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I have been thinking a lot recently about the Shards and noticed that it is not just Ruin and Preservation that have to do with change over time, but Cultivation is also in that category. That made me suspect that there is a fourth Change over Time Shard and Invention seems most likely to fill that role. That made me wonder if all the Shards were set in four groups of four like the basic allomantic metals. If we start with the Time Shards as a template, here is the table I came up with. Time/Change Relationship/ Connection Power/ Determination Emotion/ Identity Growth Cultivation Devotion Ambition Valor Stability Preservation Honor Dominion Whimsey Decay Ruin Autonomy Mercy Odium Transformation Invention Endowment I am most confident of the left column and reducing confidence as it moves right. I have no confidence in the rows of the Emotion/Identity Shards, but they seem to belong in their column together. The Emotion/Identity column is possibly mislabeled, but I can't think of something better. Mercy, Endowment, and Autonomy could very credibly be in different places on the table. The entire Transformation Row is dubious to me as only Invention fits well as the Time Transformation Shard. I would love the 17th Shards help in organizing the Shards. If we can find the true order here, then we will know that the two missing Shards fit in the gaps. Knowing that a Shard is missing in the Power Transformation slot may help us identify it. One final thing I like about the table is that it breaks Adonalsium into his Power, Identity, Connection, and Change over Time. These feel like a way that a God might shatter. Thank you for your help. Chip

So, I cross referenced the metal category page with the Steel Alphabet page and its sources, and the numbers are incorrect. It looks like it was just never updated properly when era 2 came out. It all seems right except the numbers. It placed atium as nine and malatium as ten, like is shown in the era one diagrams, and after that it just counts up by one with all the others. So the physical, mental, and enhancement quadrants have the right numbers, but nearly everything else is mistaken. I would have edited it myself, but I clicked the edit button and it was code. I have no idea how that works. It looks like it's actually just calling a file that's stored somewhere else, so I'm not even sure I can change the numbers from there. I switched around the order a bit, so now cadmium and bendalloy are between bronze and gold, with atium and malatium after duralumin, but all that did was move the rows around so it fit the era 2 diagram better. I didn't figure out how to actually change any of the information in it. I already begged for help on the discussion page, (I still don't know if I did something wrong in the process) but it's only just now occurred to me that it might be a better idea to put it here. Hopefully someone who knows more will be able to fix it.

I'm sure most of you will have seen the following comment time and time again. I'm new to Sanderson. I'm thinking about reading on of Sanderson's Cosmere novels, but I don't know where to start. This post is for them. Some bright spark in the Discworld community had a similar idea. They made a sheet (shown above) which has a sort of reading guide of what you should read first. It's by no means completely linear, but it helps. So, I'm trying to organise something similar to be made. I have done a basic map of what cosmere books should be read first, though it is by no means final. From there, we can finalize it/ make it look fancy. So hear it is. Version 0.1. EDIT: Thanks to navybrandt, we now have an awesome version 1.0. Thanks! Image below.