FeatherWriter

How long has Szeth had his powers? (Probably RAFO but whatever, I'm curious) What's the second Windrunner power? We've seen the gravity manipulation, but if Windrunning's an order, than there's another right? (You guys might be able to help on this one, because others seem to have a better grasp of this than me) Why are the people on Roshar so cosmere-conscious? They seem to know an awful lot about Shadesmar and the Three Realms compared to the other worlds. Jasnah even used the word "cosmere" once! Who names the planets? You've said once that "Scadrial" was the name of the planet as Ruin and Preservation knew it, but where'd they get that name? Do the shardholders all get together and vote on it or something? If Elendel is named for Elend then who's Lutha? What were the Herald's blades called? (It might be best to word this as a yes or no question; he seems to be more consistent about answering those. Top contenders are Dawnshards and Honorblades I think) Was the Shattered Plains the only thing that you lifted from Dragonsteel? (AKA Will you start sending out copies of it now that WoK is out?) I'm sure I'll think of more in the future...

Alright, this one's Roshar-specific, but I figured it was a bit too Cosmere-y for the Stormlight boards, so I'm putting it here instead. Basically, during my reread, I came across a passage that piqued my interest. Kabsal is talking to Shallan about the devotaries when he goes into something a bit deeper for a second... This spawned what is most likely a crack-theory, but one I can't seem to shake. What if Honor shattered similarly to Adonalsium? Honor gets splintered, but for some reason it only breaks into ten pieces (from which we gain the arc number) but unlike other splinters, each of the ten pieces was specific and different from the others, similar to the way that the 16 shards represent unique attributes of Adonalsium. Because their original shard was Honor, they are all specific types of honorable actions. We've mentioned before that "Honor" is some what of a nebulous term, so what if it's divided further into things like Truth or Commitment or such? These 'mini-shards' (I don't know that I'd call them splinters) would power the different types of Surgebinding. Honor powers it as a whole, and the pieces of Honor individualize the system a bit, dividing it into Orders. From here, I suppose it could go two ways. My first assumption was that these mini-shards were either the Dawnshards or Honorblades; most likely whichever referred to the Herald's special blades (Honorblades is probably the right term, but Dawnshards comes up more often). This would make the Heralds each Slivers, explaining some of their exceptional abilities. It was the idea that the Heralds are "facets" of the Almighty which led me to this theory in the first place. The other idea I had was that after the original separation of the ten, they were shattered into splinters, and these splinters are the different kinds of "bondable" spren that power the Orders. This coincides with the Spren Are Splinters theory that has been circling around for a while. This version is backed up by the likely assumption the the spren which follow Shallan are Truthspren, because truth is an honorable action. It's undermined a bit by the fact that Syl calls herself an Honorspren, because if one of the mini-shards was also Honor, that seems a bit redundant; like one of the 16 shards turning out to also be called Adonalsium. I suppose that the "bondable" types of spren could all be called Honorspren, and in actuality Syl is a more specific type within that category. (She is still kind of figuring all this out, so it's possible that she just picked up on the Honorspren thing and not that she's the kind of Honorspren who does Windrunning). I suppose if I wanted to combine the theories, we could say that the Heralds originally weilded the mini-shards but later splintered them. Though the image of one of those blades suddenly turning into a bunch of spren is an odd picture. And it doesn't really make sense; the Heralds in the prologue mention the Radiants, which would indicate that they're already around, and if Talenel's blade never got splintered, we'd only have nine kinds of Honorspren which wouldn't work. So, I'm going to go ahead and throw the whole meshing-the-two-together thing out. I feel like this could be a viable option. We've seen instances of shards breaking more than once. Adonalsium shattered, and then we have shards breaking down into even smaller pieces after that. What's to say that it couldn't happen an extra time in there? And just because we've never seen in instance of individual traits attatching themselves to pieces; it happened to Adonalsium somehow, because the shards are all different. Thoughts? Opinions? Declarations that there's something in Dragonsteel/White Sand/Other which proves that this could never be possible without giving explanations for fear of incurring the wrath of Peter? EDIT: Alright, looking over the Ars Arcanum, specifically the table of the Ten Essences, I'm even more convinced. The last column, "Primary/Secondary Divine Attributes" looks exactly like what I was talking about: different aspects of Honor. Shallan's soulcasting is likely essence number six, blood, for quite a few reasons (the first thing she soulcast was blood, the terms creative and honest describe her well) and this lines up with the wierd symbol-headed spren being truthspren. So because Kaladin's Windrunning - most likely based on the first essence, Zephyr - this would make Syl some kind of leadershipspren or protectionspren (probably a different name, thugh, but some synonym along those lines)

Now THAT would be awesome!

Concerning Kelsier's link to Scadrial, it could have something to do with OreSeur's emulating him shortly after he died...

And as an in-cosmere example, it reminds me of Kalad (AKA Vasher) from Warbreaker. While reading Warbreaker to my sister I had a fun time imagining that everytime someone said "Kalad's Phantoms!" they were really talking about Bridge 4. Because that would be an awesome group name.

It's possible that Midius' name has changed since the original. Like the Kaladin/Merin switch. On a bit of a tangent, I am very glad for the change to Kaladin. The name Merin looks far too much like Merlin for me, and as cute as I think Colin Morgan is, I don't think he would be my first pick for bridgeleader.

Am I the only one who cringed every time Vin burned "atrium"? I swear, some of these writeups are just silly. And I found it quite interesting that Vin apparently had way more trouble with Logen (a straight melee character) than she did with a vampire. Really?

Sounds like a major contender. I'm about halfway through my first WoK reread and I'm completely fascinated. I'm a throw-yourself-in-whole-heartedly kind of reader. I mostly read straight through and don't think about theories or predictions as I read, so going back through books is necessary for me to catch all the little stuff.

My current theory is that either: 1. Surgebinding and the Radiants are related to Honor, who powers the magic system on the front. Therefore the symbols on the back are a similar system, but one powered by another shard. or 2. It's related to the traveling/using Shadesmar system that everyone seems to be getting into. I don't know. The use of 10, a number whose importance is Roshar-specific, leads me to believe number one, but being set right next to a map of Roshar's Shadesmar, which has been confirmed to exist throughout the cosmere leads me to number two.

No! Blasphemy! I must change my travel plans from a roadtrip to an epic quest for revenge on the manuscript theif!

Okay, I get it now. Thanks for clearing that up. I'm still very interested in the other orders though. And what are the symbols on the back? Questions for another day I'd suppose...

Are you sure? The symbol on the front seems to match with the bigger circle on the top left of the sequence, and Brandon said it represents Windrunning, one of the powers. Wouldn't that make it the other way around?

Oh, thanks. I really need to get my hands on some of the unpublished works. I mentioned wanting to read them in an email Brandon a few months ago, but never got a reply; he's probably massively busy though. I wonder if he'll start sending out Dragonsteel again now that Way of Kings is out. I know he lifted the Shattered Plains from that story, and now that that's no longer a spoiler, maybe. Unless there's other things lifted from Dragonsteel. *begins planning a long roadtrip to BYU to get a chance to read that rebound Honor's thesis copy*

So, if the symbol on the front cover is a stylized glyph for Windrunning, I suppose that this means that the large circles' glyphs inside the front cover represent the Radiants' powers (Are the Radiants' powers as a group called Surgebinding? Or is that more specific?) and the smaller circles represent the Ten Orders. This lines up with the two powers = one order, and each power is linked to two orders. Though there's some extra lines there, that don't quite fit... Now if we can just figure out which glyph represents Soulcasting. I suppose if the next book focuses on Shallan we might see (or feel since it's a blind stamp) a sword version of the Soulcasting glyph. But what would we get if he focuses on Dalinar? Unless Dalinar's visions are a Radiant power. Ooh. I like that idea.

Hi, I've been a lurker for a while, and finally decided to read through the Brandononthology that Zas maintains. I haven't finished yet, but I did run across something I thought might be worth mentioning. Someone asked the "Are all the Hoids the same? Are your worlds connected?" question, (which, by this point in the interviews, I'd seen quite a few times) but instead of the usual "Yes, check the forums for more" response I was used to, Brandon threw this out: Followed by the standard "Yes, it's the same person." Any thoughts? Is this new info, or am I just behind?

That's it! Thank you so much, I can't explain how important that was to me!

I'm in desperate need for a quote from the Way of Kings, but I've loaned my copy out to a friend and can't go look for it myself. The quote I'm looking for is from Kaladin, and is actually in the narrative, not dialogue. It occurs in one of the first spear-training sessions with Bridge Four down in the chasms (I believe. It's been over a month since I read the book myself, cut me a little slack). Kaladin tells one of the bridgemen that he's doing well, and the quote I need is right before or after that. The actual quote is something along the lines of "He'd learned something about praise; that it should never be withheld but should always be truthful." And that is, of course, a terrible paraphrase, but that's the gist of it. One of my friends tried looking for it, and thought that the scene was somewhere in the 700's, but she didn't actually find it herself, so I don't know how accurate that is. Help me please??