Weltall

FYI Sel only has one magic system with regional variations, all of them draw on the Dor and consequently are a combination of Devotion and Dominion. There's no 'regional' difference in the Dor's Investiture. Brandon's even mentioned that the programming-esque nature of Selish magic is a combination of the power being contained in the Cognitive Realm, the personalities of the Vessels and Sel's focus. The last of these is not something the Shards have control over. The nature of a given Shard influences how you become Initiated into a magic system but they don't really have any effect on what you can do with the magic after that point. If Honor and Cultivation had settled on Sel instead, the magic would still likely be form-based and do similar things, but you'd get access to it via oaths/cultivation rather than expressing some variety of devotion/domination.

We don't have an exact timeline but we do know that MB Era 2 happens after Stormlight 5 (Brandon hasn't nailed down exactly where it's going to fall, but definitely after SA5) and we know that happens about three hundred years after MB Era 1, hence Felt would be 300+ years old at the time of his appearance on Roshar. This by itself doesn't mean all that much vis a vis Felt since the trick that most Sevententh Shard members use to extend their lifespans can be used by people from multiple worlds, including people who aren't specially Invested like Baon. So Felt being long-lived doesn't tell us anything one way or another.

Shardblades have names because the spren whose Physical forms they are have names. They continue to have names in the present time because they're storming amazing weapons and should have names so everyone knows why your storming amazing weapon is so special. Kind of like Baligant in the Song of Roland who wanted a sword as special as Charlemagne's Joyeuse, so he named his to match. Makes it easier for people to remember the stories when they can say 'I want to know the history of Oathbringer' and not have to say 'I want to know the history of the sword that looks like it has a fishhook at the end, you know, that one'. We know that before learning the truth Adolin at least believed (more or less correctly) that the Knights Radiant of old had names for their blades and that's why he doesn't give Mayalaran a name. So the trend in naming Shardblades may also be linked to e memory/belief that the swords originally had names, even if nobody remembers them. Anyhow, point being is that Shardblades are named for the spren. Honorblades aren't spren so they don't inherently have names that we know of and we don't have any evidence yet one way or another whether any of the Heralds gave their Honorblades names.

Yeah, to provide some helpful WoBs: In other words, a non-Nalthian is simply incapable of becoming a Drab because that's something unique to how Investiture works on that particular world. Whatever is up with Felt that prompted Brandon to say he should stand out more, it's not that.

It's mentioned in Way of Kings that the city of Stormseat is believed to have been destroyed during Aharietiam. That's over two thousand years before Honor's death around the time of the Recreance. Even if his death was a protracted affair, I don't think it was that drawn out.

Kalad's Phantoms are named after the alias that he was known by in T'Tellir at the start of the Manywar, or at least the name history records. We don't know if he called himself that or if it has a local Nalthian origin. We also know there's at least one other apparent linguistic connection between Nalthis and Roshar that Brandon has confirmed is a coincidence so it's entirely possible that this too is a coincidence. Brandon's noted that a lot of these things are (a good example would be Ati the Vessel of Ruin compared to Aon Ati) though sometimes they're intentional. The trick is figuring out which is which. But either way, good spot! I didn't catch that one.

There's clearly some sort of mechanism in place and not just a straight transmission of 'Royal Locks sDNA' because the power somehow knows who's in the line of succession and who isn't.

His name is Steve. Actual* transcript of his naming: * May not be actual

...derp, I completely overlooked Renarin. Which seems to be his lot in life. Sorry Renarin! Though it's not entirely clear that what Renarin does is new, just extremely uncommon. One of the gems in the archive is from a Truthwatcher who claims that they foresaw what was happening around them and they have to whisper so the others don't hear them as they make the recording. That suggests at least one other Radiant has been in a similar situation to him. Malata/Spark and pretty much the entire Order of Skybreakers don't seem to be unchecked in the same way, they're following their Ideals as they understand them (bearing in mind that we have no idea what Dustbringers swear) and that just happens to go against the other Radiants. I think this is a factor of what I mentioned: There's no organization in place like previous generations had and no Honor around to tell the Radiants what he thinks is the way they should act, so they're acting at cross-purposes to the main characters. That the Skybreakers are led by a man who admits he's insane isn't helping them, nor is the fact that many of them actually swore to follow him personally. But I think that's more a lack of good guidance than a fundamental shift in how surgebinding is working in the present era. For now at least.

Given that everything is subject to entropy anyways and the timeframes an immortal Shard can deal in, Sazed could be a little more Ruin than Preservation without this becoming a problem on anything less than a geologic time scale.

We do know that Honor was communicating directly with the Radiants of the past, which would have served as a guide for how they should act. It's when Honor was dying and no longer lucid that the Radiants of that era who discovered the truth of humanity's origins made the decision to abandon their oaths. One imagines that Notum is worried about what might happen this time, now that they don't even have that much to guide the Radiants. Say, another mass-murder of bonded spren when the current generation finds out just who were the original Voidbringers. Relatedly, there may have been more agreement among previous generations of Radiants about what their various Ideals meant, when Honor was there to guide them and set an example of what, say, 'Life before Death' should mean. The Gem Archive and the in-universe Words of Radiance imply that divisions between the Orders grew over time, at around the timeframe that Honor would have been dying and thus less able to get involved with the Radiants. Thus, with no Honor at all there's more potential for Radiants to do Bad Things, kind of like the early surgebinders before Ishi forced organization upon them. Since we only know of one Radiant who's currently doing things that havent' been done before and that's Dalinar, he's probably not a good basis to judge whether all the Radiants are going to be similarly less checked in their powers than before. If we see Kaladin or Shallan doing things their spren think weren't possible before, then we'll have a better way of gauging things. Well, we have a second Radiant doing the impossible in Lift but that's also due to unusual circumstances...

Given that Brandon has explicitly said that's not going to be the case... nope. Just becasuse people know more about space and think about it differently, it's not going to radically affect the distance between places in the Cognitive Realm. You'd need to have a massive number of deep-space stations spread in the area around a given system to create a big enough collection of thinking minds that they would actualy form an appreciable 'zone' in the Cognitive Realm that would seriously affect the travel time of a worldhopper going to or from that system. And even if you did, most of the Physical Realm is still empty space that has no real Cognitive presence so couple of space stations aren't going to appreciably add to travel times. Let's take a couple examples of large structures and you'll see what I mean. Deep Space Nine from Star Trek is roughly a mile in diameter and the eponymous Babylon 5 is about five miles end to end. The very large space colonies in the Gundam metaseries are maybe twenty miles on the long axis. Assuming every bit of Physical space gets 'grown' into the Cognitive Realm, that's still a very tiny blip in the vast emptiness of space that you can probably avoid with very little difficulty. Even if you have to go through such a region on foot and on the longest possible course, you'd only be adding a few hours travel time at most.

It's a visual representation of a particular thing, as filtered by a particular Cognitive 'region' so Nightblood should show up as a flame if seen in Roshar, as mist on Scadrial etc regardless of where he's actually from, same for anything else.

I saw that one. I wonder if he had in mind what he did with Liar of Partinel where he tried working Aethers into that story (pre-Shattering) because he wanted the magic system but didn't then have any plans to rewrite the original story. Now that he does plan to rewrite the book, it sounds like he's thinking of assigning a Shard to that magic but he hasn't figured out the details yet. I imagine it has to do with how a lot of what he'd done originally got cannibalized into Mistborn and Stormlight Archive, so there isn't a 'go-to' Shard to fill the position and he's got to figure out which 'free' Shard would make the most sense. Fair point, he's from Aether now but it's not guaranteed by that WoB that he'd still be from it in Nightblood. Guess we'll just have to... Read And Find Out? xD

Any Shards not seen before Dragonsteel will be introduced then along with all the Vessels pre-Ascension. One assumes that if there are any of the six Shards whose whereabouts in the present-day are uncertain at that point, we'll find out where they are and get at least some idea what they've been up to in Mistborn Era 4. One other thing to mention is that there's at least two planned works that will be released between now and then which have the potential to introduce more Shards: The rewrite of Aether of Night and the Silverlight novella. We also know Brandon's planning on introducing Aether material in Nightblood which serves as a handy reminder that even the more or less self-contained stories that are in progress now can introduce new Cosmere crossover material. The epigraphs in Oathbringer are another good example, especially if Hoid keeps writing letters.

The point is more that Dalinar could have released Odium and didn't realize it, and that even if intent matters it doesn't mean that Dalinar needs to fully understand the implications in order to have it. The followup to that conversation is Dalinar having to ask what would happen if he did say the words with the right Intent. The implication is obvious, that he could do it without having a full grasp of the consequences and it would still count. The bigger picture being, Dalinar is at a massive informational disadvantage and the potential consequences are enormous. Odium is toying with Dalinar now but that's likely to change following how badly surprised he was when things didn't go according to plan at Thaylen City.

This is where Dalinar is at a serious disadvantage: He has only a vague idea about the nature of the Shards and the agreement between Honor and Odium that he's currently trying to use to fight against Odium, while the latter has all the details and all the time in the world. Witness how Dalinar almost released whatever agreement is binding Odium by accident when the two first spoke. I doubt that a no-show by Team Odium at a battle of champions would actually constitute a loss, more likely the battle wouldn't count as starting until someone took the position. I also doubt that Odium would allow his next candidate for champion to refuse the position and remain breathing. Dalinar's a special case where he's bonded to Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow and had Cultivation chessmastering things behind the scenes. That's one man and he absolutely didn't want the job; Odium has the entire Fused population who literally owe their continued existence to him so I rather doubt he's going to have trouble convincing one of them to take up the position if he absolutely needs to. He's also got the current population of singers and those humans willing to serve him to tap for the job, a la Amaram hosting Yelig-nar. Good luck convincing every single one of them to tell the Shard of Hatred 'no' when he asks pretty please if you'll be his champion, or else he'll make you a Cognitive Shadow when you die so he can do horrible things to you for all eternity.

Vasher has a Breath reserve so even if he's completely incapable of getting Stormlight during the Weepings, he's got that to fall back on. Given what was confirmed in Oathbringer about perfect gemstones however, it's possible he's keeping one or more of those handy for the Weeping. Brandon's implied that Vasher still feeds weekly (presumably still on the Nalthian cycle, which leaves more than enough time for a Highstorm to roll around) by way of confirming that when Vasher tells Kaladin that he makes a distasteful choice every day he chooses to keep breathing, it's not meant literally. I don't think Brandon's confirmed how Vasher consumes it but I can't think of any reason why he wouldn't work like a Radiant and thus 'inhale' the Stormlight from gemstones. They're really just an intermediate storage method between storm and surgebinder anyways, not unlike storing Breath in an object sans Awakening and later retrieving it. Except that the Stormlight does eventually leak out. As for the Everstorm, Brandon said that it signals something bad for Vasher and we know that it didn't provide anyone else accessible Investiture a la Stormlight so it's possible Brandon meant that it was bad because it signaled an extended period where Vasher didn't have acccess to easy Investiture. If that's the case, he probably can't do anything with the Investiture in the Everstorm. On the other hand, Brandon added that it would make sense to us in a long time (he seemed to emphasize that point in the recording of that WoB) so he may have been thinking of something beyond Oathbringer.

Because there's only one way to get access to the magic and that's a bud from someone who already has an aether. Which is why D'Naa had to literally steal a chunk of Amberite from Raeth's palm. Well, there's also going directly to the source (an idea that could easily be done away with in a rewrite, since its narrative purpose can be served in other ways) but we have no idea where three of them are and only the Shentis know about the Verdant source. Anyhow, point being that while aethers are ultimately a very easy system to be Initiated into, the material required to actually get access to the magic is heavily controlled so the various groups outside the Imperium (and the ones within it who'd like aethers) didn't have a plausible means of getting at any buds until just recently. And the Shentis are trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves as much as possible so they're not going to start giving the secret out to everyone, lest it come back to haunt them. If the children were known to be illegitimate I suspect they wouldn't get aethers in the first place. If they weren't known, I rather doubt the woman is going to say anything. If she thinks about it at all, it's probably along the lines of 'Whew, I don't have to come up with any explanations'. If it's found out later after they did get bonds, I suspect that it would be hushed up, quite possibly encouraged by the Dari (y'know, the people who are deliberately obscuring the truth for reasons of their own) and not become wider knowledge. There's historical precedent for this sort of thing, since for example in the Middle Ages, adultery might have been a very serious criminal and religious offense but the social stigma attaching to the husband was such that they wouldn't always admit to it. With their emphasis on their ancestors, I doubt the Aedins are any less strict so there would probably be a lot of social pressure to keep mum. In other words, even if someone was put in a position where they might wonder about why their (not) children could bond the same aether as them, it's not likely they'd start publicly questioning things. Also, the Aedin enjoy a nice position at the top of the pecking order and they're not going to want to rock the boat even if some of them do find out. And non-Aedin are never going to find out about this sort of thing, until the exceptional circumstances that gave D'Naa and others outside the Aedins a chance to bond Verdant. There aren't all that many Dari and most of the details of the religion are kept secret from the general public. There also aren't that many Vo-Dari chosen and they probably deliberately don't keep written records of this sort of thing, so it's harder to notice the pattern. Given what the Dari were perfectly ready to do, they probably wouldn't shy away from murdering anyone who looks like they're getting suspicious either. The people might not have such knowledge but Khriss would and we'd be getting an Ars Arcanum so we'd get the juicy details that way. Plus, Brandon would presumbly delve into more specifics so even if the in-universe characters don't understand what they're describing we'd get a better understanding just from observing. Especially when it comes to the massive changes that Ferrous bonds create, which in the case of the heat/light ones at least are basically Perpetual Motion Machines that output energy in the Physical with no apparent input. That's gonna be worth a couple of pages by itself. And there is sometthing unique/important about aethers specifically. Peter has said that there's a reason that Brandon kept Aether of Night's magic system canonical even before he confirmed that he was going to rewrite the book (and after he'd decided his attempt at repurposing the magic for Liar of Partinel was a non-starter) we just haven't figured out what that reason is yet.

My thinking is that it would be a fun meta-reference to how Aether contributed a lot to what became the published Mistborn Era 1 (and there's clearly something we still don't know about Preservation and Ruin given Ati's mention of Vax and Khriss' comments about it having a different method of Initiation) but I'd agree that aside from that mystery which may be something completely unrelated, it's not strictly necessary to tie Aether to any of the previously-seen Shards. I mean explaining in Realmatic terms, how they work vis a vis the powers and especially the Ferrous bonds, which seems like it would be a very Spiritual magic. Actually, getting into the Realmatics would help clarify the conflict between what people in-universe believe about the Aedin and the ability to bond aethers and the reality that anyone can bond by giving us details on how Initiation works and why. The fact that it's kept from the general population doesn't really need further explanation: The people who already have bonds enjoy the prestige and would prefer to remain special rather than see the powers spread out and as the Patriarch says, the system has worked and kept order in the Imperium for centuries. Most Aedin themselves don't know the truth and believe the story that only certain family lines can form bonds; so far as we know it's only the Vo-Dari and the reigning Emperor who are in on the secret. Would you mind clarifying your thoughts, because I'm really not sure how providing more explanation on this process would result in things making less sense?

No, that's a 'neither confirm nor deny' answer, better known as a RAFO. xD Welcome to the Shard!

I stand corrected. xD

Radiant shardplate can be summoned and dismissed at will (seen as far back as the first Starfall vision, made very explicit in its reappearance in Oathbringer) so the armor probably doesn't normally persist unless the Radiant is actively wearing it, therefore it might not have been possible for someone to wear shardplate belonging to another Radiant. That said, we do know from the latter run through the vision that Radiant shardplate interferes with other people's surgebinding just like the armor does in the present day so if you could wear another Radiant's plate it would probably also interfere with your attempts to surgebind out of it.

Would you be surprised if I told you that Brandon has been asked this and RAFO'd it? I thought not... Brandon did also say that Hoid is hoping that he can do some creative things with Stormlight with his bond and that in this case at least he found it better to 'play by the rules' than to try and cheat the system like he's done elsewhere. The latter also made it explicit that yes, he did form a Nahel Bond in that scene. My guess is that getting Rosharan Lightweaving wasn't really a factor in bonding a Cryptic and he won't be using it too much, unless some situation comes up like Thaylen City where it would be possible to do some pretty ridiculous things with all that Stormlight. He's already got a magic that can do the same thing and the one WoB makes it sound like it's more 'access to Stormlight' that he found enticing. That and a Cryptic bond imposing the fewest restrictions on his actions compared to the alternatives was likely a factor too.

Brandon has on several occasions cautioned readers against assuming that there is a Devil/Satan analogue in the Cosmere. Just because Brandon worked on a series with a strong dualistic cosmology and there are other prominent examples out there in fantasy doesn't mean that the Cosmere has to follow the same pattern. Also, Tolkien called and would like to remind you that he was doing this sort of thing decades before Jordan or Donaldson.