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Hello, and welcome to the Hunger Games Chat Thread! This is where everyone can discuss the Hunger Games, post memes, plan things, suggest ideas for Hunger Games (and more), ask to be a GM, and all that jazz!

Hi all! This is my first post on the forums here. I started listening to the audiobook of Mistborn earlier this year, on my way to GenCon, and have been binging my way through everything Cosmere. Now that I've pretty well caught up on Cosmere, I'm doing a re-read of Stormlight Archive, going through it more slowly, hoping to time the completion of it with when book 5 comes out. As such, I'm going to have running threads with notes and musing as I'm going through it all, hoping to prove further discussion. I have no particular structure planned for each post, but will hope to dump notes from a chapter or two per day, on average. I'm marking the whole thread as Cosmere, so that it's safe to make references to anything. Ok, so here we go with the Prelude! I love how Kalak just casually mentions having died a few times before over the centuries; great way to show the scale of the epic right off the bat. I'm wondering whether this scene is taking place on Roshar; I assume so, but we're not really told. It could theoretically be Braize, though he mentions later going "back", which seems to indicate that he's not there now. We're not given many hints on this, as far as I can tell; the place is just described as a lot of stone columns; he says "not a lot of plants grow here", and mentions a "northern waterway". During the description of the battlefield, he mentions red, orange, and violet blood: I'm guessing that's human, Parshendi, and Fused blood, respectively? Kalak notes in passing that he's supposed to go back to Damnation if he survives, and I'm wondering what that travel is like. Do they go to Damnation through Shadesmar? Are they transported there magically somehow? I don't think we know the answer to this yet. He notices all the blades except Taln's, and thus surmises that those all survived, noting that the blades would have disappeared if their owners died. I'm curious about that, since we see Jezrien die later in the series, and then see his blade given to Moash. So...what is he referencing here? Is he just saying that the Honorblade would go with the dead Herald to Braize? It's interesting to me to think about what the end of a Desolation looks like. We know that the Desolation isn't a single huge battle, it's a world-wide war. So...what exactly makes him know that this is the end of the Desolation? Did they kill all the Fused? Was this some final, climactic battle that just was obviously the end of the whole war? He also says the enemy is growing increasingly tenacious, and I wonder if he's comparing this Desolation to previous Desolations, or just saying that, over the course of the Desolation, they put up more and more resistance. He also says "He will not be bound by this, the enemy. He will find a way around it." - I assume "he" here is a reference to Odium, but not sure what "this" is - the breaking of the Oathpact? The end of the Desolation? How would either of those bind Odium? The last thing I'll point out in the prelude is that he says that the Heralds willingly chose the pact, and thus can willingly give it up. For one thing, that seems really opposite of how Honor's oaths are mentioned in the rest of the series, as being so incredibly important not to break. But also, I hear a lot of people talk about how mean Honor is to force these 10 people repeatedly die and suffer, but we see here that it was clearly their decision.

Well, I have officially returned to the Shard, and I’ve decided to revive an old flame. While I think the Random Twinborn Combos thread has run its course, I still think there are unanswered questions to still address. Namely: what metals and abilities are the best? So this will be a daily thread regarding the feruchemy side of things, aka the more interesting side of the question. We’ll be going by the feruchemy table, so that means starting with F-Iron and working our way down. For simplicity’s and relevance’s sake, I’ll be assuming the person in question is a Ferring, and not a twinborn, feruchemist, or hemalurgist. As always, I welcome and actively request your thoughts. At the end of it all, I will create a ranking that we can pick apart. So without further ado, let’s get started! Daily Feruchemy Analysis Day 1: F-Iron wow we are starting off with a banger. This is probably the most documented metal we have, with a whole four books of pov to go off of. It also happens to be really rusting powerful. Obviously this has nice effects with many allomantic metals, but that’s not what this is about. What can this do on its own? well, a lot of things really. While storing, you can make yourself very light, which means you can survive any fall and, presumably, move faster in general, as your muscles are moving a lower body weight than it’s used to. Now, I don’t think you’ll be crazy fast, but probably faster than normal. Plus, storing weight is almost certainly going to be the initial basis of space travel. So there’s that too. Oh, and the possibility of being a decent investiture to energy machine. Tapping weight gets interesting. As we’ve seen from Wax, it makes you a pseudo-pewterarm. Strategically tapping to tank hits and to deliver power hits. Great stuff. Frankly, I don’t think there needs to be much more analysis on this. Relatively straightforward metal, with both martial and common uses. Certainly crazy scientific uses. Overall just a really good metal to have, and certainly very strong. Rating: 8.5/10. Awesome stuff.

So this has been bothering me since I reread RoW. In Mistborn ruin and Preservation are opposites, both logically and physically as they destroy each other. It makes sense that there is a shard for both preservation and ruin as they are fundamentally different and represent aspects of the cosmere. Because they are logical opposites, there investitures are also opposites. However, in RoW Navani insinuates that opposite investitures must be created. What does this mean then? Do all shards have an opposite shard or do some shards just not have an opposite? I've taken a quick look at the known shards and I can't find reasonable opposites for some of them, whether or not this is due to personal error, it doesn't look like all shards have opposite shards, but some do? If anyone knows more about this please inform me.

So just something quick, who needs birth controle in the cosmer? Like for example scaa or at least scaa heritage seems to add the chance of getting pregnant whereas noble women had a higher chance of not being able to get pregnant. That of is course being part of TLR “Grand” design. then we look at roshar, and it’s not uncommon to hear some families with 4+ kids and others with just two even shallan and adolin don’t seem to be worried about having kids. But the entire world is constantly at war So we can assume that more kids are being born then on screen. And don’t get me started on the parshindi the way they reproduce makes no sense to me. I’m unsure how other planets work as I have only read mistborn and stormlight. but here’s my working theory. That places like roshar where the average person is more invested doesn’t have to worry about birth control as they can intend to have a child or not. Or it can be altered by someone who can see the SW like TLR. Whats your thought? WoB?

So. There are 17 types of Allomancers, and 17 types of Feruchemists (technically 18 if you’re counting full feruchemists and Mistborn). That means there is 289 twinborn combinations. That is way too many for anyone to theorize on, but there could be a lot of cool possibilities of twinborn that you wouldn’t expect. So what I will be doing on this thread is randomly picking a twinborn, analyzing the potential of it, theorizing some potential resonances, making up a name for it, and giving it an arbitrary rating from 1-10. I kind of want to mimic the style of daily posts over on Reddit, so I’ll be picking a new twinborn every day, and see how long I can keep this up. Hopefully it’ll be fun! Well, without further ado, here’s day 1! Random Twinborn Day 1: A-Tin and F-Steel Well, this is already interesting! These two admittedly don’t have too much immediate synergy, but they are both useful in their own right. A-tin is great for detecting others in the area, and is generally used as a sentry-type person. However, it could be quite nice in a political setting as well, enabling you to hear and see things that you normally shouldn’t be witness to. Overall a really nice ability to have, but certainly more of a background role than a front lines sort of role. F-steel however is quite the combat role. You can certainly use it to evade being caught, but generally you would go on the offensive. Hitting others before you get hit, and evading other’s attacks, that sort of thing. The only limitation is storing, in which you are pretty useless while doing so. Now, with both, it would actually be quite nice! When storing speed, you can act as a sentry type, and then you can basically be the ultimate spy. It’s definitely not the type of thing where you could be using both abilities at once, as the wind speeds would probably be painful, but they can be used whenever the other isn’t. You can be snooping around, using A-Tin, but then quickly move to another location using F-Steel. Alternatively, you can act as a jack of all trades in combat, as you can listen for potential attacks when stationary, and dodge and attack quickly when moving. It would certainly take a lot of training, but it would be quite the act. Overall, this is a very solid Twinborn combination. I could definitely see this pop up in a book, and it would be very fun to see. Resonance: Well, I would think that with speed and heightened senses comes extra awareness and reaction time. Whether that would count as a resonance, I’m not sure. But the abilities definitely lend themselves to that. Name: How about…a Shade/Shadow? Always listening, but you will never find them. Rating: a solid 8/10! Not completely overpowered, but definitely not something that a non-Twinborn could easily beat. Again, let me know your thoughts! Is there something I missed? Do you have a better name? This is already off to a fun start, and I’m excited to continue this!

MISTBORN SPOILER Hey everyone, I was wondering about Sazed's (allignment?). Im sure it's a common topic if Sazed is really Harmony or Discord. We know Lyras used up / killed / lost part of Preservation when he created the humans of Scadrial / broke the contract so technically Preservation is lesser than Ruin? However, both powers have been described as basically infinite so I am not sure this even matters. I was questioning if we have any evidence or solid ideas if he ever sneakily changed some scripts or other stuff, like Ati used to do. We know he allowed spook's book to be "known" but that might be a completely rewritten version. I am just sus of Sazed because both Kel and Hoid avoid him like the plague. [ ]

As the title says, I am planning a short story set on Monody, first planet in the Threnodite system. Is this something you guys would want to see posted, or should I keep it to myself? Also I am not sure about Dragonsteel's stance on unapproved derivative works, does anyone know if they would have a problem with me posting a story set in their IP? I've got some pretty decent brainstorming done and I think I came up with very interesting ideas. I wanted to hear your opinions on this before I started though.

Stories are told about heroes- but every hero needs a good villain to do battle against. Be it a Dark Lord, rival faction, or environmental catastrophe, every protagonist needs to face challenges in order to overcome challenges. In a collaborative storytelling environment (such as the one we have right here on the Shard) someone has to write the villain's side of the story. This thread is a discussion board for your experiences with writing the bad guy. Since the ancient days of 2018 up until the present, I've found myself gravitating towards the role of antagonist in the stories I've helped to create. And so I pose a question to everyone: who else likewise gravitates towards writing villains? If you do, why? If you don't, why not? What have your experiences been like writing villains/interacting with villains?

Hey! I am currently rereading both stress and TLM on a beautiful beach in Egypt ( too much lore to digest in one go) I am drawn back to the comment where about implied that he and sixteen other people chattered Ado as they could not trust him to make his own decisions. My head cannon has always been (since Dawnshard anyway) that there would have been twenty people in total, 4 for the Dawnshard and 16 for each Shard. I am aware that Hoid was offered a shard and did not take this up. I wonder why there were seventeen people originally, did one person never intend to take up a shard? Was there an additional purpose for that person? I just think it’s random that they had one extra person lying around to take up the refused shard. I am wondering if Hoid declined the shard before they attempted the shattering but still wanted to be involved in the attempt. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated? I feel I have missed a link somewhere.

Fair warning, cosmere-wide spoilers for everything up to TLM I have just had two thoughts and I'm curious what everyone thinks here: 1. When T-Odium ascends, he is still bound by the pact that Rayse made with Dalinar. The power, is bound by the oaths. 2. When Ruin and Preservation worked together to create Scadrial, they had the agreement that eventually Preservation would have to allow Ruin to destroy what they had created So, when Sazed took up both shards and became Harmony, is he still bound by both sides of that agreement? Will he eventually have to give way to allow the Ruin portion of his power the outlet to destroy what was created? Or, since he would hold both sides, is he then able to anull the agreement (if it even still stands)? Then again, would the Ruin intent allow him to make that anullment?

Hey guys, me and a friend are making a Stormlight archives python game. For the sake of simplicity we are only doing Windrunners and Lightweavers, I was assigned as to take care of the lightweaver side of things, and I need help thinking of what to do for the first mission, while you are a squire. I need an idea for who they will infiltrate, it can't be something to hard but something that is relatively safe, and isn't super risky. Any ideas are helpful, please and thank you! (This is what I have so far) if order_choose == '2' : health = '100' power = '25' weapon = '0' sphere = '100%' defence = '0' stealth = '75' print("You have now been made a squire under the lightweavers") sleep (2) print("welcome to the Lightweavers!") sleep (2) print("You are now a lightweaver, and your first mission is tonight") (this is only half of the code, the lightweaver side, without the beginning stuff

So this will be a twofold post with two main questions being asked. This is not a post to change anyone’s opinions or prompt more or less reputation giving/farming. This is just a fun little question that I think is a cool thing to learn about. So the first question is this: how do you folks decide what deserves reputation given? We only get 15 reputation givings daily, which might be seen as too much or too limiting dependent on how liberal you are with reputation distribution. I will hide my opinion on this, so that others can choose not to be affected by it in their answer. The next question is how much do you care about reputation? Is it something you are quite fond of? Do you think it’s kind of silly? Why do you think that? My response is spoilered below. I am also interested in if these things are actually different from other social media sites you use. I find this platform to be very different in feel from places like Discord or Reddit. I think it helps how small the community is. Well, feel free to answer any of the questions with any amount of reason you want to give. This is purely out of curiosity and interest in how other sharders navigate the site’s rep system.

So we know scandrial is the more earth like inventions. And roshar is more magic based. we also know scandrial has 3 maybe 4 magic systems that they use. we also know that roshar, wait how many magic systems? ok so there is two ways to count magic systems. the KR are 1 system or 10 different systems. Each with their own side abilities too. then there’s the old magic, and voidbinding,(does it have 9 or 10 I forgot) so that brings us to 20 give or take 1. then there’s those magic fish, and the Larkin, and great shells, idk if that’s three or 1 or something else. And then there’s fabrials both slavery and voluntary fabrials. and possibly dancing magic in shinovar. the unmade. And possibly a cultivation magic system that we have yet to see. Each bondsmith honestly. Then singers transforming is that a magic system? so what’s yalls thoughts? I think I give up on exact count because honestly roshar is truly a special place, it’s no wonder that they came up with anti light first.

So Shai is Moonlight. I get that. Makes relative sense. I’m sure Shai was an easy person to recruit into the Ghostbloods. However, for being hundreds of years old, she sure does not seem to be the most powerful forger of her time. From what she has said, she has three soul stamps on her. Two of which are universal stamps, which I am certain is quite difficult to pull off. The third is an essence stamp that makes her an Elantrian, which is also surely difficult to pull off. However. Three soul stamps? Really? Shai is certainly better than that. Is it a limitation of resources? What Shai has made is certainly impressive, but probably something an average forger could pull off in 100 years of living. I think it’s safe to assume Shai’s been kicking for longer than that, and again, she is THE BEST forger of her lifetime. If this is the Shai we know, I would expect a whole briefcase of powerful soul stamps, including more than just one essence mark. I understand that she only has so much access to her abilities, since there’s only so much Dor that she has access to. However, even with limited resources, more options are always welcome. I find it slightly hard to believe that Shai wouldn’t have proper materials to make more, as the Ghostbloods are at this point quite far reaching and could certainly procure some. Especially since, as far as I’m aware, Shai is quite high up in their ranks. So what’s up? Why does Shai, the most powerful forger or her time, who has presumably been alive for hundreds of years, honing her skills, pals with Kelsier himself, have only three soul stamps?

What major players in our current books will become worldhoppers in the future I expect Wax(and maybe the rest of his crew) because of him calling himself Harmony's sword and the Harmony epigraph in Rhythm of War where Harmony says he is preparing a sword I also expect the majority of our Rosharan characters to figure it out, if not actively do it, due to the prominence of Shadesmar and the cognitive realm on Roshar

In tWoK prologue with szeth he mentions that the alethi are “not too far” from acquiring new shardblades. A thought followed by him commenting on the alethi warmongering and worried about the future. this of course brings up an important question. Why were the alethi confident to have new shards soon? my first thoughts was they had fanciful thoughts of new fabrials. But after O, RoW, and book 5 prologue, I think the alethi were rather talking about 1) a possible voidspren bond, 2) having the radiants return therefore the shards return with them. 3) or that gavilar was talking about a great new weapon and the alethi in their wisdom, thought it was a Treasure of shardblades.

So what crazy possible cosmer inspired technology would you like to see in era 4? personally I would like to see spiritual realm storage. (Kinda like extra dimension storage) mistborn literally everywhere due to refining the mist. bullets that move though everything due to being refined stormlight. spirit web manipulation tools. ect. what’s your thoughts? Ideas? How would it work?

So we know in rythm of war that stormlight leaks faster then voidlight. Where people arnt surprised if voidlight last for months at a time. As for stormlight it can’t even last the weeping without going dun. the question becomes, why. and I think it is a two part answer. 1) gemstones, we know that more perfect gemstones hold light longer and that perfect ones hold light indefinitely, and are much more resistant to cracking and other damages. 2) rhythms, we know stormlight has an orderly rhythm, and that voidlight is chaotic but with an order to it. well the theory is that stormlight “vibrates” at just the right frequency to escape the gemstones faster then voidlight, and because voidlight is so chaotic it might be resistant to leaking to the point of lasting months in a gemstone. what’s yalls thoughts anything I missed?

I looked online to see if anyone talked about this, and i didn’t find anything so I guess I’ll make a post. as some may know, I’m a believer that stormlight isn’t a book of the end of the world, but is in fact a book about the revival of the world, as in the following post talking about mistborn and stormlights differences. So in holding to this, I have a theory for book 5 but first some background to the thoughts. I believe in oathbringer the stormfather mention that odium rides the storm like honor used to, and what do we know about odium riding storms? He’s able to protect his army and ships while destroying others in his path. what if honor did the same thing. The stormfather said that honor loved humans. That he protected and died for them. What if he literally protected them from the storms when he was alive. shielding them and their cities from the full force of the storm. Kinda like what kaladin has done a couple of times. The bases of the theory come from one of the visions Dalinar gets when the midnight essence was released, the people lived in wooden houses, and was confused about why Dalinar was mentioning living in caves and in stone buildings. That must be because there is no need to worry about the storms, their god honor literally protects them. Also a legend, of karbronth. Called the city of bells. Saying they would hang bells outside to tell if a highstorm was even happening. Laughed at but maybe it holds more weight then we originally thought. and I think we are starting to see the stormfather change slightly, where he now considers the request of kaladin and of Dalinar.(why would he consider it if he couldn’t do the request?) To where in RoW when arguing with Dalinar he mentions how the two people didn’t survive due to a boulder hitting them. Dissipate just mentions how he only sees the front of the storm. (Stormfather is a filthy lier) what’s yalls thoughts? TLDR: I believe that the storms didn’t hurt people when Honor was alive. And that the stormfather might return to that state becoming a storm that cares.

So I've been reading Mistborn Era 2, and found a big problem with the bendalloy allomantic power. So the power is greatly increasing time flow in a bubble by burning the metal. I had no issues with that, until a scene where Wax falls out of one. He only describes a slight discomfort doing it. This makes no sense if you look at the actual physics of how that would work, and since Brandon and this community are generally interested in integrating "realistic" physics into these worlds with magic, I thought I would share my thoughts. So the biggest problem is that you should absolutely not want to move in or out of the time bubble. You might've heard of a phenomenon regarding black holes called "spaghettification". Since black holes have such a great gravitational pull, if any part of your body is closer to the singularity than another (which would always happen), you get stretched out by the differing pull on your, let's say feet, compared to your upper body. Essentially, by moving out of the bubble, a reverse spaghettification effect would happen to you. Since time flows slower on the outside, the part of you out of the bubble would also move much slower, while the part of you inside much faster. I think this would compress your body to an extreme degree, maiming, or in the worst case, killing you in the process. What are your thoughts on this? I just wanted to share my opinion, because it nagged at me. I'm not very far into the books, so there might be an explanation for it later on. If so, hit me with a RAFO

So I’m unsure if this is a theory or an observation, but let’s talk about spren, and how they travel through the physical realm. Obviously we see syl fly around and stick things together, using the surges her bond grants. wyndle seems to use progression (super fast) to talk and move around. Ua’pam is able to merge with the stones similar to the deepest ones who share the ability so I guess it’s just connecting the vary close dots, but I think this shows that the spren (who we know have small bits of physical substance) have to interact with the world within the bounds of their surges. And perhaps the body essences have something to do with it as gyls hides in Renarins body. what’s yalls thoughts, anything I missed or anything you would like to point out? edit: I forgot why I originally wanted to post this. anyways BONDSMITHS. Who are the three bondsmiths? Stormfather, sibling, and…… that’s right the nightwatcher, who has what ability? The old magic. Think about that for a moment, we have been asking what a bondsmith can do? We have been seeing hints of it sense the beginning. And that’s only casually, imagine what bondsmiths can do when properly used.

So I was listening to shardcast (a recent event) and they were theorizing about why the tukari were Shrouded in shadow no matter the angle. and so a theory popped into my head, what if the tukari are not completely in the CR? so this theory hinges on two ideas. 1: that ishar didn’t know he could make a perpendicularly until Dalinar made one 2: that ishar can Connect people to the CR like he could Connect spren to the PR so the main theory is that he is connecting about 90-95% of the person and supplies they use to the CR to easily transport between realms, and once they come back to a meeting place, he goes over himself and pulls everyone back to the PR. what’s your thoughts? Do you think ishar used a perpendicularly before his meeting with Dalinar?

So this theory is about urithiru. so the theory was bouncing in my head on possible ways to take a bondsmith off planet, as we know bondsmiths are as op as the cosmer allows, and it’ll be useful to have access to them on more the three planets at most. So the theory hit me, urithiru would be perfect to transform into a massive mother ship. within the books it talks about how the sibling is the metal not the stone in the tower, using the stone to build upon the massive city. So my thought was why not put it on a ship and fly off roshar, maybe just cutting the mountain off and flying that(not the most cost effective but it could work) now the only problem I can see is a lack of towerlight but I see it more as a non issue because of the bondsmiths abilities to, what? Open perpendicularities. They literally have near infinite light. But what if the Bondsmith dies? Oh that’s easy. In the honor spren fortress their is a large container to store stormlight, I’m sure one can be made to hold towerlight, so that the sibling has plenty of time to choose the next bondsmith. so what’s yalls thoughts? Ideas? How would rosharin space craft look like? And how much easier/harder do you think it is to make them?

Alethela, the country that is the watcher at the rim. Who learn war to better protect the world when the voidbringers return. Within this country is a book. An important book that every officer has to read. But why? lets look at two people that suffer from the same affliction especially when you look back. Moash and Amaram. exhibit 1: Amaram Let’s look at past interactions with the light of RoW to see what’s happening in the background. (Also SA5 Prologue in spoiler section) We know after kaladin gained his first pair of shards Amaram betrayed and killed kaladins squad. But why? in tWoK after winning his shards kaladin and his remaining squad are in Amarams command tent waiting for Amaram to finish talking to someone. This someone we find out is restaries. The herald Kelek, leader of the sons of honor. we then hear Amaram saying that after hours of discussion he finally agreed to restaries idea to take the shards himself to better serve alethkar. Within this we can see that kaladin himself mentioned that he saw Amarams guilt on his face. And tried to do the most honorable thing in his position and sold him as a slave. after Amarams confrontation with kaladin and Dalinar he starts regretting letting kaladin live. A bit different then during the confrontation, where he looked hurt and guilty but also apologized and said that he did it for alethkar not personal. now in oathbringer we start seeing Amaram descend into a downward spiral. he tries to forge an alliance with Dalinar(who he witnessed burn a city killing everyone in anger) but keeps being shamed by him(for killing four men for literally one of the most powerful weapons in roshar). Being put to physical work in a broken country that every alethi knew would be a perfect, easy, capture. Being contacted by odium with promises of power, and no guilt or anger. exhibit 2: moash not much is really needed to be said in this post about moash. I talked more about Amaram because people don’t seem to want to understand him. Hating him because kaladin hates him. Or at best feeling sad about lost potential. but moash has been debated on and hated on constantly sense WoR we know he’s effected by the unmade losing his negative emotions and feeling a void. (Interesting especially sense it seems positive emotions aren’t effected as far as we know) and it seems he truly wants this. So theirs that. so back to alethela, my theory on this is that people read tWoK not just to make it easier to bond spren, but to help the leaders not to make miss steps, to not act in greed to open themselves to the unmade, as we saw the unmade alone completely wiped out cities, countries, with their advance emotional allomamcy. so what do you think? Was tWoK used as a life style to better live by honor?