Search the Community

Ookla Season Cometh! Ookla Season is one of our most venerated traditions here on 17th Shard. To honor the birthday of Peter Ahlstrom, Brandon Sanderson's assistant, we change our names to "Ookla the [Epithet]" on his birthday, November 26th. Most people change back after a week, but Ookla Season doesn't officially end until Koloss Head-Munching Day (Brandon Sanderson's birthday) in December. So, yeah. Ookla season! Hopefully you won't be as confused as I was my first time around.

So I just finished listening to the Nightblood 2 Shardcast (I know, it’s an older one) and several things sort of coalesced in my head that sort of make sense. Interestingly, they started down a similar thought path regarding Endowment at the very end of the episode. I had never heard that Nightblood was modeled after shardblades, btw. Interesting. Anyway, realizing that Endowment was most likely afraid of Odium coming to Nalthis to destroy her, it totally makes sense that she might intervene in Nightblood’s creation. Also, knowing now that the five scholars had been to Roshar, it seems vary possible that they knew of Odium as well. I find myself wondering if Nightblood was an attempt to create something that would destroy Odium that went very wrong in the process. First, Endowment intervened and gave it a supercharge of investiture. This gave Nightblood way more power than anticipated. The second happened in the Command. If part of the purpose of creating Nightblood was to kill Odium, then a command was needed that would work across realms to destroy, but would only destroy the intended target(and other bad dudes). That’s why it took so long to come up with the perfect command. Understanding the importance of Intent in the command, any mental imagery had to be avoided that would corrupt the Command, such as thinking about Odium. Trying not to think about something after you’ve told not is nearly impossible, however. I wonder if somehow, subconscious thoughts and conclusions about Odium entered in to Shashara’s visualizations and that magically allowed a bunch of his random investiture (Some of Adonalsium’s investiture that was sitting around on Nalthis at the time of the shattering and was was assigned to Odium), to also get sucked into Nightblood, corrupting Endowment’s investiture and supercharging it even more. This is sounding way too complicated now (not sure I like it) Oh well. Whatever happened, Shashara thought it was great. Vasher not so much. They fought, Vasher killed Shashara. Vasher took Nightblood into protective custody. Years pass, Vasher meets Vivenna, they go on an off world Yesteel chase where something really bad happens on the planet. Vivenna decides to return home and stay out of other world business. Vasher, saying he is tired of living off of other people’s breath, says goodbye to Vivenna and heads for Roshar taking Nightblood with him. He assures Vivenna that he is just going to live a simple anonymous life and keep the world safe from Nightblood. I’m sure he is also thinking that it can’t hurt to have the weapon designed to destroy Odium in the same system that he (Odium) resides. Sometime after returning to Nalthis, Vivenna happens across a member of the 17th Shard, finds herself in agreement with their policy of nonintervention, joins up and accepts an assignment to go fetch Vasher and Nightblood back to Nalthis. This is just an example of the crazy places my mind goes when listening to Shardcast episodes. Now you know what kind of nonsense goes on in the frightening recesses of my mind. You may now all commence tearing apart and completely disproving my meanderings. PS. Apologies for any misspellings etc. Autocorrect and my iPad both hate me.

As I received book 17 of Oathbringer, my question to Brandon was "name a character that is in the 17th shard, but we do not know it". His response in my book was Iyatil used to be a member of the 17th shard. Thoughts... theories?! Exciting stuff!

So this is just something up for speculation and possible theorizing: Do any of you think we'll get another major Letter written among the epigraphs of Oathbringer as we had with The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance? And if so, who do you think will be the one writing the Letter and what do you think it will be about? Just wondering what y'all think of it.

So at the end of The Secret History, Kelsier appears to Spook and declares that "Ignorance almost lost us everything. I'm not going to let that happen again." Then in the end note from Brandon, he says that the story of Kelsier is far from over. As we know, Kelsier somehow returned to the Physical Realm (likely something to do with the spike in his eye), and then traveled to the South to help the people there with medallions that were presumably invented by himself and Spook. After spreading their new technology, Kelsier disappears. Now lets consider what Kelsier learned in The Secret History. He knows now that there are other worlds, 16 Shards, traveling between those worlds is possible, and that Hoid is up to no good. He is also immortal, and has the means to share that immortality with others, such as Spook and more importantly Demoux, a known 17th Shard member. Along with immortality, he could share the powers necessary to travel between worlds. We know that Kelsier has no intention of dying the "final death", and that he continues to meddle in cosmere events. We also know that the way he works is by gathering a "crew" of capable people to work with, and we can assume that he wouldn't be against working with people not from Scadrial. We know that Kelsier has an inflated sense of self-importance (which would explain the crew's presumptuous name). And we know that Kelsier thinks Hoid is a negative force on the cosmere (which gives a motive for the 17th Shard to hunt Hoid). Also, Kelsier having met Nazh gives a reason for Hoid to call them "your friends of the 17th Shard". Now that its all written down, it does admittedly seem a little flimsy. But thoughts? P.S. Half the credit for this goes to the user Rosharan

What do we know about The Ones Above Us? I assumed they were just world hoppers but I was thinking they could be the space travelers from the third mistborn trilogy, becuase Brandon said that space travel would be powered by allomancy. This is probably wrong but I just wanted to say this and please tell me if I am wrong. Or maybe the people of the First of the Sun can see on the cognitive plane instinctually and the Ones Above are traveling using vehicles in the cognitive realm? That probably doesn't make any sense because they are said to sail the stars or something like that, and would stars appear in the cognitive realm? Also on a side note does the Conservation of Mass theory apply to the cosmere because I read that Nightblood makes stone disappear upon touch which doesn't seem to make sense. I know I am rambling but thanks for looking at this.

Ok, correct me if I am wrong but Demoux was seen as a world hopper in the Stormlight Archive, but he was also a noble in the mistborn series who was being imitated by a Kandra? How can this be possible? Wouldn't Ore Seur need his bones, meaning he is dead? Does that place the Stormlight Archive before Mistborn? I thought that Stormlight was after Mistborn? Or was Ore Seur using a fake corpse left by Demoux before he time travel/world hopped? But I also thought Kelsier killed Demoux to get the bones for Ore Seur, or that was at least implied. Thanks, and I'm new here, I would appreciate any clarifications and answers.

Hey, I decided that as much as I would like to, I will not have time to read Words of Radiance all in one night. After coming to terms with that idea, and the fact that I would then have to be off the forums for the duration of the read, I decided I would post an alternate solution, and propose it to 17thSharders as well. I think it would really be a great time if a group did the reading "together" over the course of say.... 2 weeks? I don't know, it is flexible, but the idea is that every night, we read 2 or 3 or x chapters, then come on the forums to discuss what we are thinking without moving along. It would really be fun to see peoples end-of-chapter or end-of-part reactions instead of just the thoughts we see when book-long arcs are finally concluded. It would be like watching episodes of your favorite tv show and talking to your friends while you wait for the next episode. PLUS: On a night that you just can not wait, you can read, post your reactions, and then continue reading but not post until the next day. It would take a good amount of self control, but I think it would be worth it for those of us who can't finish it in a night or two anyway. If anyone finds this idea interesting, I'm game for it, just let me know.