Weltall

Whether Adonalsium is or is not the actual creator of the entire Cosmere is a big fat RAFO. He's mentioned that some people in-universe would say yes, others would say no and he's not telling us who's correct. Regardless of whatever Adonalsium is/was, the Shards aren't natural processes in the way you're thinking. They're basically one-sixteenth of Adonalsium's total power, coupled with something called an Intent that shaps how that power can be used (with some leeway for the one who holds the Shard to decide how that Intent should be expressed) but they aren't fundamental forces in and of themselves. Entropy happens throughout the Cosmere without Ruin being directly involved, for example. So yes, 'reality' gets along just fine in the abstract without the direct involvement of the Shards. Note that this can work whether Adonalsium is/was the creator god or not.

Unless you count that it was the key to the time travel that made the events that split Zelda's timeline possible, no. I was just having some fun with what would 'really' happen if Nightblood and the Master Sword came into contact.

Just tossing some ideas out there, I could imagine Preservation being expressed more in terms of scholarship, where the magic system comes to people who are passionate about studying (preserving) knowledge of the past. Or for the most destructive interpretation I can think up offhand, it could go to the extremes that Ati tells Kelsier about with Preservation touring around the Cosmere, finding interesting planets and using its power to freeze them in one 'perfect' moment. I think Ruin might even have a less destructive manifestation if its Vessel had been someone else; Brandon mentioned that Ati didn't have the willpower to resist its Intent affecting him, so hypothetically we could get someone who similarly expressed it as inevitable entropy but without going nuts and enjoying the process of destruction. Or we could have gotten something much worse... We know Honor could look quite different if someone like Sadeas was its Vessel per WoB. The thing that immediately came to mind was what happens in Star Trek from TNG onwards with Klingons and their concept of honor, which gets lampshaded in DS9 when Worf calls them out on caring more about glory than honor. I could totally see Sadeas expressing Honor along those lines, though without knowing the exact dimensions of that Intent I'm not sure exactly how that might be expressed. And right now I'm stumped on Endowment (but we're told that Hoid would find this Shard potentially tempting, so I'm sure there's some neat possibilities someone else can think up) and we know too little about some of the other Shards right now for me to think up good ideas. Particularly Dominion, which I can imagine some ideas for but it would help to know for certain what its canonical 'theme' is first.

At the start of the series, they have eight including Jezrien's. One of the remaining two is Taln's and the other was up in the air but Brandon revealed its status in a WoB and it's since been confirmed in the text.

I would say it is for a couple of reasons. First, even though it is an early work and the manuscript isn't fully copyedited, it's still a fun story in its own right. It's got some flaws that Brandon's acknowledged but the story's perfectly enjoyable on its own terms and it's got some fun characters and neat concepts. I've read it and the White Sand prose and while the latter feels a bit more polished, I had more fun reading Aether, if that makes sense. It's also very worth reading if you're interested in seeing how Brandon's grown as an author and how some things that we're familiar with in his published works had their origins in earlier pieces like this. For example, the meta-plot of Mistborn Era 1 had its genesis in Aether and we can track some of the development of the spren of Stormlight Archive through a chain of unpublished works. As mentioned we've also been told by Peter that Aethers are already canon to the Cosmere, even if the novel Aether of Night itself is not. If you keep an eye out, you'll be able to spot the evidence for this in one of the published books: And lastly, since Brandon has announced plans to eventually do something with Aether, it might be worth reading sooner or later, just so you can compare the original to the (undoubtedly far superior) final product, whenever we get it.

Uhhh, it's kind of pointless for your friend to argue for paired elements making more sense when it's already been established that alloys are how it works. Brandon has mentioned that he really wanted to use silver in allomancy but he wasn't able to because he'd already settled on pewter as one of the metals (long story, see here) so by now it's locked in that some metals simply don't do anything in the Metallic Arts. As for burning alloys as separate metals, that probably wouldn't work Realmatically. I'm not sure how aware you are of it (it's one of the principles that underlies all the Cosmere works) but in essence, the metal in an alloy would probably 'see' itself as one metal rather than two so there'd be no way to make it burn as distinct elemental metals. You also couldn't get god-metal alloys if the system was designed that way. Not that we know of any more than one of those right now, but the possibility of at least another fifteen atium alloys (sixteen if atium/lerasium does something) is well worth having as a potential plot hook for future stories. Some of those metals are also incredibly rare (like Rhenium) and the viability of a magic system that requires ingesting vast quantities of mercury is... sort of questionable.. The plot developments in the second and third books of the original trilogy where characters discover new metals flow much better when you can say 'I have this known metal (aluminum), I know an alloy of it should produce an effect, let's experiment and see if we can't figure out what it is' instead of having to test literally every possible metal until you find one that doesn't make you sick or kill you when you try to burn it. TLDR: It works perfectly the way it is. Also, welcome to the Shard!

I asked Brandon about this at an Oathbringer signing. Here's his response: So he hasn't solidly determined it yet and we won't know for some time. However, it seems reasonably safe to assume that whatever it is will not be particularly Mesoamerican in style because he's planning on writing a civilization along exactly those lines in The Aztlanian. I think an African-inspired culture could be really cool (lots of possible models to choose from, across a huge span of time) but I'm sure that whatever Brandon settles on will work just fine.

Consider this then: In other words, even though he's still actively burning atium there are times when he needs to not just use pewter but flare it to avoid atacks, or follow up on opportunities. Clearly, there are times when the two metals work better together than just relying on atium alone.

As a silent observer of this threat until now, I'm starting to wonder if you aren't just being deliberately contrary right now. You're ignoring that the text itself says that Elend was using pewter to enhance his body in order to keep going. Obviously it has a benefit even when you still have atium to burn, or he wouldn't have been doing it It's not really hard to see why either; even if atium lets you see the future it doesn't mean you're always going to be in no danger while burning it. Imagine a situation where there are multiple koloss attacking you, or your movements are hindered by the terrain, or both at once. You can't completely dodge them no matter what you do. But hey, if you have pewter to enhance your strength and your reflexes above their normal level, maybe you can. Or even if you can't completely avoid harm the pewter helps you shrug off an injury that might have disabled or killed you. And even if you're in a completely open environment with only one opponent to worry about, having pewter and atium means that you can kill or disable your opponent faster. Now factor in a pitched battle where you want to reduce the number of opponents as quickly as you can and you'll see why it's useful. Just because atium on its own is extremely powerful doesn't mean that it's not better when used in combination with pewter.

The Trails in the Sky trilogy (the first 'arc') is available on PC and the first two games of the Trails of Cold Steel games (the third arc) are available on Vita and PS3. A PC port of the first Cold Steel game is also now out and a port of the second is on its way, so pretty soon the entire localized series will be available on a single platform. There are also PSP versions of the first two Sky games but not the third. It has to do with when the games got localized versus when they were originally made. There are also three games that haven't been localized yet, one because it just came out and there hasn't been time yet and the other two (which constitute the second story arc) are likely only a matter of time until they get picked up in some form.

Yeah, Vasher has learned a trick to supress his Divine Breath so that he doesn't get the benefits of those Heightenings (the life sense, perfect pitch, color sense etc...) but he still gets kept alive, so long as he has a Breath per week to feed it. Brandon has said that it has to do with a trick of self-perception but we don't know exactly how it works yet. There were some hints of this before the reveal at the end but they're subtle. Later in the book where Vasher and Vivenna are rescuing a girl who was being held captive to pressure her father, as Vivenna looks at him after the fighting she thinks that he looks bigger than before, stronger. The annotations mention that this is because Vasher's control slipped slightly during the fighting and some of his Returned nature started manifesting before he got it back under control. Similarly, the way the girl reacted to Vasher was meant to be a hint, but not an obvious one.

@avus That would explain so much, might as well add Scott Lynch too. Hmmm, if he's got that many spikes for Writing Speed, maybe Brandon calling his birthday 'Koloss Head-Munching Day' was meant to be a hint to his true nature all along... Also called the Trails series, it's a JRPG franchise made by Nihon Falcom and localized by XSEED Games (with NISA distributing it outside the US). It's got a very similar approach to world-building as the Cosmere; all the entries in the franchise take place in the same setting (albeit a continent rather than a galaxy) at around the same time, there's lots of crossover and the more games you play, the more of the big picture you'll appreciate. At the same time, you can generally play the franchise in discrete arcs that focus on a single country without needing to play the other entries to understand the immediate story. It's also very heavily focused on the characters and the story rather than the gameplay and the writing likes to take its time to set these things up before all the payoffs arrive. Much like the Cosmere there's all kinds of fun to be had trying to predict future developments, then the newest game throws its equivalent of the Sanderson Avalanche at you and leaves you amazed, pleased at the things you got right and then scrambling to rebuild your theories before the next game comes out. Basically, it's an awesome game franchise for people who like RPGs and Brandon's works.

It is a noble thing you do. xD I've been trying to send Kiseki fans in Brandon's direction whenever the opportunity comes up, maybe I should start trying to do it in the other way around, too.

Sheathed, Nightblood itself won't hurt a 'good' person but it doesn't care about the morality of anyone or anything it hits. And unsheathed it will happily kill its wielder if they don't have any other source of Investiture with which to feed it. The Master Sword is only seen doing weird things to people hit with it who are 'evil', though it works on an entirely different standard than how Nightblood judges morality. In at least one timeline it has its own way of punishing unworthy people who try to use it. So I figure that Nightblood is probably more dangerous to get hit with for the most part (unless you're Ganon, in which case you'd be screwed either way), you really wouldn't want to use either sword unless you're sure it's not going to be hazardous to your own health and if the two blades themselves clash, it would probably cause the universe to divide by zero. Which, spoiler alert, is actually the true cause of the Zelda franchise's multiple timelines.

Brandon was asked this once, the response is worth quoting in full.

Bumping topics like this is totally okay, especially when you add fun new content. And in honor of your avatar (one of my favorite characters, from my favorite JRPG franchise) I've come up with some facts of my own: - Brandon Sanderson and Toshihiro Kondo were separated at birth. How this works out is very complicated and involves time travel, a Dominion carrying a set of hemalurgic spikes and an Invested penguin. - Brandon Sanderson is the Grandmaster of Ouroboros and the Sept-Terrion are actually seven fragments of the Shard of Cleverness. - Brandon Sanderson has played every game in the Kiseki series, even the ones that don't exist yet. Similarly, Kondo has read every Cosmere book that ever will exist. This truth explains a great many things about the most recent works in each franchise.

My guess is no, if such a Shard exists Hoid wouldn't pick it up, based on a couple of WoBs we have. Hoid was offered a Shard we haven't seen yet If Hoid were to be tempted by a Shard, it would be Endowment Now, these are slightly fuzzy because in the case of the second WoB Brandon could have been thinking of only the shards he'd revealed to us (which didn't include Ambition and arguably didn't include Autonomy) but in general it seems to imply that Hoid might be interested in taking up Endowment if he could but he wasn't interested in/willing to take whichever of the sixteen was offered. And he may not want to be bound by whatever limitations are placed on the Shards, no matter what power might come with them.

Yeah, given that Mraize's collection includes several easily recognizable worldhopping trophies (and we have WoB on the really mysterious one) it's quite likely that what Shallan thinks are hairpins are actually hemalurgic spikes. Beyond that there's been speculation on individuals who may be spiked but nothing definite. Not really seeing the same sort of thing with Mraize that you do with spiked people, at all. And even if the listeners being influenced are analogous to Ruin influencing people, they wouldn't qualify as hemalurgically spiked. They'd be influenced by a different shard, a different magic system and probably in a slightly different way even if there are some similar fundamentals at work. We also have WoB that while Odium can influence people in a similar way to Ruin, he has to use different methods. The listeners specifically are noted to be protected from the method Ruin would have used, so Odium has to use spren as an intermediary and only some spren work. And for humans, he needs to use the Unmade and can't do it himself. TLDR: There's related stuff going on, but not to the extent that we could say that the listeners are 'hemalurgically spiked'.

Brandon has addressed this. Basically, Preservation fiddled with the system so his 'sign of sixteen' would work and deliver the hint that he wanted people to see. This involved removing certain misting types so the numbers worked out.

Preservation gave Terris the prophecies (StoneWalker's WoB outright says it and there are others as well) but Ruin later manipulated them. And missed the full extent of Preservation's planning. So everyone's correct, from a certain point of view. xD

Preface: I haven't finished Oathbringer and won't bring up anything from there until I have. I want to make sure I'm not missing any important context or new material from later in the book first. Apparently we do not, I was misremembering the WoBs when I posted that and didn't think to actually look them up beforehand. Errorgance, I know. It would be more accurate to say that a number of people think the guards are aluminum but Brandon has RAFO'd all questions on the subject that I've been able to find, though he's usually added some flavor of 'you're on the right track' that makes it sound likely that aluminum is involved. Anyways, thanks for keeping me honest here. My counter-argument to your counter-argument would be that these WoBs are discussing the magic that comes from the Shards rather than the Shards themselves. We know that the Shards have some control over the magic systems they create but other things like the location they Invest in also plays a part (like the numerical aspects that are linked to the planets) so I'm not sure whether this supports your point or not. The one for instance is specifically responding to how some of allomancy's powers relate to the idea of 'Preservation' when they do flashy, dynamic things that seem to be all about change, and the other goes into a very different area but we could argue its meaning either way I think. When the second linked WoB talks about how you could replicate one Shard's power with another, I think that was more along the lines of 'you can do all sorts of things with Investiture, it's just more natural with some than with others' which he's talked about elsewhere. For example, using Endowment's power to try to replicate Honor/Cultivation with the creation of Nightblood or how he's said that Hoid's 'plot detection sense' uses the same fundamentals as F-Chromium but may not necessarily be Feruchemy. I think that answer is more of a side-note than something directly relevant to the Shards and their nature. On the imprinting, I know that he wasn't directly addressing the source of the mandates but my own take on it is that if a Vessel doesn't have a permanent effect on the Shard, it's more likely that none of them did, rather than 'the first Vessel did and everyone else is stuck with that' which is sort of special pleading. But that's another argument where we could go back and forth on semantics and I don't think it would be very productive. On the 'different Vessels, different Mandates' thing, I've come to appreciate that the WoBs in question are somewhat vague as to what that means. For example, one could interpret some of his responses as saying that Adonalsium could have shattered into different pieces if the number were different, rather than 'there could have been sixteen Shards in a different universe, but with different mandates than the ones you know'. I mentioned this in the hypothetical of a universe where Preservation and Ruin could have remained a single Shard had Adonalsium been divided into fewer pieces. So I think that one's inconclusive right now. I've also found a newer WoB that, while still open to interpretation, suggests to me that Adonalsium was the source of the mandates. I interpret this as Brandon saying the mandates were 'broken off' from Adonalsium and thus came with the Shards, rather than something that the Vessels had direct control over. Leras could be thinking of Ati after he took up Ruin (the latter explicitly discounts his life pre-Ascension having been anything particularly important so maybe it's an attitude Leras also held?) but that's a good observation so perhaps Ati wasn't as completely unattuned to Ruin as I've been thinking. That said, there are a couple of WoBs that suggest that there are degrees of compatibility and influence at work. Odium and Rayse are a good match: There are Shards other than Harmony which are not as strongly influenced by their mandates: Now, there's wiggle room here because Brandon could be thinking of Rayse, who's extremely well paired with Odium. But it's also a fair interpretation that there's at least one other Vessel out there who isn't as strongly controlled by their Shard, which then raises the question of why some and not others. Ati did not have the willpower to resist his Shard twisting him: This suggests to me that even if Ati did have some sort of attunement to the idea of Ruin, it wasn't the same as what we see with Rayse, who Hoid at least thinks is still completely in control. If the Vessels created the mandates, you'd expect all sixteen to be strongly compatible with whatever they created, rather than having degrees of influence as we see with Ruin vs Odium and the possibility in the previous WoB that there's at least one more Vessel whose personality is less affected. Always an interesting discussion. I'll tackle the rest of your post (including the bits about aluminum in your response that I skipped over) in a bit.

We have reason to think that pre-Final Empire Scadrial was more Cosmere-aware than during Rashek's reign; Brandon has confirmed that Kwaan had some understanding of Realmatics for example and Brandon has said that the Worldbringers of Terris and the Worldsingers of Roshar have similar origins and the similarity of names is intentional. We know Hoid is affiliated with the latter but whether he founded them and whether he's connected to the Worldbringers has been RAFO'd. Anyhow, there's good speculation fodder there. Despite all that, Alendi was probably not especially Cosmere-aware. He might have picked up some things from Kwaan but we know from WoB that Rashek (who would presumably have gotten a good education from the man as well) only learned about the existence of other worlds from the Well of Ascension and didn't have enough time to get more than a general idea that other worlds were out there. So Alendi would have known even less than that. We can also be absolutely certain he hasn't worldhopped, otherwise he would have recognized Ruin's Perpendicularity for what it was when he describes it in his journal.

Given that Brandon has said that he set up allomancy based on powers that would be useful in a caper story and then built the system from there, the Doylist explanation is probably 'because that spread of powers works best for storytelling purposes'. And remember that the classification system is an in-universe attempt to categorize the magic to the best of their ability and it works pretty well there and for our purposes but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a perfect description of how it works. So not all external metals might be opposites of the internal metals, not all pushing metals opposite of their counterpart pulling one etc.

Just uploaded both the general Q&A audio and mine in the signing line. Here's the latter transcribed and with a couple minor interjections trimmed for ease of reading:

Well, Pagerunner found that Brandon continued to do Aether-related work even after Mistborn was published and he had plans for a Wind-based one; Syl was originally going to be from that work which gives another link in the chain of how the Aether concept has changed over time and influenced other works. Given this, you could probably cast most/all 'radiantspren' in Aether terms. Wyndle is probably the most obvious given the visual similarity he has with Verdant bonds. The Aethers as we see them appear to be either end-positive or maybe end-neutral, it's kind of hard to be sure since we know so little about Ferrous and Bestarian is sort of its own thing, but Amberite and Verdant are probably end-positive. Since those two result in the creation of matter in the Physical, you could easily imagine new Aethers that create different forms of matter/energy. So creating electricity or heat wouldn't be outside the theoretical scope. I'd actually like to see some magic involving the manipulation of water at some point, so I'll imagine an Aether called something like Aqueous as a counterpart to wind.