Kasimir

Can I ask if this is how you still feel engaged? Because ngl I often feel disengaged or lost, and IDK if it's because I'm not finding places to latch onto besides that one subforum. I've seen your ebook thread and actually have it bookmarked because I kinda have some projects I want in nicely ebook format I don't like it as a community format as much - I cut my fandom teeth on forums and the Shard will always be special to me for that. There's a mostly-dead forum for another fandom I still visit on occasion because I spent my formative years there. I agree with you on the searching; I'm ok with it for casual conversation. I've greatly liked it as a platform for DMs - most of my friends, I now keep in touch via Discord DMs. Sometimes I have to make a mental code switch back to Shard messenger. That one...does make me sad. I remember the days my friends and I racked up easily 7k+ messages between us on Shard PMs, just chatting about life and the latest stuff we were up to. I like the chill element in that the 17s Discord does let me relax and just lean into conversations - I don't go to too many places beyond #books but I feel like there's always something interesting for me there, and I don't feel out of place just having Stover or GGK conversations with fellow fans Thanks! Again, great to know there are more people out here Edited to add: @Medium - Apologies, appreciated the reach out! I'm tired and missed yours on the scroll. Will get back tomorrow after some sleep

Fair, but be careful - there's a 3 line forum sig limit IIRC. IDK how tightly they're enforcing it now as I've seen some sigs violate this a bit. Just don't get modsmited and we're cool And for the love of the Stormfather, change if if they tell you to

Hello everyone! I don't want to pre-empt the mods, but I'll note that for those of you who've been around in the SE Discord, we've had a few conversations about the future of SE, and our current trajectory of decline. (If you are currently playing the AG, shoo, go have fun, we're trying to shield you from it for now ) Some of the conversations have involved questions about SE visibility and increased insularity. Anyway, I spent some time making a bunch of simple banners for advertising. I encourage any SE-er who wants to make their own banners to do so, just keep it within the legal forum limits (500x100 px max) and if you have snappy taglines you want to see in a banner or image ideas, let me know and I'll see what I can cook up. Images in the spoiler tag. There are...a whole bunch of them. Feel free to take them and put them in your sigs - I'd advise making the image a clickable link so people can click on the banner and be taken to us

Fair, yeah. Maybe I needed to make the Discord migration for real, too - I do feel a bit like outside my subforum, I sometimes feel - strange posting even in forum games or some of the more relaxed threads because a lot of them are young 'uns and then there's that felt disconnect or "man what am I doing clouding their vibes" kind of thing Tbh I get this? I used to feel that way, but also because when I came to the Shard, I was in university so I first automatically assumed everyone was the same age, but there was a whole tier of clearly adult Sharders like Awesomeness Summoned and little_wilson, and younger ones like Lightsworn Panda, so sometimes I'd just struggle to relate. I was lucky to have a friend group to hang with, but now that most of them have aged out of fandom, in a strange way, the perceived gaps between me and my elders like Wilson have shrunk, but the ones between me and the next gen have grown. I will agree some of that is personal mental barriers. Like yeah when I was in uni I felt chill engaging in silly clan wars like swearing to the Lords of Chaos, that sort of RP-lite thing, but it just somehow feels...odd/pretentious/"Hello fellow kids!" energy trying that now. Maybe that's a problem since you technically never should be too old to YOLO, but still. I apologise that this has become a weird vent thread. But I do reiterate it's just nice to know I'm not totally kayana and that someone else has felt this way.

Thank you so much Ngl it's just nice to know someone else kind of feels this way. I do feel like I'm experiencing this more and more. IDK if it's my own perception, but I do feel like I used to be ok with hitting other threads. Now I look at anything left and 80% of them feel like theorycrafting that needs a PhD in Realmatics, a PhD in physics, and a PhD in philosophy with an Aristotle specialisation to even begin to engage in, and I just don't have the time to keep up anymore. I think if Discord'd been big when I first started on the Shard, I'd've made the move you did earlier.

See, my problem is that penguins are just cute. I mean, look at that face. Could you really bring yourself to smite something that adorable, if you were me? Live Araris reaction: Truly, he continues to fly under the radar >>

Honestly that's fair, and sometimes I don't want upbeat, I do want a darker character so I get it! I think it's just great that the Cosmere has all these varied characters for different moods, if I'm being honest

AG11/AN15: Night Six - Beyond the Horizon This wasn’t the first time the caravan’d stopped in Tyrian Falls. Far as Sew knew, they’d always stopped in Tyrian Falls: it was one of their bigger waypoints—though that wasn’t saying much, considering the size of some of the villages they’d stopped in—-between Fadrex and Luthadel, if you didn’t take the canals. She’d never stopped looking for her parents. They’d left at one stop. She couldn’t remember which. She’d been young then, and all memories faded into a blur; brief sketches of the caravan pulling into one village and departing from another. To the very young, one village looked much like another, and she couldn’t have told you where they’d gone, the places they’d seen. Time was, maybe Old Coop could’ve said something about where they’d gone. She remembered him puttering about the camp, fixing broken axles, or mending a skewed wooden board. Old Coop’d gone though, and some of the faces in the caravan’d changed. The other caravaners’d said something about skaa rebels and hard times. Sew wasn’t really sure what, exactly, because she’d not paid enough attention, but she got that times were bad in the Final Empire, and that some of the regulars who used to ride with the caravan’d gotten cold feet. Most of the others had only faded memories of what stop her parents might’ve left at. Some of them said Loenthal’s Run, some of them said Fadrex proper, some argued it was one of those small waystops, villages barely big enough so the caravan camped on the village boundaries and sold what they could, even though most of the goods were meant for Luthadel, or Fadrex. Maybe she was wrong, trying to find her parents here. Maybe her mum and her dad hadn’t left her at Tyrian Falls at all, they’d left her at Loenthal’s Run, or Far Dorin, or maybe somewhere else entirely, some place her blurred memories couldn’t reach. But she had to believe in something, right? Had to believe that she could find them. That part never changed: how it always felt like it was on the verge of becoming real, that she’d turn the corner and her dad would be there and her mum would be there and they’d hug each other, one family together again at long last, and they’d say they were sorry for leaving her behind, and they’d had their reasons, and she’d tell them about everything they’d missed, in those long years since they were gone. Sometimes, a voice in her head whispered that it was too long since, that they weren’t coming back, that even if they did, would she even recognise them? Would they even recognise her? Sew ignored it though, as she ignored most doubts. She had to believe in something. Some people believed in the Lord Ruler. Sew believed her parents were still out there, and if she asked the right questions, or tried hard enough, she would find them again. There were five in the common room of the Hound and Hustle. Falcon, Sew, Lysia, Nibbles, and Sauve Chad sat there, in one of the side-booths, staring warily at each other. Ade was nowhere to be seen, and Falcon privately thought that Ade’d probably gotten distracted with gossip, or the many things she’d had to do, and then just forgotten to show up. “Lysia’s suspicious,” Sauve Chad said, matter-of-factly, the same way he’d accused Aralis of getting his name wrong several days ago. “One way or another, you all need to stop letting her off the hook, or we won’t get anywhere.” Nibbles was frowning at Sauve Chad. “Nibbles thinks you should eat these chocolate rocks because you’re in a hard place right now,” he announced, shoving a platter of…rocks over to Sauve Chad across the table. Everyone stared at the rocks. They looked just like…rocks. Inert, grey, some of them streaked with colour, and craggy. The sort you’d find at the bottom of the canal or on the slopes of the ashmount Tyrian. “Nibbles,” Falcon began, warily, probably convinced that Nibbles’s remaining eggs had finally cracked. “These are…rocks.” “These are chocolate rocks!” Nibbles insisted. He picked one up and crunched on it as though it were candy. Falcon wondered if Nibbles was burning Pewter. Pewter let you do remarkable things like crunch rocks, didn’t it? “Still, Nibbles will offer a fresh fruit if Sew can explain why she isn’t a Spiked in cahoots with Lysia,” Nibbles said, brightly. “Nibbles isn’t offering a chocolate rock because chocolate rocks are for everyone but especially Sauve Chad!” Falcon ignored the chocolate rocks for his own sanity. “I don’t like Sew, and I don’t like Lysia,” he finally said. “The way I see it, Sew being yet another Smoker? What’s up with that? But I just don’t like how bad Lysia looks here. It’s all those small things pointing at Lysia, really. But another Smoker? I keep going back and forth, but…Sew it is. She’s probably the Spiked we’re looking for.” “Lysia accused Kael Voss to save Byrar,” Sew protested. “Like it or not, you can’t say that’s okay. I’d bet you these rocks that someone else, another Spiked, was working to save Byrar that day. Like, who lets their family down just like that, if you can do something about it?” She picked up one of the chocolate rocks and looked at it curiously, but sensibly did not bite down. “Yeah, no, we gotta stick together or we’re lost, and I’m with Sauve Chad here. I think we gotta do something about Lysia.” Except that she’d said it, and she was Smoking, pushing her Coppercloud out as far as she dared, but she didn’t have all that much Copper, probably just enough to cover Nibbles, whom she was sitting with. …And two pairs of hostile eyes stared at her, across the table, and there was Nibbles, whom she’d trusted, but who apparently thought she was Spiked as well, and— —And Sew’s instincts screamed trouble, and you didn’t live as she did, a caravaner, an orphan, without learning she could trust her instincts, and when to do so. She flipped herself over the edge of the booth, scrambling up and over the back of the seat as Nibbles made a grab for her, and ran. The caravan had packed up, and was ready to leave, even as Sew drew up short at the boundaries of Tyrian Falls, gasping for breath. She’d really wanted to make this work. She’d really wanted to find her parents. But the others had been getting restless for a time. They knew what they’d run into, out there in the mists, whatever Aralis was saying. And as the villagers of Tyrian Falls pointed fingers at each other and accused each other, as the streets of Tyrian Falls ran with the blood of unfortunate innocents, they all knew that Tyrian Falls was no safe harbour, no place to shelter from the oncoming storm. Hreon'd taken her aside the previous night. “Things’re getting dark in this village, Sew,” he said, and Sew couldn’t remember a time he’d used her name, a time he hadn’t called her ‘little one.’ He looked at her, his eyes deadly serious. “We can’t stay here. The winds are turning foul. We have to keep moving.” He hesitated. “Anyone in this town is probably lost. They can’t hold back the koloss either. We’ve got to move, Sew.” “But my parents,” Sew’d protested. “They’re here, I just know they are.” Hreon'd looked at her, and there was the ghost of sorrow in his eyes. “Sew…” he began, carefully. “They’re dead, girl.” “No,” she’d said. “No.” They were alive. Sew knew it. She would find them. She had to believe. “There was a raid from the Steel Ministry,” Hreon continued, inexorably. As unstoppable as the footsteps of the Tyrianers pursuing her, after the initial shock. “We don’t know who told on them. Your parents, Sew. They were Mistings, and you know the Steel Ministry’s views on that. You know why we’ve always told you to stay safe, to be careful about who you told about your metal. Thank the Lord Ruler, you were a Smoker, so we never had to worry about whether a Ministry Allomancer would discover you burning metal.” “No,” Sew’d said. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying!” she screamed, covering her ears. Things she didn’t want to think about, things crammed desperately into a box at the back of her mind, one that had come slightly ajar that night. One that flew open, even as she ran from the Tyrianers, from the man she’d thought maybe might be her dad. From Falcon. Her bare callused feet slapped against the cobblestones. The caravan didn’t wait. It was the core rule, the ground rule. You lingered, you were left behind. That was it. It was a final hope. A desperate hope. A fool’s hope. But Sew had always dared to hope, even for the impossible. Maybe they’d waited a little, just for her. Sew didn’t know. But she had to try. She sprinted the last leg of distance, hearing the shouts and the cries behind her. Knowing none of it boded well. And—her heart in her mouth—she realised the caravan was still there. They’d packed up, and the stairs were drawn up, and they were ready to leave, in full line, and yet they were still there. Hreon sat on the driver’s seat of one of the caravans, and he nodded to her, gravely. A line of worry eased on his forehead as Sew sprang up, right next to him. They’d waited. He’d waited. That was what family did, right? As Hreon gave the order to depart, the caravan once again began to move, leaving Tyrian Falls, just another village in the long line of villages they had visited, and maybe they’d visit this one again. Maybe they never would. Sew looked back over her shoulder, watching Tyrian Falls recede into the dust, into the distance. Maybe she hadn’t found her parents. And maybe that was okay. Maybe she had to stop looking back. She’d told herself she could do it, that she could find them. That her eyes were on the future. And maybe all of that really meant that she’d forgotten she had family here too, and these were the people who cared about her, who’d taken the place of her mum and her dad, even if Old Coop was gone. “I’m glad you waited,” she said. “I’m glad you came,” Hreon said. And if it wasn’t an apology, if it wasn’t love, given voice, given a shape in the world— —It was good enough. @Ivory Dragonfly fled with the caravan! She was a Village Smoker! @Chartreuse Penguin has met the inactivity filter and been replaced! Please welcome Chartreuse Penguin 2.0! The Night has begun! It will end in 24 hours on the 28th January 2025, 11PM ET. PMs remain closed! Player List:

I used to, but it's hard to love her when half my friend group keeps complaining about her? It just puts me in a mental space where I'm tired of hearing about her, but I also didn't want to come out and say it because that's a rough thing to lay down in an intro thread Tress is amazing. Would push the book to way more people!

Clearly the correct move here is to blame Sanderson for creating so many awesome characters As someone who is not an air-sick lowlander, Rock and Tress are great choices! Great to have you join us for real this time!

Welcome to the Shard! I absolutely relate to the problem of less-than optimal sleep username creation What was your first introduction to Sanderson?

Welcome to the Shard! What are three of your favourite Sanderson characters?

AG11/AN15: Day Six - Every Grain of Sand Another day came and went, and with it, another death. Acks had been killed in the ensuing affray, though Clem privately suspected that Nibbles was just…Nibbles, and had a thing about making his suspects his entire personality. The villagers of Tyrian Falls had retreated for the night: not to the Hound and Hustle, which had become a place of confrontation and death, but to their homes, to shut themselves in, and to pray to the Lord Ruler or to whatever heretical gods they worshipped in defiance of the Steel Ministry that they would live to greet the dawn. What was the point? Clem wondered. Was there anything that was worth saving any longer in Tyrian Falls? Had there been anything worth saving at all? For the second night in a row, Clem was not returning from the palisades. Maill and Jerric had the watch for the night; paired to avoid what had happened to Gam. It’d seemed to have worked, the night before, although Clem did not know if it was because the Spiked had simply turned their attentions on murdering the would-be defenders of Tyrian Falls. But it wasn’t just the Spiked, was it? The Spiked, Clem was beginning to dimly grasp, were only the tiny part of a large, snarled knot that was bigger than any of them could begin to understand. They were killing themselves, inexorably. Each time they clashed, each time they exchanged harsh words, each time the people of Tyrian Falls hunted for the Spiked in their midst, and each time they failed, they were dooming themselves. Tyrian Falls was breaking apart, stroke by stroke, as surely as a blacksmith tapping an iron rod with his chisel to make caltrops. The need to defend their village was, in and of itself, something that bore the seeds of their ruin. How many Tyrianers already had the blood of their neighbours on their hands? How could such a village defend itself from the koloss? Could they even still trust each other? Somewhere out there in the night, the koloss were advancing on Tyrian Falls, inexorably. Each day and each night that passed brought them closer to the village and its meagre defenses. Even if they found the Spiked tomorrow, Clem thought, would they be able to hold the village against the onrushing koloss? Teys had thought so. But Teys’s plan had relied on a united village, one determined to work together to fend the koloss off, motivated by a common love of their hometown and their community. Was Tyrian Falls, the Tyrian Falls that now was, the one that had been having been lost when Halsen had died in the brawl in the Hound and Hustle, even still worth saving? He did not know where his nighttime wanderings were bringing him. Or he did know; because his body seemed to know where he needed to go, even though his mind was doubting, conflicted. Mouse watched. All his life, Mouse had watched the people of Tyrian Falls. It was easier, on reflection, to watch, Mouse thought, rather than to do. Sometimes, you could just sit on a bench and watch the people scurrying around like little ants in their ant nests, preoccupied with their little tasks and things, and you could even make it a bit of a game, trying to work out what they were thinking, what motivated them. In that light, trying to find the Spiked seemed to be something that Mouse thought he was pretty ready for. If the Spiked were hiding among them, then Mouse figured that a careful watcher should be able to find the Spiked. Their fell intentions should be written upon their actions, be concealed within their body language. All the sorts of things that someone who’d spent most of his life watching should be able to find. He’d picked up on Byrar, for all he’d ended up being suspicious of the Jaist priest. In Mouse’s defense, he was pretty sure that religious devotion sometimes wound up looking a lot like mass-murdering fanaticism, so he wasn’t too upset with himself for getting a little mixed up between the two of them. Either way, they’d found and stopped Byrar, so that was a win in Mouse’s book. Lysia, though. There was something uncanny about Lysia that made Mouse feel…uncomfortable, and whatever it was, Mouse just wasn’t sure he could put his finger on it, which only unsettled him more. He was used to being able to make sense of what he saw. Part of watching people was waiting for the moment the puzzle pieces slipped together, the way you could point to a woman hurrying home with her groceries under her arm and say, she’s worried about the Spiked, and the man going the opposite way, with a bundle of iron rods, he’s headed for the blacksmith and so on and so on. The pieces weren’t fitting together, and the fact they didn’t was jarring, and Mouse—wasn’t used to that. So Mouse decided to try doing something, for a change. Something bold. Something a little different. He tailed Lysia. Lysia’s trail seemed to make no particular sense to Mouse. She wandered through most of Tyrian Falls—to the Hound and Hustle, through Market Square, past the bakery, where the scents of freshly-baked baywraps lingered, even at night, with a brief pause by the docks where the canalboats would’ve been loaded, back when they saw more traffic between Fadrex and Luthadel—but Mouse realised that he didn’t really know where Lysia lived. He tried to keep Lysia at least two streets behind him, ducking behind corners and signs to avoid being seen. All the same, Mouse was surprised to turn the corner and discover he was walking into a dead end. The alley terminated in a solid brick wall, which was swarming with bugs, but there was no real sign of where Lysia had been. That’s strange, Mouse thought. Were those bugs…he’d remembered seeing them around the village, a few times, and yet the more he thought about it, he’d never seen their like before. For all he’d watched, Mouse had spent most of his time watching people, not the flora and fauna of Tyrian Falls, and so the realisation shocked him, like a sudden ashfall on an otherwise clear day. When had he first started seeing them? Mouse reached over to pick up one of the bugs, when he heard a whisper of soft cloth, as though— He was turning, trying to catch whoever it was, when someone whispered, in his ear, “Hello, little Mouse,” and an arm like an iron bar closed over his throat. There was a strange cold. Looking down, struggling against his attacker, Mouse realised he’d been stabbed. And again. And again. Blood gushed from his wounds. It was as though he was watching it happen to someone else, Mouse thought. Watching his own death. Aralis was sitting on his rocking chair, on his porch, watching the gleam of the distant stars with a warm cup of herbal tea. His thwacking staff rested to the side, within easy reach. He’d never needed the staff, Clem figured. All his life, he only remembered Araris using it to thwack someone or other who irritated him. Clem nodded to him. “You’re not…worried?” he asked, at last. Giving voice to the thoughts that swarmed his mind. “Why would I be?” Aralis replied, raising a sardonic eyebrow. He set his steaming cup down on the side-table. “There aren’t any Spiked, kid. Aren’t any koloss, either. Saboteurs, yes—-a whole bunch of people going around, making us go for each other’s throats. But the others have got that well in hand, and I’m not going to interfere if they’re doing the job.” “They’re killing each other,” Clem said. “Hayden was innocent. So was Acks. So was Kael Voss.” “I’m not thrilled they’ve taken to killing their suspects before we can get anything out of them,” Aralis conceded, “But the Watch is run pretty ragged right now. Everyone’s jumping at shadows. And they can’t be talked out of the koloss obsession. What we’ve got is what we’ve got.” Clem hesitated, for several long moments. Aralis simply picked up his tea again. “...Do you think Tyrian Falls can be saved?” he asked. Not because he thought Aralis had an answer, but for the sake of asking the question. As though in asking the question aloud, in setting it loose on the world, he had in some way eased the burden on his own soul. Maybe because he wanted to hear the answer, wanted to hear someone else tell him that Tyrian Falls could be saved, that there was something worth saving. …He probably should’ve picked someone if he wanted comfort, someone who wasn’t Aralis. “From the koloss? Or the Spiked?” “From ourselves,” Clem said. Because there was no way any conversation involving the koloss or the Spiked was going to get off the ground, where Aralis was concerned. “I don’t think it helps to worry,” Aralis said, at last, which was more thought than Clem’d expected him to give to it. “More people are working on this than before, even if they’re still getting hysterical about the Spiked. There’s no point worrying ourselves about the outcome before we know what it’s going to be.” Clem nodded. “I see,” he said. He didn’t, though. In his mind’s eye, there was an hourglass, and the grains of sand were slipping, slipping, slipping away, inexorably. Unless you tipped the hourglass. Unless you gave Tyrian Falls a new lease of life. Unless Tyrian Falls was worth saving. I watch each grain of sand as it falls, Pilu whispered, and then was silent. @Azure Mouse was killed! He was a Village Smoker! PMs remain closed! Please stop PMing! The Day has begun! It will end in 48 hours on the 27th January 2025, 11PM ET. Player List:

Sie lernen Deutsch, oder? Welcome to the Shard!

Thirding, it's a great setting and period too

Welcome, welcome! What about Mistborn Era 1 makes it your favourite?

AG11/AN15: Night Five - Steel and Feathers (Don’t Ever) The two deaths, both at once—of the Jaist priest and of Rind—had reverberated through the fabric of the village, leaving the surviving villagers in a state much like shock. The Jaist priest had been a voice of comfort to many Tyrianers, even if he did insist on praising the Ja in what seemed to be every waking moment. Though it had taken him some time to work up to it, he had been a steadfast presence against the Spiked, alternatively denouncing his suspects and praising the Ja in the same breath. Too, there was simply something about his sincere devotion that made you want to believe in something more—the Ja or otherwise—something that made the threat of the Spiked pale in comparison. On the other hand, Rind had been the village’s Mistborn. He had successfully fought off one prior attack from the Spiked, and he had helped stop Byrar for good. To see Rind cut down like this in the night by an unknown assailant had been as a stone cast into a calm lake; fear and chaos rippled outwards. Acks paced the common room of the Hound and Hustle, where most of the villagers had wandered to. Bugs swarmed one of the tavern’s walls, and Acks resisted the urge to smack at them—there were just too many, and Acks had greater problems on his mind. “Sew,” he said, through gritted teeth. “You lied about Smoking yourself and Rind, didn’t you?” “I hadn’t!” Sew protested. “The metallur—the metal people, they said they were outta Copper and I thought they’d given me some! I can’t burn Tin! Besides, you really think Copper was gonna stop them from finding Rind? Whoever did it, they were ready for him. You heard what Clem said.” Sew was, at least, pretty convinced that Clem wasn’t her dad, but maybe her dad was one of the other survivors? Definitely wasn’t Aralis. Her dad wasn’t that ancient, she was pretty sure. “I’m a Smoker too,” Mouse announced, abruptly, causing everyone to stare at him. “And you kept this quiet?” Nibbles wanted to know, emerging from the kitchen with several pastries on a tray. “Nibbles thinks you should try this, because you are crackers!” He shoved the tray aggressively at Mouse, who, apparently at least a little intimidated, took a pastry. “We had a whole debate about Byrar, who was obviously evil, and Sew, because how many Smokers could there really be, and you didn’t think this was relevant? Nibbles doesn’t like this, even though Nibbles agrees fervently with Byrar’s death!” Mouse shrugged. “The way I saw it, Tyrian Falls could be a colony of Smokers and I wouldn’t be surprised. I saw a fence with a No Smoking sign the other day, and I thought maybe someone’d put it up because there were too many Smokers in Tyrian Falls.” Dozing on his porch at his home, Aralis muttered in his sleep. He had a sudden and distressing feeling that someone had mentioned something dark, fell, and unutterably terrible, though the feeling passed in mere moments, and he slid back into a peaceful slumber, with no intimation whatsoever of Spiked or koloss. Lysia had had a terrible, horrible, very bad, no good day. Well. Technically speaking, it had been a series of terrible, horrible, very bad, no good days. At least, Lysia was pretty sure it had been days. She wasn’t sure how long it had been, though she got a series of strange glances from passing Tyrianers when she stopped them to ask after what day it was. It had been about five days, she reckoned. Maybe four. She wasn’t too sure. The pain had eclipsed everything else, blanketing reason and all sense of time and self as the hungry red-white fog had expanded, eating into Lysia, eating into everything. There was no way that was just some virus planted by the Lord Ruler. Something had attacked her Cognitively, taken away her consciousness. That shouldn't be possible, not for her. Her people alone, in all the cosmere, should be immune to something like that. It was literally in the name, for Adonalsium's sake. She needed to get out of this place. She needed to report back to her superiors, and then seek information in Silverlight about what could possibly do a thing like that. And for that, she needed the Spiked. Lysia pushed open the door to the Hound and Hustle, thinking she would find answers at the tavern, or at least, pick up more information there. She was certain the villagers had been attempting to find the Spiked while she had been—out of commission. She doubted they would sit idly by while the Spiked picked them off, one by one. She walked right into the common room in time to hear them arguing about her. “I do feel bad about this,” someone said. Lysia didn’t recognise who it was. Then again, she wasn’t at her best right now, and hadn’t been over the past days. “However, there’s a potential chance that Lysia is one of them.” “The Spiked.” “Yes.” “...I think I can see that,” said someone else entirely. Well. Storms. That wasn’t going to go well. Clem worked at the forge. Nails. The simplest thing to make, the first thing a blacksmith’s apprentice learned to make. Everyone always wanted nails. It was the simple things that held everything together. A man’s faith in his God. A friend’s smile. A father’s laugh. An unassuming orphan, who just wanted to save his friends. He struck down with more force than he intended to, and growled a quiet oath. He’d need to reheat the iron rod if he wanted to save it. He grabbed it with a gloved hand and thrust it back into the forge to re-heat, watching for the moment the end began to glow cherry-red. Nails were supposed to be simple. So simple his body knew how to do it, the actions burned into deep muscle-memory over long repetition. So simple his mind wandered, even here, even now, and he found himself tumbling over and over in a maelstrom, lost. Maybe you just had to start again. He sucked in a deep breath, and flexed his shoulders, trying to ease the tightness that had set in. Remembered that morning summiting the ashmount Tyrian, the way the decision had felt to clear, gazing down at the world spread out before him from the crater of the ashmount. A risky thing to do, but he’d had confidence in himself, his skills. Had wanted to see more of the world, had remembered that view, everything else shrunk to the size of ants. He had left Tyrian. He’d had so many plans, except he’d ended up coming home from Luthadel, years later, because Pilu called. Because Clem had been, in a way, broken and beaten down by life, by the Garrison work. By all that had happened with Wurek. He drew the iron rod from the forge and worked it again, hammering at it. His technique was raw, wild. He should’ve shaped it with quick and careful hammer strokes. His chest heaved. You made the choices you thought you had to, he told himself. Tried to hold that younger self, returning from the top of the world, descending to the earth from the summit, with compassion. You made the choices you thought were best for you at the time. Sometimes, you were wrong. And sometimes, it was the best you could do; sometimes, the choice only seemed wrong, because you’d become someone else entirely. Sometimes, the best choices only seemed wrong on reflection because you’d lost the person you were, down the line. He should have stayed. He should have left. There were no answers, and Pilu was silent. The hammer clanging against iron, Clem worked. There were more Spiked in Tyrian Falls, and they’d killed his friends, and one of Tyrian Falls’s hottest bachelors. The fact that they’d killed his friends was sufficient. The fact they’d killed one of Tyrian Falls’s hottest and most eligible bachelors just made it intensely personal; an affront to Acks and what he actually did. As far as Acks was concerned, he intended to make the Spiked pay. At first, he’d settled his gaze on Sew. He didn’t like the way Sew’d interacted with Byrar previously; didn’t like, either, that Sew had apparently been one of the voices condemning Hayden Vendel, who had obviously survived a Spiked attempt on his life, and who’d been a veteran and a Lurcher, even if Acks privately admitted that Hayden’s marriage prospects were junk. Hard to matchmake a man who was in his cups most of the time, and Acks hadn’t appreciated being accosted over burning the Eleventh Metal either. He didn’t know what that metal was called, really. Just knew it wasn’t one of the standard eight, or the other two, the ones you burned only if you were a Mistborn. Truth was, Acks couldn’t burn the Eleventh Metal either. But Rind could, and Rind’d told him all about the things he’d seen. Strange things: ghostly after-images of other people, much like a gold or atium shadow. Almost everyone in Tyrian Falls had had a shadow. Hayden Vendel, Rind described, as a happy man, without the missing leg. A craftsman’s calluses perhaps, or a farmer’s. A Hayden Vendel who hadn’t left for war, who’d stayed and worked his trade. Perhaps surprisingly, he’d seen a prelan’s tattoos on the Jaist, though he’d looked no less content. He’d never described Acks. Acks had always wondered why. Lysia walked into the tavern, and Acks stood up. If it wasn’t Sew… He’d never heard Rind describe Lysia, either. There was something to it, like an itch that Acks couldn’t scratch. Rind’d seen Lysia, looked at her when burning the Eleventh Metal. And his eyes had widened, but he hadn’t said anything, and there was something of significance there, Acks though, even if the moment had been lost when the scuffle began, and Rind’d been distracted. It had to mean something, hadn’t it? Because the alternative was, he was a man clutching at straws, trying to rationalise the death of his friend. Trying to make all of it mean something. He walked over to Lysia. “I think you’d better leave, Spiked,” he growled. Of all people, Acks had not expected Sauve Chad to back him up. But Sauve Chad had evidently moved on from cursing people in the Lord Ruler’s name, and silently showed up by Acks’s side, nodding to him. At least he wasn’t alone. “No,” said a clear voice, a girl’s voice. Sew stood there, glaring at him, hands on her hips. “You leave the lady alone,” she said. “You aren’t my dad, I know it. Why’re there so many Smokers in Tyrian Falls, huh?” Acks blinked. “What?” he asked, confused. “‘Cause these things happen for a reason,” Sew continued. “‘Cause I bet the Lord Ruler don’t give powers that aren’t needed. There’s balance there, even if we can’t see it. That’s what my mum always used to say.” Her voice wavered, and then strengthened again. “Way I see it, there’s me and Mouse, and why’re we there, huh? Probably ‘cause someone like you is working with the Spiked.” Nibbles had moved over to stand next to Sew. “Nibbles thinks the girl might be right,” said the chef. Acks burned Brass. He reached out, trying to Soothe their suspicion, but—there was nothing? Nibbles closed in on Acks. “See, you asked,” Sew said, matter-of-factly. “I got more Copper last night. Real Copper this time. This enough of a Coppercloud for you?” Acks had an overwhelmingly bad feeling about this. @Coral Swan was executed! He was a Village Soother! The Night has begun! It will end in 24 hours on the 25th January 2025, 11PM ET. PMs remain closed! The GMs would like to remind all players to try to tone down on the jargon/heavy-duty acronyms - not all players are equally conversant in it, and it can be intimidating to deal with, especially if they have to keep asking. Player List:

Araris took the first question. I'll take the second one.

This question goes out to the truly ancient Shard users and the venerable Shard users, but I'm interested in hearing from the whippersnappers too How do you deal with being venerable? Has the way you engaged with the Shard changed? I first joined the Shard in 2014 in the wake of Words of Radiance releasing. I remember first starting Mistborn in 2008, but you know, for whatever reason, things in my life aligned nicely when WoR released and I was massively on the hype train and just wanted to engage in fandom, talk about it to people, that kinda thing! And then I found 17S and the rest is history. (Seem to recall a question from Argent in my sign-up thread at that time if Kasimir was my real name, after which the disappointing response depressed him ) At that time, I was super hyped to just hop all over the Shard and interact, including in the notorious Shipfather thread (if you know, you know, if you don't know, you don't want to.) I remember being in the Lords of Chaos at some point, which I think is a dead guild/social clan now, and we had...some sort of beef with the Newcargo Court? Sometime in April I also discovered the Sanderson Elimination subforum, where I now spend most of my Shard time. I think I first joined a game there in May due to RL schedule stuff again, and made many RL friends, some of whom I'm still in contact with today. I guess where this is leading to: I used to be all over the Shard, and to feel enthusiastic about just showing up wherever, including in theorycrafting threads and just joining in. These days I'm mostly in Sanderson Elimination (still, yes, I know ) running/playing games for the love of the community and that's it. I'm on the Discord, but show up intermittently in books for 17S, and more with the SE community. Has the way you engage with the Shard changed for you, venerable Shard users? (I define venerable as those who joined years ago, and especially if you joined in high school or uni, and are working now. Ancient are those who are even older than us ) I kind of feel a lot of mental barriers now when I look at other parts of the Shard and IDK if that's fair. I'm not super into hardcore theorycrafting and never was - the threads I joined were really more stuff like Adolin or Windrunner Fifth Ideal speculation. I've joined some Entertainment and General threads on occasion, but social clans and guilds just skews so young and sometimes something in my brain says it's silly and I've outgrown that, really. (Maybe some of it is fandom brain too - I've fallen out of love with fandoms, but around that period as well was a discourse that fandom wasn't for older members and we kind of needed to leave certain spaces to the young.) I feel a little dissatisfied with how my brain doesn't feel cool freely engaging anymore, but I am wondering about everyone else's experience. Young 'uns who just want to chime in, do you feel like this might affect you in future? Or that you might outgrow/leave the Shard?

I'm happy to re-confirm that the default state of a Smoker who sent in no orders is to self-Smoke. Araris accidentally nuked the entire section on Smoking when we were trying to remove a series of confusing clarifications that had persisted from AG6 (Fifth and El) that weren't adding clarity to how Smoking works and had been responsible for the 42069 questions on Smoking we were receiving. That's the allusion to Araris nuking the Chesterton's fence in the write-up. The rule itself remains unchanged.

For a moment, you are not in Tyrian Falls any longer. The sky is a gentle, forgetful blue, and the long green grass stretches out as far as the eye can see, rippling in the soft breeze. The peace and the stillness radiating from this place is a balm for the weary soul. All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. And then you are back in Tyrian Falls. While the Spiked still menace you, for a moment, you have been blessed. The day is a little brighter, a little less wearisome. ...You have the strangest feeling that one of the GMs approves of your based use of Piplup.

AG11/AN15: Day Five - Dead Man, Dead Man The night that descended on Tyrian Falls seemed a little lighter, a little more hopeful. The lights of the Hound and Hustle twinkled in the dusk, and the sound of music and laughter filled the night with a warmth that had been sorely missed in the village over the past few days. This rejoicing, this momentary happiness, had been paid for in blood: the blood of multiple innocent Tyrianers, but also in the blood of one of the saboteurs who had sought to destroy the village. It was a sober note: a jarring edge that marred the sweep of the music. The Jaist priest pushed open the tavern door, letting out a bright slice of warm light. He stepped out into the night, the door creaking shut behind him. It had, the Jaist thought, been a good day’s work, praise the Ja. The evildoer in their midst had been unmasked at long last, with no small thanks to Rind, and Nibbles and Rind had both put an end to Byrar’s fell deeds, the Ja be praised. Still, the Jaist knew that the work was yet unfinished. Where there was a single Spiked saboteur in Tyrian Falls, there was undoubtedly more. Byrar had fellow conspirators who needed to be unmasked, and stopped as well, praise the Ja! Most of the villagers of Tyrian Falls referred to the priest as “the priest” or “the Jaist.” He had not been born in Tyrian Falls: it lay too close to the main route between Fadrex and Luthadel, enough for the Inquisition to come around swiftly with stern questions if they caught wind of a practising Jaist. The majority of his brethren had died for their faith in the purges; if you survived, you learned to be careful, and at least a little more discreet about your faith, praise the Ja. A very long time ago, the Jaist had had a name. He had given up that name, as the Ja had his own, and had considered it both a mark of devotion and a touch of—not forbidden—vanity. Who he was, and who he had been was unimportant. He yearned each day to make himself an evermore perfect vessel of the Ja’s glory, that only praise for the Ja would move through him; would reverberate, joyfully. As the Jaist walked, he praised the Ja to the rhythm of his footsteps. Each time his foot struck the cobblestones of the street was a reminder to praise the Ja, that the Ja was ever-present, and filled him with a great, all-consuming joy. There was a whisper of cloth, and then something hard and sharp tore through him. The Jaist teetered on his feet. His hand went to his chest. It came away wet, sticky with warm blood. What had— “Praise the Ja,” he whispered, uncertainly. And then another. And then another. And another. A figure, hooded and cloaked, dropped lightly to the street before him, cape billowing out with the sudden movement. Coins gleamed between the spectre’s fingers; coins that immediately streaked towards him, glinting like starlight. Caught by surprise, and already wounded, the Jaist was too slow to dodge. The coins tore through his chest, and blood bubbled to his mouth. He was dying, the Jaist thought. It was more beautiful than he had expected. Everything fled, bit by bit. The sense of the world around him, the figure, the coins. Everything dimmed, blurring, fading towards darkness. There was only the Ja. There were only the words. The words were everything. “Praise…the Ja,” he mumbled. “Praise…the Ja.” He went to death joyfully, and death embraced him, the words of his God on his lips. “Praise the Ja,” the Jaist breathed, smiling tremulously. It was the last words he would utter in this life. In the mists, a man walked, and walked. He was alone, and yet he was not alone. Fear was a companion, even as the mists swirled about him. He burned Tin and Bronze, not because he particularly wanted to know exactly when death was coming for him, but because he thought it would be worse not to know. As much as the mists still terrified him, Rind hadn’t wanted to spend his last night alone. He’d placed that last vial in his pocket—undrunk—and forced himself to walk out into the night. His feet traced an uncertain, weaving path across the cobblestones. First, he’d thought of going to Falcon’s home. But Rind had begun to harbour increasing doubts about Falcon. While Falcon certainly seemed to watch many of the Tyrianers, Rind had found some of Falcon’s observations…odd, and was wondering if Falcon had in fact had some form of ulterior motive that had been guiding his observations. Then, he’d thought of visiting the enigmatic Jaist priest. But Rind wasn’t sure the Jaist would be at home at this time of the night. He went on, past the closed smithy, and onto Market Square proper. A cold wind blew, and goose pimples pricked his arms. The mists seemed to gather more closely about him, and Rind had to force himself to breathe past that reflexive surge of panic. He really didn’t like the mists. Market Square. He remembered there was…something about Clem’s father, wasn’t there? It had been before Rind’s time, though, and spoken of largely in whispers these days. Acks’s home was near Market Square, but Acks was another friend that Rind had started to harbour doubts about. His involvement in Kael’s death, his questions as to which metals Rind had stocked up on—after having fought Byrar twice, and drained his pewter and iron vials, Rind wondered if he was jumping at each shadow, or if such questions no longer seemed as innocuous to him. There was Nibbles, he supposed. With the eccentric chef having angrily accused Byrar of being evil to the point most of Tyrian Falls had thought Nibbles crazy, Rind supposed there was probably reason to try Nibbles. At least maybe Nibbles would be able to make something else his entire personality now that Rind and the chef had taken down the Spiked saboteur. Besides, Nibbles would still be working in the kitchens of the Hound and Hustle, which meant there would be a crowd there, even at this hour. Rind paused, thinking about how strange it was that you could feel so alone, on what was most likely his last day alive, even in a crowd. The Hound and Hustle would be packed with Tyrianers; some of them farmers from the outlying homes, a few craftsmen, the grocer…They were faces he’d attached names to, and yet, they weren’t friends. He’d felt no attachment to them, formed no real bonds, the way he’d bonded with the Jaist or Acks, as much as he doubted them now. He thought about how you could sit in a crowded room with the woman you bought baywraps from each day, how you could still feel—out of sorts. Alone in the world, even as you waited to die. Out alone in the mists, a world unto himself in the dark that had engulfed Tyrian Falls, Rind walked on into the night, drawn towards the lights of the Hound and Hustle, and waited to die. Aralis stared at the fence. It was, he thought, a rather well-crafted fence. Years as a carpenter before retirement had taught him how to evaluate these things. The wood had been treated to fireproof it, and the various parts of the fence interlocked nicely, with the wood having been evenly cut and glued together and then sealed by nails. It was also a fence that had no business being here. If Aralis had been drunk, perhaps he would have found the sudden materialisation of the fence far less disturbing than he did. But he hadn’t actually drunk any alcohol that night, having stopped at a simple herbal tea, and as he crossly racked his memories, he could not ever, in decades of having taken this particular shortcut through Tyrian Falls, recall this particular fence of this particular construction ever having existed. In addition, the fence had a sign on it, that simply read: TYRIAN FALLS: SMOKERS NOT ALLOWED. Below, in smaller letters: EL AND FIFTH WERE HERE. “That’s absurd,” Aralis growled, glaring at the fence. If anything, it offended him even more than the village’s continued insistence on Spiked did. Fences did not simply just suddenly materialise where none had previously existed. And they most certainly were not erected in a day. He also had no idea who in tarnation the names on the fence were, but he didn’t particularly like them on sheer bloody principle. The fence refuted Aralis’s insistences by continuing to exist. He pushed against it, but the fence remained where it was, stubborn and unyielding. “Oh, bother,” Aralis muttered. He gave up and brandished his staff. “Away with you!” he commanded, staring at the fence. The fence continued to exist. It was, after all, a medium-sized dry good. Aralis smashed at the fence with his thwacking staff. It was a good fence, but in the end, it was just a fence. Aralis understood carpentry: it had been his trade, after all, and he intimately understood the weak points of the fence, or where to hit to take it down. After a barrage of staff blows, the fence collapsed. …And took half the awnings and washing poles in the backstreet along with it. Aralis stared at the remnants of the fence and the awnings and the washing poles, all collapsed in a flurry of cloth and wood, and belatedly wondered if leaving the fence in place had been a better idea. …Nah. Clem couldn’t say what had drawn him out towards Market Square. He’d always avoided Market Square, whenever he could. Something about the place, knowing the atrocity that had happened there, that his father had committed there, had made it difficult for him to feel at ease there. As though the fell deeds of the past had irreversibly stained the fabric of the place; as though they still echoed, even now, across the years. As though Connal’s son, walking through Market Square, could stir the shades of the blood-soaked past. And yet. A sort of nagging restlessness had set his feet on the path to Market Square. His fingers closed around the Pilu statuette in his pocket, but his God was silent this night. Perhaps even Pilu closed his eyes to Market Square, Clem thought. And yet it was difficult to shake the sense that he was being called, drawn out to Market Square by some terrible purpose. Burning Tin for an extra edge, for a little clarity, Clem felt the mists swirl more closely, as though drawn to him. At the same time, they seemed to become more translucent, allowing him to keep a careful eye on his surroundings. It reminded him of the night routes he’d patrolled back in the Luthadel Garrison, and Clem wondered to himself when a walk through Market Square had begun to feel like the careful pace of a patrol through one of the more hostile areas in Luthadel. All of a sudden, his Tin-enhanced ears picked up shouting. Sounds of a scuffle. Clem sprinted, trying to follow the direction of the noises. He wasn’t particularly armed, but he’d a knife he always carried on him, and reached surreptitiously for where it lay sheathed. Whatever it was, he doubted it boded well. He skidded to a halt as he burst upon a hooded figure— “HEY!” Clem shouted, as loudly as he could, and charged. The hooded figure didn’t even turn about to engage him. The glass knife plunged into Rind’s chest—once, twice, and then a third time—with swift and brutal efficiency and then Clem heard the clink of metal hitting the cobblestones and the figure sprang lightly into the air, soaring over Clem, before he could intercept, and making off. Before Clem could process what it meant, that the assassin hadn’t bothered to fight him and had just taken off, he rushed over to Rind. “I’m dying…” Rind whispered. His chest was a ruin of blood and torn flesh. “Aren’t I?” “Just stay with me,” Clem said, keeping his voice calm. He’d seen this scene too many times, back in Luthadel. Didn’t want to deal with it yet again. “I’ll get Sandhya, everything will be fine. Just stay with me, okay? Rind? Rind!” Blood on his hands, Clem shook Rind lightly, but there was no response now, no rising and falling of breath. Rind sagged back against Clem’s arms, and reverently, Clem laid the man down on the cobblestones of Market Square. Years later, Market Square had claimed another victim. “You did so good, Rind…” Clem whispered, his voice cracking. Remembered young Garrison recruits, fresh out of training, sent to die in the Barrel’s Bottom, the worst quarter of Luthadel, where the only thing that kept you alive was luck, and sometimes, just being too stubborn to die. “You did good.” He knelt in the blood, on the stones, and in the darkness and the silence, his heart cried out for guidance, for Pilu to say something, anything, but there was no answer. There had never been an answer, not to something like Market Square, and not to something such as this murder. Something cracked inside him, and in that moment, Clem thought it might just have been his faith. @Mauve Crocodile was shot! He was a Village Tineye! @Melon Dingo was killed! He was a Village Mistborn! PMs are now closed! Please stop PMing! The Day has begun! It will end in 48 hours on the 24th January 2025, 11PM ET. Scrawled on the walls of the Hound and Hustle: Player List:

YKYASF when you were writing an after-action report for a Pokemon game you ran, accidentally derped and called two players Voidbringers*, and don't have the faintest idea why you used that word instead of...whatever you probably originally meant >> *I'm actually more disturbed that the players I called Voidbringers didn't ask me why Voidbringers came out of nowhere...

That's just how the cookie crumbles

"Time will always flow. Everything will pass by. That might be why youth is beautiful. It shines, blindingly bright, for just an instant. But you can never go back to it." —Reply 1988