The One Who Connects

We like to joke about how much stuff Brandon has planned at any given time, but we need to realize that he's usually not working on four things at once. I gotta agree with Angsos. If memory serves, the "Secret" that ended up as Skyward was 3rd on the list before. Now he's added Skyward at the top, and that secret has been pushed down one spot to 4th. Seems reasonable, no? On the subject of Air/Space combat, there's these snippets from the Cover Reveal Article: Combining several things from this tells us that Flight School is almost certainly on planet. You can't exactly use "from the sky" and "take her skyward" in a space setting can you? She's trying to repair a old ship she "found," which implies crashed/abandoned, rather than sitting in the mechanics bay of flight school, and you can't find a lost ship in space without being a pilot, something that she isn't since she hasn't completed flight school, forcing the ship to be on the ground. Brandon appears to imply that she gets into flight school during the time she is repairing the ship, meaning that flight school is also on the ground, since she wouldn't say the ship could take her skyward if flight school is already skyward, nor could she repair a ship on the ground while in a training academy in space. Additionally, since the 2017 SotS implies Skyward will be a trilogy, so having the first book be predominantly air combat rather than space isn't too unreasonable.

I could see that, considering that he was still pushing the "everything published has been released in chronological order" angle back then. (And then Wax/Wayne happened...)

You remember right(and spelled it right too ) As a sidenote, your sig says "join the ghosbloods." There should be a "t" You said it yourself, he got killed. But in the Cosmere, death isn't always the end, as our friend from Scadrial so eloquently proves. Think of it in terms of "dead" and "gone." During Aharietiam, Taln ended up dead, but he wasn't gone. Jezrien is dead, and he appears to have been separated from the Herald's bond, but whether or not that means he is "gone" is up for debate, since Brandon considers it as "using similar fundamentals" as Hemalurgy. I imagine that he's gone, but I can't 100% say that he is.

You can technically distill God Metals out of the Mists with the right tech, but I don't know about normal metals(and I don't know if they'll reach that tech without knowing its possible)

I'm aware of that. That was my point in saying that the girl would very much want to forget what happened in a situation like that. The "intent" of an awakening is the mental visualization, and she would likely have that intent in spades. Divines don't stick around.

Gotta agree with Wandering Investor here, that would all fall under the Easiest Entry Point category. Flexibility/Versatility/Capability would be in terms of what the magic can actually do, and in AonDor's case, it is literally programming reality. Given enough prep-time, you can do practically anything.

This depends on your criteria for mobile. If you mean easiest to get more fuel/power elsewhere, then it's the Metallic Arts for sure. But if you mean most mobile in the sense of being able to be used anywhere, Awakening would tie with it because you can awaken practically anything, anywhere, with no hacking. But the subjective ones make for the best debate

I disagree. As has been demonstrated multiple times throughout the books, the wording of Commands are pretty straight-forward. She'd be saying something pretty similar to "forget this ever happened," and in her situation, I would imagine that the girl very much wanted to forget what happened. There's Intent taken care of too. Also, given that her self-awakening only took "part of a breath," I am not sure it is as complex as you think it is.

A Society of Secret Societies. Wouldn't exactly be the first time someone's tried something like that in fiction, so I could see this.

It's actually Navani who said that. (Thank you again, Fulminato) But like you say, there have been too many info losses since then for us to be certain whether or not she's right.

This is the only thing on Arcanum that's even slightly relevant with "Stormlight" and/or "cold/frost/ice" in it. It's not very helpful. Of possible note, I'm pretty sure that while they use the term "frost" twice, there is no mention of actually being cold, which feels a little odd. Well, google defines frost as small ice crystals, so I don't think they could get encased in a block unless they stood still for a long while, something I don't imagine they'd do in the heat of battle.

The small cracks in (Relis?) Breastplate during Adolin's 4v1 appeared at the edges near his shoulders, not in the center of the back where the blow happened. Hitting the same place doesn't appear to work the same way on Roshar as it does here.

They barely register in the Cognitive Realm though. Shardic energy isn't exactly something you can hide.

I would imagine so. Aluminum prevents Shardblades from cutting magically, but at the end of the day, they are still Swords with sharp edges. Aluminum against powered Shardplate seems kinda equivalent to Steel against unpowered Shardplate. It's still very bulky/heavy/thick armor, and unless a bullet could normally pierce something of that thickness/durability, the magic doesn't matter. Disclaimer: I don't have an explicit WoB about Plate to back this up, but it makes sense.

I had a couple (barring athletic folks) in my post before, but it felt too clunky, so I switched it out to read "your average person" because it flowed better. I felt that the "very fit for their age" was a bit of an outlier, but it's not that big of a deal. If a character was in exceptionally good shape, Brandon would make a note of it, even if it was a couple inner thoughts by other people, and it'd be obvious that we weren't dealing with the average "insert age here."

The Dor is the Cognitive Realm of an entire planet, a planet that's 1.5 times bigger than Earth. And it it full to bursting with the power of two Shards, compressing that energy into an almost plasma-like state. For a Single Shard, that'd take up a Cognitive Area equivalent to at least 0.75 times the size of the Earth. I can't imagine the Dawnshards are even remotely big enough to hold that much power. If we assume the "Stone of Ten Dawns" story referred to the origin of the Dawnshards, they might only have to hold 1/10 of the Shard each(but that's still quite a lot). For Reference, Szeth absorbs enough Stormlight at one point that it feels like it's ripping him apart from the inside. He had that much Stormlight available to him in the Gem Pouch he carried with him. Maybe a Dawnshard can hold Investiture better than he can, but it'd still have to be bigger than he is to hold any meaningful chunk of Shardic Energy. You'd be surprised. The Well of Ascension is only a fraction of a Shard's total energy, but it's still enough to move a planet with. Nightblood is strong enough to damage a Shard.

Without having read the scene, I imagine that she's describing what Szeth has described twice or more. He's pulled in enough Stormlight that it felt like it would tear through him, to the point of creating an explosion of light. During the Highstorm fight in WoR, we get Kaladin's PoV. During said Highstorm scene: That shows how much Stormlight they were holding during the Storm, and I don't think Kaladin ever describes feeling like Szeth did, despite the sheer volume of Stormlight around/within him. To use a comparison, Szeth is essentially hosting a small scale version of the Dor: too much power in too small of a space. If you want consequences for holding too much Stormlight, look no further than the "rip him apart" line above. Szeth kept himself alive by using his Stormlight to relieve the pressure on him before his body gave out. Stormlight healing isn't as instant as F-Gold is. If you hold enough of it that your body explodes, that healing isn't gonna help. Additionally, you can't heal Savantism/Spiritual Drift. In order to "heal" Spiritual Drift, you'd need a magic that can alter the Spiritweb. Forgery, Hemalurgy(maybe, it's iffy), and Shardic Meddling would all work. Brandon even appears to acknowledge that Savantism is possible for a Soulcasting Radiant, although it might look different than normal. This one seems to have the simplest explanation: He hasn't used it enough. From the same WoB as above: Szeth had the Honorblade for roughly 8 years, but how often did he really use it during that time? Other than Klade and Taravangian, I don't think any of his former masters even knew about the Honorblade. And most of his masters were farmers and merchants, who aren't exactly the killing type. Makkek was probably his first master in 5 years to have him kill something other than weeds.

Indeed. Been like that since 4th grade when I saw the first few books in my school library.

Interesting. Still a fan of the "tah" sound, since that's one thing I'll always associate with Fire. No preference between Options 3 and 4, but it'd be good for other people to provide opinions too. Guess I've fulfilled my "learn something new every day" quota. That's actually really interesting(and kinda strange to think about, given how hot Texas summers get even with the rainstorms).

I think Brandon has counteracted this by making Roshar very high in ambient investiture. (Whether that was intentional or not, I don't know, but the concept seems sound) As for character ages, here's my opinion: There are things that a your average person in their sixties can't do very easily/at all that people in their fifties can due without issue to the physical states of their body at those ages. One of the biggest suspension of disbelief issues consumers of any media have is characters doing things they are physically incapable of doing. Brandon is good at minimizing suspension of disbelief when it comes to this subject, and the easiest way to do that is to write characters at the age they say they are. Most every author knows that, because they've been a reader who has probably had an issue with this in the past. If Brandon says that a character is 55, I expect that character to be physically equivalent with a 55 year old Terran Human. And I expect that Brandon will try to write said character like a 55 year old Terran Human because that character is 55 in Brandon's head, regardless of what age he'd be in Terran years(60.5 in this case). At the end of the day, this point is one that I think really matters: How old does Brandon see the character as when he is writing them?

We don't actually know this yet. All we know is that a/the strain of humanoids that currently occupies Roshar existed before the Shattering. Where they existed at that time is still unknown

Kandra can functionally live forever. Price doesn't always mean the same thing to them as it does to us.

I remember that as each book focusing on an order, not each flashback character. Do you have a link? I'm pretty sure Brandon has referred to Oathbringer interchangeably as "Dalinar's book" and "The Bondsmith book", same with WoK = Kaladin = Windrunner and WoR = Shallan = Lightweaver I mostly agree with Nymeros, because that's what Brandon said: He's essentially said that sometimes they'll match, sometimes they wont. And given that Eshonai was proto-Willshaper, nobody seems to count the Eshonai/Venli switch as focusing on different ones, so it's gotta happen later on, no?

Oh hey, its this subject again. (I'm surprised how long it took. We went from 3 times in 3 months to a 4 month gap) Thank you. It's very refreshing to hear someone else who sees more than one option. On the subject of options, have 9 of them: (I'm tired of having to format this as a multi-quote, so it's been condensed into just one now. Individual links to parts one, two, three, and four, for context/discussion value)

I'd go for a "Ta" name. I'm not sure after that, since there is minimal difference between the three. Hrmm... A or O probably. In my head, takkel sounds a lot like tackle.... actually, is there a dialect for pronouncing these, or will they work like plain english?