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I recently went down a cosmere rabbit hole(which I do on occasion) and I discovered that Design and Hoid somehow got off of Roshar to get to Komachi without breaking their bond. But I've also seen several articles state that that would be a bit of a problem for Hoid. How does this happen? I haven't read Yumi yet, if it's a spoiler, please don't tell me the answer, but if it isn't, I need answers.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW IN THE WORLD DESIGN HAS A PHYSICAL BODY?? AND DOES THIS MEAN THAT IN STORMLIGHT 5 SYL WILL ALSO FIND A WAY TO MANIFEST INTO PHYSICAL FORM AND BE WITH KALADIN??

Anyone who reads Korean (I think), what does it say on the sticker that came in the box?

Whatever happened to his cryptic Design? We last saw them together in Stormlight 4 and I am not sure a Nahel bond can reach that far. You see no mention of them in the book. Based on the discussion in the thread the book seems to take place way after he made the bond so did he lose Design maybe during the events of Stormlight 5?

I've seen a few people ask the question in other threads but I haven't really seen anyone give a theory about it. This story is clearly meant to be taking place in the later stages of the Cosmere, well after SA, so why is Ulaam the one who shows up to record Hoid's embarrassing poems instead of Design? Because if anyone was going to be there just making fun of Hoid I would've expected it to be her. Is she just hanging out somewhere else on the planet or maybe in the cognitive realm? Are they still bonded? Did he just get so sick of her interrupting/spoiling his stories that he decided to find a way to undo the Nahel bond? He didn't seem to use any of his Radiant powers at all, and I didn't notice any Cryptic-like designs on his clothes or anything either. Thoughts? Did anyone see a clue that I missed?

Apparently, Hoid is now stuck on Roshar due to his Bond with Design. But if he is a Feruchemist, he could overcome this by storing his Lightweaving and Soulcasting abilities inside a nicrosil metalmind, then compounding those powers, which would replace Honor’s investiture with Preservation’s, thus allowing him to leave. Well, that and he’d also need to break his Bond with Design, but that would be comparatively simple (if somewhat selfish and traitorous).

Anyone else catch Sanderson's inner Alcatraz bleeding through in the interactions between Hoid and Design? I thought the references were hilarious and was one of my favorite moments in the book.

Hello everyone. I'm a concept artist inspired by the Stormlight Archives. Since I love creature design, I decided to work on a Chasm Fiend for a portfolio project. Currently I have the 3D model finalized and ready to be textured (given color) but I wanted some feedback on a potential color scheme. So far I've been looking at marine life for inspiration, since I want my Chasm Fiend to be more than a dull grey or stony color. This may be less accurate, but I think it will help mine stand out a bit. Please look at the images below and let me know what you think! Thanks! -Critterweaver P.S. I've also included some graphics showing my progress, as well as a first pass on a textured game-ready 3D model. Feel free to comment on that as well.

Good morning, Sharders! Things look quite a bit different today, don't they? It gives me and everyone on the staff great pleasure to reveal the new 17th Shard--our fourth major iteration since we launched in 2010. I've referenced this for so long, worked on this for what seems like an eternity, that it feels unreal to finally show it to you. We hope you love it. With this version of the site, we've updated our software to version 4.1, from our previous 3.4. That jump from 3 to 4 is a huge one and a massive overhaul of many site systems. Things will be different, but that's okay! It's different in (hopefully) a good way. Let's talk about what 17th Shard 4 has in store for you. You can immediately tell, whether you are looking on the site on your PC, your phone, or your tablet, that things are really different. That's the biggest feature of this update: we now have a fully responsive design. It's just one theme that expands to the device you are using, instead of having some shunned mobile skin. What this means for you is that when you visit 17S on your mobile device, you actually have all the power of the site, all the time. Quoting multiple people at once? Easy. You'll find the editor on mobile is the same thing as desktop. You can edit all your account settings on your phone. Everything just works the way it always should have. Though I absolutely love having a great mobile site, I also can't stop staring at this glorious art Will, aka Shivertongue, made for us. A new, cleaner logo; a glorious new background; and cleaner iconography. Legend has it that he just appeared in my apartment and left a flash drive there with this art, and then promptly vanished into the mists. In addition to his enigmatic help, Kerry (KChan) and Monica (Moru) helped with a lot of design and coloring as well. Design is important, but what other features are in store for you? Well, there's a ton! We now have a Cosmere Q&A board where people can pose questions, and other members answers. It's like our old "Question and Answer" thread, only it no longer needs to be in just one topic. People can rate questions as well as answers so you are sure to get the best answers. So, if you're new to the cosmere and have a lot of questions, or you are a veteran with complex questions, or maybe you just want to know if this thing you heard actually has a quote to support it, make sure you get right on it over here! What else? There are a lot of reputation improvements. You can, at long last, undo an accidental upvote or downvote, and the color scheme for positive and negative reputation is more neutral. But that's not all. You can now @mention particular people in posts and they get notified (of course, that can be turned off if you like). User profiles are pretty different and now allow you to have a cover photo. The "View New Content" is now "Activity" and is that newspaper on the navigation bar, and it's very cool now. There's a bunch of small stuff, and I'm sure you'll really like it. Some things are in different locations, though. Your account options are on the upper right, under your username. That's where you can edit your sig, for instance. You can also edit some other settings directly on your profile. On mobile, your account options are in the dropdown menu under "Account". The editor is now rather radically different from before. It's a far superior Rich Text Editor, and in my experience, actually does the things you want it to. One important difference is that when you press Enter or Return in the new editor, it automatically creates a new paragraph, with spacing between the two paragraphs automatically supplied. You don't need to press Enter twice for the same effect anymore! Of course, there are times where you'd really like to not have that extra space between lines--perhaps in your signature, for example--so to do that easily in the editor, just press Shift+Enter. Easy! The editor is also quite smart on knowing what spacing you want if you paste text from elsewhere, so that's a plus. Long time users of the site probably input things in BBCode. You can still use BBCode, though the actual post data is no longer stored as BBCode. You might wonder as you go about your merry way on the site today, why on some tabs, there is sometimes a Pause icon on the tab. It's not that 17S is trying to play music, it's that when that pause icon is there, you aren't getting browser notifications for stuff on the site, because you hadn't been to that tab in a while. Known Issues There are some things I am noticing upon this update that I want you all to know about. Some content was just not quite converted exactly as I (or anyone) would have expected, so let's talk about that. We talked about how in the new editor, it defaults "Enters" to automatically put space between paragraphs. This caused no problems on some posts, where the old empty line between paragraphs that you needed before was removed nicely. On other posts, there is still an empty line between the two paragraphs, and because the editor thinks, "hey, you wanted extra space there too, right? Right!?" it puts extra space after that empty line. This causes those posts to look ultra-spaced out (which sounds way less cool than it actually is). I've identified why this is happening and am actively working on removing these extra spaces. Just bear with us a bit, and don't feel obligated to edit your previous posts to fix it. I'm on the case! The line spacing also affected signatures a great deal. The fix I have planned to do on posts might not work on certain signatures for various dumb reasons, so if you have time, you might want to update your sig. (Hey, that's a lot more practical than editing all previous posts!) Remember, in the editor, you can use shift+enter for a line break, if you don't want that extra spacing. Some avatars--for reasons completely unknown to me--totally vanished, leaving users with the default avatar. We're sorry. (Sorry Matt.) You'll need to reupload the old avatar. Should you not have a copy of the file, I could probably find it in the old site files. I've also heard reports on our test site that some people just can't log in on the new site somehow. I'm not totally sure why this happens. But, there is an important distinction to the name you log in with in this new version. Previously, you could have a Username (your log in name) and a separate Display Name. This was deemed as a somewhat unnecessary distinction, so now you only have a Display Name. So make sure you're logging in with your Display Name! If you do that, and are still having log in difficulties, perhaps try a password reset or email me at [email protected]. I am hoping these aren't widespread, but I am happy to help. Myself and other staff will be on hand especially often, tweaking minor things, and helping you all out! So, if something is broken, if you're confused about something, post here! Also, in addition to suggestions or criticism, feel free to send us some love. We've worked on this for a long, long time, and in particular, it's caused me more stress than you can possibly know. So send us some love if you like it, and of course criticism and suggestions.

Hey guys, don't know if this has popped up in a thread somewhere (did a quick search under shardplate skirts), but I'm really curious about this. All the illustrations show Sharplate as having skirts attached. Why would they need a skirt? Generally, this was for protection around the groin area as it was impossible to fit plate right up your inner thighs and around your precious areas. Argument 1: The design is built this way to fit the same design model as current armour; "it just looks right" to the warriors of the time. OR against this Argument 2: Because of the form-fitting nature of Shardplate, all these precious areas are well protected by the Shardplate itself. Thus, having a skirt is extra encumbering. Argument 2 makes much more sense to me: Radiants of the time were far above regular individuals; I don't see them designing their gear to fit in. Standing out was no problem. Why would they need skirts then, if the armor fits their bodies so well? I get conflicted when reading which way to visualise this. I like to stick with the idea of no skirts, as it makes more sense for Shardplate design to me. Your guys thoughts? If you have any evidence from the books, that'd be awesome.

So, you want to write a fantasy, and you want to have a magic system. Perhaps you've never tried this before, perhaps you don't like how that last one turned out. What ever your reasons might be, you might have come here looking for ideas on how to proceed. Or you might have come here looking to help someone else build a magic system, in which case, you are also welcome here. I've noticed that this section of the forum has a regularly reoccurring request: I need help with my magic system. Recently, Cstryon asked a slightly more interesting question. He asked for help with the process and the documentation of a magic system. I thought that was a really good question. Mostly because I've designed quite a few magic systems, and most of the inside the last two years. And yet when I put my fingers to the keyboard, I found that I didn't know how to respond. I have magic systems, but they just . . . happen, I guess. Several times over. Whenever I want them too. That answer did not satisfy me one bit. I listen to Writing Excuses. I hear professional writers dissect their writing process on a regular basis. And here I sit, on the edge of a yawning chasm full of swirling mist in the middle of my world building process. I hesitated for a day. Then I dove in. My rules: 1) Start from scratch. I cannot analyze what I did if I'd already done it. I had to find a combination of ideas that I had never even considered for a magic system before. Luckily, I managed to scrounge up a couple of interesting seeds in somewhat short order. 2) Write down EVERYTHING. I do a lot of world building and character design while I putter around doing menial jobs at work. But this time, I needed notes on everything. So I had to force myself NOT to think about the project unless I had it up on my display. 3) Analyze after. Corollary to rule two. I needed something close to stream of consciousness notes. I had to focus on the building and the writing. Finding the order behind the process could wait. The rest of this post is what I learned about my process, along with the notes from my sample. I hope that those who want advice can find something useful. I am open to absolutely any type of feedback people want to leave. Including the people who want to have fun building a world from the magic system presented here (if this is you, the orderly presentation is under the Spoiler in Step 6). Step 1: Concept Like most everything in writing, I wasn't going to start without something cool. And more than that, I like to work on the intersection of multiple cool ideas. I took a plot conflict that I'd been sitting on, and the magic power of an old magic item I'd crafted for a role-playing game, and set to work. Grab an idea, or several, that makes you say "OOOooooo." Saying "The claw!" is optional. Step 2: Broaden Next, I went over the ideas and asked myself what they meant together, and what all the pieces meant by themselves. I prowled around with a shovel, turning everything over and looking at what was underneath. Two cool ideas can set a direction, but I was out to build a road. Why are those ideas cool? What parts do you like? What does that imply? John Brown talks about a technique he calls list and twist. This is the list part. Step 3: Define Now that I had a pile of ideas and concepts, I tried to carry them farther. I went through the concepts and tried to fine dependencies and mixtures that maintained that cool factor. More than that, I wanted ideas and combinations that sounded cooler than what I'd began with. And beyond that, I wanted the things that mixed with the original and took cooler up to awesome. Compare the ideas to the original direction. Set your path toward the most fun. Bring in other ideas you want to use, like character elements and plot conflicts. Remember that your magic system is there to add to the story. I put a {research note} into this section. If I were doing this to write a story, that is when I would have started cross-referencing my ideas. Since I didn't, I wound up running with four different system ideas trying to find a solid direction. In the John Brown list-and-twist, this is the twist. Step 4: Focus As I said before, The magic system needs to add to and support the story (or the gameplay, or whatever your objective is). I knew this was coming back at the {research note}, and now, it was time to buckle down. Ever heard of world builder's disease? It's bad enough with only one world. I wasn't going to do four. Ideas are cheap, so piece together what is working now, and toss the rest in the bin for later. The first steps worked on the breadth, next comes the depth. Time to pick one. Step 5: Refine This is where I got into the gritty details of the magic. This is the part where cool ideas become powers with costs, and limitations. This is when the magic becomes a system. How did I do it? I've mentioned this part in answer to other threads. Ask questions, look for consequences. Pick answers arbitrarily, try them on, throw them out. Find themes, use them for guideposts. And this time, my advice comes with examples. Be warned. This section gets deep. Over 5,100 words deep. There are a bunch of cool ideas in here, but be prepared for a lot of reading. Step 6: Summarize Did you try to read that example above? I don't recommend it. That's how I thought the system through, but there is no way I'm going to be able to use that as a reference while I'm writing the story. This is where the ideas need to make sense, not just in your mind, but on the page. This part was not written as a stream of consciousness. This part is methodically arranged for clarity. It is a bit dry, but I prefer my system rules that way. I aim for them to give shape to the ideas in my head. Then I add in sections for examples, or write the examples in my other design documents. Feedback? Did I miss something? Want additional explanation? Found a hole in the process or the system? Wondering how Sanderson's Laws are applied? Want to springboard off of something I said and build your own system? Want to make use of the systems I dumped in step four? Want to ask for applied advice for your own system? Found some horrible grammar in my "clearly written" system manual? Want to tell me to stop asking so many questions? =) Sorry, it's compulsive.

Many of the threads in these parts are requesting help with building a system out of a particular power. I have the opposite problem. I have no trouble building systems. I tie them into the world, make schemes for how people handle the system's limitations, identify points of misunderstandings, all of that good stuff. Most of these systems are based around magic users with specific, limited abilities, rather like Mistings or superheroes. The trouble is that I often find one or two interesting powers that fit my schema well, and then I can't find enough similar ideas to fill all of the other slots. And with three, four, five, . . . lots of magic systems under construction, I have lots of slots to fill. And so I come to you, asking the question in this thread's title. What would you do with magic? Let's do a little brainstorming together. Think along the lines you might for a "If you were a feruchemist . . ." only throwing the doors wide to anything. Need some starting points? What's something tedious that you need to do regularly? An activity you find distasteful? Something that would be nice if it could be done faster? Something that you can't quite achieve in reality because of one little technical detail. For example, I've built powers out of the following ideas: Carving stone with your bare hands. Sealing an object inside a seamless crystal sphere. Repelling insects without chemical repellants. Weighing things without a scale. All ideas submitted to this thread may be used by any reader as they please. Ideas are cheap. Limitations are more interesting than powers. Your limits almost certainly will vary, so stop worrying about originality and help me build a nice repository of launching-off points for aspiring writers. Feel free to suggest twists of other peoples ideas. Mix and match. Whatever floats your boat. Hmm . . . floating a boat . . .