Site News

In 2021, we had our first Staff Review on the 17th Shard, with the intention of it being an annual occurence. We did it again in 2023, and now in 2025, so it looks like it's become a biannual event instead!

Quick but important announcement - as a security measure, starting with January 2, 2025, the forums / website will no longer allow people to log in using their username, only email. Once this change goes live, you will also receive an automated email whenever you haven't logged in for a few months, and someone (hopefully you) successfully logs into your account. 

If you've been logging in using your username, and are not sure which email you used for this account, you can check your account settings. We recommend everyone switch to logging in with email before the January 2 deadline.

If you were around a couple years ago, you may remember that we launched an application form for prospective moderators. Since then we've been keeping an eye on the responses while waiting for a good time to bring on new mods, and with the upcoming release of Wind and Truth we think that time is fast approaching! If you think you would be a good fit, please fill it out!

TL;DR: Our monthly art commissions will no longer show up under the website's news, you'll need to look for them on our socials, Discord, or Patreon.

We're updating our forum software to the latest available version on October 21 and that will bring some downtime as well as changes - including the look and feel of the forums - with it. Get a sneak peek of what that looks like and what you can expect in the future in this article!

Want to support some indie authors that hang out on this very forum (down in the Reading Excuses subforum, most often)? Check out the Space Wizard Science Fantasy Year 2 Kickstarter! There are 12 new books coming from this indie small press, run by one of the contributors, and with stories by many others! And if you want to support something for Pride Month, all these titles have queer and inclusive elements.

We also have a very special announcement: Seanan McGuire is contributing a story for the Lofty Mountains anthology we’re publishing this year! So if you’re a fan, be sure to check that one out.

Three weeks ago, we asked you to judge the 17th Shard staff, and the way we are running the community. Now, after two weeks of collecting results and another week of data crunching, it's time to see the results.

We're doing our staff review once again, we'd love it if you can contribute!

Today we have some exciting news about Arcanum!

If you've never visited, Arcanum - The Brandon Sanderson Archive is a collection of questions and answers about Sanderson's works asked at various signings, releases, and other events.

We've just released a new update to the site, and we want to let everyone know what it's all about. Ultimately, this update is about making it easier for users to discover content and find help. First is a brand new Readings page, which collects all of Brandon's readings into one central hub. There are also several new Help pages, which give assistance on everything from navigating Arcanum to using advanced search or adding new content to the site. While much of this information could be found in the forums, you can now find it right in Arcanum itself. Lastly, you'll find an updated main menu which makes finding all of these pages, and everything else on the site, easier than ever.

We will be at this November's Dragonsteel convention! How exciting! A bunch of us are going to be at a variety of panels for you! Who's all coming, we got me, Jess, Ian, David, Evgeni, Rosemary, Mi'ch, Kadie, Jof. Danielle. Marvin's flying from Germany to be there. So many of us will be there and don't hesitate to say hi! 

Hey there, we’re back with another round of Coppermind Objectives! The Lost Metal (Wax & Wayne 4) will be out before too long, and there’s still plenty of work to be done to prepare the Coppermind for it! There are tons of ways to help, so we hope you’ll join in!

After a two year hiatus, we’re back with another round of Coppermind Objectives! There are plenty of pages that need work, and tons of ways to help, so we hope you’ll join in!

Having seen the smash success of Wordle, we here at the 17th Shard decided to ride its coattails with our own clone release a themed version! The pool of Shardles is hand-filtered by our staff from the titles of Coppermind wiki articles about the Cosmere, Cytoverse, and Reckoners universes, with a new one available at your local midnight each day.

Last year we announced our Interactive Map and Timeline of Roshar. And with Rhythm of War now one year old, we're here today to announce a major update! We have expanded the timeline to include events for the entirety of Dawnshard and Rhythm of War, and we've added a few other new features that will be explained here. For a general overview, if you are unfamiliar with the project, see our previous announcement and this trailer. We hope that this map and timeline continues to be a useful tool for refreshing yourself on the books or simply exploring the world of Roshar!

We have some pretty exciting news for you today: we are going to change the logos across 17th Shard, the Coppermind, and Arcanum! These new logos are made by Raul Chaves, who we hired based off a brand identity for Allomancy that he did. We've wanted to make our logos more modern for quite a while, and I hope you'll agree that they turned out awesome.

Two weeks ago, we started an anonymous poll where we asked you, the common users, to judge us, the mods! Now that two weeks have passed, we have pored over the results to discover the answers to what are clearly the most pressing questions we could have. Who's your favourite mod? Who's the scariest mod? Read on to find out!

When we originally launched our Patreon, we designed it primarily as a tip jar. Well, after a lot of brainstorming, that is changing today, with new, actual tiers of rewards for you all. We also have some new patron goals, which we'll describe at the end of this post.

Hi everyone! I wanted to talk about spoilers on the Coppermind and some things we are doing on the Coppermind to assist here. 

Turns out a whole lot of you really would like to refresh your mind on details as you read the book. Now, the Coppermind has always been a site with spoilers, as wikis often do, and so we kind of played this release with our business-as-usual attitude. I'll talk a little bit about why have done things this way historically a bit later in this post. But given the server load, and the amount of comments we've had regarding spoilers, we've made some changes that I think will help everyone a bunch.

After several months of intensive work, we're happy to finally announce our interactive map and timeline of Roshar! Use it as a refresher on the events of the books before Rhythm of War is released or simply explore the world of Roshar. If you have any issues using the map or have suggestions for us, feel free to comment here, use our feedback thread, or approach us on Discord. Read on to find out more about the map's creation, its features, and what the future holds!

Ten years ago today, 17th Shard opened, with myself as its first account. I can't believe our tenth anniversary is right now; 2010 feels like ten thousand years ago.Think about how many books we've gotten since that June--The Way of Kings wasn't even out yet! Now we're three massive tomes through the Stormlight Archive with the next one coming so soon. This site and community has evolved so much over this decade. So many of us were brought together through Brandon's books. If you'll excuse me for getting sentimental, I'd like to take you down memory lane now, and celebrate all of us together. 

Today, we are launching a Patreon for 17th Shard and our content creation efforts. We have long had a well-hidden donate button on our About page, and it was hidden for a reason: we don't want to beg for money. However, people have asked for an effective way to donate to 17th Shard, and so this is a good way to do that. Nothing with us is changing with our content release schedule. We will not timegate content or paywall content. This will just be a tip jar if you happen to really like the site, or want to support our content. If you're willing to put some of your hard-earned money into this venture, that is extremely humbling and we are insanely grateful for it, but make sure your financial situation is solid before you do. Don't feel obligated to do this; only do this if you really like what we do here and feel in your heart you want to support us.

This month, we are beginning a brand-new initiative for the Coppermind. The Coppermind is a living, breathing thing, and there's so much to write that it's impossible to have the wiki succeed without your help. But often, people are interested in writing for the Coppermind but don't know where to start. To this end we are going to have monthly objectives to help guide people towards what should be done.

Hey everyone! It’s finally the day we have all been waiting fo-- Oh wait. No, not that day. You still have to wait a week for Oathbringer. But it is the day that I have been working towards for a couple years now. The idea that it is finally out is a tiny bit terrifying, but Harmony is it exciting as well.

Here it is. Arcanum, the Brandon Sanderson Archive:

https://wob.coppermind.net