BeskarKomrk

@WeiryWriter Yeah, I recorded the Post Signing Line audio.

I've transcribed the Sunday reading Q&A session and added the transcription of the interlude reading to the document. Nothing too interesting there, only two Cosmere questions that were both RAFO. But it's still useful to know what people have asked so we don't waste time on the same questions.

Remaining to-do:

Complete the Rithmatist Q&A transcript

Complete the Sunday signing transcript

Check through the Sunday post-signing transcript for accuracy

I don't think I'm going to transcribe the Career panel if there are no Cosmere questions there. Probably is interesting to listen to though.

3 hours ago, DAdam said:

Should the reading transcript go in a separate document since it happened in the Saturday readings/Q&A?

I believe the reading transcript is the interlude that was read on Sunday.

I believe the Friday signing transcript is completed! @jofwu once I start transcribing the Sunday Q&A, I will add your transcription of the reading to the document. Or someone else can start it if they have the time. There's still a lot of work to be done here!

A relevant WoB to keep in mind:

Quote

Question

How many magic systems are in The Stormlight Archive, and how many of them [have been seen?]

Brandon Sanderson

I would see the only major one you haven’t seen is Voidbinding, it depends on how you count them. I count fabrials as one, Surgebinding as one, and Voidbinding as one. And then the Old Magic is kind of its own weird thing.

Source

This question was in 2016, so Words of Radiance had been out for a while. So whatever the Listeners are doing at the end of WoR, it isn't Voidbinding. This, to me, makes it seem like the Parshendi forms are completely different from Voidbinding and are instead a function of their natural ability to bond with spren.

@ccstat Thanks for transcribing that! I added the document to the first post, and added a few things that happened before I started recording.

On 2/19/2017 at 6:52 PM, AerionBFII said:

I thought Bonding with Sword-Nimi was giving him a stronger connection to the Cognetive Realm?

Nale still has his Honorblade and Surgebinding so i'd guess that he is able too 

Szeth's afterimages are not because of a stronger connection with the Cognitive Realm, but because his soul isn't sticking to his body quite right:

Quote

Also: the Returned on Nalthis are cognitive shadows, shoved into and firmly attached to their dead bodies by virtue of that enormous "divine Breath" they're given. And Szeth is not a cognitive shadow; his real soul was returned to his body... it just isn't sticking very well. Hence the afterimages.

Source

Lift is the one with the stronger connection to the Cognitive Realm, which allows her to see the images. But that's not the reason why they exist.

21 minutes ago, DAdam said:

No problem, I know you've been waiting for the verbatim.  If someone wouldn't mind creating a google doc for the Sunday signing for me to throw it in after, that would be great!  The harmonium question turned into more of a conversation.  

Here you go: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o_-OadmbojDGZqFWls2meynCw4qLBWP-syEeSSgSRQ0/edit?usp=sharing

EDIT:

I updated the OP with links to all the recordings people have posted and the transcription documents we've created so far. I added an additional recording I took of our brief Q&A after the Sunday signing where Brandon was kind enough to wait around an extra 15 minutes while we pestered him. You can find that here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9wtqhlj4y2s56b/Brandon Sanderson.m4a?dl=0

1 hour ago, Khyrindor said:

Is there a google doc for transcribing the Signing line yet? If not I can get on it.

I made one for the Friday signing here.

I just updated the OP with the links to the audio files and the Rithmatist Q&A transcript. I'm going to start on the Friday signing line transcription now.

I had a few other questions answered that I'll paraphrase quickly.

Quote

 

Q: Do the different Listener forms each correspond to a specific spren?

A: Yes

Q: Does dullform correspond to Lifespren?

A: RAFO

 

Quote

Q: Denth has the Royal Locks independent from being a Returned, implying he's part of the Idrian royal line (Brandon concurs). Does Shashara also have the Royal Locks in the same way?

A: That is a guess you could make

Quote

Q: How long before the events of Warbreaker did Vo Return? The book implies it's a long time. Thousands of years?

A: Not thousands, but it is a long time. Doesn't want to give a hard answer without looking at his master timeline, so sort-of RAFO.

I was there for about half an hour but I did manage to get one question in. Wish I had gotten there earlier.

My general remembering of my question:

Q: In the Stormlight Archive, there's a relationship of some sort between the Chasmfiends and the thunderclasts (Brandon generally agrees here). Is there a similar sort of relationship between white spines and the Midnight Essences?

A: Yes, but it's a more tenuous one. The Midnight Essences imitate whatever's around them.

I interpret this to mean that the Midnight Essences were imitating whitespines during Dalinar's vision, but that there isn't necessarily a deeper relationship there.

I thought it was a little slow at the start, but once we got into the main part of the movie I was hooked. Especially once they started the mission at the end, I thought the last 45 minutes or so was absolutely incredible. Even though it was really sad, I thought having all the characters die was the right choice. It really sets it apart from a lot of other blockbuster movies coming out now, and makes A New Hope feel even more important. And even given the slow start, there were a lot of moments in the beginning that blew me away. Some really really incredible use of CGI here.

I'm pretty sure Jimmy Smits in the movie is the first and only time they have acknowledged the existence of the prequels.

I generally think it's 2000+ years before the books. We know Honor was alive for the Recreance and he was Splintered "millennia ago", which I take to mean greater than two thousand years.

I think some of them do. Some languages (generally the ones with different symbols associated with them) already have their own page. Aon, the women's script, and the thaylen script are all examples of that. And as I said above, I think this will help a lot in cases where multiple countries speak the same language (like Arelon and Teod). It doesn't really make sense to me to duplicate the info on both pages, and I think it would be strange to have it on one page but not the other. The cleanest solution, in my opinion, is to have a separate language page. Even if it leads to some small articles being created, I think it would clear up some of the more complex situations.

I'm not sure, that's a good point. I'm in favor of having a consistent structure set up, and we already have some separate pages for certain languages that are fairly small (one example: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Fen). We could also create them as redirect pages to the Language section on another page (similar to how the Ethnicities and Nationalities category is set up).

I was thinking about this as well (we're so in sync!). I think it would be good to create separate pages for the languages specifically and link to those from the culture pages, as the names of the languages won't always be the same as the culture they're associated with. It also covers the cases where there are multiple languages spoken in a single country and when one country speaks another country's language, like how Jah Keved mostly speaks Alethi, but also contains the Horneater Peaks with their own language. So yeah, my idea was to make separate pages like "Alethi (language)" to differentiate between the language and the nation.

4 hours ago, Thanatos said:

Fivelate

Brandon has said that Trell is a shard we already know.

 

This isn't technically true. Brandon said the metal in Bleeder is from a Shard we know. However, there's nothing in the text or in any WoB that explicitly connects that metal to "Trell", the entity that Miles/the Set worship. I'll grant you that it's likely they're related, but we can't say that for sure yet.

2 minutes ago, jofwu said:

That's what I figured, though it seems a mystery how she got away from her guards for that long... I was thinking the guards weren't in on the ruse? Eh... I just need to keep reading and found out.

A self-RAFO? Impressive.

I assumed that either there was a separate compartment to whatever carriage the governor was in that allowed Paalm to slip out unnoticed, or she just said to the guards "hey I'm gonna take a walk for a bit, you keep going" and they did what she said because she's the governor.

1 hour ago, jofwu said:

I'm just going to keep adding to this as I notice more things during my reread...

It dawned on me this morning that Steris and Winsting are in the middle of a conversation when Wax hears the voice in his head at the party. Another thing that doesn't seem odd before you realize Winsting=Paalm, but when you do... Is it possible that Paalm can converse with Steris (while impersonating somebody) AND talk in Wax's head at the same time? Maybe, but I doubt it. Again, not much but it's light support that Paalm isn't the one speaking via Hemalurgy.

On the downside, the voice does speak very personally. Things like "I am going to kill your Father," which certainly sounds like the person actually doing the killing. If nothing else it suggests that Trell is very involved and not just watching on and providing subtle support.

Side note: I can't remember... Do we find out who killed the priest? Did Paalm sneak away to do it somehow, or was it somebody else?

@BeskarKomrk, if you do get into a reread let me know if you see anything that supports or weakens this theory.

I think it's believable that Paalm could converse out loud and via telepathy at the same time. It's something to ask Brandon (we don't even know the "method" of the telepathy in terms of Realmatics), but given that Paalm could literally split her brain into two, I think she could probably manage to do both at once.

I believe, and Coppermind agrees, that the priest was killed by Paalm impersonating another priest. The governor disappears from the party while Wayne is questioning people, and the timing seems to work out such that Paalm could have murdered the priest right after leaving.

I will definitely let you know. I'm currently in the middle of another book (Lies of Locke Lamora), so it may not be for a little while, but I'll keep this theory in mind for sure.

4 minutes ago, Sarevok said:

From the wording that Brandon is using and his comparison to a Japanese-American, could he be implying that she (and by extension all Southern Scandrians) aren't originally from Scadrial and migrated in from somewhere else?

I don't think that's what he's trying to say here. He's specifically trying to say that there was not a mass immigration of Southern Scadrians, but that Iyatil is an isolated case of someone from Scadrian heritage immigrating to another planet and having a family there. I think the WoBs that Pagerunner posted are pretty definitive when taken together with the one I posted above. We have three planets referenced when talking about Iyatil: where she lives, where she's from, and where her people are from. We know from the books that she lives on Roshar. Pagerunner's post specifies that her heritage is Scadrian, which means that's where her people are from. So the only question is, where is she from specifically? I don't think the answer to that question relates in any way to the origination of the Southern Scadrians. Additionally, they can use the Metallic Arts, which means they must either have originated on Scadrial (created by Ruin and Preservation) or they must have all eaten Lerasium (which seems unlikely given how rare it is).

I was definitely freaking out when I transcribed that question. I was a little surprised it didn't get more attention in the signing thread, because I thought it was a huge revelation.

29 minutes ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

What similarities are there to the migration on Threnody?  Are they the cultural ancestors (or decedents) of the Iriali?

My understanding is that the similarity is that they've both gone through mass migrations. Brandon may also be implying that the Iriali were similarly fleeing a cataclysm of some sort, and that's why they migrated in the first place. Personally, I think it's very possible that they migrated from Ashyn a long time ago (I think we know via WoB that there was some sort of cataclysmic event there).

4 minutes ago, jofwu said:

She's Scadrian, no? Or is the idea that she did spend time there, but she's not from there?

See this WoB:

Quote

Question (Paraphrased)

Is Mraize a worldhopper?

Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

Yes, he's been to a few planets, highly supervised by his babsk.

Question (Paraphrased)

So what planet is she [Iyatil] from?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, that's kind of a hard thing to say. She has three planets she's "from". For example, she's living now on Roshar, but then she's from a different planet, but that's not the planet that her people are from.

Question (Paraphrased)

So there was a mass exodus to that planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. If you were to find a Japanese American, where would they say that they are from? Her people did not have a mass exodus.

Question (Paraphrased)

Have we seen mass exoduses before?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are some in the cosmere. There's a mass exodus that is mentioned in one of the interludes in The Way of Kings.

So I would interpret that as: Iyatil lives on Roshar and is Scadrian, but wasn't born/didn't grow up on either of those planets. Also worth noting that this is the WoB that the original "mass exodus" quote comes from, prompting the question about the Iriali in the OP here.

Awesome write-up! Everything you've said about the chemical properties of harmonium makes sense to me. I only took general chemistry in college, but I like to think the physics degree is worth something. I'll have to get back to you on the stability of the nucleus question, it's going to require a little more research first. However, I'll say now that even physicists don't understand it very well. The strong nuclear force that holds the nucleus together is probably the least understood of all the fundamental forces, so it's pretty easy to for Brandon to handwave that kind of thing away. It will have to be different from cesium regardless, as it doesn't share any of its physical properties. I don't think it would be a reliable way to make airships fly if there was a good chance of it melting in the process. I'll have to think about this further and see if I can come up with something.

1 hour ago, KidWayne said:

@PallonianFire Yeah, but doesn't that still leave open the possibility that Autonomy is divesting himself from the Taldainian system's "Sun" and is trying to Invest Scadrial?

Your idea is valid but it does nothing to suggest that Autonomy had to be invested on Taldain itself. Khriss getting off-world could be possible via a Taldainian magic system (e.g. Elsecallers on Roshar).

That's true, but we haven't seen any evidence to suggest that might be the case. On the other hand, we know that when Shards invest in a planet, you get a perpendicularity that people can use to worldhop. It's a lot simpler to go with the explanation based in something we already know (Autonomy being invested in the planet itself and having a Shardpool there) rather than inventing a new magic system to explain it.

Darn it, now I have to go reread SoS to check your theory out in more detail.

I remember some discussion when it first came out about whether or not the voice in Wax's head was really Paalm. Doesn't he comment that it sounds similar to her actual voice or something? Not that that really means much when Shards are involved, as Ruin was able to replicate Reen's voice in Vin's head.

We're not at all certain that Paalm was acting on her own, and it seems 100% likely that she was influenced to some degree by another party. Whether that influence was in the form of direct communication throughout the events of the book, or whether it was simply a suggestion and the gift of a spike that would free her from Harmony's control, is the real question. Trell being Autonomy is a pretty popular theory, which I think is definitely strengthened by the new information we've received, as you point out in your theory.

One thing I haven't seen people talk about much is how sure we are of the connection between the unknown metal that Paalm had and "Trell". The name Trell was mentioned by Miles at the end of AoL, and then when thinking about the unknown metal at the end of SoS Marasi decided to try and learn more about Trell. However, the two are never connected by either Miles or Paalm. Even in BoM, when we find out that the Set worships Trell, it is never connected to the actions of Paalm or the unknown metal specifically. The Set support her actions in SoS, but Wax's uncle is very clear that she is not one of them and that he, in particular, voted against helping her. While I do think it's unlikely that there are two different powerful entities messing with Scadrial at the same time (aside from Harmony), it's still worth talking about and making sure that we aren't making unwarranted assumptions. I've seen a lot of Trell theories that pull evidence from both Bleeder and the Set, but I don't believe it's been confirmed 100% that they are related.

In any case, I definitely think your theory has merit, and I will probably do some re-reading tonight to look for evidence. I think it's pretty indisputable that Paalm was influenced by somebody. Who that somebody is and the degree of influence is open for debate.

9 hours ago, jofwu said:

I noticed something SUPER interesting in a SoS reread just now. Thought about making a new topic, but this one seems close enough...

At the end of chapter 7, Wax goes in to interrogate Rian, the man who tried to shoot Winsting. Here's a rough quote:

From here Rian goes on to point out the coin buried in his skin and so on. Now, I'm not particularly familiar with SoS. But I don't think we've ever had much reason to find this interaction very notable.

But now we have this news that Autonomy (Bavadin, rather) is female. And the "she" really catches my eye, folks. I think we generally assume Wax is correct that Rian is talking about Paalm. But isn't it clear that something else is at work behind all that we've seen?

Follow me. What if Trell is the "she". Rian didn't hear from a faceless immortal. He heard from God. Harmony? No, some other God. Trell. Autonomy. Bavadin.

Do we have a good idea of what Autonomy's Intent looks like in practice? Because this line sounds suspicious to me: "She promised me freedom..." A "she" promising freedom, and the guy think's she's a god? We know Autonomy has left Taldain and is up to something. I'm curious if this little conversation is one that's going to have SO much more deep meaning in retrospect, after Trell is revealed.

That's all.

As an aside, Trell can't be multiple Shards, I think. There's a recent WoB that Harmony is the only vessel holding multiple Shards. Brandon cited Dev & Dom as the only other case where two shards are mixed. (Besides Harmony) I think this is from the recent Chicago signing. The outdoor Q&A.

 

It's definitely possible that Rian was actually referring to Bavadin in this conversation, but my gut says he was talking about Paalm. Paalm talks about giving people freedom throughout the book (meaning freedom from Harmony's control), and was also trying to plant the idea that she was going to kill the governor (the "him" in the quote) to mislead Wax about who she was impersonating. It fits too well into Paalm's plan for me to believe Rian is talking about anyone else.