Catalyst21

Peter?

Just wanted to ping you so this didn't disappear and get consumed by the mountains of other stuff on your plate.

Thanks Ookla

So Ed... how much do I need to pledge to get a better rate than $20/set?

I'm serious by the way.  I am willing to go significantly higher than the 5 sets / $100 I am at now, I believe in this project, but not at MSRP+$5

So Ed... any thoughts on these posts?

So I made the pledge ($40) that broke $8k (copper), then upped it to $100 to break $24k (gold and Atium).  Now we're over $25k.  It will be interesting to see where this ends up.  Additionally on December 17th Crafty said:

• Crafty Games on December 17
• Alvron, if we get to $24,000 then we'll be able to add retail packaging.

in response to:

So it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

447 codes unlocked 3 to go until the next unlock.

445 codes unlocked 5 to go until the next unlock.

Since, as Argent so nicely put it, you have such power...can we, the Shard, lobby for weekly Newsletters with these treats? I mean, we don't have to be terribly greedy. The treats don't have to always be Stormlight 3 chapters (though that would be nice!). Here are some alternatives that I'm sure the 17th community would be okay with:

 

1) Chapters from Shadows of Self

2) 6 NEW Shardhunt codes so that we can finally unlock the Alloy of Law Annotations 2

3) Or you could just release the Alloy of Law Annotation 2 reward sans the 6 remaining codes 

4) Artwork examples for the upcoming White Sand graphic novels

5) A picture of a photo-shopped spiked cookie for our Dark Alley friends

6) ...TBD!

 

Thanks!

2) 6 5 NEW Shardhunt codes so that we can finally unlock the Alloy of Law Annotations 2

Can I be added to the White Sands \ Aether of Night PM as well? 

Thank you

Sounds great! I'm kind of sad because I was just starting to getting into raiding with my guild when the semester exploded in my face. Boooo. I'm sort of curious what Mists of Pandaria will be like, though, so I dunno if I can bear to quit just yet. XD

Hey KChan, welcome back, your absence was noticed and your input was missed.

Is there any place online that I could read Aether of Night, Drogansteel, or White Sand? I keep on seeing people mention them but I haven't found them at all. Please help!!!

Look at these posts:

AoN and WS are historically available from Brandon.

Asking how to get AoN & WS

My reply to the above post

There is one known copy of DragonSteel in existence. It is Brandon's master's thesis, and kept at the BYU library. Supposedly you are able to inter-library loan it, but I have not been able to. (I have heard rumors of digital copies of it, but the people that supposedly have them won't share, and I have not actually seen copies)

We rich noble types need not worry about napalm ruining our nice furniture. We simply buy new stuff.

Any way you slice it, gold compounders are almost as annoying to kill as Wax's ability to shoot Miles' gun away, over and over.

I think the best you can hope for with a gold compounder, unless you've got a battle-axe or something is to neutralize them. I propose the floor-spikes... Sharpened fiberglass or plastic, or aluminum if you're rich like me, set pointing upward in a wide array over a certain area of floor. Activate the reversed polarity electro magnet (now with REPULSING action) to shoot them up through the specially prepared decoy floor, and impale the bloodmaker, hopefully immobilizing him and making it REALLY tough to heal himself, on account of the dirty great spikes poking up through his legs and chest. Gruesome, but effective, with the bonus of being really expensive. Heck, you might even be able to use them for hemalurgy afterward.

Dang it, WHY must everyone INSIST on denying me my flamethrowers? I just wanna have a bit of fun.

Let's not forget their practicality against door-to-door salesmen. It's only a matter of time before they begin corrupting the modernized Scadrial.

Ummmmm... none of those objects are magnetic, so you flip on your electromagnet and ...... nothing happens.

try again...

Chapter 17 is now up.

This reminds me a little of the Mythwalker chapters, where female Kkell powers are different from males. But I don't think we've seen enough Surgebinders to determine whether or not gender affects powers.

All we have right now are two male Windrunners (one of which has been said to be unconventional) and two female Soulcasters (who are most likely from different orders).

Or - random idea - maybe the orders themselves are genders specific. Like it would be impossible for a female to become a Windrunner or a male to become a Soulcaster. I could easily see that estabishing very different gender roles in a society, with something so intrinsic as the development of powers.

Ooh, except for ardents, who can step outside the lines through the use of fabrials. That would also establish the idea the ardents are beyond the other gender roles as well! I'm liking this theory more and more!

Technically neither of them are windrunners, Kaladin is on the path to becoming one, and Szeth has the same "power set" as a Windrunner, but is not one. See quote.

source=http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/446239-q-a-with-brandon-sanderson-way-of-kings

Message 21 (page 1):

Do Szeth and Kaladin both belong to the same order of knights radiant?

Message 52 (page 2):

Jay wrote: "Do Szeth and Kaladin both belong to the same order of knights radiant?"

Szeth isn't actually in an order of Knights Radiant. Something different is happening with Szeth that people have already begun to guess. And Kaladin isn't yet a Knight Radiant, but the powers he uses are those of the Windrunners, one of the orders of the Knights Radiant. Szeth is using the same power set. So your phrasing is accurate to that extent.

yes, the Basic and Reverse Lashings are based off Gravity, the Full Lashing is based off Pressure.

edit: ninja'd!

Just to make this post useful, Brandon had said that "Szeth is not a Radiant, something different is happening with Szeth.", so Szeth is getting his powers differently from Kaladin who is on thepath to being a Radiant.

just to source your quote:

source=http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/446239-q-a-with-brandon-sanderson-way-of-kings

Message 21 (page 1):

Do Szeth and Kaladin both belong to the same order of knights radiant?

Message 52 (page 2):

Jay wrote: "Do Szeth and Kaladin both belong to the same order of knights radiant?"

Szeth isn't actually in an order of Knights Radiant. Something different is happening with Szeth that people have already begun to guess. And Kaladin isn't yet a Knight Radiant, but the powers he uses are those of the Windrunners, one of the orders of the Knights Radiant. Szeth is using the same power set. So your phrasing is accurate to that extent.

It wouldn't even need to be burning a different metal. When he burns charged god Miles gets a massive influx of health, he then drains it away into his numerous goldminds. His massive bloodmaker abilities are just him drawing the power from his imbedded goldminds constantly. So most of the time the gold in his stomach can be uncharged it's only once in a blue moon does he need to filter some of his massive health into a burnable goldmind and "top off" his reserves.

If you reread what I wrote, charged gold is functionally different from uncharged gold, therefore it even though physically it is the same metal (gold) it is functionally different.

Miles puffed on his cigar, thoughtful. As always, he was drawing upon his goldmind

So yes, he is constantly tapping health, instead of burning it for his day-to-day use.

The man reached up and ripped off his mask, revealing a hawk-like face with short black hair and prominent eyebrows. It was him. Miles. A lawkeeper, a man who should have known better. A Twinborn Compounder of awesome power. His eye grew back, and the head wound was gone in an eyeblink. Golden metal glimmered on his arms, deep within the sleeves. His metalminds; they were spikes he wore driven through the skin of his lower arm, like bolts. Metal that pierced skin was extremely difficult to touch with Steelpushing

Again, this implies he is tapping instead of burning to heal his injury.

Change didn t scare Miles. Change was an opportunity, a chance to become something you were not. No Augur was bothered by change.

Augur. He usually ignored that side of himself. His Feruchemy was what kept him alive and these days he hardly noticed even that, save for the faint sense of extra energy to every step he took. He never got headaches, never felt tired, never had sore muscles, never dealt with colds or pain.

....

He turned, studying his domain, such as it was. Thieves, murderers, and braggarts. He took a deep breath, then burned gold.

...

Either way, he liked to think that burning his gold on occasion helped him—that each time he did it, it let him take the best of what he had been and mix it with the best of what he could be. An alloy of himself, then.

It disturbed him how much the two people he became hated each other. He could almost feel it like an oven’s heat, radiating from coal and stone

These series of quotes first state that he typically ignores the non-charged gold allomancy, then later says that burning non-charged gold help him.

It is interesting to note the effects of double gold compounding as applies to the law of diminishing returns as applied to feruchemical "flooding / funneling / over-tap" if his healing from 'critical' injuries is from tapping.

I think the bigger question is "did he burn it while still Compounding"- whether he used a metalmind or swallowed gold flakes isn't important to my question. Though that line of thought does lead me to another question- could you burn a metalmind to get the ordinary effect of the metal, as well as an enhanced version of its Feruchimical effect, or would it only be good for Compounding? Obviously it doesn't work that way automatically, or Miles would be followed around by his gold shadow all the time, but would it be possible?

source = http://www.openthefridge.net/blog/2011/11/18/interview-author-brandon-sanderson.html

People ask about getting the power from metals and things, but that’s not actually how it works. The power’s not coming from metal. I talked a little about this before, but you are drawing power from some source, and the metal is actually just a gateway. It’s actually the molecular structure of the metal… what’s going on there, the pattern, the resonance of that metal works in the same way as an Aon does in Elantris. It filters the power. So it is just a sign of “this is what power this energy is going to be shaped into and give you.” When you understand that, compounding [in Alloy of Law] makes much more sense.

Compounding is where you are able to kind of draw in more power than you should with feruchemy. What’s going on there is you’re actually charging a piece of metal, and then you are burning that metal as a feruchemical charge. What is happening is that the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge, and so you actually fuel feruchemy with allomancy, is what you are doing. Then if you just get out another piece of metal and store it in, since you’re not drawing the power from yourself, you’re cheating the system, you’re short-circuiting the system a little bit. So you can actually use the power that usually fuels allomancy, to fuel feruchemy, which you can then store in a metalmind, and basically build up these huge reservoirs of it. So what’s going on there is… imagine there’s like, an imprint, a wavelength, so to speak. A beat for an allomantic thing, that when you burn a metal, it says “ok, this is what power we give.” When it’s got that charge, it changes that beat and says, “now we get this power.” And you access a set of feruchemical power. That’s why compounding is so powerful.

So the way I read that is no, you cannot burn a feruchemical charged metal and get a allomantic charge (or both charges) out of it because "the feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge"

To relate this to AoL, Miles burned UNCHARGED gold to use his auger ability. He could also burn charged gold at the same time for his bloodmaker ability, because allomantically it is, for all intents and purposes, a different metal.

Just being whimsical, my friend, no offense intended. Also, "fairly complicated"?!

If it were much more complicated, my head might actually explode.

Yes, but the question is, Would it actually explode if no one is there to observe it? If the observer was then killed, would your head then un-explode?

Re: the size of the different spheres. Unless I misremember, all of the spheres are the same size* and it is the size and type of the gem inside that makes all the difference. I think one of Shallan's first chapters talks about the size of the gems in a few sentences, but I don't have the book with me right now, so I can't check.

*I imagine they are all about as big as a http://www.steampunkglass.com/USERIMAGES/o4.jpg]glass marble[/url]. And just to make sure we are thinking of the same glass marbles, the ones I played with are about a centimeter across.

The link should be this

Having a child can't involve the death of the returned the God-kings have had children and then passed the collection of breaths on to said child, if the Returned had to give up their breath to have a child they wouldnt be able to do that.

Also I think the Returned breath does affect the returned body in some way, otherwise it wouldnt be genetic and the royal line wouldnt be any different from any other line, but there must be some relation to the spiritual or cognitive aspect as well that got passed on... so Im really not sure whats going on there.

from my post above, quoting the Warbreaker annotations:

Only Potential Heirs of Idris Have Royal Locks

This is true. It's not a matter of genetics, but lineage. That's a subtle distinction. Only the children of the person who ends up inheriting will have the Royal Locks. (Though there are a couple of notable exceptions to this, they won't show up in this book, as it will take another novel to explain why and how the Royal Locks really work. If I ever write a sequel, that should be in it.)

I guess that's what I'll need to sift through.

I have that in progress, I will release it when I'm finished.

I am doing that as part of this.

Chaos's note: Please do not double post, especially when it's been five minutes and the second post is a single sentence. The edit button is there for a reason. Use it. Thank you.

I might be misremembering, but I believe Brandon has said that Siri could use her royal breath to transform like the returned do.

edit: couldn't find it in the Brandonology... I might just be remembering a theory someone posted

I remember that as well, but couldn't find it.

And its Royal Locks, not Royal Breath.

However I did find the following:

Only Potential Heirs of Idris Have Royal Locks

This is true. It's not a matter of genetics, but lineage. That's a subtle distinction. Only the children of the person who ends up inheriting will have the Royal Locks. (Though there are a couple of notable exceptions to this, they won't show up in this book, as it will take another novel to explain why and how the Royal Locks really work. If I ever write a sequel, that should be in it.)

This factoid about the Royal Locks should be one of several hints about the lineage of the Idrian crown. There is something odd about their heritage.

...

...

...

There's also a clue in that hair, one that Vasher mentions. Because of it, and her heritage, and something very mysterious in the past, every member of the royal line has a fraction of a divine Returned Breath in them. That makes it much easier for them to learn to Awaken than a normal person.

source=https://sites.google.com/site/brandonothology/brandonothology/part-1

Graendal: A question that's been on my mind for a while. If Returned can't have children, how are Siri and Vivenna descended from one?

Excellent question. One I have to RAFO. When I was writing WRBRKR, I was planning on two books.

I seeded two questions to be answered in the next book. One was the origin of the royal family.

The second was how Vasher was able to survive while hiding his divine Breath. I will answer these questions.

Eventually. (It has to do with restoring Breath and life to the child while still in the womb.).

Chapter 15 is now up.

The 2nd book The Blinding Knife has been announced.

A different spin on the same idea

TLR burns age-stored-atium. Instead of becoming younger he simply stores that investiture in a nicrosil metalmind.

TLR burns his nicrosil metalmind, thus compounding his investiture and stores this increased age investiture in another nicrosil metalmind.

Now if TLR taps that metalmind....what happens?

Super compounded age....

also he could burn non-age infused atium and store that in nicrosil, thus having atium available without having to swallow it and regurgitate it if it was not needed, its already burned and standing by when its needed.

When did that happen?

I have asked nicely (i think...), but got nothing in return. Maybe I should ask again.

I requested via the "Email Brandon" link on his main page.

For subject I chose "Request to be Added to the Mailing List"

I asked on: Oct 14, 2011 at 1:15 PM

Here is a copy of my request:

1. Mims, Fl 32754

2. [email protected] [email protected] (yep, double checked)

3. I understand

In addition to being added to the mailing list I would like to request a copy of White Sand and Aether of Night. I would appreciate it so much.

Thank you for your consideration,

James M. Mathews

[email protected] (Triple Checked)

note: the email I submitted is not one I actually use, I own the domain, and that address is aliased to my real email address.

He replied on: Oct 18, 2011 at 10:35 PM

and his response:

James,

You're officially on my mailing list!

I'll be sure to let you know when I'm heading anywhere near Mims on tour.

Also, I've attached WHITE SAND and AETHER OF NIGHT. They are some earlier work and unpolished, but I hope you enjoy them. Also, if you don't mind, please don't distribute them without my permission and let me know if you have trouble opening the files.

Thanks for reading.

Best,

Brandon

Following is the latest newsletter

<newsletter removed to preserve space>

Hope that helps!