Titan Arum

Granted, you can now communicate by making various baby coos, cries, and gasps. I wish my dog's farts smlled like Shallan's perfume.

Granted, but you then lose the ability to communicate in any way. Even sign language. I wish that my "axe"hound's farts would stop smelling like fish.

Howdy, Drunk Monkey! Welcome to the Shard. Based upon your reference to Lightsong, is Warbreaker your favorite novel in the Cosmere? I can't decide if you're crazy or not, but joining the 17th Shard a week before finals could be an interesting (i.e. bad) decision on your part! Good luck with those tests.

I whole-heartedly agree. Syl actually has character and ranges in her emotions, not just negative emotions. As an armchair psychologist, I'd say she's manic depressive, but she's relateable and engaging. Additionally, she actually questions Kal about his actions, and let's him know when she thinks he's making a bad decision. Pattern is monotone and simply does whatever Shallan requests. Granted, his ability to mimic anyone is pretty cool. As a result, I feel connected with Syl whereas Pattern is too two-dimensional and a rather flat character (literally and figuratively in the physical realm!).

Type with one arm and then just pretend you're a One-armed Herdazian, and you'll immediately be that much cooler in our eyes! Oh, and welcome to the 17th!!

When you buy a personalized book from Brandon's website, just so that you can ask Brandon a question. (And afterwards, when the answer isn't that helpful, you still think it was well worth the $29 to do what you did.)

That's probably exactly why the One's Above are at First of the Sun. Aviar's will probably fetch quite a sum on the open market. Also...imagine how much Herdazians would pay for a Mistwraith chouta! Would it still be considered cannibalistic?

Who doesn't like arbitrage!? Worldhopping would be great for merchants in general. If only every babsk would think of this...which leads me to believe that maybe Rysn will eventually be the Worldhopping Merchant of our dreams? She has to set herself apart from her Vstim, who's well-regarded (and potentially famous) on Roshar. How else to do this other than becoming Cosmerchant?

Without knowing too much about them, I would argue that Odium's champions, or his Heralds, could be the Unmade. In one of the Listener songs, the Unmade are mentioned as almost god-like. Similar to the Heralds for humans: Words of Radiance: Chapter 31 Epigraph said

Soulcast the 16 Allomantic metals in large amounts (not atium or lerasium for obvious reasons), then go to Scadrial and corner the metals market by undercutting everyone else, thus creating your own metal monopoly. Surely, even at this price point, your profit margins are huge and nobody else can enter the market because they'll just lose money. Because, you know, mining is expensive! Edit: For an added wrinkle, because vials of metal contain alcohol, Soulcast/buy kegs of the various shades of Rosharian wine and assign a color to each Allomantic metal so that it's easy to distinguish which vial contains which metal. Due to this user-friendly (and potentially user-enjoyable) system, you may even be able to increase your prices ABOVE the cost of the lowest competitor because nobody else can use these wines to distinguish which vial of metals is which.

How frequently does Brandon make it to the East Coast for signings/talks? I would love to go to a signing of his, but haven't been able to because I only began reading his books this summer! Also, thanks for all the great information everyone! I love the worldhopping and Shadesmar stuff! And a 10Y anniversary Elantris edition! Woot! (x16!)

Moogle, While they may be able to detect life sense, it seems, based upon Brandon's answer, they can be seen as something else too since he said they would be seen as something new. Maybe the picture is incomplete; however, I don't think Jewels is the Terriswoman anymore because of that answer...assuming Vivenna truly senses her as Drab.

I've been thinking a lot lately about who the Terriswoman Worldhopper may be in Warbreaker. In fact, this idea is what brought me from a lurker to a regular board member a few months back. However, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper and get some WOB on the subject before posting anything. Thus, I specifically ordered a personalized copy of Warbreaker just to ask Brandon a question to try and unearth information about the appearance of non-Nalthians on Nalthis. There's been some speculation about who she may be in Warbreaker, but nothing confirmed. Kurkistan has hypothesized that she may be the Nurse, and got a really gleeful RAFO from Brandon. While I like this idea, I began to think that Jewels may be our Worldhopper, for many reasons: 1) She's a random Drab with a group that includes two of the five Scholars of Nalthis 2) She's in love with Arsteel, which implies that she probably has known him for quite a while. Also, Denth seems okay with the fact that she loved him, even if he thinks it's strange that she still sleeps with Arsteel. 3) She is often off-page gathering information, which seems to be a common strategy for worldhoppers on other planets. 4) What better way is there to look inconspicuous on Nalthis than being a Drab? The first two points, for me, are closely related. According to WOB in the Warbreaker Annotation, Jewels joined the group because she was in love with Arsteel. How long ago did she fall in love with Arsteel? If someone is a Drab, they get sick more frequently (according to the same Annotation), and in this world without healing capabilities, I find it hard for them to have a terribly long lifespan. Thus, it's possible that she fell in love with Arsteel a long time ago, and really isn't Drab. Also, Denth seems okay with the fact that she was and still is in love with Arsteel/Clod. If she were some new recruit to the team, would he really be okay with this situation unless they've known each other for a long time? Would he be okay with the fact that she’s Clod’s primary keeper? My speculation is that she may have been a part of this team for a long time and knew the Five Scholars from times past when Arsteel probably reciprocated her love. As we know, Worldhoppers have ways to either be immortal or extend their lives. Could this explain how her relationship with Arsteel/Clod is acceptable to Denth? The question derived from this situation, however, is that if she’s not really Drab and can extend her life, does Denth know what she really is, but is okay with it? The third point is mostly just speculation. We know that Worldhoppers seem to be big on information gathering, and Jewels is often off-page doing just this for Denth’s group. For example, Demoux and co. are gathering information to hunt down Hoid. Hoid seems to be extremely Cosmere aware (but not as aware as Khriss!), and to get that aware, you have to gain a lot of knowledge from information. Nazh goes worldhopping to Shardworlds to make sketches to share with some unknown party. Jewels skills seem to be along these lines as well. Additionally, if you were a Worldhopper, wouldn’t you want to collect information on the Five Scholars? This seems like the best opportunity to learn about the investiture of Nalthis. Thus, maybe Jewels fakes a relationship with Arsteel initially (only to really fall in love with him), and joins the group to gather information about Awakening, Returned, BioChromatic Breath, etc. For the fourth point...if you’re a Worldhopper on a planet that isn’t your homeworld, wouldn’t you want to look drab or at least not stand out? Well, on Nalthis, a Drab is a good option to sink into the background unnoticed! They look…plain, drained of color. Nothing special about them and their characteristics. Yes, I know that Awakeners wouldn’t be able to sense them, and this would stand out, but Drab’s are common enough that that they probably aren’t as surprised by Drab’s as Vivenna was when she first realized Jewels was a Drab (page 226 of the first edition PDF). She was probably surprised because she only had just reached a Heightening to have life sense. To test my theory of if Jewels could be the potential Worldhopper, I wanted to ask Brandon a question, without directly asking him point blank if it’s Jewels; I wanted to avoid the RAFO. Before I reveal my question and Brandon’s answer, I want to highlight a comment that Kurkistan posted from Oct., 2013 that helped frame my question: This one statement made me think that if Jewels is our Terriswoman, maybe her investiture from Scadrial would make Awakeners perceive her as Drab, even though she’s not technically Drab. As Kurkistan mentions, we don’t have explicit confirmation on how they would appear. Thus, here’s the question that I ultimately asked Brandon (and the capitalized word was indeed capitalized in my question for emphasis): Brandon's answer: At first I didn't like this answer because it meant Jewels was not our Worldhopper. However, I believe that it answers Kurkistan's question: Non-Nalthians are NOT Drab, and are in fact seen differently. An Awakener would be able to potentially pinpoint a Worldhopper out because they look different, new even. Now that I think about it more, while Jewels is most likely not our Worldhopper, maybe Vivenna, who had never "seen" a Drab before, misidentified her? Probably not though...

Nice post, and I agree with the previous statements that the probability of a 1/50 Misting and a 1/50 Ferring is probably not independent of each other. I think that your assumptions in general hold, but let's assume, because we have incomplete information, that the average likelihood of being a Ferring or a Misting across the entire population is indeed 1/50. Thus the math to determine the probability of a Compounder of any given type is quite simple: P(Compounder(x))= {[1/50(1/16)]^2} = 0.0000015625 If there are 5MM people living in Elendel alone, that implies that: #Compounder(x) = 0.0000015625*5MM = 7.8125 people are of type Compounder(x). If there are 16 types of Compounders, we get: Total Number of Compounders in Elendel (TNCE) = 7.8125*16 = 125 Compounders in Elendel! Such a nice, pretty number! And thus, you are more than justified to have a character be a Compounder and it's justifiable to have names for Compounding types. If we can have names for each KR sect (of which some were supposedly very small), then we can have names for Compounders, who if public, will likely be very famous due to their rare ability.

Ohh, what if you had a Shard-Leatherman? Best. Tool. Ever. My answer, though, is sorta spoiler-ish for the Cosmere as a whole:

Sorry to hijack this post with a different question but...what's up with all the Ookla name changes? I know that was Peter's name on TWG, but this change is pretty recent for everyone on the 17th Shard, no? I may be ignorant, but the only Ookla I am even aware about is Ookla the Mok. Is he the reference?

Thanks for the updates Peter! I feel like a petulant child who wants everything now: Stormlight 3 in 2016 is sooooo far away! But Shadows of Self in a year? Yes please (but still soooo far away!)! I better start planning on some awesome questions to ask about Wax and Wayne for, what I assume, will be the future book tour.

I just recently told my mother to read the Mistborn series as her first jaunt into Sanderson's work outside of TWoT. She loved Brandon's writing in TWoT and wanted to know what else he had written. I then proceeded to buy her all three of the Mistborn books and she devoured them in just a few weeks. I think you're off to a good start by starting there. Then if I were you, I'd read Elantris followed by Warbreaker.

And if Shallan even decides to use her Shardblade, she'd still probably wait the ten seconds anyway, not realizing that she doesn't need to. Thus in that time period she'd clearly be killed by Vin either by the obsidian dagger or some other allomantic ability because I'm sure she would have some form of metal on her person that could be effected by allomancy.

Be somebody, or be somebody's fool.

When you're visiting San Francisco and while riding the bus you're reading the 17th Shard forums instead of enjoying the view. When you see a 1 year old kid playing with a stick in an SF parklet and he immediately is drawn to you because he must subconsciously know that I belong to the Church of the Stick.

This isn't racism. It's a dislike of the overlords in the system because they are repressive to the common folk and have a belief in an outdated imperialist dogmatic system...if only Dennis the Constitutional Peasant were on their side. Because really, they didn't vote for the king! Also, it's not very PC to have a racism joke-off. I don't like your request. It'd be better if you just asked in general who would win a battle based on their skills from their investiture. If that were the case I'd say Kelsier would win because he has, to date in the books, a lot more experience with Allomancy relative to Kaladin's experience as a Windrunner.

I was thinking about this as well. If gemhearts are really like giant jewels, but act like a heart...what if the veins and arteries to and from the gemheart don't actually carry blood, but are instead the network for stormlight to travel throughout the body? The Greatshells absorb stromlight directly through their carapaces (maybe with the help of their spren), who then share some of this stormlight directly with their spren. Once absorbed, the stormlight then uses these veins and arteries to infuse the gemheart and then disperse it back through the body of the beast by providing the requisite energy needed to BECOME a Greatshell. Thus, without the bond with the spren and the capacity to grow a large gemheart, there wouldn't be Greatshells. I'd say the symbiotic relationship with the spren is the key to the existence of the Greatshells, but the spren need a lot of stormlight which allows the beasts to get to their immense sizes.

When you order personalized books from Brandon for no other reason than to ask a question in the "Personalization" field because you've never been able to ask your question at a real signing or Con of some type. (And I must say, I hope that all of these personalized books are money well spent and not just "RAFOs"...then again it's still money well spent because Brandon deserves every cent he makes from his amazing books!)