, he'd have to reach it and then break it within SA5, perhaps even within the Final Ten Days. Completely forgot that WOB, good to have it confirmed! Makes his whole biography even more tragic somehow, the fact that he was thrown into all of this without even the basic warnings that were the first thing Rysn was told when she got her Dawnshard.

Relevant WOB: TSM is probably after Sixth of the Dusk, which - given the SOTD2 chapter - also puts it deep into space era cosmere.

There is a small discussion already here: There are some interesting things there, but I still think that this issue is largely not understood. I believe the reason for that is that we don't know when and for how long Hoid exactly had the Dawnshard and what effects come from directly carrying it and which ones come from having carried it in the past. Just too many unknowns to really come to good conclusions imo

I actually really like the idea of Torments and Blessings as arcanist's terms for the Invested Arts' powers and limitations. We have established the Blessings in a hemalurgical sense with the Kandra anyway, so thinking about it more broadly (which seems to be the tendency with cosmere terms anyway) feels very intuitive to me. The power over the surges would be an example for a Blessing, the incapability for most to leave the system a Torment. Depending on the person, the oaths can be seen as Torments (depending on how much they feel they limit them personally). And the Reod would have turned Blessings of the Elantrians into Torments in the most literal sense. Idk, I find it compelling to have in-world terms for these storytelling principles that Brandon has talked about so much, as in limitations being more important for a story than powers aka Sanderson's 2nd Law (so Torments make a good story, not necessarily the Blessings).

I wonder if there's also something like SEU (sphere equivalent units) that add up to BEUs like cents and dollars. The equivalent of human soul seems a bit much when talking about how much you need for steelpushing etc., and "0,001 BEU" seems inconvinient.

Sigzil talks about the Evil on Threnody as if it's still around, so probably not. His musings about it make it sound way more like a Spliter gone rogue or something, which would make sense since we know that chunks were broken off when Ambition and Odium fought in the system. The Evil could be a combination of leftover and abandoned Investiture of both Ambition and Odium, since hatred coupled with strong determination sounds pretty evil. As for the Admiral being a Dawnshard, could be but I don't see it as more probable than other characters. She travels via spaceship instead of skipping, and the way the Night Brigade destroys planets is described as a lot of work, which would probably be different with a Dawnshard (given what seems to have happened to Ashyn. They probably let the Shades destroy the planet instead, would be my guess), and while she seems to be more or less immortal, there's many ways to achieve that in the cosmere. It isn't off the table, of course.

That's interesting from a thematic perspective. Brandon has named conquest a synonym for Dominion: With the concept of unity seemingly connected to Honor in some way (given the Dalinar scene), Sigzil's statement seems like a codified version of what the Wyrn is trying on Sel versus what Dalinar is trying on Roshar. So with what he does at the end, Sigzil walks in Dalinar's footsteps and wins against the Cinder King who is in a long line of tyrant in the Cosmere that function like the Wyrn.

The Night Brigade novel is confirmed to be very dark for Brandon's standards: So yeah, that will probably be the closest Brandon will ever do to grimdark.

So we know the following things: Brandon has confirmed that we will see the origin of Sigzil's development in Stormlight 5: That said though, Sigzil will not get the Dawnshard in Stormlight 5. He mentions in TSM that he got it when he was 38 (which caused him to stop aging at that point). He's not 38 in Stormlight 1-5, more like in his 20s, so that has to happen post-timeskip. Then there's this passage that has some hints about the chronology of it all: ... So we actually know that Sigzil became a Skybreaker after he got the Dawnshard. Which, yes, is in violation of what the Sleepless told Rysn, but we don't know if the Sleepless ever know about what happens there (I would even strongly assume that they don't), so it's probable that Sigzil was never told that this could be a problem. Interestingly, that passage does not mention when exactly he broke his first bond. It could have happened before or after he got the Dawnshard. But due to Brandon's above comment about all of this starting with Stormlight 5 in combination with the fact that Sigzil gets the Dawnshard in the back 5, this timeline seems logical to me: Sigzil leaves the Windrunners some time in Stormlight 5 He spends the entire timeskip not being a Radiant He gets the Dawnshard some time in Stormlight 6-10 Being on the run, he finds Aux and they form a bond. In some occurance that we don't know the specifics of, he burns Aux, leaving his bond in a weird place. We can't really speculate much on what exactly happened when Hoid made him a Dawnshard, since - as is evident in the quote above - Sigzil doesn't "fully understand" the things that happened there either. The other two huge question marks are: Why did he leave the Windrunners? - Post-ROW, he's the leader of the Windrunners, but he hasn't had to handle many extremely dire situations since then; a few smaller scale fights against Skybreakers and then the fight with Ishar, but no real catastrophe. I think it's still possible that the Windrunners will go through an extremely bloody battle in Stormlight 5 that leads to so many losses that Sigzil is just done with not only the responsibility of being a leader of the Windrunners, but with the idea of having sworn to protect people (with the possibility of letting them down) in general. Remember that nothing indicates that he ever reached Shardplate level as a Windrunner - he probably never reached the fourth Ideal, he never accepted that there were those he couldn't save - which also makes sense with the way he acts in TSM - he actively tries to not feel connected to the people he should protect, precisely because he cannot accept losing them as soon as he does. So that's how that would make sense to me. Why did he join the Skybreakers later? - There are two reasons that make sense to me, and I think a combination of the two is reasonable: First, he is on the run from people who do not mess around, so being a Skybreaker - and using the oaths to circumvent the Torment, as is hinted at during chapter 1 - probably seemed like a good idea. (Again, chances are that he had no idea that the Sleepless would have warned him.) Second, Sigzil repeatedly states how much he misses being able to fly, so when he spends 10+ years not being a Windrunner anymore, it makes sense that this would tip him over the edge to take the risk. That's as much as I could gather. The spren didn't know that they would turn to Deadeyes when the Radiants abandoned their oaths during the Recreance, which to me implies that them dying was never a problem before that. It was only when Ba-Ado-Mishram did weird things to how Connections work that it was changed somehow (in ways that we'll hopefully understand via book 5). It's very much possible (or even probable, given the hints in ROW) that this Connection weirdness could be resolved in book 5, so abandoning the oaths would not necessarily lead to Sigzil killing his spren.

William Ann has a half-blackened face at the end of Shadows for Silence, so probably not. It's possible she could heal it with some technique that we don't know yet, but that would mean that Brandon intentionally gave up the chance of having an antagonist with a badass half-blackened face, so I doubt it ^^ (Edit: She seemingly also lost a hand, which I completely forgot.) Sebruki seems sensible to me. She's described as dark-skinned ... perhaps if the Admiral was her, that would have been mentioned about her? Though I definitely like the idea that Shadows for Silence - by far the most disconnected Cosmere story so far - would be more directly tied to the overall Cosmere narrative in a way like that.

I think my favorite part about this is how it's a Stormlight Miniature ... but not from a Stormlight book ... but of a Stormlight character!

Very good obversation, it definitely builds towards a magic vs. technology (that is fueled by magic) conflict, which makes sense in this context, since Star Trek is more science-based and Star Wars is more magic-based. Brandon has said that Space Cosmere would be closer to Star Trek than Star Wars: ... and ... ... which makes sense because the main Space Cosmere story is going to be a Mistborn story after all, so it's like Enterprise vs. the Jedi Order from the perspective of the Enterprise, or something like that. (Not knowing much or anything at all about who will be the protagonists etc., of course.)