Kurkistan

^First of all, here's the link for that quote. As a rule, it's always good to make sure that there is a trail of breadcrumbs, so that people who haven't seen that quote can also see the (presumably new to them) interview it came from, as well as cite it directly in the future. EDIT: Yes, it's from the same interview as Flash cited, but the principle remains. Second, I would hazard that Odium has refrained from placing any of his power into anything, or at least any significant amount of it. Honor and Cultivation caused Spren (this may or may not have cost power in the long run), Ruin and Preservation created humans and animals (though it could be the case that the only thing that actually "cost" anything was Preservation specifically investing Humans with a "divine spark"), Endowment endows Returned, and Aona and Skai were probably doing something too. So far as we know, Odium has not invested his power into anything. If he is directly responsible for the Voidbringers, then that is probably to a relatively small degree, as opposed to planet-wide investment of Investitures that do not directly benefit the ability of a Shard to combat other Shards.

We really do need something. For now, though, there is the Questions and Answers thread, and you can do some pretty cool things with searches. A- That is a supposition based on your own personal theory (which I've just Leibniz'ed, coincidentally), not necessarily a commonly-held belief. B- That was the single-most frighteningly sentence I've ever read. Apologize to poor Curse for scaring him half to death! :P/>

Hello, and welcome back to the madhouse. EDIT: Start on the second post if you want to follow a completely unrelated (yet still more intelligible and possibly more interesting) discussion about the nature of the spiritweb. -Start off on this whole other thread if you want a much more succinct version of the points made on this one, as well as much more evidence that came out after I posted this original thread. I do plan on a more comprehensive expansion to the MEC based on TES, but this is a bit of a side-jaunt that I think it's valuable to have. Aside about previous theories: First of all, a bit of a disclaimer. While this idea has been bouncing around in my head for awhile now, and I've even posted a few disparate thoughts on it, Nepene was the first one to get anything of this form down on paper. I'm pulling a bit of a Leibniz to his Newton, then. Nepene had some good ideas, but I think his terminology and/or focus was a bit off, and his thread got seriously derailed by unnecessary discussion of Brandon's spirituality. I tried to redirect Nepene towards Platonism, but alas, 'twas not to be. That being the case, I'm now posting my alternate view on how "Forms" (Nepene's "Archetypes") work in the Cosmere, based primarily on my understanding of Platonism and the Spiritual Realm rather than Jung and the Cognitive. I have this alternate focus because Brandon referenced Jung as a bit of a one-off on how the Parshendis' songs work; this may well be interesting and lead to some useful conclusions about Realmatics, but I don't think Spiritual Archetypes follow from it. On the other hand, Brandon has explicitly stated that Realmatics is "based on a mash-up between Platonic Forms and Asian style 'everything has a soul'", and we know from Shai that the "Window" Form and others like it exist in the Spiritual Realm. And, obviously, me being me, I will be going into absurd depth. However, I do acknowledge that Nepene has priority as to the rough outlines of the importance and nature of Forms/Archetypes. P.S. Also, as it turns out, I kind of took a right turn at Albuquerque, and shot off into crazy-land. I'd intended to just lay out some general outlines for how Forms would work, but that was apparently too easy (and short), so I (unconsciously) decided to tackle almost the entirety of Forging as well. Looking at Nepene's thread, I think we split off fairly sharply in focus, so there isn't too much overlap (although, incidentally, I still think he's wrong on his impacts over there ). Background: Awhile ago, I posted a thread postulating that spren work by accessing "Forms" stored in the Spiritual Realm. Here is the main evidence I based it on: Basic Theory: sForms Basic Realmatics, Gaotona Emulating Ashraven, and Human Forgery in general: Plausibility "Calculation": Strength, Scope of Effect, and Inertia Role of Cognitive Aspects: Closing: Wow, that was longer than intended, and went some places I didn't expect. Sorry about that. Anyone want to suggest a TL;DR for me to throw in? There are a few chinks to be filled in in order to have a proper MEC-response to TES, but I got more of my thoughts down than I meant to. Sorry about that too. Discuss, permutate, criticize (immediately skip because of how long it is...). Have fun. P.S. Also, I acknowledge that there is a slight possibility that this thread is absurd. Either that or awesome. But that's how I roll. No middle ground for me. P.P.S Also also, this is slightly more TES-centric than I intended, but the implications flow to the rest of the Cosmere. EDIT: TL;DR: There exist a range of semi-independent "Forms" in the Spiritual Realm--created and maintained by the perceptions of living beings--the strength and reach of which are determined by the strength and reach of those who "believe" in any given Form. These Forms range from a weak, regional "our mayor is a mean guy" to strong, universal "Humans: they age." The "plausibility" of any Forgery is assessed in reference to these Forms, with each object having a certain number of connections to certain Forms based on its Cognitive identity (a table won't bother to connect with the Human form, I don't think, though it could without any real harm). When a Forgery is done, the network of Forms which are related to its target do a group "gut call" on whether and to what degree it is acceptable. Same on the level of individual souls, as in the case of Gaotona. Living beings kill off stamps because their Cognitive aspects actively fight against the external imposition of identity. Stamps do not replace original aspects, merely overlay them for a time. Also, just as an aside, I don't think a bunch of rocks in space without any observer will ever form a coherent Cognitive aspect as a singular being, so there can exist objects which, while Physically singular, are made up of a plurality of Cognitive aspects. EDIT 2: A bit more evidence. I hadn't recalled this quote until Nepene put it in his Cosmere 201 quote-bank: (WoK 711) While this is in-line with Vorinism's "everything is super-powered when you die" (farmers grow entire fields with a wave of their hands, etc.), and so might be religiously inspired, Ashir and Geranid seem to be pretty Realmatically knowledgeable, so I'll give them credit on this one. So a hint that "objects" in the Spiritual Realm are in "a state of ideals". EDIT 3: Significantly changed the Gaotona part, as well as moving stuff around. I had been waiting for someone to post a criticism before saying this, but apparently I scared everyone off, so I'll just put it down for posterity. EDIT 4: Threw in some extra stuff in the Cognitive section. EDIT 5 (01/04/2015): For what it's worth, plausibility does seem to be decided by Forms.

YOURS! What about mine? If you took it and literally reversed everything it said, you get the truth!

First, of all well done on your evilizing of the previous wish. Rep for you. Ruin immediately alters all the text (oops, you didn't specify metal pages, did you?), leaving a narrative which shows the crew betraying each other (destroying Vin's new-found ability to trust) and causing the destruction of civilization and, ultimately, the world as they interfere with TLR's plan to save them all from Preservation, that evil mist-spirit who goes around killing people with mist-sickness. Vin kills everyone else in the crew in their sleep, then immediately goes to TLR to offer her help, at which point he kills her too. Then he uses the Well of Ages and Ruin's corruption causes him to destroy the world. I wish Kelsier had actually fought Moraine in the Suvudo Cage Match.

No worries. This thread was dead 60 minutes after I posted it. That's why I derailed it myself.

While they could have made a great game if they'd taken their time, an inexplicable sense of urgency has overtaken the dev team, and they release it immediately. Predictably enough (see: every movie tie-in ever), the unfinished game is terrible, putting the Mistborn name into the mud for the rest of time and souring Brandon to the prospect of any video game adaptations of anything else, ever. I wish Ven and Elend had survived.

I don't have any material handy either, but could the iron symbol mark the location of the Luthadel storage cache? There was a bit of a corridor to get to it, IIRC.

So far as Honor's definition goes, there are two options that jump out at me: First, the idea of "real" honor could still be alive and well among the Alethi, only the nobility don't place much value in it. Kaladin thought it still existed and felt betrayed when Amaram didn't live up to the popular conception of honor. So the populace at large believes in a more "honorable" form of honor. The lighteyes could believe in it too, come to that, but simply not follow it. Like knowing ice-cream is bad for you, but eating it anyway. This is somewhat related to Cheese Ninja's thread about Nohadon changing the way Nahel bonds work. Second (and more likely), Honor with a capital 'H,' as in Tanavast, had something definitive to say about what exactly "honor" meant. If I had to guess (and when don't I? ), I would recall that Spren are not just the Forms they take up. They are born of a combination of Cultivation and Honor, and likely have independent existence--of some form--beyond needing to rely on Forms. So Heralds come down from on-low, form the KR, and tell people what's what, with Honor having set up the system for bonding spren, as well as altering the dispositions of certain types of spren so that they react appropriately when someone acts properly. EDIT: Or it could be a bit less intentional, simply the result of an Honor-Cultivation mash up on Roshar, without any real control on the Shards' part. No! Not another one of those! The last time that happened, I ran away and hid for three months! (apparently, since I still can't recall why I didn't post back then) :P/>

^Ah, my mistake then.

Aw, stop getting your reasonableness on our fun.

^I believe that quote is one of the stronger pieces of evidence used by the "Spren are cognitive aspects" crowd, of which I am a nominal member, barring some Realmatic reason why not.

Wow, I don't know why I didn't reply back in November. Still, there is discussion to be had. I do hereby formally revivify this thread, which I am allowed to do... because! @Nepene Thanks for the assist. Good to have your uncanny quote-finding skills on my side for once. :)/> @ulyssessword I'm coming to a thought about the seeming discrepancy between the cases of Shai not wanting her Forgeries to be known and the ones of her displaying them proudly. This isn't very "Form" related, but it has to do with Cognitive aspects. I think I was wrong to say that "Emperor as Emperor" was a Form, at least in the context that we're talking about here. There may well be a kind of spren-accessible "Imperial" Form, but I don't think that's the kind of thing that affects the Forging of a specific person. So, instead of relying on Forms for success or failure, the plausibility of Forgery could rely on the individual Cognitive aspects of the items being altered. Where I go all new-and-shiny, then, is how those Cognitive aspects react to different kinds of "disbelief" about how they are Forged. I would hazard that the ability of an outside perspective to affect the plausibility of a Forgery depends upon both the strength and number--quality and quantity--of disbelief directed at it. So 100 people who are like "oh, didn't that window used to be broken? Eh." is less harmful than 1 who goes "It's a MONSTER! Kill it with FIRE!!!!!!!" to the Emperor's re-ensouled body. Those are the kind of strong reactions are what you would get from a Forging that wasn't supposed to have happened; that is surprising, offensive, and shocking--in other words, secret Forgeries. Shai's "public" Forgeries, on the other hand, are received with a degree of acceptance. Instead of "that desk is a fake!" you get "that desk has been Forged into a better version of itself. Cool beans." And that leads us into a discussion of the nature of Shai's soulstamps of herself, which (aside from her special one) leave her with a degree of knowledge about past events and her own true identity as a Forger. I would hazard that these soulstamps are actually a bit "meta," as it were, incorporating their very artificiality into the descriptions of the alternate versions of Shai. A stamp of a history in which Shai stamped herself, essentially. So her Shaizan stamp would say "<Shaizan's history> + and then Shai applied this stamp at X time for Y reasons," with X and Y somehow being written such that they are variables that draw upon Shai's recent past. Instead of creating Shaizan as a full-fledged person, it instead creates her as an acknowledged fiction meant to serve a specific purpose, as decided by the circumstances under which Shai assumed that character. And so Forging itself can become part of a plausible history for an item/person. The way Shai's "I give up" and the Emperor's stamp differ from this, then, is that they do not have that second-level incorporation of their artificiality, and simply re-write the past of their target. P.S. I'm working on a TES addendum to the MEC, so this is kind of a dry run for it, and some of it will probably be adapted for further discussion.

^That's a harsh price. It is available as an eBook for cheaper, and it's $8.50 on Amazon, so it looks like the bookstore just gauged you.

Well done. Sorry the question I suggested got RAFO'd. Be wary about his plant answer though, since they could just act like Vivienne's shawl and store the Breaths without exhibiting an aura.

Nice work. We've been gnawing at that TLR question for awhile now. You might want to throw the WoT stuff in a Spoiler section. (Ex. <spoiler>STUFF!!!</spoiler>, with [] instead of <>).

Kaladin wins! But, Syl got sliced in half during the fight, dying horribly to Amaram's final attack as Kaladin watched, helpless to save her. Kaladin lives the rest of his life in an abyss of despair, horrified at how his selfishness killed his greatest friend, and ultimately dies sad and alone. I wish I had an hour alone with Brandon's super-secret wiki of facts.

I saw this quote on Dragonmount: So this either means that Szeth didn't have a Shardblade or that Shardblades didn't used to have the "thou shalt not cut the living" specification. I'm leaning towards the latter, due to Szeth needing to take on a Shardbearer at the end of the road, which would have been slightly more impossible with a normal sword. Theories about Szeth's Truthless-ness and/or powers being tied to the sword also wouldn't work if it was a normal blade. I like that Brandon changed it. I wouldn't have fainted or anything if there had been gore, but it does provide a nice thematic resonance--stated outright several times in the book--in that Shardblades were never really meant to be used against people.

Cool. I'll see if I can help you out, although be warned that this is all my own opinion. I'll comment on things I find iffy or interesting. That sounds right-ish. The prevailing opinion (which I strongly support) is that people on Nalthis are essentially the same as people everywhere else, but Endowment enabled them to split off part of their souls. So everyone on Scadrial has a "Breath", they just can't use BioChroma to do anything with it. Eh. Not sure about this one, Realmatically. If that makes the game go better, though, it's your choice as the DM. That's actually highly plausible. Investiture interferes with Soothing/Rioting, IIRC. A good one for your scenario would be: "Is it the case that only native Scadrialians can use Hemalurgy to 'spike' attributes out of victims?" This is based on a quote that people on the Southern continent have the "seeds of the three metallic arts" in them, suggesting that only Scadralians can use Hemalurgy, in some way. If you get desperate... -Is Denth technically the king of Idris, or is he an offshoot that happened to keep the Royal Locks for some reason? --This is a sneaky question: assuming Denth is a Royal because of his hair changing color as he died, and luring Brandon out by making it sound like it's as obvious as Shallan's "secret", so he'll confirm Denth's royalty when he RAFO's the broader question. Yes, I am evil, thank you for noticing. -Why does The Lord Ruler spend time as an old man, if he can just Compound (previously compounded) Age instead? -Are Conjoiner fabrials sensitive enough that pairs of them attached to taught membranes could work as telephones?

We're currently discussing this in some depth in the thread Kea posted about the signing.

Ah, sorry. I meant the one that is seemingly speaking through the death rattle in the OP.

An interesting theory. As others have said, though, my theory (and perhaps others like it, though I can't recall any at the moment) is not definite, so it's not the best grounds to lay yet another theory on. As to the death rattles. There are several possible responses to this. Take your pick: Option 1: It may be that taking on the Heralds as his champions restricted Honor, as he hopes to restrict Odium by having him take on a champion (IIRC). This could have two results: i) Honor can only actually affect the world significantly through the Heralds, perhaps even only communicate through them. No Heralds and no desolations to draw them out, no effect on the world. See Opt. 3 for the consequences of that, even with a living Honor. ii) Honor was left materially weakened by the Heralds breaking the Oath Pact. This could result in Honor being incapable of affecting the world as he was fighting a losing rear-guard battle against Odium from nearly the moment the Heralds left. So Honor would have been dedicating all his energy to staying alive and, in the end, composing the visions. Option 2: This KR (if he is one), is currently chilling in Damnation and extremely annoyed at that fact, perhaps even after the Recreance. Reason enough to be mad at Honor. Option 2.5: The aforementioned KR from hell can also see the current state of the world, and is more so annoyed at how the KR are remembered. Option 3: Honor only ever communicated with the KR through the Heralds during desolations. The KR relied upon this regular oversight from the Heralds and the inevitability of the next desolation--to keep them honest and to maintain their legitimacy. When neither happened for a long time, a combo of negative public opinion ("why do I have to pay these tolls to get through Urithru?") and corruption within the organization brought them down to the point where the individual KR quit in disgust. God-hating follows. Option 3.5: Post-"Final Desolation", at least, Honor could more be seen as a "hands off" diety who works in mysterious ways and makes sure everything turns out right in the end. Then things start going wrong, and it's god-blaming time, as the KR falls apart through corruption and whatnot as seen from Opt. 3.0. --- Not that all of these are necessarily true or even plausible, but the death rattle isn't a silver bullet. Pick the options that you think hurt you the most and argue at us about it.

Okay, we can work with that. I just wanted to be 100% sure of what our foundation was before we went off into theory-land. As it is, your interpretation may well be correct. Sorry if I came across as a bit badgery there, it's probably a consequence of never being able to go to a signing myself. Also, I'd just like to note that I'm glad my frame of reference thoughts resulted in something as useful as your theory/question/answer: all it had really done up until then is do terrible things to my FTL thread when I thought too hard.

^So, just to be sure, when you say "his response suggested to me that Shadesmar's boundaries are related to a planet's three aspects", the "suggested to me" part is your own interpretation of the what you recall as quoted in the OP, and not a vague recollection of Brandon saying something?

^I know you can't remember exact words, but do you remember enough to paraphrase his response as a whole?