Weltall

So... Calvin becomes a shardholder? That would explain so much.

Well, better late than never... - I like the Autonomy nod and some of the name changes and have no problem with Ais' gender being changed. - I miss the early Darksider chapters, even if some of the material was worked into the narrative in flashback form and I can understand why it makes for a smoother narrative to follow Kenton through the opening section without jumping away. I also miss some of Cynder's prose commentary, like how if they can't communicate with Daysiders they can at least call them to repent, after learning about the reason for their language barrier issues. Or asking Khriss not to tell him anything she learns about the source of their food until they get somewhere where they have other options. Understandably cut but I got a chuckle out of both those lines. - Speaking of, Cynder and Acron's identity crisis. I imagine they're going to be very careful about the next two volumes, there. Made it hard to get a feel for them as characters in the graphic novel when they kept trading names. But who knows, maybe it's a newly revealed Darksider game. - Going along with that, Baon didn't really match the mental image I had of him. In the prose version he stood out for being really tall and having a darker skin tone than the other Darksiders but he doesn't really stand out so much in the graphic novel in either respect. - Not so much a thing specific to this volume as a general one: I wonder if the graphic novel is going to end any differently with regards to the prose version's dangling plot threads with the Kershtians and with Scythe (or their new names I can't recall offhand) or whether it's also going to leave things open for a second work and if so, whether that means we can expect to see the key content of Lord Mastrell at some future date. Given how compressed the story has been so far while still explicitly retaining all those unresolved elements, I have to imagine the latter option is more likely.

- To add to the bud discussion, the impression I got was that while the 'High Aedin' are essentially just people who got lucky and had stronger aether buds given to them, not everyone is suited to a particular aether which is why Raeth can't do much with his Amberite until he was able to enhance his power with Night. And by implication, his incompatibility made the bud itself weaker over time, since otherwise the attempt to steal a bud from him should have been High Aedin-level. The Patriach's supposedly decayed ability with Amberite due to a combination of age and lack of use seems to support the idea. - The Former seems to be 'imprisoned' (but not really) in the world as a whole.but able to express himself most directly through the source of Verdant. Though that makes me wonder now what a Ferrous or Besterian bud looks like. We know Amberite's a gemstone in the palm and Verdant a vine-like band but I don't remember the writing ever describing the other two, we just see their effects. And yeah, the Former implies that the four aethers came from Order and Chaos in an 'impure' form and then the 'god aethers' were Order and Chaos in their pure form. - We're probably never going to know the original intention since Decay became Ruin so that entire plotline is either going to be extensively rewritten or dropped entirely if/when Aether gets the White Sand treatment..Augur had an interesting idea in another topic that the Vax that Ati mentions could be Vaeria with a new name and the plotline could involve something Preservation and Ruin did before creating Scadrial. If I had to guess though, I'd say it lies in the comment that Decay always seeds betrayal. Maybe he simply wasn't capable of doing otherwise in the end, kind of like how Niven's Protectors are incapable of not betraying someone as soon as doing so is more advantageous to them. Or possibly he felt they were dangerous enough to him (at least in potential) that leaving either of them free just wasn't worth it. Of course this raises the question of how their release would affect things after the story (and whether Makkal's time riding around in Raeth's head might have influenced him in the long run) but we'll probably never know that for certain either.

That would fit really well with Decay being rewritten as Ruin and the Former having some traits that seem like they made their way into Preservation. They could have messed around on a minor shardworld before deciding to create their own and gave us Scadrial. How that might play in with the aethers I don't know but it would make a certain amount of sense and allow the story to be rewritten without necessarily having to bring a new shard into the picture.

No, you're not. The first page or two I figured Eric was Hoid and then I realized that wasn't where it was going. As far as the reference to Ais' old cases go, I could swear that I did see him think about old ones at some point that could have been a Hoid reference but after seeing the WoB I went back to check and couldn't find it. Either my mind is playing tricks on me or it's subtle enough that I didn't catch it with a search and I'd have to reread the whole manuscript to find it.

For whatever it's worth, the same exact wording is used for each of the ten orders with the names changed around, the only difference being that for ones like the Dustrbingers the last sentence is something along the lines of 'there are no currently known members of this order'. I didn't think that part was as important as the last sentence. I realize it doesn't specifically prove that the group following Nale in the present are genune Skybreakers but it does appear to confirm that Nale's ability to judge a potential Skybreaker is intact despite his madness, which is certainly suggestive.

Yes I did, though they already had some nice used copies of his works on the shelves so it's probably just the person who made the announcement and handed me the booklet that didn't know about them. Anyhow, the bit in question:

Which is one cool thing about these books. One of the reasons Shardblades exist (real world-wise) is that Brandon wanted to justify the ginormous swords seen in fantasy art, RPGs and the like, hence everything about the setting that goes towards them and the massive creatures they're designed to be used against. And the same thing works to justify oversized hammers since people with Shardplate but no Blade actually can use something that heavy without tiring or worrying too much about opening themselves to attack.. Next up, Navani invents the 'Shardcannon' by finding a spren that replicates the effects of Division and we start seeing tropes from FPS games. BFG=Big Fabrial Gun?

Didn't even know about the day or the book in advance but I randomly decided to go to a local used bookstore (San Francisco's Green Apple Books) and managed to snag a copy. It's very short, maybe thirty pages. It's illustrated with art from the books and has single pages of information on the focus characters for the first five books, locations, flora, fauna, spren and the Radiants. I haven't had time to read it all but one thing of interest is that when it describes the ten orders (WoR spoiler) Oh, and I found out about it because they made an announcement that anyone interested in 'young adult author Brandon Sanderson' should inquire when purchasing and when I did, they assumed the I was picking it up for a child at home. I'm guessing they're familiar with Reckoners and maybe Alcatraz (if not their appeal to all ages) but not his other works. Ah well.

Yeah, I've seen far too many retailers use placeholder dates to trust them in the absence of an announcement from the author, or artist or whatever the case may be.

A wish I'm sure all of us have had, oh, five or six times a week. Marasi, never let anyone tell you your powers aren't awesome.

Wayne doesn't have a permanent last name, instead he trades for new ones as the mood takes him. His current one is borrowed from a constable who annoyed him in return for an old wad of chewing gum Okay, seriously I have no idea.

...well there's no need to get all salty about it.

Yeah, I like Taldain for Broken Sky, especially since Way of Kings features an early cameo by a White Sand character so there's already a reference there. One thing I was wondering though, since there are two other inhabited worlds in the system, shouldn't Braize and Ashyn have much closer Cognitive representations that should be somewhere on the map? There are some other features (the Nexuses of Truth, Transition and Imagination) but there are too many of them to be only those planets and one of them is part of the Reshi Isles on Roshar so I doubt it's entirely empty in the Cognitive Realm.

It's an interesting thought and could explain some stuff going on in Mistborn. At the same time, Honor implies in Words of Radiance that it's possible to force a Shard to appoint a champion for their cause which will bind Odium in some way. I wonder if that might not be a potential mark against the idea since it sounds like a somewhat similar idea.

Lessie suspects that Wax killed an infamous criminal because he 'caught him on the crapper' when they first met, in the prologue of Shadows of Self. Wayne uses the same term multiple times in the book, about five times in a row at one point. This isn't really anything new out of Wayne and it's not worse than anything we've seen before.

It helps to remember that the magic systems aren't caused by the Shards directly but the interaction between their Intent, the focus of the world and the S-dna of the people. Hemalurgy developed from factors outside Ruin's direct control and it just so happens to have been in a way that requires you to stick a spike in someone to steal their power for yourself, which makes it something you just can't be born with. That it's an end-negative system probably has a lot to do with the Intent of the Shard, which gives it another good reason for being different. It's also not really all that different from a lot of Selish magic systems conceptually and those are largely all the result of one Shard so far as we can tell. You're born with the potential for a power based on region but you have to make the effort of learning the system all on your own. You may be born in MaiPon but you're never going to become a Forger unless you want to be one and put in the work. And just like that, anyone can become a hemalurgist, they just need to know how to make a spike and where to place it once they have one

Given that the thing discusses ending all life on Scadrial because it's a threat to Trell and how casually it does so, I think it's safe to assume that they're not native to the planet. Only if you assume that Edwarn calling them Faceless Immortals means that they operate under the exact same principles. He may not know enough about other magic systems or he may just be likening them to the most familiar reference he has. If they work more like voidspren from Roshar then it's a complete non-issue. Even if they are kandra-like, hemalurgy doesn't require any sort of connection to Ruin. As Sazed himself points out in the epigraphs, the trick to it is simply in knowing where to place the spikes. If you know enough about it and you have the necessary intent, you're in business. And if the Set knows enough of hemalurgy to give themselves allomancy and feruchemy, they know enough that Trell should be able to figure out how to steal the human attributes used to create the kandra and koloss. But like I said above, I don't think we should take his use of the term too literally and they're probably a different kind of entity and he's merely likening them to the kandra because it's what he's already familiar with. It's entirely possible Dominion and/or Devotion have reformed at some point, though I'm not entirely keen on the idea of essentially resurrecting a Shard offscreen like that. My thinking is still that we're looking at something that's of Odium (possibly with some help from Autonomy) and if there is a connection to Sel, it's from a memory of one of Odium's servitors rather than necessarily being something that was of Dominion. Fjordel doesn't really seem to know what they're worshipping (except maybe Wyrn) and the Svrakiss are supposed to be a force of evil in Shu-Dereth, which is the most Dominion-aligned religion/system of magic we've seen, and it sounds like the religion postdates the splintering of Dominion so I'm not sure how much we can take at face value. I don't think we're going to untangle the mysteries of Sel until we get those Elantris sequels.

The description first put me in mind of Odium since red eyes are associated with his spren and the way they operate (the implication being that they're possessing an unwilling host fits too) but the Svarkiss connection is a neat one as well, even if that too could ultimately point to Odium if you think the legend dates back to when he visited Sel.

Ninja'd as I was typing. Anyways, yeah, Parshendi culture apparently dictates that assassins should be highly visible and the target should have a chance to see them coming, so accepting responsibility for killing Gavilar is likely a part of it. It's hard to be sure since we don't know exactly what he was doing that made them want to kill him right after signing a treaty, aside from the vague idea that he was bringing back the Parshendi gods for... reasons. Maybe they thought it was possible to stop what he was doing and taking responsibility was part of it too, though if that was the case you'd think they might have been clearer about their reasons.

Bear in mind that getting a rise out of Marasi is one of Wayne's favorite hobbies. After using a polite euphamism the first time, he goes for broke at the end and leaves her confused because of his mixture of crudeness and wisdom. In other words, he's being his usual self. And there's a certain inherent absurdity in the way he first describes Chip (and needles Marasi when she asks for more details) and the way he sums it all up at the end. You don't necessarily expect it, therefore it's funny.

My first theory, such as it is. At the beginning of Secret History, Leras says that while everyone moves Beyond, it takes longer for allomancers and freuchemists. We see lots of people die from Kelsier's perspective but very few of them linger more than a few seconds, even less once Preservation isn't there to talk to them. I think this might explain why Drabs aren't capable of being Returned. It doesn't seem to be a stretch to assume that it's not being metalborn per se that lets someone remain a Cognitive entity for a while past their physical death but that it's a result of them being more highly Invested than normal humans. So a Radiant would probably hang around longer, or an Elantrian... or someone with large amounts of Breath. I think the reason that Endowment can't Return someone with no Breath is that they don't have enough Investiture to maintain their identity in the Cognitive Realm for long enough. From Lightsong's recollection, he had enough time after his death to see multiple visions of the future and listen to Endowment speak to him and offer to make him a Returned. That suggests she needs a certain minimum amount of time. A Drab, having no Breath and hence no Investiture probably vanishes to Beyond before she can get through the process.. Any thoughts?

Ahh, good spot, I'd forgotten those passages.

I don't think I've seen any time when Brandon has said that there are differences between mistwraiths that used to be feruchemists and 'natural' mistwraiths. When asked how intelligent they are, the response certainly made it seem like he was implying that all mistwraiths used to be human (here) so the impression I've always had is that the number of mistwraiths were fixed when the Lord Ruler created them. And clearly I was wrong so never mind. Setting that aside and assuming for purposes of argument that anyone could be made a mistwraith, I suppose Harmony could make Wayne one (whether he would is another question, not the least because of the moral implications of inflicting Wayne on all those generations yet unborn) and as long as he got Blessings quickly enough, he'd probably retain most of his memories and his essential Wayne-ness. Except that you get right back to the problem MeLaan raised near the beginning of the book: They don't have spare Blessings, which is why they haven't had any new kandra since the Lord Ruler died. So it's sort of a non-starter. And this might be an issue if a human and kandra could have a child as well, since we have no idea what would happen. Given the spiritweb shenanigans the kandra have going for them, I suspect that if it's not impossible, it's at least massively unwise.

Fixed that for you.