Glamdring804

This is just painful to look at. Don't tell me someone actually gave you this for a homework? Wat. Metallic hydrogen? Oh man, this is awesome. We just made ourselves a little piece of Jupiter.

Ah, I got ya now. No, the Lithomancy that Nahiri uses is actually "Magic of the Earth's Crust." Essentially, her magic allows to shape stone to her will and create resilient, lasting structures or tools. She can raise a marble rampart in the blink of an eye, or draw a glowing sword straight out of the ground.

The Weatherlight story was supposed to be quite good, though I haven't had the chance to read the novels. As for Nahiri, yeah, that about sums it up. I could have dealt with her becoming a villain, but only if it was done right. It ended up feeling shoehorned into the story, and rushed because they needed an antagonist to set things in motion. They stripped her of any sympathy or credibility in the process, and just turned her into a 'lol, eviluuz' archetype. I stopped following the Magic story as a result.

Nahiri was initially introduced as a protector initially, someone who believed in sacrifice for the greater good. Thousands of years before the current Majic story, she and two other powerful mages (known as planeswalkers for their ability to step between worlds) discovered a trio of terrible eldritch abominations. These bizarre creatures live in the space between worlds, and traveled the multiverse consuming said worlds. The three planeswalkers managed to draw these monsters into Nahiri's home world and lock them in space and time. Nahiri agreed to stay as a warden for the prison, and they three parted ways, on the condition that should the prison ever fail or weaken, they would answer the call and help save her homeworld. Millennia pass. The eldritch horrors struggle against their bonds, and eventually loosen them enough to reach out and start consuming Nahiri's home world. Nahiri calls for the other planeswalkers to come to her aid, but neither does. After several months, she manages to repair the prison on her own. Confused at her partners' absence, she leaves her home world in search of them. She finds one partner, Sorin, on his own home world, where he is exhausted from having created a network of defenses for said world. She asks him to come back to her home world to help check on the prison. This is where the first cracks in the story appear. Instead of keeping his oath, Sorin outright refuses. And instead of trying to reason with him, Nahiri goes off on a childish temper tantrum and attacks him. After a protracted battle, he wins, and imprisons her in a block of magic-proof silver. Fast forward to now. The eldritch horrors escaped their prison and are laying waste to Nahiri's homeworld, so that they may gain the strength to travel between worlds again. Throug a completely unrelated chain of events, Nahiri is released as well. The first thing she does is travel to to her home world, and finds in under attack by the monsters she had tried to keep imprisoned. And this is where stuff really starts fall apart with the characters. Instead of trying to save her world, like most reasonable people would do, she decides that instead, she should get revenge on Sorin, and destroy his world as well. So, she travels to his homeworld and starts using her magic to draw one of the eldritch horrors to it. Sorin comes back to his homeworld. Instead of trying to save his world, he just gives up and decides to go kill Nahiri. The two fight, both bemoaning about how the other is a terrible person. Nahiri wins and imprisons Sorin in much the manner he caged her. Nahiri decides to become a villain, and is last seen leaving Sorin's homeworld. This doesn't really capture what actually happened with them, but basically, in order to bend their story in the way they wanted to, they reduced two of their better characters into one-dimensional vectors. Storytellers are supposed use conflicts to flesh out characters, not turn them into cartoonish villains. The entire arc felt lazy and convoluted. I'm not sure I'm following...

No storming clue. Probably depends largely on your major and field.

It's open enrollment, so they accept more students than actually end up enrolling. They have plenty of out of state students. As for housing, I can't really speak to that, as I live off campus. You will also have to pay out of state tuition, unless you establish residency in Montana.

Nahiri the Lithomancer, a character from Magic: the Gathering with awesome, badass powers whose character arc was unfortunately butchered by Magic Creative's poor story-telling. @Kaymyth; As fun as that sounds, it's not really relevant to me. I mainly am interested in MTG because of the lore, I don't actually play that much.

And just think, it would be a smaller signing, so we would get plenty of one-on-one time with him.

Heh. Heheheh. You even need to ask? Let me put it this way. MSU is the closest college town to any ski resort in the nation. Our local ski area is literally 20 minutes away. If you plan your schedule right, you can be on the slopes in the morning and in class later that afternoon.

Then absolutely come here. MSU has absolutely incredible science and engineering programs. Plus, with three of us, there would be enough to start a club! (Hey Eric. How's Calc 3 treating you?)

He was so deep in the revisions, he forgot to update it. What an amazing author. I wish I had his creative stamina.

@Chaos I'm listening to your voice and going "why isn't he talking about iterated integrals or conservative vector fields..."

Which is why I called it a baby Cosmere. I like that he's dedicating a small bit of his time to quick, cinematic action books. As he so aptly described it, the Cosmere is that premium, delicious, fancy steak dinner that you can tuck in to and take your time with, and the Reckonerverse is a quick burger that's cheaper, faster, and fatter, and shallower, but delicious nonetheless.

Yes, by the looks of it, the Reckonerverse is set to become its own baby Cosmere. The Cosmere doesn't have Earth in it, so if something is set on Earth, it is most definitely NOT Cosmere. If you want unspiked cookies, please come to Fantasywriters.org. I can assure you the only major threat to your safety over there is the large draconian overlord.

Heh. Don't forget the eastern Dakotas. Now that area is flat. I go partially insane every time I drive through there. Everything is just so uniform, all the way to the horizon.

Oi! Bozeman is not a desolate tundra! It's a vibrant and dynamic college town nestled in the corner of a broad valley, with beautiful, towering mountains in both directions. It's certainly better than Kansas Ciy, which is just flat and sticky ... Damnit, @Chaos, why wasn't this a thing in class?

Yes! Snapshot is in the Reckonerverse! It's well on its way to becoming a baby Cosmere.

Meh. The lecturing pace was fairly easy to adjust to. The best part of your teaching style is watching you try to draw figures on the white board. It's also nice, getting the occasional Stormlight themed worksheet.

That's just a personal preference. There some people (like me) who enjoy that kind of game. To each his own. On a different note, the world of Destiny is one of the best science-fantasies I've encountered. Everything just feels...right. If Brandon weren't so busy with the Cosmere, I would suggest he write some adaptations for the game. It feels a lot like one of his worlds. It feels logical and right, yet lived in and real.

Yo homie, what's up? *throws a stick in his face*

Well Damnation. You beat me too it. All this week, I've been working on a write up on how Destiny is Cosmere, but because of school, I never finished it. Then I came here, and saw this thread. I agree that Destiny is obviously Cosmere. My own Cosmere take was built from the ground up, instead of trying to fit it into the Stormlight Archive, which led to some simplifications on the Destiny side. Here's my explanation and evidence, in no particular order. Bad Juju This isn't particularly important, but it's a nice example of exactly how Cosmere Destiny is. This is the flavor text for the exotic pulse rifle Bad Juju: "If you believe your weapon wants to end all existence, then so it will." —Toland, the Shattered Basically, what Toland is saying, is that he somehow managed to align his weapon with his intent for the weapon. This phenomenon, that believing something will have the desired effect will result in you getting said desired effect, is something we see all the time in the Cosmere. Toland believes Bad Juju wants to end all existence. Every time he uses it, he invests it ever so slightly. Over time, he has invested it enough that it has begun to show signs of an Awakened object, and develop a degree of sentience. Now, before we jump to conclusions, I am not saying that Destiny magic is awakening, only that the investiture in Destiny can be used in a similar manner. The Fallen The alien race known as the Fallen are another important hint regarding the Traveler's nature as a shard. It would seem that, over time, races and species exposed to the Traveler develop a dependency on Light. They carry around a small portion of investiture with them, slowly warping their spirit web. Again, this is something we see all around the Cosmere. Scadrians have small amounts of investiture within them. The people of Nalthis are imbued with even more investiture, so much so that they have a dependency on it, and if they are stripped of that investiture, they suffer physiological and psychological effects. This is exactly what happened with the Fallen. Before the Traveler came to Earth, it visited another system that was home to a race known as the Eliksni. The Eliksni were quite similar to us. They were a burgeoning civilization that were just taking their first steps to the stars. The Traveler's arrival kicked off a golden age of innovation. Their technology surged forward in leaps and bounds. Lifespans increased tremendously, and things in general were pretty peachy for the Eliksni. Then, the Darkness showed up, and the Traveler fled. Without the Traveler, Eliksni civilization collapsed, and they became the Fallen, a wretched race of space pirates roaming the stars to collect enough scraps to survive. The effects of the Traveler's departure were quite severe for the Fallen. Without the Traveler as a source of light, they literally started withering away. Their bodies became stunted, and their statures were greatly reduced. They were forced to rely on the Serivitors, mysterious artificial lifeforms that collect and concentrate ambient investiture in the form of Etherium, to sustain them. They were exposed for heightened levels of investiture for too long, and now their spirit webs bear the scars. The Fallen aren't actually direct servants of the Darkness yet, but the holes in their spirit webs open up the possibility for them to become such. It would seem that this happened with Skolas after he was captured. The Darkness used its investiture to fill the cracks in Skolas, granting Skolas new power, and turning him into a proper servant of the Darkness. Not a good sign. The interesting thing about this is that there is evidence that what happened to the Fallen is starting to happen to humans. All humans on Earth now carry small amounts of light within them. They're gradually becoming attuned to the Traveler's investiture. The longer they are in its presence, the more invested they become. The Darkness, the Traveler, and Intents Initially, I also thought that the Darkness could be Odium, but this didn't quite add up. Only two of the four alien races in Destiny are direct servants of the Darkness: the Hive and the Vex. Now, the Hive certainly act in many hateful ways that wouldn't be out of place among Voidbringers, but the Vex do not. (Before we get too far, the Vex are not actually robots. They are mecha suits for colonies of bacteria) The Hive follow something called the Sword Logic, which basically says that if something can be killed, it never deserved to exist in the first place. Therefore, they should go on an omnicidal rampage and destroy everything they see until only one living being is left in the universe. This sounds pretty hateful, but it's also something that can be described as extreme ambition. Their ultimate end goal is to become the dominant species in the universe. Pretty rusting ambitious, right? Their society even directly rewards ambition. The only way to advance is to forcibly take what you need to reach the next level. The Vex also have a similar goal. Their endgame is to become the dominant life form in the universe. Their chosen method isn't to destroy everything until there's nothing left, but rather to reprogram the universe so their existence becomes a fundamental property of it. They want to rewrite the laws of physics to make themselves literally indestructible. This isn't really what I would call hateful behavior. The Vex, being mostly machine, seem incapable of hate and other emotions. Integrating themselves into the laws of physics though, that is pretty darn ambitious. Thus, I came to the conclusion that the Darkness is not Odium, but rather Ambition. But that's not all. The question of the Traveler's intent was a little harder. The Traveler goes from star system to star system helping fledgling species and generally being a good guy (or girl). The Darkness was following the Traveler, though and whenever it caught up, the Traveler fled and abandoned the young species to the Darkness's wrath. That wasn't exactly an honorable move, so Honor was out. The Traveler could be cultivation. It goes around terraforming inhospitable planets, which is apparently something all shards can do, but I'm sure it would help to be a shard about growing things. It also focused on nurturing young civilizations and helping them grow. The biggest problem with this is the Guardians. They do not act in a way that is aligned with Cultivation. The Guardians are a very independent group, both with each other and outside influences. Even their commanding officers, the Vanguard, don't really have direct control over them. They are more of the Guardians' managers. The Guardians themselves are not really a unified force even. Most Guardians work on their own or in small groups that rarely contain more than half a dozen members. The Guardians, for the most part, do their own thing. They go around looking for big bads to fight and loot to collect and glory to be won in general. The Titans are perhaps the most subdued example. They seek prestige by aspiring to be shining paladins who defend the weak. The Hunters imagine themselves to be the big damnation heroes, great warriors roaming the wilds and fighting monsters. Warlocks are the classic sorcerer, constantly looking for ways to expand their powers. All three orders are seeking their own form of glory. The Guardians are heroes in their own right, but this seems to be more of a natural byproduct of their actions. Their driving motivation is their own ambition: to seek ever greater challenges and achievements. The Guardians as a whole, are also aligned with Ambition. Now this is a sticky situation. How can both the Traveler and the Darkness be Ambition? Neither of them are, and they both are at once. We know that Odium splintered Ambition. However, we don't know hoe exactly that happened. As evidenced by Sel and Honor, there is more than one way to splinter a shard. I believe that when Odium splintered Ambition, Rayse somehow split the shard straight down the middle. Some point after, Cultivation took up one half, and Odium, in a desperate move to prevent a shard from becoming more powerful than him, took up the other half. The Ambition mixed with their original intents, and Cultivation became Glory, and Odium became Conquest. Thus they became the Traveler and the Darkness as we know them. The Guardians and Ghosts Since the Traveler is a shard, I think it's fairly obvious that the Light is the Traveler's investiture, and the Guardians are the ones capable of channeling it, which is how they gain their abilities. So what exactly does this make the Guardians? They aren't quite Radiants, since their parent Shards aren't Honor and Cultivation, and their powers are quite different from those of any Radiant we've seen so far. Also, the Ghosts are similar to spren, but they are also similar to Seons, and can do things neither can. Let's start off with the nature of the Ghosts. They were created by the Traveler after he/she was severely wounded by the Darkness. The strain of fighting the Darkness drove the Traveler into hibernation, and with its last act, it created the Ghosts to protect humanity. These ghosts are obviously splinters, but they are not a type of splinter we have seen before. All the ghosts have a physical body, and almost count as robots. It would seem that the Traveler splintered pieces of its own cognitive and spiritual forms and bound them to physical forms to create the Ghosts. Guardians are not your typical investiture wielders. The Ghosts travel the Earth and Solar System searching for bodies of the ancient dead that are compatible with Light. As soon as they find the right person, they fill the remains with Light and resurrect the person as a warrior of Light. This is quite interesting. It would seem that the Ghosts can detect the spiritwebs of people who have long since passed on. Once they find a compatible web, they use investiture to somehow pull the person back into the world. Furthermore, the Ghosts act as permanent anchors for the guardians. A Radiant can die if their central nervous system is destroyed. Guardians can only die if their ghost is killed or drained of investiture. They can be decapitated, vaporized, you name it. As long as their Ghost survives, they can still be resurrected. Guardians, it would seem, are much more invested than your typical magic wielder. As for their specific uses of investiture, Guardians have a few abilities we haven’t seen before. There are the usual suspects, such as becoming nigh-invincible by filling your body with investiture (Warlocks' Radiance) and warping physical phenomena using investiture (Titans' Fist of Havoc and Stormcallers' Stormtrance). Guardians though, can also shape investiture into solid physical constructs, like weapons and shields. Quite fascinating. This relates to the last strange ability Guardians have: Universal ammo packs. When a guardian fights, he or she will often pick up ammunition off of their defeated enemies. This makes no sense. Why would alien weaponry use rounds that are compatible with our weapons? This is even stranger when you consider the fact that many of the alien weapons are energy based, not projectile. What I believe is happening here is the Guardian's Ghost uses investiture to transform scavenged matter and energy from enemy packs into rounds that are compatible with their own weapons. This also explains the swords of Destiny. They very similar to Shardblades. Instead of forming the entire weapon themselves, the Ghost creates the blade using existing matter and investiture. The Ghost itself can't form the blade, because it is already locked in a single physical form. God Metals This transitions nicely into the new God Metals introduced in Destiny. There are three elements in the game that do not correspond to anything in the periodic table: Spinmetal, Relic Iron, and Hadium. I believe these are the God Metals of Cultivation, Ambition, and Odium, respectively. Spinmetal is an electrically conductive metal that grows on plants in cold environments. These plants apparently started showing up when the Traveler did. The fact that it grows on plants is a dead giveaway that this is Cultivation's metal. Relic Iron is a dense and durable material found in lumpy deposits on the deserts of Mars. This would seem to be Ambition's metal, since it also appeared when the Traveler did. The third metal, Hadium, has to date only been found on the Hive ship Dreadnaught. Hadium reacts to energy and investiture it is exposed to. The Darkness likely grants it to the Hive to help them kill everything. All three of these metals react to the Light in interesting ways, and are often used in the construction of Guardian gear. Whew. That was longer than I expected. Kudos to you if you read all of it. I even have more I might add later! Any thoughts?

Generally, my favorite part of Brandon's books is the stuff between the covers.

It wouldn't be very good exercising, since you'll never put it down.

Yes! Finally! Let the hype intensify!

Your recognition of such is likewise appreciated.