Weltall

2 minutes ago, mathiau said:

I don't see him committing random genocides for no reasons but the Fains better have stopped their war with humans on Yolen by the time he gets there.

Given how few people apparently still live on Yolen, I think the whole trune/fain thing became moot a long time ago.

On the main topic of discussion, Lift and Jasnah at least have some form of Plot Armor for Book 5 because Brandon has specifically mentioned letting us see the former when she's grown up (ergo she must survive the timeskip) and Jasnah might be the major character of the back half (which would be very hard if she's dead the whole time). You can make a dead person work as a focus character for one book but it's awfully hard to make them a major character for five if it's entirely posthumous. I have other characters I think are pretty safe for narrative reasons (Kaladin, Shallan and probably Szeth but that might change) but those don't have Word of Brandon to back it up.

Dalinar is the major character I see as most likely to have something happen to in the next book, though whether he'd end up dead-dead or just no longer on speaking terms with the Physical Realm is a whole separate question. I'd lean towards the latter especially since we already know that Rayse wants him as a Cognitive Shadow. Adolin's a tossup for me because while his Prime counterpart died I don't think that makes a huge difference to his canon self (his role has changed massively) but he also doesn't have quite the same degree of plot threads swirling around him which seem like they'd be impossible to resolve in a single book.

8 hours ago, Zoey said:

I kinda think that Rock is already dead. He broke a law of his people, and left to go there, saying goodbye, and when Drehy and Skar returned, they said that he would never be coming back. I saw that as pretty heavily implying he might have been executed. 

Kaladin's internal monologue states that "Skar and Drehy had relayed the news after returning to the Shattered Plains, it seemed Kaladin wouldn’t be seeing Rock again.". At no point does Kaladin think that Rock is dead and considering the circumstances (it's at Teft's funeral) if he were dead there's little reason why Kaladin wouldn't have reflected on that in the moment.

An alternative possibility is that he won't be coming back because he's accepted a much more important responsibility that's keeping him away. Consider: According to Rock, the first nuatoma to obtain a Shardblade would become king of all the Unkalaki. Rock is very strongly implied to be the legitimate nuatoma of his peak, because the relatives of the current nuatoma serve them (which Rock was doing, ergo the nuatoma was related to him) and all of Rock's older siblings are dead. When Tuaka hears that lats bit, she starts to say that Rock is now- and then he cuts her off. The rather obvious interpretation is that she was about to say that now he is nuatoma. Rock is entitled by custom to Amaram's Shards by virtue of killing him at the end of Oathbringer and that included two Shardblades.

Ergo, at the time he killed Amaram and was entitled to his Shardblades, he was most likely a nuatoma, ergo he is the first person with a claim on the position of king in many years. He's not coming back not because he's dead but because something happening offscreen caused him to accept this position rather than hide from it.

Brandon has RAFO'd the question of what would happen if you shoot an aluminum bullet through the edge of a bubble but we know that you can't even set up a bubble if the edge would pass through aluminum so my guess is that firing an aluminum bullet through the bubble would have a similar effect and it would collapse the whole thing.

That said, we know that a bubble can be dropped and reestablished very quickly from the way Wayne uses them, so there's no real need to resort to aluminum bullets or some kind of complicated allomantic grenade tricks. You just do what Wax did at the end of Alloy of Law: Carefully aim, drop the bubble at the right moment so your shot goes straight, fire and immediately restart the bubble. It saves you a small fortune in aluminum. Wax pulled off a trick shot while needing to coordinae with Wayne so imagine how much easier it would be to pull off if the same person was handling both aspects of the procedure.

We really don't know why T-Odium is doing what he is right now so it's hard to say what he's planning to 'save' everybody from. The brief glimpse we get inside his thoughts suggests that he believes he's saving the Cosmere from chaos and rule by 'broken gods' so it seems he thinks that he can do better than the other Shards have been. However, it's entirely possible there's more to the story than that.

One parallel that's interesting on a quick skim but I haven't had time to really dive into the theology to confirm it: Apparently the Mormon conception of Lucifer is somewhat similar to this, where he came up with a plan that would have resulted in the salvation of all humans but without moral agency (and in return he'd get all the glory as well). When God rejected it, Lucifer rebelled. That sounds on first glance very similar to Odium in general being very selfish, Taravangian's desire to save everyone and Rayse!Odium trying to get people to surrender their moral agency to him, like we saw when he tried tempting Dalinar at the end of Oathbringer.

Welcome to the Shard!

Yeah, when we see Taravangian's thoughts at the end he's very clearly talking about other planets which he thinks need 'saving'. This also comes up when Rayse was negotiating with Dalinar and he makes it very clear that his ambitions extend far beyond Roshar and he really wants to leave so he can get going with those plans, or at least  be able to move forward with those plans even if he's still stuck in the system. Taravangian seems to have picked those plans up after taking over the position as Odium, even if he won't be doing it for the same reasons.

...you realize that you're arguing against both biology and the author's direct statements, right? At this point you're either not going to be convinced or you're just having a joke for the sake of it. Also, have a few more WoBs:

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Questioner

I'm really curious about Ryshadium. Is there something bigger about them?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not super-huge. They are non-native species who have started to form spren bonds like native species do. So, a symbiotic bond with a spren has started happening. Ryshadium are horses that have done that, basically. You could say that humans have done the same thing. Non-native species that have started to form spren bonds. The Ryshadium are the only other non-native species that that has started happening. Like the chasmfiends have a symbiotic relationship with the spren that they have, the Ryshadium have a spren.

It's not as visible, but it is there.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)

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And I did write one more scene for it this morning that I needed to add, in Kraków, so when you read Stormlight 3 you can know there was one scene that was written in my hotel here.

It involves one of the Ryshadium horses, so you'll know.

Footnote: the scene in question is from Chapter 10 of Oathbringer
Kraków signing (March 21, 2017)

Assuming you're still going to insist on your interpretation for either of the above reasons at this point, further discussion is basically a waste of time.

1 hour ago, Val the Moofia Boss said:

Are there any songs in English besides Aria of the Holy Saint? Maybe in the Ys series?

I wasn't counting vocal songs per se but songs that have background vocals, which Falcom almost never provides the lyrics for. Termination from Ys Origin is a rare exception where they do provide them and coincidentally the lyrics to that one are in English. You can also hear English in parts of The Azure Arbitrator and Reverie's final boss song at the very least.

Quite a few of the vocal songs (loosely defined as 'songs where the vocals are the focus of the song') have English lyrics, including one more Trails song (Missin', a vocal rearrangement of Visions from SC) and there's also one in French (Lumiere dans dedale) and Ys has a fair number as well.

12 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

So, ummm, been like three days since I beat the final boss but, CS2 stuff. Still. 

  Hide contents

I'm starting to think that having three phases, two battle themes, and Latin vocals is no longer enough of a qualifier for a final boss.

 

Sometimes the vocals are actually English. Or at least, the bits we can make out are. xD

So, once you're done with Epilogue since I assume you'll be jumping to CS3 next, there's something that comes up on New Game Plus runs of CS2 that you don't strictly need to see (because CS3 will fill you in over the course of the game) but it's helpful to know since it's a big chunk of important lore and getting it sooner rather than later can't hurt. In brief, there's a new book collection quest spanning the game but you can't actually read them until Epilogue. In lieu of replaying literally the entire game over again to see it, you might want to check out this video when you have a few minutes to spare.

We know that something called an Excisor is required to make unsealed metalminds and we don't know how many there were originally or whether the southerners have been able to make more. Consequently it's hard to know how quickly new unsealed metalminds can be made since we don't know the specifics of the process or how many can be made at a time.

Identity is actually involved in creating unkeyed metalminds (anyone who already has the right power can access its storage) rather than unsealed ones (grants the relevant power(s)) and it's not really hard at all since it's built right into feruchemy via F-Aluminum. As mentioned, we don't really know exactly how the latter are made aside from 'it needs an Excisor, nicrosil and at least one other metal'. Brandon has said that if he doesn't describe the process in The Lost Metal, we have permission to bug him about it until he explains it.

Welcome to the Shard!

1 hour ago, Woefulleaf said:

Sorry if this had already been asked but I was wondering if someone could explain the mechanics of investiture and how it connects the different magic systems. I have a very basic idea of it but not enough to make sense of half of what is said on here .

Investiture is a third state alongside matter and energy and is basically the energy that underlies all the different magic systems in the Cosmere and it transcends all three Realms (Physical, Cognitive and Spiritual). All Investiture in the Cosmere originally came from Adonalsium and after the Shattering, all of that Investiture got 'assigned' to one of the sixteen Shards. Brandon has likened this to the concept of spin in physics. Pure Investiture can take solid, liquid and gaseous forms. The first of these appear as the various godmetals (atium, lerasium, the Honor/Cultivation alloy that Shardblades are made of etc), the second is seen with the Perpendicularities (aka 'Shardpools' like the Well of Ascension) and the last includes Breath and Stormlight.

Direct access to Investiture is usually mediated by one of the Shards but there are indirect ways to make use of it as well, as seen on places like First of the Sun. Allomancy for example works by using metal as a key that draws Preservation's Investiture and tells it what you want it to do. The Dor is a mix of Devotion and Dominion's Investiture and all magic on Sel is essentially programing, telling that Investiture what you want it to do.

You can get all the details here:

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Investiture

3 hours ago, Woefulleaf said:

Did any of you catch that Kelsier reference in RoW? I’m pretty sure he’s the leader of the ghost bloods now.

This has been confirmed by Brandon. You'll like that WoB as it has a lot of juicy info, especially when it comes to his relationship with the Ghostbloods we see on Roshar.

Right now it's pretty safe to say that what Kelsier is mainly up to is trying to figure out how to get off Scadrial. Possibly so he can continue his new ambition to find every Shard and punch them in the face.

Frustration nailed it, you can find (almost) everything that we know about the Cosmere between those two places. If you just want to browse, set aside an hour or three to check those out, if you want to ask questions just drop them in the appropriate forum.

Oh, and welcome to the Shard!

The original covers are wildly inconsistent and often kinda bad. In other news fire is hot, water is wet and the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.

Also, I'm sorry but that isn't Nic Cage, that is totally Chevy Chase.

I don't play it myself but I have a friend who does and streams; I've been watching to see if they find a good Rosharan System because they sometimes take suggestions for naming places and from what I've seen of the game it's likely that there's a perfect candidate out there somewhere.

Nielsen could have seen that coming from a hundred selge away.

Welcome to the Shard!

You need to be sufficiently Connected to a Shard to become its Vessel, whether naturally or by hacking it somehow. Access to a Shard's magic system isn't strictly necessary. Vin was sufficiently Connected to Preservation, so she could Ascend once the Shard was free to take. Preservation and Ruin were playing four-dimensional chess and both saw Vin as the perfect playing piece, but Preservation was better at it and thus saw a few moves ahead to the point that he set Vin up to kill Ati and leave both Shards free for Sazed to take.

Here are the relevant epigraphs that set this up:

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Regardless, the mists—the power of Preservation—chose someone to become their host long before all of this happened. That someone, however, was immediately seized by Ruin and used as a pawn. He must have known that by giving her a disguised Hemalurgic spike, he would keep the mists from investing themselves in her as they wished.

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She once asked Ruin why he had chosen her. The primary answer is simple. It had little to do with her personality, attitudes, or even skill with Allomancy.

She was simply the only child Ruin could find who was in a position to gain the right Hemalurgic spike—one that would grant her heightened power with bronze, which would then let her sense the location of the Well of Ascension. She had an insane mother, a sister who was a Seeker, and was—herself—Mistborn. That was precisely the combination Ruin needed.

There were other reasons, of course. But even Ruin didn't know them.

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Vin was special.

Preservation chose her from a very young age, as I have mentioned. I believe that he was grooming her to take his power. Yet, the mind of Preservation was very weak at that point, reduced only to the fragment that we knew as the mist spirit.

What made him choose this girl? Was it because she was a Mistborn? Was it because she had Snapped so early in life, coming to her powers even as she went through the pains of the unusually difficult labor her mother went through to bear her?

Vin was unusually talented and strong with Allomancy, even from the beginning. I believe that she must have drawn some of the mist into her when she was still a child, in those brief times when she wasn't wearing the earring. Preservation had mostly gotten her to stop wearing it by the time Kelsier recruited her, though she put it back in for a moment before joining the crew. Then, she'd left it there at his suggestion.

Nobody else could draw upon the mists. I have determined this. Why were they open to Vin and not others? I suspect that she couldn't have taken them all in until after she'd touched the power at the Well of Ascension. It was always meant, I believe, to be something of an attuning force. Something that, once touched, would adjust a person's body to be able to accept the mists.

11 hours ago, RadiantFox said:

I haven't actually read edgedancer and lift seems like she would have felt like she shouldn't age after visiting cultivation, at least until she's forced to witness her own development. So it's particularly murky there. Basically I'm still questioning the full effects and can see reasoning for multiple ideas.)

Until just before the start of Edgedancer, Lift firmly believed she wasn't aging because that's what she asked for and what she thought she got. So yes, as far as she's concerned she should never menstruate in the first place and getting her first period is to her an absolute freakout moment. Bear in mind too that she's an Edgedancer so she's got even more control over healing than the vast majority of surgebinders. Her magic doesn't care, reproductive functions are considered natural in the same way that genetic ailments and old age are.

Well, you got me curious so I cracked open my Japanese copy to see what that translation did. It went with the ordinary word for a Buddhist monk but with furigana (basically subtitles for text) rendering the sound of 'Ardent' to tell the reader that's the word that's actually being said. Uses after the first just went with Ardent. So it's not a universal thing across all translations, but still an interesting observation.

Provided you've finished Rhythm of War (or don't mind a very minor spoiler), you might find this topic of interest:

We're about 99.9% certain that Cosmere healing will not terminate a pregnancy under normal circumstances because Spiritually-speaking there's nothing wrong with the mother and fetus' spiritweb is not the mother's spiritweb. Case in point: Lift freaks out when she gets her first period in Edgedancer and she definitely thinks something is wrong with her; her magic disagrees.

Stormlight definitely can help ensure a child is healthier than they would be otherwise because we know that exposure to it generally makes Rosharans healthier than average so extra exposure from the mother being a surgebinder should be even better. Anything that's considered a poison can be healed by stormlight so things like fetal alcohol exposure could be virtually eliminated with just the passive healing. An Edgedancer or Truthwatcher could likely do even more with Regrowth.

Welcome to two days ago when that info first came out...

These WoBs are relevant to the original question and why Brandon isn't going to answer it (and there are more), so there's no 'right' interpretation of the Beyond.

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Questioner

I wanted to know what your stance on gods were, if you were trying-- If you had a meta-message about God.

Brandon Sanderson

If I what?

Questioner

If you had a meta-message about God.

Brandon Sanderson

I do not really. What I'm fascinated by ends up in the books and I'm fascinated by religion. But even in something like The Stormlight Archive, I don't want there necessarily even be a definitive answer? There are god... lowercase "g" gods. Whether there is a capital "G" God is still, in my opinion, left to the interpretation of various people. I'm not necessarily trying to say anything specific, I'm trying to say what the different characters say. Does that make sense? Jasnah doesn't speak my belief, but neither does Dalinar. But they speak their belief, and I try to respect their belief the best I can. So it's more like trying to be true to the different characters.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)

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dIvorrap

Was really Evi the voice that Dalinar heard when he opened Honor's perpendicularity?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. (You knew it was coming.)

So here's the thing--I'm never going to confirm or deny anything from Beyond the Spiritual Realm. Because it is unfair for me to do so. I believe there is an afterlife in our world, while others (quite rationally) conclude there is not.

The Cosmere has systems in place for ghosts and things to be real, yes, but I want it to always be possible for intelligent people to disagree about things like Evi's voice. Spiritual Connection creates visions in the Cosmere that are quite realistic (like all the ones Dalinar experienced.)

What Dalinar heard here could very rationally be a version of such a vision. That's what the Death Rattles are, for example.

Or, it could be his dead wife speaking to him from beyond the grave. Navani would say that's what it is; Jasnah would say it's the first. I try very hard (despite my personal biases) to not undercut the viewpoint of someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife. It is vital to me that the author not sweep in and say, "Yeah, it's cool some characters are Atheists at all who doesn't believe in an afterlife...but nudge nudge, we both know there is one."

The existence of an afterlife (not Cognitive Shadow style, but in the Beyond) in the cosmere is subject to your own personal interpretation. Everything that happens like this CAN be explained by Realmatic Theory, with very valid examples from the books.

General Reddit 2020 (June 5, 2020)

Well, that was a whole bunch of info in the Kuro livestream, along with a surprise trailer to accompany the gameplay footage. There isn't a clean version of it yet but Falcom will probably release it within a day.

So, we've gotten leaks of the newest scans which have info on the recently revealed bunch of characters from the Web CM.

There's a Dengeki livestream coming up in about twelve hours that's supposed to have a new video. We're getting dangerously close to full trailer time (the release is a little over a month away) so if that's not the video we're getting (and I suspect not, see above) it'll definitely be coming Soon.

On 8/22/2021 at 7:32 PM, Eluvianii said:

The only difference I see between Gaius and Kal is mental health. He even attracted the falcon version of a rhysadium. 

But yeah, I mean, it's not only that the colors are bright, but they're also unusual, like the ones in the books. Amber and purple eyes are commonplace in Zemuria. While on the other hand, if you take the ten or so NPCs that make up the general population, it's all brown eyes. 

I'm tempted to start working out which Orders the various characters would belong to. xD

Even Brandon doesn't pronounce it 'properly' (or many other names for that matter) so say it however you like, it's okay.

17 hours ago, Eluvianii said:

I've come to the conclusion that protagonists and important npcs in Trails are lighteyes and everyone else are darkeyes. 

Gaius Kaladin would have something to say about that... because please, tell me I'm not the only person who sees some similarities between those two.

Though now that I think about it, the entire main cast of Kuro would probably be considered lighteyes by color and yeah, most of the main characters of the other arcs probably would too. I can think of a couple that might straddle the line (Estelle, Zin, Lloyd, maybe Anelace, Alisa and Crow depending on the lighting) but most are pretty light in color. And then Reverie gives us a character with heterochromia but both eyes would be considered lighteyes shades. I guess that makes her, like, super-lighteyes or something.