I have a theory. Please prove me wrong.

[Random Bystander she/her]

Ok, so in RoW we learn about the shard Mercy. Well, what if Moash becomes Mercy. I have evidence that this is possible. Maybe.

Go to chapter 8. Moash is talking to Kaladin, and he says "For mercy. Better a quick death than to leave them to die, forgotten."

Now, go to interlude 4. Moash is talking to Odium. Odium says "I would claim this one, as I have claimed you" (he's talking about Kaladin), and then it says "Vyre would see him dead first. A mercy."

I really don't want to see this happen. Ever. If anyone can see a problem with my theory, please post it.

[Honorless he/him]

1 hour ago, Random Bystander said:

I have a theory. Please prove me wrong. 

Sure

1 hour ago, Random Bystander said:

Ok, so in RoW we learn about the shard Mercy. Well, what if Moash becomes Mercy. I have evidence that this is possible. Maybe.

Go to chapter 8. Moash is talking to Kaladin, and he says "For mercy. Better a quick death than to leave them to die, forgotten."

Now, go to interlude 4. Moash is talking to Odium. Odium says "I would claim this one, as I have claimed you" (he's talking about Kaladin), and then it says "Vyre would see him dead first. A mercy."

I really don't want to see this happen. Ever. If anyone can see a problem with my theory, please post it.

A few WoBs, they're kinda long but they answer Brandon's long-term plans for the Cosmere so...:

Quote

Fantasy Faction

Someone from Earth is about to be sent off to the cosmere. They've read your first Stormlight book, but they've never really taken time to really dig deep and find out about how it sits in the overall "cosmere", so they're totally unprepared. What basic concepts regarding shards, magic systems and world hopping do you think are most important?

Brandon Sanderson

The first, most important thing to say to the person who's being sent there is to enjoy the story you're in. All of the cosmere stuff, the interconnection between my books and all these wonderful little things, are right now mostly Easter eggs. Which means that if you spend the whole book only worried about that, you're going to miss the beauty and fun that is the book that you're part of. I often say to people, don't worry if you read them "out of order," because it's all Easter eggs right now. Don't worry and stress if you miss something about the cosmere, because while someday that might be important, you first need to enjoy the book that you're part of. But the primer I'd give to this person is that the worlds are connected. If you show up on a planet and there's a guy named Hoid around, then be very afraid, because you're someplace very dangerous.

Fantasy Faction interview (March 24, 2014)

Quote

ckannan90

I have a cosmere question. At the end of Words of Radiance, Szeth receives Nightblood. The wiki told me it was a sword from Warbreaker, but I didn't realize how significant it was till I read the book. This, to me, seems like the first major cosmere crossover. All the other crossovers so far seem to have just been cameos (Hoid tells stories, or there are mysterious people hunting somebody, etc). I will RAFO, but it does seem like Szeth getting the sword means Nightblood will play a not-insignificant role in Stormlight 3. Does this mean the cosmere books are going to converge more going forward? Specifically, would someone need to have read Warbreaker to understand Oathbringer? Till now your different cosmere series have been readable in any order (and I didn't read them in publication order). Similarly, Mistborn: Secret History seems to be a prerequisite for at least the next Mistborn book.

Brandon Sanderson

One thing you have to remember is that in my cosmere outline, Warbreaker was a prequel to The Way of Kings, explaining Vasher's backstory. So I consider them more closely connected than some other things. But you could consider this the first major crossover.

Nightblood will be re-introduced, so those who haven't read Warbreaker will be brought up to speed.

Thoughtsunthought

Wow. Cool to see this.

One of my "concerns" is that eventually the cosmere stuff will overwhelm the individual series arcs.

Kinda like the Marvel Avengers movies, whilst they are great on their own, they lose some of the individuality that an Iron Man movie might have. If the overall story adds characters then you may end up with a Captain America: Civil War movie which whilst was amazing. Wasn't really a Captain America movie and would lose so much to someone who had only seen Capt America movies.

That being said I totally trust your judgement on this, I say concerns but I don't mean in a bad way.

That being said is any book flagged for an Avengers style "battle for the cosmere"?

Brandon Sanderson

I do have some plans for mixing later on, though I'll be very forthright about when those books come out. Meaning, so long as I'm not talking about these things as the main focus of a series, you don't have to worry about it taking them over. Conversely, you can be very excited when it does happen, as those stories will be very clear about what they're attempting to do.

One thing I do try to warn people is that the cosmere isn't an "Avengers" style concept--the goal here isn't to collect a variety of heroes from a variety of worlds and then throw them at a problem. It's more of a, "What if you could watch the world of something like Star Trek develop, by seeing individual engaging stories from various planets, then slowly watching them merge into a larger universe."

While some characters will, obviously, continue on through the series, and the Vessels of the Shards will be very important, the focus of the greater cosmere storyline is the cultures, the magic, and the evolution of the planets, while the individual stories are about the people who live on them during turning-points in their history.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 5, 2016)

Quote

Questioner

I know that Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Elantris are set in the same universe, and they've all kind of got certain Shards and I was reading that, like, you might do a book about that? 

Brandon Sanderson

I will eventually, there's no 'might' about it, but I always try to talk somewhat timidly about it because I don't want the focus to be on that, I want the focus to be on each story that's happening. For instance, The Stormlight Archive will only be about The Stormlight Archive. I will be upfront when I do a crossover, but it is many years in the future. For now, I like it being a behind the scenes thing for fans who really want to get into it. I don't want to scare a reader who'll be like "I can't read Mistborn because I haven't finished all of these other books". You can read Mistborn on its own, and there will be cameos that you will notice as you do more, and the more I write, the more to the forefront some of these things will come, but I will lead you gently into it. But yeah, I will be doing crossovers eventually.

Questioner

And when did you kind of-- was that something you wanted to do from the very beginning, or were you halfway through--

Brandon Sanderson

No, that was something I wanted to do from the beginning. I was inspired by Isaac Asimov combining his Robots books and his Foundation books, and he did it late in his career. It kind of felt a bit hacked together a bit, but it blew my mind when he did it and, as a writer, I always thought, what if somebody did this from the get-go.

The actual origins of the kind of worldhoppers for me was reading books as a teenager and inserting Hoid into them. I really did this.... Do you read books and you like change what is happening in the book, or maybe it's just a me thing? I would have my character interacting with the characters in the books, in my head, as I played the movie of that book in my head, while I was reading it, and there was this character hopping between worlds, with this knowing smirk on his face.

And so, when I was working on Elantris I said, "OK", I knew I had something in that book that was good, that was important, that was relevant, I was very confident in that book. It was my sixth novel, by the way, so I kind of had a handle on these things, and so that's when I decided I'm going to start doing some of this, I'm going to insert Hoid into this and I'm going to start planning this larger epic. It was particularly important to me because I knew I was not going to write a sequel to Elantris immediately, but I wanted to be writing epic stories, and the reason I didn't want to write a sequel to Elantris is because, if an editor rejected Elantris I wanted to be able to send them another book, because when you're getting close to publishing you'll start getting rejections that are like "This is actually a really good book, it doesn't fit our line, you just wrote a great mystical llama book but we just bought one of those, do you have anything else?". I wanted to be able to send them "here's my next thing" rather than "oh, I've got a sequel to the one you just rejected". And so I sat down and wrote the sequel, which was not a sequel, it was called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I jumped forward and I wrote White Sand which is another book connected to all these things and it went on, you know, it went crazy from there. And then when I actually sold Elantris it was already going and already in there, and I was able to sit down and write Mistborn, well in hand, knowing what was going to happen. That's why you find Hoid in Elantris and Mistborn and the sneaky, the scary-- well, it's not sneaky and it's not scary-- the moment in the third book when Vin gets creeped out by Hoid is a very important moment, Cosmerologically, but I'm not going to tell you why!

Shadows of Self Newcastle UK signing (Oct. 20, 2015)

The Stormlight Archives is upfront about it's Cosmere connections but the kind of clash you're thinking of, with various Shards who're on other worlds, is not gonna happen for a while yet. It's a launching point for all that though. We got to learn about a few other Shards but it's probably safe to say that it is not yet time for them to come to the forefront to that degree yet.

As for the connection between Moash and Mercy, consider this WoB:

Quote

Karthikeyan Eswaran

For a person to ascend as a [Vessel], is it enough to have a Connection with the Shard, or does their general intent/mindset have to align with the Intent of the Shard (like Rayse and Odium have both shown similar mindsets)? If the intent needs to be similar, how did Ati, who was described as a kind person, pick up a Shard like Ruin? And if the intent doesn't need to be similar, how did the people at the Shattering manage to ascend, as the Shards had just been created? Did they have to go through some process to create a Connection? Or did they all somehow already have a Connection with Adonalsium (and thus with all the Shards) which made it easier to Ascend?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there did need to be some Connection created--there was a lot going on with this. But it is possible for intents to not align and someone to take a Shard. It's way easier if intents do align, but humans don't tend to align 100% to any specific intent.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 5, 2018)

Human beings tend towards behaviours that reflect their inherent complexity, we're not just all about Honor or Odium or Ambition or Autonomy, we're complicated. So just because a human being shows an understanding of or feels a connection to a concept that is close to the Intent of a Shard, it is not necessarily symptomatic of any significant Connection between that Shard and that person.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Honorless

[Random Bystander she/her]

19 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Sure

A few WoBs, they're kinda long but they answer Brandon's long-term plans for the Cosmere so...:

The Stormlight Archives is upfront about it's Cosmere connections but the kind of clash you're thinking of, with various Shards who're on other worlds, is not gonna happen for a while yet. It's a launching point for all that though. We got to learn about a few other Shards but it's probably safe to say that it is not yet time for them to come to the forefront to that degree yet.

As for the connection between Moash and Mercy, consider this WoB:

Human beings tend towards behaviours that reflect their inherent complexity, we're not just all about Honor or Odium or Ambition or Autonomy, we're complicated. So just because a human being shows an understanding of or feels a connection to a concept that is close to the Intent of a Shard, it is not necessarily symptomatic of any significant Connection between that Shard and that person.

Thanks. 

[Leuthie]

Moash/Vyre is going to pick up the shard Mercy because he used the word "mercy" on two different occasions, neither of which referred to things that would be called "mercy" by a rational person?

Solid. I'm on board.