Weltall

Just as a heads-up, Brandon has confirmed that Odium will be around in the back half of Stormlight Archive. He left open the question of whether Rayse will be around, but I suspect he just wants to keep us guessing with that one.

As mentioned, it's difficult but not impossible. The fact that Vasher is on Roshar is proof enough that it can be done if you know how. Here's a WoB where Brandon mentions this.

Brandon has described the pulses as 'ripples in the fabric of creation' based on the power being used. Even if you assume that Szeth can somehow 'fake' the pulses (bearing in mind that he has no way of knowing what they feel like and this probably would require direct manipulation of the Spiritual Realm, which is well beyond Lightweaving) the simple act of using Investiture to create the fake pulses would itself create a distinct pulse that would instantly identify him as the real target. Atium shadows have a very distinctive appearance and Szeth (or any Ligthweaver) would have no way of knowing how to create the right effect ,short of being able to burn atium to experience it for themselves or having access to an unsealed coppermind with a memory from soneone who saw the shadows. I suppose a really detailed description from another atium-burner might be enough, but even if the could get the visual effect right they would have to expend a lot of effort making the illusions appear to be taking place the proper span of time 'ahead' of the present, or Rashek would notice that they aren't synching up properly. Bear in mind that atium expands your mind and your reaction times so this is the sort of thing you expect him to notice. Also I'll repeat that A-Bronze detects Kinetic Investiture rather than just allomancy, so the illusions will definitely feel different from Szeth, making it effectively possible to see through them regardless of whether they look like atium shadows or even generate atium shadows. We also have WoB that 'steelsight' and A-Gold are usable by blind people and the first one even implies that atium can impart its effect on someone who can't actually see with their eyes, which pretty much does an end-run around Lightweaving since it's a visual form of illusion-magic rather than planting fake images directly in the mind. If you don't need to look at the illusions and can still get the benefits of atium, the illusions can't really fool you.

Knew about it, thought it was a neat idea in theory but as a personal choice I decided to wait for the complete book so it was kind of torture seeing new material come out every week and resisting the urge to check it out. If Brandon does it again, I might just take the plunge and read at least some of the chapters. And yeah, I would be willing to read an entire brick book in this format if Brandon wanted to do an all-digital initial release with print version to follow (again that is, but I wasn't yet a reader of his the first time). Given what he's said about his plans for Nightblood, I'll get that chance eventually.

What RShara said. You might be remembering one of a couple Words of Brandon about the first version of White Sand where he simply stopped after a point, then wrote a second novel titled Lord Mastrell that continued the narrative. He pretty much considers them two halves of the same book and what we have as White Sand (Prose) is the result of rewriting both as a single novel.

Said individual has been brought up as a possibility before in the Hoidspotting topic and it's definitely not him. First, as RShara noted Skathan is far too prominent a figure (especially given that Bavadin doesn't like Hoid) and taking that sort of role is way outside of Hoid's usual way of operating. Also, we have a WoB that Hoid's role the the prose version was an offhand reference to an old case of Ais'. As Skathan (or the equivalent prose character, the name changed) is mentioned multiple times and never in that context, there is no possible way for them to be Hoid's secret identity.

To add a couple little details He probably can't pull Investiture from the Everstorm given that Brandon said that it signals sometthing bad for him and he'd probably hide from it, but if Voidlight can be accessed without needing Odium to corrupt Investiture in some way (the 'red eyes' thing) it's possible he could feed off it in the same way that he can feed off Stormlight. We also know that Vasher could get Investiture out of Taldain easily, except the planet's interdicted so that wasn't an option for him. So which Shard powers the Investiture is less important than how easy/safe it is to access. Brandon has said that there is a quantum of Investiture, in addition to the above WoBs about how Team Sanderson is in the middle of working out equivalencies and such in the real world.

Well, the campaign ended and it looks like they hit pretty much every stretch goal they revealed, not to mention exceeding their minimum pledge goal by a factor of four. Now to settle in for the long wait and keep checking the inbox for backer updates between now and October.

Yeah, you're grasping at straws. There is a connection between Hoid and Odium but it's not what you're thinking. While we don't have a firm timeline and nothing in the existing Liar of Partinel samples is canonical, we have confirmation from the Letter in WoR that the bit about Hoid taking that name from his old master is still true and Brandon has confirmed it as one of Hoid's oldest aliases. Meaning he was calling himself that before the Shattering and before Odium existed. Probably before Rayse was even born, assuming Brandon doesn't radically revise the things he's previously said about when the events of Liar take place vis a vis the main Dragonsteel sequence; Brandon has previously put the events centuries apart. Also, Odium fits the 'pattern' of Shard names in the same way that Devotion does and was a name that originally had a more pedestrian version that Brandon changed, and Ruin originally appeared (in the unpublished/noncanonical Aether of Night) under the name Decay. Welcome to the Shard!

@Faceless Mist-Wraith Judging by the discussion, it seems like what happened is that people on the old TWG board put together a list of anyone who could have been Hoid and then eliminated the most unlikely candidates until they were left with a short list that included the Terrisman, then Brandon effectively confirmed it. He mentions 'a character noticing something odd about someone' as a hint that remained in the book so there's probably something subtle in that scene that isn't recalling itself to my memory.

I'm pretty sure the Dor doesn't care whether you secretly think the opposite of whatever you're trying to accomplish. Selish magic has been likened to programming and by that logic, as long as you form the necessary connection to the magic system and you draw the symbol(s) properly, the rest doesn't matter. Much like as long as you've typed everything properly and there are no external variables, a program will do what the code says regardless of what the programmer is thinking at any given moment. The Dor is what's actually doing the work, the symbols the practitioner draws are simply channeling that power. An example of this from the book is what happens with Dilaf's wife. The Elantrian who drew the Aons presumably did not consciously intend to transform her into a proto-Hoed but they made mistakes in the modifiers so the Dor acted the way it was instructed regardless.

AonDor requires Intent and won't function without it. The Tenth Anniversary edition also makes this explicit in the Ars Arcanum entry. Khriss mentions that one must intend to draw an Aon and have an idea of the correct shape in order for anything to happen and apparently she has tested this to her satisfaction and confirmed that one can't do 'accidental AonDor'.

Adhesion doesn't allow for literal wall-running because gravity is still a thing and will be constantly pulling you down (or 'backwards' from the perspective of the person trying to wall-walk). Using Stormlight to strengthen the muscles and heal the damage you're doing to your spine would be ludicrously inefficient if not impossible. If you ever played on bars in the playground as a child, you probably tried all kinds of crazy swinging at one point or another. Adhesion wall-walking would be akin to hanging from a horizontal bar and trying to pull yourself parallel to the ground and then stay there perpetually. Climbing normally with Adhesion is more sensible (we see Kaladin doing it before he masters Gravitation, albeit using rocks he places as handholds) but it's still no faster than ordinary climbing so there aren't going to be very many circumstances in which it's really a useful ability. That sort of thing is really the Edgedancer/Dustbringer area of expertise.

Yeah, he has various other identities but as long as you know that Hoid and Wit are the same person you have the connecting thread that will let you figure out most of those other aliases because almost all of them are mentioned at some point in Stormlight Archive. There's only two appearances to date that are so subtle that you either have to look for the visual clues The Sovereign mentioned, or know it because Brandon has told us. There's also a probable appearance in the White Sand graphic novels but it hasn't been absolutely confirmed yet that it's him.

Welcome to the Shard! Lightweaving isn't a good atium counter. The only reason it was so effective in fooling people at the end of Oathbringer is that they were so pumped up on the Thrill that they didn't care that they were fighting illusions. TLR has multiple means of determining what is real and what isn't. He can throw out a spray of coins and notice that they don't react properly, he can use A-Zinc and Brass and notice that they don't actually have minds or he can use A-Bronze to sense Investiture. Szeth will definitely 'feel' different from anything else. The lack of mind also means that the illusions lack the full set of Connection that 'real' things have. Brandon has mentioned that various forms of future-sight including atium involve reading the Connection between things, so.the illusions probably do not create atium shadows at all. And with no atium counter, it becomes very hard to beat TLR because no matter how fast or powerful you are, he's going to know what you do before you do it and react faster than you can counter due to the combination of that and F-Steel. Shardplate doesn't really help much because as we see from Amaram's example, the crystal growths that Yelig-nar likes to create in his hosts tends to damage the Plate if not destroy it. And we know that it's possible to damage Plate with a Lashing-assisted kick, while TLR has pewter compounding. Any defensive advantage it would provide would be temporary and once it's gone, you have the small disadvantage of the video game-esque weak point that is the gemstone that practically yells 'shoot me!'... and an opponent whose magic system specializes in throwing small bits of metal very very fast. Might take a few of them to crack the stone but he could keep the pressure up pretty easily. In addition, getting in close may leave TLR open to being attacked but it also puts Szeth in Leeching range. Combine that with duralumin and Szeth is likely to lose something important very quickly. All it would take would be disrupting his connection to Yelig-nar for a couple of seconds, given that the transformation appears to remove all of your internal organs. Even if that's outside the scope of A-Chromium, being deprived of Stormlight/Voidlight for a few seconds would take away most of Szeth's power until it could be replenished. Also, I don't think you've quite taken iinto account the massive weakness in this whole scenario: Nightblood. One of two things is likely to happen here, neither good for Szeth. Either Nightblood decides that the possessed Szeth is now Evil and makes him turn the sword on himself (a very quick Game Over and Szeth doesn't even need to draw the sword for this to happen) or Szeth is able to draw the Nightblood who spends a short time being very happy about the massive amount of Investiture he's got to feed on, then kills Szeth when the Investiture runs out. Brandon was actually asked about someone being supercharged by a Shard using Nightblood and he said that they'd still be consumed eventually. Szeth's best chance in this scenario would be for a blitz attack with a sheathed Nightblood (assuming the sword doesn't make him commit suicide) and to hope that his massive array of powers allows him to land a lucky hit before Rashek has the opportunity to figure out all of his capabilities. Very difficult with atium in play but not completely impossible. All that said, this is a closer match than most, kudos for coming up with a creative idea for how to get close to Rashek's level.

@Zellyia Yes they are. It can be deduced from everything we know about them but Brandon has also said so directly.

We don't actually know that the Honorblades can change. Navani and Dalinar see Jezrien's in the vision of Aharietiam and recognize it immediately as the same Blade they're familiar with in the present day, and unlike living Shardblades there's no known mechanism by which the Honorblades could change form. I think the idea that they could stemmed from Kalak's thoughts about the Honorblades being 'inscribed with glyphs and patterns' not matching Jezrien's Blade, but at the point that he made that observation he was specifically looking at the seven Honorblades belonging to the other surviving Heralds so Jezrien's wasn't included in that assessment. With the vision confirming that the Blade looks the same now as it did back then, it seems the assumption they could change shape was simply in error. Given the unusual coloring of the dagger and how it matches Odium's apparent fondness for gold, it's far more likely that the dagger is made of his godmetal (Raysium? Rayseium? Odium(ium)? ) than that an Honorblade somehow lost most of its size and mass, changed colors and changed its properties; compare how the knife kills with how an Honorblade or Shardblade does.

Silverlight's a place rather than a secret society per se and we know that people born there can be part of other groups (Iyatil is a Ghostblood and used to be part of the Seventeenth Shard) so even as a place of origin it doesn't establish anyone as being part of a monolithic group, though by default it makes you one of the more Cosmere-aware people out there. Oh, to have a couple hours to walk around the place... Anyhow, if we're thinking of Silverlight generally then we could probably mention more specifically the arcanists who study Investiture and the scholars of history, religion etc. who Khriss mentions as knowing more about various aspects of lore than she. It's unlikely Khriss is the only scholar to do field research (she does mention multiple failed expeditions to First of the Sun) so there should be others out there. By that token we could also count the Ones Above as a worldhopping group, though they do it with FTL rather than the usual use of Perpendicularities. And... do Bavadin's many personas count as a 'society'?

Mraize strikes me as the type who would deliberately seek out a rare Aviar for rarity's sake, possibly even going to a trapper's camp to take one from there because it's harder than just grabbing one from Patji's Eye. But as you've noted, the place where the Aviar get their tallents is the Perpendicularity so it really doesn't matter what types of birds are in-demand on the mainland or in common use among the islanders and we can't use the assumed timeline as an infallable guide to what sort of power Mraize's Aviar has.

While the numeric symbolism would be entertaining, Brandon isn't exactly beholden to it. He finished up Wheel of Time in three books (fpr a total of fourteen) rather than try to cram it into one book per Robert Jordan's original idea or two books to make it fit the symbolism associated with the number thirteen in-universe. Stormlight Archive was always plotted around ten books while Mistborn was planned around nine and the existence of Era 2 bumping the total number close to sixteen is more or less a happy coincidence. Brandon may well write more books (he's floated the possibility of novels set between Eras 2/3 and 3/4) but I don't think he's going to try and base his decision to write more books based on an arbitrary need to match real-world publications to in-universe symbolism. Or for that matter, to not write additional books if it would put him over that arbitrary number. He'll write the stories he wants to tell and which work out (Apocalypse Guard reminds us that he's perfectly willing to step back from a project if something isn't coming together) but I don't see him forcing a novel he isn't satisfied with just to hit a magic number, or to not write an awesome story because it would be his seventeenth full Mistborn novel.

He could be using medallion technology, since we know that southern Scadrians have a respectable offworld presence (Iyatil is descended from a group that migrated to Silverlight) and they might have brought some of their technology with them. I'm assuming the migration happened after the Sovereign gave them the means to make the medallions since both of Scadrial's pre-Catacendre Perpendicularities were located in the northern hemisphere. Alternatively, he learned the local language the old-fashioned way which is why he lacks the speech oddities that Vasher and Vivenna sometimes let slip. Brandon has been pretty consistent in the idea that magical translation is much more likely to result in these slips, though experience with the magic is another factor. Fairly detailed WoB here. A Scadrian worldhopper would probably distinguish themselves with odd references to metal. We see expressions in Era 2 like 'a bad alloy' where we might call someone a 'bad apple' on Earth for example, not to mention the everpresent interjection of 'Rust!' as a curse. That sort of thing could give away a Scadrian who's using Connection to speak the local language and trying to force through something in their native tongue that doesn't fit the local lingo.

It has to do with accessing the Spiritual Realm. Here's a couple of linked WoBs that should be of interest. A-Atium, A-Electrum and Sak's talent all make use of the Spiritual Realm Atium was meant to foreshadow the underlying mechanic of Fortune Elend's moment of foresight at the end of The Hero of Ages was him peering into the Spiritual In the Spiritual Realm, 'time' does not exist and all places and times are one

You just necro'd a topic that was two years dead to say something that multiple other participants in the topic had already recognized as far back as four years ago when this topic was started, including the last person to post in the topic. Necroing isn't exactly forbidden but it's generally polite to make sure you're contributing something new when you do it. Also, Brandon has in fact confirmed tha the crystal is an Aether. Oh, and welcome to the Shard!

You're assuming that Mraize's Aviar has the same talent of hiding Cognitive presence as Kokerlii. We don't know what talent Mraize's bird might have, but since the talents we do know of are similar to other magic systems we can imagine various other talents working in similar manners. Perhaps Mraize's bird can sense Innate Investiture (like a surgebinder who isn't actively surgebinding, or a feruchemist who isn't currently storing/tapping power) which would be incredibly handy, or even one that could just sense Kinetic Investiture since that would enable him to do things like detect Lightweaving and probably Smokeform, assuming that's what we saw in the Gem Repository. Maybe he's got one with a talent more like Sak that can sense potential danger via Fortune manipulation, or one that functions like Dilaf's anti-Aon power and disrupts direct applications of Investiture. There's a ton of potential things that Aviar could be doing other than just hiding his mind. However, even assuming that Mraize's bird serves the exact same function as Kokerlii, there are still a couple of ways that could be useful. First, it would potentially let him approach people like Hoid or Nalthian worldhoppers without magically alerting them to his presence. Mraize strikes me as the type who will take any advantage he can get, and throwing someone off by being invisible to one of their extra senses could have situational uses. Given the various forms of mental manipulation in the Cosmere, being able to hide one's mind could also be handy generally. We've seen the Unmade get inside people's heads and that's the sort of thing Kokerlii might be helpful with. Of course, given some of the other things Mraize has in this trophy collection (at least one of which Brandon has confirmed is only a trophy and can't be used by Mraize) it's also possible he's not carrying this Aviar around for any immediate purpose and just wanted to show off to any Cosmere-aware folks he might run into. Though it's rather more likely that whatever talent the Aviar grants, it's something functional.