Weltall

Oathvember, right up there with Febtober as the greatest non-month of all. Anyhow, I won't be surprised if the interior has some Dalinar artwork but I'm expecting it to be in the present-day, as the Shallan art in WoR was.

That was actually a point of irritation in an episode of Stargate SG1. Carter (under the effects of an alien armband) was trying to use her temporary super-speed to write all the books she wanted to, but she was limited by the ability of the computer she was typing on to actually process her input. So yeah, even if Brandon had super-speed and a keyboard capable of handling it without breaking, he'd need a supercomputer to crank out books at lightning speed. Are scientists looking into this problem? If not, they should be.

I reread both WoK and WoR while waiting for Arcanum Unbounded so I'm not going to do another reread so soon but I might skim a couple of chapters for fun. I've been following along with Alice Arneson's Warbreaker reread so I'll have that fresh in my head in November. Other than that, I'm probably going to be busy reading non-Sanderson things and will be attempting to finish the newest entry in the Legend of Heroes series (which has a Cosmere-like approach to narrative and speculation-fodder in game form) between its late September release and the arrival of Oathbringer so I certainly won't be bored in the home stretch.

This seems entirely possible. Dalinar's vision of Nohadon includes some telling lines: Now, ths was a time when Nahel Bonds were being formed but as the people who'd formed them were being called Surgebinders and not Radiants we can assume the Orders weren't formally established yet and perhaps Ishar hadn't gotten around to his 'follow these precepts or I'll kill you' ultimatum. Even so, while things might be better now it's still likely that you could end up with a selfish Radiant who still manages to keep the First Ideal well enough to not break the bond and then has a lot of leeway with their remaining Ideals. Lightweavers for example don't seem to have major constraints on their behavior besides the First Ideal and we know there's room for personal interpretation even within an Order as to whether or not an Ideal has been kept.

One argument I can think of against Dalinar using the blade (aside from the extracanonical one that giving him a Surge he's not 'supposed' to have would somewhat complicate our learning about Bondsmiths and their powers and it seems too early for Brandon to throw that sort of mixing of powers in) is that the Stormfather storming told him 'You will be a Radiant with no shards'. He specifically told him he wouldn't become a Blade for Dalinar's use and commaned him to get rid of the dead Blade he was currently bonded to. Now, you can argue that an Honorblade is a different beast and wouldn't fall under the Stormfather's prohibition but that kind of hair-splitting that would violate the spirit of Dalinar's promise while technically upholding the letter of it (you said Shardblade but this is an Honorblade) seems like it would be out of character.

Ahh, I think I see how this works now. Chuck Norris kicked Milky Way!Adonalsium so hard that it actually Shattered reality backwards in time, leading to the divergent universes of Alcatraz, Rithmatist, Reckoners, Apocalypse Guard and Snapshot.

Count me in for the 'Adolin revives his Blade' crowd. We obviously don't know how you'd actually do such a thing but the way he treats his blade feels like he's being slowly set up in that direction, we know it originally belonged to an Edgedancer and we know one of their Ideals is all about remembering the forgotten. Seems a reasonable assumption that if it's going to happen, Adolin has the mindset for it and for the relevant Order. Was this from a WoB I missed or hopeful speculation? Because I'd love for it to be confirmed but the only one I know about wasn't that specific

Brandon implies that there is a hard limit to how much investiture you can stuff into any given vessel. He was asked if something like a Shardblade or Nightblood could be used as a hemalurgic spike and replied (paraphrased) that something like that was theoretically possible but for something in that league, it could be argued that they were already 'full' and couldn't be Invested further and mentioned the existence of a limit. Now, this was specifically in the context of hemalurgy and using already-Invested objects as spikes but the general principle that an object can only hold so much Investiture would apply to metalminds as well.

We have Word of Peter rather than Brandon, which via some hair-splitting around the wording could be argued to mean that the book makes it look like he's Thaylen even though he actually isn't. I don't think that's what Peter intended but Sharders will be Sharders. xD As noted, this is almost certainly an Aether from the unpublished Aether of Night. We know that Brandon wanted to work them into the cosmere even though Aether is unpublished and we have Word of Peter that we've already seen references to them. Brandon tried working Aethers in with Liar of Partinel but he wasn't satisfied with the work and they probably won't appear in the final version now that Aether of Night is going to be revised and released eventually. But the sample chapters did have an Aether which was described as 'rose-colored crystal'. So we know the crystal in Mraize's collection looks like an Aether and as LoP isn't canon the reference to Aethers that Peter had in mind almost has to be this trophy. If we assume for purposes of argument that what Liar told us about fainlife is at least somewhat accurate, the branch itself is probably safe as long as nobody tries to eat it. It's skullmoss that spreads fainlife so as long as the branch is dead and was sterilized to kill any of the spores that might have been present when it was cut, it should be safe to keep around as a 'more awesome worldhopper than thou' trophy. Which doesn't answer the question of how the hell he got his hands on such a thing...

I suspect it's a coincidence. Not everything in Brandon's work has to be deep foreshadowing just because there's a lot of it and we shouldn't fall into the trap of reading too much into things. For example, people have noticed that the name of Ruin's Vessel shares the name of an Aon from Elantris but Brandon has confirmed that 1) that wasn't intentional and 2) the names aren't pronounced the same even though they look identical. So the fact that Steris is an anagram of Sister is kind of interesting but we shouldn't assume that this was intentional. Plus, it's not as though the revelation that she and Marasi are half-sisters is a huge twist that comes out in the Sanderson Avalanche, it's revealed about halfway through the book.

We might get a new (fragment of a) chapter in the Lost Metal broadsheet inserts but it's equally possible we'll get some other story instead, like BoM had the Nicki Savage story 'presented by Allomancer Jak' in the same style. A full story with annotations seems unlikely, as entertaining as they would be. But if there's another MAG expansion for Era 2 we might get something.

While almost everything in the Liar of Partinel sample chapters is still subject to change, we can probably assume that we'll be introduced to Hoid by whatever his original name is like in those samples (which call him Midius) and we'll only see him adopt 'Hoid' as his preferred name at a later point in the Dragonsteel arc. Currently we have evidence that he's gone by at least two aliases pre-Shattering (he and Frost both mention his being named for a rock and WoB says this was Topaz, the other was mentioned in Secret History and Word of Peter says the full name was Cephandrius Maxtori) so we're likely to see stretches of time where he goes by those names and potentially others.

If we assume that Suit really did have something more to contribute to Trell's long-term plans in the Cognitive/Spiritual Realms then something would have to be done to either intercept him before Harmony showed up or to hide his death. If we take the 'faceless immortal' at face value (har har) then it's likely that some behind the scenes arrangements were in place both to get Suit away from Harmony's influence and to provide him with the extra Investiture he'd need to resist the call of the Beyond. Otherwise his post-Physical death usefulness would be measured in minutes.

Well, we probably won't but we know Era 3 will have a thriving pop culture scene so some Scadrian equivalent could exist and BoM dropped hints that moving pictures will eventually be a thing. But we do know that comics will become a hugely popular medium so I'm expecting some fun references to stories we don't see either directly or in great detal, like the pulp stories in Era 2.

Hoid is a man of many names. Technically Hoid isn't even his real name (the Liar of Partinel sample chapters suggests he was originally named Midius but that's potentially subject to change) and he's gone by half a dozen or so aliases that we know of. But he seems to default to Hoid for personal reasons and the name far predates the Shattering though we don't know when he started calling himself that. It's a funny idea though and dealing with Odium is clearly high on Hoid's priority list.

@Shadows4Silence Just as a heads-up in case you haven't seen it yet, Brandon has mentioned in various WoBs (for example here and here) that since all his magic systems have the same fundamental underpinnings, there are ways to attain very similar results using different systems.

A point on Hoid's lifespan: Given that there are multiple ways to achieve the same general ends with Investiture (like Yolish Lightweaving versus Rosharan, or Hoid's Plot Sense using the same mechanism as F-Chromium) we can't really use his healing or lifespan to say that he might have held a huge chunk of power at some point in the past. We know the Heralds are ageless and are/could be considered Cognitive Shadows and anyone with ~2000 Breath gets immortality and virtual immunity to disease (and alas, alcohol) so Hoid's lifespan could very easily come from some pre-Shattering magic or a creative hack of one or more systems; it doesn't require him to be a Sliver or hold a huge chunk of Shardic power. But I do like the idea that Hoid's inability to hurt people (with the sort-of exception of recently-deceased Cognitive Shadows who like to pick fights) and his healing and/or extended lifespan are linked in some way. Hair-splitting time: Slivers are people who have held a substantial fraction of a Shard's power and then released it, not a thing one could recieve. It's possible that Hoid did at some point pre-Shattering hold a lot of power and could be considered a Sliver but in order to be a Sliver he'd need to have given that power up.

Brandon has also released a sample chapter or two each from Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime, which were the biggest sources of cannibalization for what we know as Mistborn: The Final Empire. And you can read the entirety (up to the point where Brandon stopped writing it) of Mythwalker, which also got bits of it cannibalized into Mistborn and The Way of Kings but is most important for being the place where Brandon first tried out what would ultimately become the core plot of Warbreaker. As with the others, nothing in it is canon but it's an interesting look inside Brandon's writing process and there are a couple ideas in there which could potentially be cannibalized for a future book (like its bloodline magic). A selection of chapters from Way of Kings Prime focusing on the character who became Kaladin in the published version can be found in the anthology Altered Perceptions. As noted, you can get Aether of Night by asking Brandon nicely (he recently changed his stance on this from 'I might rewrite it one of these days' to 'I will rewrite it one of these days' so we have that to look forward to) and White Sand's prose version can be obtained the same way, or in the most recent newsletter.

Ben McSweeney's Steel Inquisitor concept art and the MAG cover also show round spikes (which is how I mentally pictured them too) so we can imagine that a 'typical' hemalurgic spike probably follows that pattern. There's also the things which are almost certainly hemalurgic spikes seen in Mraize's trophy collection in Words of Radiance (which Shallan thinks might be hairpins of a sort) which suggest something more rounded as well. So if you're trying to make a display spike for a Steel Inquisitor, rounded is probably the way to go. But just to split hairs, it helps to remember that any sufficiently pointy bit of metal can become a hemalurgic spike under the right circumstances, like the broken sword tip that gave Spook A-Pewter, the pin portion of Vin's earring or even a bullet. So if you wanted to try out something else for fun after doing a rounded spike you could experiment with all sorts of designs.

@Calderis I agree with your points on the Honorblade not being good leverage over the Shin but I'm not sure I can agree with you on Navani not bonding the Honorblade out of research concerns. The main reason for this is that she's eventually going to learn from the emerging Radiants in her family that Shardblades (and Plate, but perhaps in a slightly different way) aren't the super-fabrials they've been assuming but work on a different principle so there really isn't a future in continuing Shardblade research as they've been doing it. If they want more Blades and Plate, they'll need to get more people forming Nahel Bonds and study how that works. I'm sure she'll be picking Jasnah and Shallan's brains nonstop as soon as she learns that. Now, on the general question of hiding that Honorblade, we have WoB that they're going to be using it to a degree because Brandon has mentioned testing it on the Oathgates so it's obviously not going into a storeroom somewhere. I'm not sure if Brandon wants to start experimenting with unusual Surgebinding combinations so early in the series but we're probably eventually going to see Honorblades used for that purpose. But assuming he isn't going to start now we can speculate that the blade isn't going to any of the proto-Radiants. Adolin already has a Shardblade and since he's not a Surgebinder, the Honorblade-granted Surges and his Shardplate would interfere with one another so he wouldn't get a real benefit from Jezrien's Blade. I think Navani's actually a pretty good possibility if Dalinar wants to 'hide' the thing, especially as he and Navani were already partners in the Great Shardblade Switcharoo in Words of Radiance. The other possibility of course is that Dalinar gives the Honorblade to the temporary King of Alethkar, The Lopen the First and Only of His Name.

@Staterus@Calderis We do. Brandon has told us that the people who killed Adonalsium (and went on to become the sixteen Vessels) could very easily be thought of as an 'opposing force' and that we shouldn't have been reading as much into his original response as we have.

Yeah, Rlain is effectively protected because he's seen what the rest of the listeners have become and he doesn't want that so he should be safe even outdoors. For parshmen things aren't as cut and dry but if they're indoors they're probably less likely to change than outdoors; Kaladin's sample chapter from Oathbringer suggests that just being indoors isn't a determining factor, even if we didn't have the above WoB to also state it. But being indoors should help for the same reason that the listeners need to expose themselves to ordinary highstorms to change and the more 'indoors' the safer.

Considering how Sanderson has some vaguely Lovecraftian horrors in Stormlight Archive (at least by implication, when you have things like 'Re-Shephir the Midnight Mother') I wonder if the planned Threnody novel will have a character discovering a hastily scribbled letter written by someone who went mad when they encountered Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know. But to the original question, Threnody's perpendicularites are noted to be difficult to predict in Khriss' essay. Since she's talking about traveling to the planet I don't think that's really a problem for your theory so it could be that doing something to set off a lot of Shades at once could indeed be what she's talking about in terms of the morbid origin. That would result in a gathering of large-ish amounts of Investiture in a single location, perhaps enough to make a perpendicularity form briefly before the Shades disperse. No idea what that would look like in the Cognitive Realm and I volunteer someone else to go find out for us. I'll stay here, thanks. xD

Here you go

Yeah, depending on how the Shards are splintered the effects on the different worlds could change and whether you'd really notice this or not would depend on the circumstances. For example, Sel has an extremely screwed up Cognitive Realm and location-dependant magic because of the specific way Devotion and Dominion were splintered and the aftereffects of the battle between Odium and Ambition has done things to Threnody even though the latter wasn't killed in that system. But Honor's splintering didn't break Surgebinding (from what we know the main effect was that it cut off the Heralds from their direct power supply) as spren are still doing their thing. The Shards are godlike but they aren't like The Force in that they're binding the cosmere together so it's not like the universe would end if all the Shards were gone. Right now I'd be more worried about all but one particular Shard getting splintered in terms of how bad things would be for the cosmere...