Weltall

The livestream has come and gone and we got our new gameplay footage, though I was wrong and we didn't get a look at the mechanic I was expecting, just some more characters (main and guest) in Action and Command Battle modes. Got some new character reveals too.

Brandon has RAFO'd a question on why he didn't change the southerners to survive in the new world so it's likely to come up later. That said he seems quite impressed with them and their accomplishments (contrasting them to the northerners who have it so easy) so one kind of gets the impression that he wants to see how much further they can develop on their own, especially since his own attempts to actively provide for people have kind of backfired. And no, Wax and Wayne wouldn't need portable cooling to survive in the south because it's too cold there for the southerners to be comfortable without the aid of technology, and they're still uncomfortable even up north where one assumes it's warmer. They might want to bring jackets though.

I haven't reread EotW in some time so it's possible she did say something like that and I'm not recalling it. It's also quite possible that either Moiraine didn't know about Wells at that point (being the most obvious 'objects that hold Power') or, more likely, RJ hadn't nailed down the magic system yet.

1) Objects can in fact hold or manipulate the One Power, that's pretty much what ter'angreal do. There's even a particular subset of ter'angreal whose entire purpose is to store the Power, though they don't get mentioned until late in the series. 2) The glow is to all appearances a visual representation of the sheer amount of Power that its wielder can channel, there are enough instances of the Power described in terms of glowing that it's not surprising a powerful amplifier artifact might also glow as it does its thing. 3) The giant statute sa'angreal also glow really really brightly when they're used. I don't recall if the access key ter'angreal glow as well.

The titular Dark One does appear to fill that sort of role, but until we know how the Narrative got started it's hard to say whether it's actually the case or it just looks that way. While we're on the subject, how many worlds are out there anyways? This might as well be Brandon's motto as a writer, even moreso than Sanderson's Laws. Speaking of the connection between worlds, I got a very strong Discworld vibe (via Hwel) from the interlude where Shakespeare writes about Mirandus

One thing that might also help explain the relative lack of knowledge of biochemistry is that they probably have less pressure to research certain things due to the population being unnaturally healthy. Sazed basically waved a magic wand and made genetic defects go away for the northern Scadrians so there's going to be a lot fewer cases of people born with medical issues that would prompt people to start asking 'Hey, why is this happening and is there something we can do about it? Let's look into it!'. We also know that the Words of Founding include a compilation of what Sazed had in his copperminds, which we know included medical knowledge. It's likely that the post-Catacendre civilization had knowledge that was 'good enough' that it took care of most of their needs so there wasn't as much need to go looking for more. This might be another of Sazed's ideas that didn't work out quite so well, like how he made the Elendel Basin so productive. We know he dropped hints about technology he wanted the Scadrians to develop (mainly electricity) but we don't know if he did the same for medical knowledge and it might be that he essentially gave them too much too soon and it stifled progress.

The only one we know of is Nightform, from the Song of Secrets. Given the number of Regal forms implied to exist, it's a safe assumption there are more.

Clean shots of the new Kuro update have surfaced so we've got some more details: EDIT: And we got a new teaser video that also dropped late and while it's short there's a lot to see. Seeing how we just got this new video, it's pretty much a given that the upcoming Dengeki livestream which promised a new video is going to be gameplay footage rather than the full trailer. Now that a certain mechanic has been revealed, my guess is that's part of what we'll be getting in eighteen hours or so.

You're asking in the wrong topic...

While I'm hesitant to take an obviously sensationalized story too seriously, I also really really want Ferrous bonds to be canon so we can get a Realmatic explanation for how they work, so I'm fine with giving Nicelle the benefit of the doubt here if that's what it takes.

Based on the description we get of the things, it would supercharge the power of a guy who's already bonded to a demigod Splinter of Honor that is also a fusion with the Cognitive Shadow of a former Vessel, with incredibly powerful abilities that include serious Realmantic manipulation. Combine those with one of the four Commands that were apparently involved in the creation of the Cosmere and... yeow. I mean, one reason the Sleepless were willing to entertain Rysn's bargain in the first place is that she can't really do anything with the 'Change' Dawnshard because she lacks access to any Invested Art. Giving Dalinar that sort of power, whatever it does, would be pretty much the exact thing that they were trying to prevent from happening in the first place.

I'm not sure if you're serious or making a vague attempt at something that, if it had been done properly, would have resembled satire...

I think you're reading more into that statement than Brandon intended. He said that Todium didn't gain the memories he excised, which sounds more like 'I'll take these Breath-stored memories from you and take them for myself as if the Breath was being transferred' or like you could 'gain' memories out of a coppermind. The analogy isn't as different as you think; once the memory is in the coppermind it's a fungible asset that can be transferred but it can't be copied... though it can be altered, as we see Ruin do to Sazed and historically did to Kwaan. It's not unprecedented in the Cosmere for externally stored memories to be tampered with. In the alternative, even if he doesn't know exactly what was in the memories all he would need or want to do is remove the most recent memories so as to erase the last few minutes from Hoid's recollection. Excising something as huge as Hoid's memories of a relationship with another person would mean tampering with lots of memories and not only that, it would require very specific tampering of the kind that you don't think Odium is capable of to target those and only those memories. Remember that the entire point of Odium messing with Hoid's memories is to try and hide the fact that he gave away that 'Odium' and 'Rayse' are no longer synonymous, while still allowing a do-over of the conversation to happen in order to reinforce the desired outcome. If Hoid comes away from the experience with obvious holes in his memory, he may not know exactly what happened but he's gonna know that something happened and that's going to put him on his guard in the exact way that Todium wanted to avoid in the first place.

I can't think of a single reason why Todium would want to remove those memories since the more he alters, the more likely it is that Hoid will notice what's been done. By removing something as major as memories of a relationship, not only does it dramatically increase the risk that Hoid notices something's wrong but it exponentially increases the odds that somebody else notices that he's acting differently. Todium's entire purpose in messing with Hoid's memories there was to erase a few minutes worth of conversation to hide the blunder that gave away that Rayse isn't Odium's Vessel any more, anything beyond that would potentially compromise that goal and at least put Hoid on his guard. This is of course setting aside the theory that Hoid engineered some part of that confrontation, witness how he had just enough Breath that the damage done dropped him off the Second Heightening.

Some Kuro info appears to have leaked early and ryokutya gives us the bare details. Hajimari/Reverie spoiler: Good luck!

There was a minor Kuro update that slid in quietly last week, the official site now has a page for all the shop-specific bonus goodies. Falcom's own offering is (as typical) still unrevealed and other store goods don't have any promotional art yet. There are at least two different DLC item packs (from Tsutaya and Rakuten respectively) but what they contain hasn't been revealed yet. One very interesting detail that's been noted in these shop goodies: I'm gonna need a bigger carton of popcorn, I think. Speaking of Episodes that hit you harder than you might have expected... that one manages to punch all your buttons at one point or another.

I wonder if that's even possible, whether because Leras did something to make it only work for one person at a time or because of Cosmere metaphysics. Brandon RAFO'd the question of what would happen if two people simultaneously grabbed for a Shard so we don't know whether or not that's possible (I'd expect that what's true for Ascension via a Shard applies similarly to Ascension via a large chunk of its power) but the way that the Well was set up was intended for one person to find and use the power so I imagine that having a whole group of people trying to enter the Well at once could do some funky things vis a vis who actually gets to call the shots. That seems like a complication that Leras might not want to have dealt with. It also sounds from its description like the pool isn't that large, so whether multiple people can fit in that physical space at once is uncertain. It is however an interesting question and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if there were multiple people who Ascended using the well before Alendi went looking for it. As noted, the Terris people had feruchemy beforehand and we still don't know how they came to be the people to express the power, though Brandon says the seeds of it are latent in every Scadrian. Also, since the Well refills every 1024 years and we have a tentative timespan of something like ten thousand years from the Shattering to the present (a number Brandon echoed in the context of how old Scadrial is) that leaves time for a whole bunch of cycles depending on how long after the Shattering the planet was actually created and populated.

Well, there's always fanfiction for that; It wouldn't be hard to come up with a reasonably plausible method of making a multiverse work for fic purposes. Heck, there's another WoB where Brandon admits that if you realllllly want to you could imagine it happening (Reckoners spoilers in the link) so you could make a crossover of it and get your AU that way. But yeah, canonically it's not happening and neither is time travel.

You're misremembering the context; per Oathbringer Honor was still alive at the time but he was dying and wasn't in a position mentally where he could help the Radiants of that era deal with the revelation. The WoB that states that Honor's death was a protracted event even says that yes, the vision of the Recreance was created from Tanavast's memories, meaning he had to have been alive to see it. So does this one that's even older.

Well then... <gets some more popcorn ready>

Seeing how you're in the postgame, it wasn't hard to guess.

Speaking of actual characters, we got a little surprise in Kuro news this morning via an update to Falcom's website. Spoilers for Reverie and CS4 by implication:

Reverie Postgame While we didn't know this for a fact pre-CS3, it was pretty much inevitable after Azure.

It's a good thing you didn't look up Falcom's teaser for the big expansion beforehand, because they gave that away in one of the screenshots...

Ahhh yes, that one. On the initial release of the game, it was even the last thing you could do since the bulk of the postgame content was added in a big patch a couple of weeks after launch.