Search the Community

Title says it all, really. I am an agnostic and I'm curious to know how your religion (or lack thereof) has impacted your life and the way you view things, both positively and/or negatively. Gonna tag @Trutharchivist , @Kingsdaughter613 , and @Nathrangking, who are Jewish, and @Kaymyth, who I think is a pagan. Not gonna tag all the Sharders I know who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because there's just too many of you Please keep it respectful; I deliberated making this topic for a long time because religion and politics are notoriously touchy subjects on the Internet. There aren't many places where you can discuss either without it descending into a flamewar, and I trust you folks to be better than that.

So, I realized that as much as I am a religious geek in real life, I am a geek of all the many cosmere religions and love them all differently and uniquely (much as I do IRL, but I digress). This poll was just out of curiosity, maybe promote discussion? I love most of these religions, but my top favorite is Survivorism (solely because I love Kelsier). (This is in a RoW thread because... I have a fear of accidentally spoiling it?)

God What is God actually? Or what is a god? I think about that far too much but I enjoy the thoughts of others. And Brandon did put his thoughts into his books. Some things he did put there intentionally and some probably without thinking about it. I read a lot about similar topics in this forum and i assume that my basic idea was already mentioned but most things I found were older. I am thinking this through while writing it. There will be errors and I hope someone finds them. Gods throughout the history of mankind in the real world I've never met someone who actually believed in one of the ancient gods of the Greek, Egyptians, or Vikings in the way they are represented in the strategy game Age of Mythology. And by my Christian standard the gods in the game are not gods at all. They are not all powerful or all knowing. They are not good. They are more than one entity. They did take on physical forms and sometimes even impregnated women. As somewhat of a christian myself I have to think about Jesus when writing that sentence. He had a physical form, his father was God and he did not seem to be all powerful. But this discussion should not be about him. The ancient pantheons knew many Gods and all of them had a different purpose. The main Greek gods for example are known as the Twelve Olympians. And the ancient gods did always fight or party. There are many great stories about all of them. Gods in the Cosmere as seen by the residents To talk about all of them would probably be more difficult than talking about all of the gods in the real world, but I want to bring up my favorite examples. Blushweaver is called a god, but from my viewpoint she is a resurrected, highly invested, human. The Stormfather is a god for many Rosharans. He is basically a Spren for us. The Heralds are also gods for many Rosharans and I do not know what they are for me, but they are similar to Blushweaver and the Returned. For the Un-Kalaki all Spren are gods. And last but not least there are the Shards and Adonalsium himself. This is more difficult. For someone who believes in the divinity of one of the beings mentioned above the shards would probably be gods too. And Adonalsium as a combination of all of them would logically also count as a god. Many gods becoming one In our world it happened that one religion devoured others. Sometimes a polytheistic religion slowly focused on one of the gods at first and then integrating the aspects of the other gods into the main god. Multiple religions and multiple gods became one god as the only god of one general religion. This happened a lot and is related to other phenomena. If you think about the pyramid (hierarchy) of needs it makes sense to pray for food and shelter at the beginning stage of a developing society. But later those basic needs are fulfilled and love, esteem and self-actualization become more important. Those needs are more abstract than food. This leads to the god, responsible for this need, being more abstract. This is a complicated topic and you can spend years looking into it but my main argument is that in our world multiple religions and gods did unite to become one. The Shattering of Adonalsium In the cosmere the whole topic of religion currently begins with the Shattering of Adonalsium. Adonalsium, an (all-)powerful being was shattered into 16 Shards. Those Shards represent different aspects of the same being. And maybe something important happened with the 4 Dawnshards before that, but this is currently RAFOed as far as I know. Here is where part one of my conclusion starts. The Shattering of Adonalsium is the opposite of what happened in our world. In our world many gods become one. If we think of Adonalsium as a god then his shattering is one god becoming many. And not only Adonalsium did become many gods, but his shards did too. In Greek mythology divinity gets passed on to the children of the god. If both parents are gods, the child is a god too. If only one parent is a god, the child is born as a halfgod. If we use this theory on Roshar, then every Spren is a god. We can argue about how much divinity is needed to actually be called a god, but it is hard to draw a line. So let's just use the easy way and say everything that is pure investiture without a physical form is a god. This would be one easy way to define god in the cosmere. It is clearly not perfect but it is a definition. It is not the definition I would use from an out of world perspective but it would be fine as an inworld one for me. Socrates? What has Socrates to do with that? Socrates asked difficult questions. Imagine someone asking about honor. What is honorful? If you ask many people there will be a consensus on a lot of honorful behaviors. But some things will be contrary. And this thought of contrary views on honorful behavior can be represented by spren. Syl believes that Kaladin is honorful. Other Honorspren may agree or disagree, but no other spren agreed enough to make him a radiant. The part of Honor (and Cultivation maybe) that thought of Kaladin as honorful enough to become radiant is called Syl. So Sy is only a small part of the whole Adonalsium, but a part with power and an opinion. If we say that Adonalsium is the god of the Cosmere we can argue that he did split up himself, his will and his power into many little pieces but those pieces are still the will and power of the whole so every Spren is Adonalsium but Adonalsium is all Sprens and all the other Shards as well. A Spren is then a part of God. It is divine. If we accept that Adonalsium never was all powerful or willingly limited himself that every part of Adonalsium is still God in its essence and Identity. Are Humans Gods now? No. But as mentioned in the cosmere and the real world. There is something special about Humans. In the Cosmere we can add a lot of other beings to the list of special ones. But to keep it easy I´ll just talk about humans. Every human has some kind of divinity. We have souls or something. That's a complicated and abstract philosophical and religious idea. And I will not discuss all world religions at once but most agree that humans are special. The one above all The true God of the Cosmere So even if we do not agree on Adonalsium being a God there is something even deeper than that. If we define God almighty and something that knows everything, the past, the present, the future there is still one being that fits this description. Brandon Sanderson! He created the Cosmere. He created it out of nothing in his mind. He completely decides all physical rules. He can change them anytime, but it would make a worse story. He knows the past of the cosmere and also it’s future. He can do whatever he wants with it. He is almighty in the cosmere. He is God. Of course he is not the god of our real world, but no one in the Cosmere can prove that Brandon exists. He creates characters and tries to make them seem conscious. And he does it so well that they seem real or believable to all of us. But sometimes he has to intervene in the broader story. Intervene in what would normally happen. He creates coincidences that bring the important people together. Someone finds the right book at the right time. People meet randomly or due to mysterious reasons like Hoid. Hoid is somewhat the main way of Brandon to influence the story. And by influencing the story he changes the cosmere itself. And Brandon created the Cosmere in a way that Hoid seems to be real and not divinie. At least not much more divine than many other beings. Hoid can be everyone. He can be beggar on the streets, the king's wit, or just some random traveler you meet at a campfire. But Hoid is always Brandon’s influence. Hoid is in a way the inconspicuous hand of god. And have you ever met a Hoid in your life? Someone who did influence your path through life in a positive way without you noticing it at first? Maybe something that seems unimportant, like a stranger wearing a funny T-Shirt with a joke on it. You meet someone special years later and remember that joke. You tell the joke, one thing leads to another and you are happily married. This is a bad example but it is related to something that actually happened. So the true god of the Cosmere is Brandon Sanderson. He created it and tries to change as few things as possible, even though he knows everything and is almighty. But he influences the people in small but well calculated ways with his delegate that we know a Hoid.

To my knowledge, in the cosmere we haven't encountered a religion that is true "in world". Most religions we have seen, such as Vorinism, Survivorism, or Shu-Korath, are focused on the attributes of a Shard or an individual, which we know to be human(oid)s with potentially lots of investiture. To that end, what exactly is the point of the religions in any of Brandon's books? They certainly provide hope, influence culture, and interact with magic systems in interesting ways. However, in my personal experience, the most powerful part of religion is that when you believe a religion to be true, it adds a sense of meaning and direction to your life. Kelsier, TLR, and the Shards don't have any evident (to us) authority to do such a thing, and yet their religions all offer some sort of greater meaning to life. If someone could prove to me that my religion was created by some sort of sudo-god, I would probably become rather distressed. I'm pretty sure Brandon has mentioned some sort of "Truth" going on in the background of the Cosmere that he doesn't want to elaborate very much on, but I think the closest we've gotten to this is Dalinar's struggle to understand Honor's death. Anyway, I guess I was wondering what other people's thoughts are on this topic. Does it bother you (that basically everyone in the cosmere believes in lies, and that Shards are willing to allow religions about themselves to be perpetuated)? Do you think you would be an atheist in the cosmere, given what you know about it and its religions?

So I can't find it mentioned or talked about anywhere, but I'm about exactly here in an Oathbringer reread and Evi and Dalinar just got done talking about how Dalinar is changing (getting older). We know already Evi's religion has been described as kinda pagan, kinda vorin. Dalinar is talking about getting older and she says he's changing from one aspect to another. He asks her to clarify and she talks about how they worship"the One", all power is his power, the old magic is "an aspect of the One" (Cultivation/Nightwatcher) who grants some of his power, the Almighty is another aspect, there are many aspects to the One, and people can change between aspects at different times in their lives. Sounds like she (her culture) worships Adonalsium and/or the Shards and could even be the closest thing to a "one true religion" of the Cosmere. I've searched Arcanum, the Coppermind, and good ole Google but haven't found anything about this. Any info would be great Edit: I relistened cause it was 45 min in between hearing and being able to post. I definitely paraphrased and used a wrong word (aspect instead of Avatar), but the overall point is the same.

This may well qualify as a 'no duh!' type of a question, but I was just wondering if we have any information on precisely how the Shards relate to the various religions of the Shardworlds? I mean, obviously a few of them are pretty much unambiguously just the Shards by different names, like Jaddeth for Dominion, Domi for Devotion, Austre for Endowment, and of course 'Almighty' for Honor. But what about all the other ones? In Hero of Ages it's implied that most of the Scadrian religions contain common elements related to Ruin and Preservation, so there seems to at least have been influence by the Shards if not actual deification (by the humans at least), but it's a little difficult to tell whether this was deliberate influence on the Shards' part or whether it just sort of happened. Do we have any information relating to this issue?

Ahoy, Thought I'd make my first foray into Cosmere forums with an actual topic as well as a general greeting. My interest below will concern at least the Stormlight Archive up to the end of Oathbringer, so spoiler warning?

So I have been thinking about this for a while and I want to know what people think. Warning, I will be diving in to the Christian Faith a bit and I do not mean to cause any hard feelings. I also want to know what other people have to say because I think that Sanderson does a really good job on his religions and I want to see the parallels to Earth religions. I have been comparing some of the stuff the New Testament says and the Oaths of the Knights Radiant. They do seem to have some correlation, specifically the Bondsmiths. Here we go: First Ideal: Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Journey before Destination. Correlation: see the Immortal Words page on the Coppermind Wiki but I will break it down. Life before Death: in my family, we are taught that dying for Christ is easy, but living for Christ is hard, I think that this is reflected in the explanation of this part of the Oath. Dying/killing should never be the first option. Strength before Weakness: Servant Leadership, we see this in Kaladin in the first book and is a theme through out the NT. Journey before Destination: Your faith should effect how you live your life, the walk is just as important as the end goal. Bondsmiths: I will take responsibility for what I have done. If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man: That really resonates with the idea in the Christian faith that we should keep growing and expanding our faith and that there will be set backs. If we ignore our set backs and sin, they will keep us from The LORD and growth in our faith. Only by acknowledging what we have done can we really change for the better. Now I know this will be controversial, but I do not mean it to be so. I want to know if other people have seen similar correlations between their faiths and philosophies when reading Sanderson's works. Thanks.

Ok, first of all I'm really sorry if this has been asked before. But I guess more cosmere aware fans can enlighten me Did Radiants used to worship the three shards? Or else why are they 3 depicted in "the" room in Urithuru? Do we know why Odium is represented like he is? Does the pagan thaylen believe in Passions have to do with Odium-Passion? I'm seriously believing it's something that comes from a time when Odium was the human's God... Thanks to anyone that takes some time to help me through this

Simple theory, but profound historical Rosharan implications. The girl who looked up tells the story of a girl who climbed a wall forbidden wall only to find on the other side that she was the monster all along. On the other side they also had Stormlight, and Storms. After she climbed her people experienced these things as well. (Ostensibly). Meanwhile, we have some interesting facts. Shinovar is behind a giant wall of mountains. The storms have no power there. There are few (or no?) Spren. There may not be any Stormlight (unconfirmed). Shinovar has a typical ‘human’, Yolish environment, whereas the rest of Roshar is profoundly alien. The Shin religion holds walking on stone to be profane, meaning religious shin can never leave their valley. The Shin also see using Stormlight as illumination to be profoundly disturbing, implying it’s too holy to use like that and that they don’t have/use Stormlight. Meanwhile, the Listeners were the native rulers of Roshar, who have since been delegated to a slave species. THEORYTIME: The stone shamans prohibition against walking on stone wasn’t originally strictly religious; it was part of a deal, a treaty. Humans settled on Roshar in the Shinovar valley, likely with shardic or other magical help (dawnsingers?), but either way some serious terraforming was done to create a ‘wall’ and to give the valley soil. A deal was made with the Listeners (possibly by the humans, possibly by the shard or dawnsingers that helped set up Shinovar) that the Humans wouldn’t cross over the wall; that it would be illegal for them to walk on the bare rock or Roshar. Thus the humans (likely refugees?) were able to settle an enclave of Roshar in peace. Generations pass, and reasons may have been forgotten (or simply prohibitions and restrictions ignored). It’s possible too that new humans came to the valley of truth or any number of things. But what happened was that someone climbed the wall, and broke the treaty. After that, or as part of that, more humans came over the wall from Shinovar and began to colonize Roshar. Were they adventurers and colonists? Were they refugees fleeing ethnic discrimination by the Shin? Were they ‘truthless’, banished from the valley? Or did they just want new lands to settle? Either way, significant populations of humans crossed the mountains and began to spread throughout Roshar, stealing the fire from the gods and opening Pandora’s box, all at once. This began the millennia long struggle between Humans and Listeners (although it may have had long stretches of peace, commingling and cooperation - see the herdazians and horneaters). Likely, it is the human/listener tensions that Odium was attracted to/fanned into the flames of war and hatred, leading to the cycle of desolations where Odium would infiltrate both sides and seed them with voidbringers. Eventually, the Listeners being more naturally susceptible to Spren bonds and having more righteous anger against the humans were suborned en masse by Odium. (Alethi and Iriali are both ethnically interesting with their hair - likely they arrived on Roshar later). Tl;dr - Stone shamanism is a memory of early humanities treaties with the Listeners, and The Girl Who Looked Up is about those treaties starting to fall apart/early human forays from the valley of Truth.

Hi, I sent this letter to Brandon, but I think it unlikely that I might get a reply. I would not expect you to read all of it, but I thought some of you might be be interested in the Sexuality section of it in reference for his future work. A heads up, it discusses all of Brandon's published works: Dear Brandon, I came to you having finished the Wheel of Time series and was feeling a hollow space within me that needed to be filled by more fantasy. Therefore, let me make it clear that I owe you a huge debt of thanks for your work on WoT and the Cosmere. There were a few topics that I’d like to discuss - in the same way how you feel the need to get a story down on paper, I would like these thoughts out of my head. Sexuality: The main point that I’d like to focus on is the heterosexual relationships of characters. I admire the romantic bonds that your characters forge whether they come from hardship or circumstance and personally I dismiss much of the claim that they are passionless or platonic. However, I would urge you against skirting around when sex actually does happen. It does not matter whether you claim to be a bit of a prude, you yourself mentioned in your Dumbledore EUOlogy that writing characters having a jovial time from is a natural part of any believable world; sex is much the same. The need for relaxation and good cheer amongst friends is as human an experience as two sweaty people lying in bed pleasuring each other - either from passionate love, casual abandon or respect founded on pressured times. Fantasy is primarily drawn from Western medieval-renaissance influence which itself was frequented by the casualness of farmhands with milk maids, easy lovers’ induced by Mediterranean festivities or young nobles dallying with maidens keeping secret from their father that they may not have an intact hymen anymore. Sex extends down to more disquieting interactions between noble and peasant girl that then need to portrayed in a negative light. Despite the control of the Church, people were just better at hiding it. It is one of the only drawbacks that I see in organised religion today: it clings to the dregs of social acceptability from centuries past. It was useful as a social construct when rural families had little knowledge of contraception to stop diseases when they could not afford multiple partners over a lifetime, however, with how far we have advanced in technology the prohibition now seems outdated. Raw primal desire is just something we cannot get rid of - as anyone who has gone through teenage years well knows. This may be prying, but I feel that some of your reluctance on this topic may come from what you have shared of your upbringing, in that was a sexual conservative one. You had to wait, of course by church and choice, until you could share with your wife something that you never let out. As such, it is a very personal and closeted topic for you to broach fully as it stirs too many feelings close to your home. However, you have said that you want to push the boundaries of what is expected in writing. We know that epic fantasy was weighed down by the preconception of Tolkien and Jordan of no sex. It seems only natural that if you want to push you and your books to new places, expanding that sexuality is the logical way to go. It may not reflect with your personal views or you may worry that it will reflect badly in your community. So what. What you put into your book is pushing your artform and your art is capturing the human nature. If you want to see under the skin of what makes a human graceful, an artist draws nude pictures; if you want to see beneath the skin of what really makes a human tick, you write in their deepest primal urges. You may say ‘All my batch of fantasy contemporaries are doing this, so I don’t want to do what they’re doing’. Yes and no. While in the last 15 years sex has been rising to the pages, it just seems to be making a big splash when surrounded in an ocean of meekness. I’m not asking you to go as visceral in sexual details as GRRM, for that is his style and how he plays with sexuality. If I wanted to see more of that kind, I would go read more GRRM. In fact, you started to move in a more positive direction with Warbreaker; it should not matter if the novel’s concept concerned was trying to get with child. However, that withstanding, every other novel feels like a Drab: a incredibly complex biological organism with divine proportions of engineering living an intricate life yet it fails to look quite right - it is missing its Breath. There are numerous examples I am sure you are familiar with, the most popularised one that of Vin and Elend sleeping in separate rooms before they are married, despite having been in a relationship for years and that you hint at their desire for each other’s body parts. Only after they are married is it mentioned that Vin will wear a top off in a tent. Again, I think this is an issue that stems from your personal life, that you never allow characters to engage in sexual matters before marriage. As I have mentioned in previous paragraphs, there are reasons for this hesitance and why it is limiting. Perhaps removing this limitation is the first step to opening yourself to your characters previously unseen natures. Start by creating a mere sentence that notes a main character coming out of a door tucking their shirt in. All the while, we can see inside the room where a random/side character is laying in bed with the sheet pulled over their chest. A simple casual occurrence, with no need to make a big deal out of it. Warbreaker was approaching this yet was still tamer. As you have claimed in the past, writers draw out their material from their own lives. This does not mean you have to jump in a time machine back to your college years and experiment with one night stands. But by talking with people of different life experience, sexual morality, a woman outside your community and your author friends who have written sexual passages will prepare you to slowly progress into writing sexual nature. As I have said, your task as an artist is to relate and expound the emotions that are in our lives. It means when a character describes the love of his life, there should be descriptive language of how the light of her eye dances with flashes of white and violet, the reddening of her cheeks as she runs to meet him in breathless excitement and the soft slope of the marble white skin down her back. The aim is to emote the perception of grace and beauty to the readers, the same feeling they would have when looking upon a master artwork. Moments such as these you know are excellent in order to slow the pace of the story. But similarly, one must be able to deal with eros, something which is so common between the butting heads of young and vibrant characters. Let us say, for example, Renarin grew jealous of Adolin for having an exotic and beautiful girlfriend (I avoid using Kaladin as I imagine that he has grown to like Shallan through their shared experience and then realises her outward attractiveness later on. Therefore, his is a merging of love and lust). The young prince on guard duty would notice the way Adolin caresses Shallan by circling the point underneath her wrist, the drop and swell of the breast due to a lower cut dress as Shallan unconsciously leans in towards Adolin across the table. Then there is lust of a minor noble character meeting his barmaid interest for a weekend morning vigorous and enthusiastic coupling. Slightly more challenging is a more domineering relationship such as that I might relate below between Jasnah and Shallan. When writing of lust, the danger to avoid from a lack of sexual experience before marriage is that you do not create the sense that the reader should be joining in on some gigglish teenager ignorance of a taboo. The less dangerous yet still important caution is to avoid making females incapable of displaying lustful actions - to do otherwise is to debase them to the traditional Victorian roles of ‘stiffly lie there and take it’. Your stories are known to have grit in them, whether it be the harsh world of Mistborn, the gruesome imagery of Bloody Tan’s menagerie or strong and broken characters like Kaladin. This realistic aspect would only be compounded with a realistic representation of sex. Just as violence needs to be shown in an oppressive regime, a high stress situation may likely bring people closer together. An unconventional relationship that blossoms out of respect is likely the undone challenge that you would relish, yet I would only appreciate if you are willing to commit to showing its full romantic development. Below are some more encounters from the Cosmere were this issue cropped up: With Wayne and MeLaan, I was getting slightly excited that you had written your first sexual premarital experience. And yes, well done that they managed to get their tops off, but it is a little simple-minded that Wayne and MeLaan were just kissing under there. When I first saw the words ‘neckin’ and ‘snogging’ I thought it was a joke, that others characters were trying to pass off a euphemism to protect Marasi or Steris’ innocence. But no, all parties seriously believed the two were just touching lips. Firstly, the amount of time that it took the train to travel to Ironstand and its protracted fight sequence gave plenty of time for foreplay then a passionate rebound shag reaching at least third base. Wayne’s personality and environment leave him with little inhibitions; the same for an immortal being who has had centuries to try every trick in the book. I thought it unlikely, but I had a faint thought that for the first time a lesbian relationship between main characters might occur. This possibility came to me from the gradual respect that Shallan and Jasnah grew for each other as two capable scholars. There is also the Shallan’s adoration of Jasnah in the student-teacher position that many fans were quick to wonder if it represented bisexual feelings. Jasnah herself finds herself seems so free from men and previous attachments that once we start to see cracks that mark her as a human, we can wonder if she might allow Shallan’s attentions to become something more. It would create a perverse moral quandary to explore if Jasnah were to take it up: if it is an abuse of the pedagogy relationship and would it require secrecy. I am not disappointed that this did not occur, maybe the opposite as Jasnah is one of my favourite characters. You would have received an angry email about how you did not know what to do with a strong atheist character if she had turned out to be dead. Fortunately, once Shallan failed to stumble over her corpse, I suspected that she lived, as I suspect that mere assassins could not kill Jasnah - even if the encounter tempts the dangerous waters of character resurrection. I thought Jasnah’s disappearance might have been unnecessary so that Shallan would be all alone, as I did so enjoy Jasnah and what she could have added to Navani and in the Shattered Plains by taking command of the royal court. For the first book and a bit, the dynamic between the two was what made Shallan interesting, compared to the second book when it focused on Shallan’s past. In the end, I do appreciate the growth that Shallan underwent. To bring it back to the point, you have said that you do not concern yourself with whatever orientation that characters have. I agree that making a big deal out of it would be the wrong direction. Yet you do not abstain from romantic relationships in your books. It makes it a perfectly acceptable precedent to trial other kinds of relationships. Please do not make Adolin into another Gawyn. The Trakand prince, despite his struggle to find his position in relation to Egwene, died still not able to reconcile that his love for Egwene needed him to put aside his pride and be her shadow. His selfishness lead to his death and failure, thus letting Egwene sacrifice her life so freely. That inability earned Gawyn one of the most hated positions among WoT fans. I fear that I can see you setting Adolin on that same tangent. He worries that his place will be overshadowed by having a Knight Radiant for a wife. However, I hope that I am mistaken. Although Adolin is boastful and proud, he does seem a better rounded person than Gawyn. Adolin was drawn to Shallan because she was something unconventional and exotic to him. I hope their dynamic leads to the couple working together as a fighting duo rather than the diametrically opposed Jordan couple. Blushweaver and Lightsong. God I was sad that they never got to consummate their relationship. Again, I hope that your personal stance had nothing to do with that they did not get to have sex because they were decadent unmarried gods. Blushweaver was set well to be one of your most erotically entrancing characters in your entire cosmology. I do admire the two’s articulate flirting - it does represent the most realistic building towards a relationship that I have so far. Blushweaver’s reproach to Siri, “Find someone else’s bed to climb into, you little slut”, left me laughing for quite some time and endeared her to me. I wonder if it would have been more tragic if Blushweaver and Lightsong ended up in a cell together in the end, Lightsong reciprocates Blushweaver’s desires in the face of the situation and they end up having sex on the cell floor or if as it happened, Blushweaver never really knowing that Lightsong really did care for her in the way that she wished. Hopefully they are up there in the Beyond, making up for all that lost time. In conclusion, I feel that you have come some way since the innocence in Elantris and Mistborn and are spreading your wings. Mr Jordan started incorporating more sexual influences too before his passing. It is only a matter of time before this challenge takes you, but I would much prefer it now when you writing so much good and prolific work. Religion: On a different point, I have noticed that it does seem that the characters that hold true to religious beliefs come out on top. Do not get me wrong, I love a good pantheon in fantasy, but I hope this is not a permanent fixture. Sazed did not deserve to Ascend because he went through a crisis of faith and back, but because he was one of the few characters that has gone through trials and we still believe is morally good. That trial did not have to be a religious one and there were plenty of morally grey characters that fill the quota to hold both Ruin and Preservation. Preservation set up someone who cared about the world and this is the person who Saze is. In this, I feel the resolution of characters is sometimes too simple: religious characters are true and the simple good of deontology wins the day. Someone like Dalinar seems a little too pure for what is to come. I hope that when Jasnah confronts her uncle on the whole quandary of if time is worth praying to a Shard, especially if by the end of the Stormlight Archives Cultivation dies. As for The Diagram, the tone of their passages perpetuates that they are the bad guys, but really in the face of an apocalypse, I hope utilitarianism will be shown for its ideological worth. What would you do to save your own wife and children? A sociopathic force has a gun to their heads, do you deny that you would choose the random stranger to die instead. What if it were four random strangers’ lives, five? I think I know which you still would pick. At what number do you let the gunman pull the trigger. It is likely that you never would, not for all the other six billion of us. To protect what is your world, you would give anything. Death: I am sorry to compare you to GRRM again, but I feel the death of characters is sometimes muted because you save them all towards the ends of your books. You might be relying the deaths as ending bombs to give closure to the novel. Valued characters’ deaths spaced sporadically throughout the structure is part of the formula which makes GRRM’s deaths so well received and emotional. As you say, characters have to take risks and their consequences, but one of those big risks should end in the ultimate consequence in Act 1, perhaps our main viewpoint character. Perhaps Dox and Clubs’ deaths didn’t hit as hard as they were meant to, but the only other time can think of a character death midway through the plot is Parlin and you yourself admitted that he needed more done to him to give his departure justice, yet still he is not a primary character. When Karata died, the outrage at her demise was not the event itself, but that not enough attention was given to it. Simply her head gets cut off while running. Even an extra sentence of Raoden acknowledging the light going out of her eyes would have left the audience much happier with the departure of an invested character. Genre: I must say that I am not keen on Mistborn advancing technology to the later end of the 1800’s. I am a diehard fantasy fan and am not of that more common breed that can also stomach sci-fi as well. Give me the setting of magic, medieval times and curious creatures and you can sell me a story of whatever concept you want. However, I start to get discomforted by technology further late Renaissance/Galileo times. It starts to drift from high fantasy. I know of the pitched Mistborn ‘trilogy of trilogies’, but with the Wild West/Victorian feel of Wax and Wayne, we already are into low fantasy territory. The novel use of Allomancy still as a magic kept me through the prologue concerning guns and then the partners’ chemistry, but the magic is starting slip away from the story’s control (machine guns being chief among them). I occasionally appreciate an urban low fantasy such as Skulduggery Pleasant, but only if follows its own rules and genre. By the time we reach modern day and then sci-fi plasma guns and artificial intelligence, I fear that all will be lost that was the spirit of Mistborn. It may be a clever idea to transition a series from fantasy to sci-fi, but I worry if I’ll stick around for it. The implications that it has for the Cosmere are too great, as our shiny technology will inevitably reach the other Shardworlds and turn your anthology into a sci-fi collection. This narrative danger is seen in Sixth of the Dusk. And that worries me because when you started writing you said to yourself that you were going to be a fantasy writer. I would not be particularly interested in a war between the futuristic Scadrial versus high fantasy era societies - it would just seem cheesy. The only hope I can see is that all the future scientific discoveries on Scadrial will come Allomantic innovation, much as the Southerners have, as opposed to electrical currents and telephones. Even still, I can just see our own ideas of the future such as flying cars being excused by Allomancy while losing the feel of fantasy. That said, here’s a suggestion for a potential death in the Wax and Wayne series: a Hemalurgist could die via accidental electrocution through their Hemalurgic spikes, Tesla style, courtesy of Wayne’s beneficiary Sophi Tarcsel. This letter may appear a scathing criticism, but I love your books - these opinions may simply be more useful than the praise that would needed to fill another correspondence. I am hugely looking forward to more Stormlight and have pre-ordered Oathbringer. The cultures and biogeography of Roshar are a world unlike anything I have seen before in fantasy. Blue skin and crystalline fingernails, I’m looking forward to seeing to seeing a cross breed of Thaylen eyebrows and whatever eccentricities that you conjure. Best of luck,

Kell here! Alright. Let's get down to business. In The Alloy of Law (Chapter 6 I think), it mentions that Lord Yomen(?) is a Sliverist(?), or worships Ironeyes/Death. Sadly, the page is sorely lacking. D'ya guys all have more info? I'd love to learn more. P.S. Does Marsh condone the practice? The Path is probably the most popular religion in modern Scadrial. However, despite extensive details, there are a few questions to be asked. Are Pathians allowed to dual worship? Are Spook and/or Marsh deified? Please add it to the Wiki! I also have one question about the Church of the Survivor. Somewhere in Bands of Mourning, Marasi or Aradel or MeLaan or someone (whatever) mentions that one variation of the story is that Kelsier was the Ascendant Warrior's enemy. He was stabbed with a spear by a slave, for the slavery he condoned, a worker, for the labor he forced, and a Prince, for the nobility he corrupted. Is there any more details to this? I'm very interested. Ising the I of saying goodbye(Hey that rhymes!)!

I haven't read the books in a little while and I can't find anything on this on the wikis or from searching the forums. I know the Steel Ministry was the organization that the Obligators/Inquisitors were part of with the Canton of Orthodoxy specifically for "religious" matters but what was the actual name of the religion? What would you call someone who believed that the Lord Ruler was God?

Hi all! So I was curious if anyone could give me any feedback or ideas/critisim on an idea that's been rattling around in my head for a while; Bascially the concept is that a people, or more likely a religion encompassing many peoples, in a book would believe that they're in a book. Not that they know that they're in a book, but that they believe that every man's existence is being written by a god, the Author of Fates, and that they exist as both the protagonist of their own lives, and of books being read of their lives as they happen. Being an author would be either very holy, or a profae calling, I can't decide whether they would find the concept of being a god to whatever world someone writes about an honour or a sin... I think this could make for an interesting viewpoint character, as the narrative would have him musing on how he hoped that the reader was enjoying the story of his life, and thanking the author and reader for anything good that happened, as without the author writing it it couldn't happen, and without the reader, nothing could progress. And the inspiration for this idea was the idea of a character, possibly a priest of this religion, in some kind of disaster, a building collapsing on him or someone about to kill him. He would either be pleading aloud or in his mind, screaming to the heavens for the reader to stop turning the page, to stop reading so the world would pause, for the author to not write such a tragic end to him.... and then his story would end. (That last bit was inspired by the cobbler interlude in the Stormlight Archive, where "Experience... ended." ^_^) What do you think? I'm curious about a third person narritive that could slightly interact with the reader in the way a first or second person one could, and about the effect a chapter like the disaster one would have, if the reader would feel guilty for reading onwards and ending the character's life, since if they didn't turn the page and advance the story by reading it he couldn't die, at least in their minds.

I just read this WoB an idea come to my mind: We know that Trell and Nalt was quite enemies in this Ancient Scadrial's Religion BUT: Some clue seems to point Autonomy as Trell (not confirmed of course) and if Nalt is related to Nalthis we know what Shard lives there. Autonomy and Endowment are quite opposite (maybe not as Ruin and Preservation) but their Intents are the farest I can Imagine. It's possible that the two Shards and maybe some situations between them Inspired this religion. For example Autonomy/Trell has his own single eye (the Sun) a metaphor of Individuality, while Endowment/Nalt has his thousand of eyes (the stars) a metaphor of spreading. Any idea pro or contros to this Idea/theory ?

So, I just read both BoM and SH today and I was struck by what seemed like it might be a hidden connection as to the connection between what appears to be Kelsier's reincarnation and the worship of Trell. In the first book, Sazed preaches the religion focused on Trell to Vin, and stresses the fact that they viewed the stars as the many eyes of Trell, which watched over and protected them. Trell's brother only had one eye (the Sun) and, in his jealousy, made it shine brightly to block out the eyes of Trell himself. My theory is that the followers of Trell are specifically opposed to "Kelsier", who has one eye and one eye spike. This sounds a lot more strenuous on paper, and since I'm not exactly an expert on the Cosmere, I'd happily accept any fact-checking of feedback you guys would be willing to provide.

I find it ironic that the religion which holds Sazed as god has a faith which leaves much to be interpreted by yourself, with only a few vague rules. This was the kind of religion that Sazed would immediately label untrue, and probably why he refuses to be worshipped.

As the title states, which team do you think would win in a duel, given that all of the magic systems work simultaneously. Team 1: Pre-Radiance Kaladin; unconsciously uses Stormlight as he did in Bridge Four, and has no shards. Vin at her strongest (But not as Preservation); plenty of Allomantic stores. Hrathen, ability as shown in Elantris. Enough said. Team 2: Raoden at his best, able to make use of AonDor. Denth in Warbreaker, plain beast. Eshonai in Warform and in full plate. Place of Battle: Elantris, Sel. Who do you think will win? Feel free to justify below

So the religions in the Cosmere are all based on real religions. I want to see which Cosmere religions are based on which Real World religions. My Thoughts: Vorinism=Hinduism (caste system=callings) Survivorism=Christianity (obviously) Pathism=Buddhism If you have any ideas for any other Cosmere religions connection to real world religions post them here, or if you disagree with any connections I've made post below as well.

I've started trying to write a little more seriously, to get practice in. This world started as a place to practice in, but I am liking it, and so plan to continue. This is a world where musical notes are given attributes. eg: Time Note, Gravity Note Combining these attributes in certain combos and proportions can create all kinds of effects. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3rojsqdmk4s4vub/The%20Listener.docx

It's been awhile since I threw a Forms thread at you guys, so I decided now's the time. This one is actually fairly short, just a thought that came to me the other day. Evidence: We have only a few quotes on the nature of conceptual interaction between shardworlds. Dead end: So that one's a dead-end because "shash's" universality is the direct result of the Shards having a single point of origin. More interesting, though... Source: Theory: Now we're in business. "Shadows"... Sounds like a Form to me!! So, in short, I would propose that the broad strokes of religious concepts (among other types of concepts, almost certainly) exist on a level that transcends individual shardworlds. So a man is pondering the beauty of colors on Scadrial and strikes on their possible spiritual significance: in so doing he establishes a Spiritual connection to some somewhat vaguely defined "Colorful Religion" Form. So far as other concepts go, I would hazard that similar things could happen with aesthetics, inventions, philosophy, etc. Not so much that every culture is just a carbon-copy of the other, obviously, but enough for a certain degree of similarity/contiguity. Now if only Roshar could pick up some Crossbow Forms from Sel...