Weltall

Yeah, that was another great one. It would have been nice to get that content in CS4 but considering the context of it and how it would have given away important details in that game (and a lack of a good place to slot that content) it makes sense. Yep, enjoy having relatively convenient access to All-Cancel for the first time... ever.

I think that Kelsier's 'problem' is being stuck on Scadrial when he'd really like the freedom to go elsewhere in the Cosmere and possibly punch some more Shards in the face, rather than incipient insanity... not that he was a paragon of mental health beforehand. He's only been around for a few centuries at this point while the Fused and Heralds are thousands of years old and while we don't have an exact timeframe, we can reasonably assume the Heralds were comfortably past a thousand by the time of Aharietiam when all but Taln were at the breaking point. They also spent most of their immortality being tortured so that didn't exactly help things. We also see with Vasher at least one Cognitive Shadow who is comfortably older than Kelsier and not showing signs of insanity, even if he is wondering if he's really the person who died or just an Investiture copy who thinks he is. I don't think Kelsier ever needs to worry too much about that though, he has far too high an opinion of himself to care about that distinction.

(Implicit CS4 ending spoiler)

I know, right? Did you spot the little detail at the very end?

They're not Cognitive Shadows normally but if/when they die they would presumably be similar to Kelsier at the start of Secret History, persisting in the Cognitive Realm after death and likely for a relatively long span. Whether the way they're affected by their Investiture makes them similar to Slivers in their ability to persist indefinitely, we don't know. Of course, being dropped into Sel's Cognitive Realm isn't necessarily conducive to a long unlife so whether anyone on Sel could last longer than a few minutes as a Cognitive Shadow is up for debate.

As mentioned, it's basically Super Confuse, where the enemy doesn't have a chance to still hurt you anyways like sometimes happens with that status. That last Episode was a surprise. Have you played it yet or just unlocked it?

It could have had one at some point but since we know from WoB that humans on Ashyn predate the arrival of the Shards so I'm inclined to say no, unless Adonalsium had placed one there and set things up to leave it in place. We know Shards can do this so it's not unreasonable to think Adonalsium could have. That said, there's also no reason to think that there was ever a Perpendicularity or that there needs to have been one. Adonalsium literally created the entire star system from scratch so there's no reason that he couldn't have created the original Ashynite humans already in place based on the Yolish template in the same way that Preservation and Ruin poofed humans into existence on Scadrial. We know from Brandon that his working model for how people got from Ashyn to Roshar involves Spiritual travel rather than Cognitive travel, so right now no Perpendicularity is needed. Have you read the excerpt Brandon read from The Silence Divine? It's made clear that some people remained behind after the exodus and are living on floating cities.

In addition to the previous points, we had WoBs that confirmed that Frost was the recipient of the WoK letter years ago (here and here) by combining the two pieces of information that Frost is the oldest character we know and that the letter was written to somebody older than Hoid. Oh heck, just follow this link to Arcanum and go down the list of WoBs we have on Frost and you'll know almost as much about him as anyone not named Brandon Sanderson does. xD

Yeah, that sort of thing can happen with these books.

I believe the important fact that you're overlooking here is that these are hemalurgic constructs. Steel Inquisitors could heal (with appropriate spikes), koloss are hard to put down and kandra are impervious to most forms of harm. Why do the chimaeras being superhumanly durable break your suspension of disbelief when shapeshifers, berserker giants and human pincushions don't?

Except that Rayse makes it clear that he currently can't dedicate much if any effort into meddling in other worlds (which is also explicitly why other Shards aren't willing to intervene) because getting the freedom to do so is one of the conditions he and Dalinar eventually agree to. Per Harmony, whichever Shard is messing around with Scadrial is doing it at the time he's writing the letter and all indications are that the letters are being written or received during the events of the book in which they appear. That would mean that Odium is meddling in another world at a time that he by his own admission can't do so as he'd like. And like I said, Harmony is aware of Odium and the threat he poses. I'm pretty certain that since he believes that it's a Shard he doesn't know that is doing the interfering, it's not Odium; If he even thought that was a possibility that it was Odium's work there's no reason he wouldn't say so to the one guy who agrees with him that Odium is dangerous and the other Shards need to take the danger more seriously. As for the "men of red and gold" there's no reason that he has to be referring to people from outside Scadrial. The southerners could easily fit the other criteria you omitted from that line (they're the bearers of harmonium, the final viable metal native to Scadrial) and with their technology they probably could dominate the rest of the planet as of the end of BoM if they really wanted to. The Set also has access to harmonium and their soldiers wear red so the line could refer to them, if they have some gold association we haven't seen yet

Not officially but when you take the WoBs on Trell we know that it's a Shard we knew at a particular point in time and Harmony's letter in this book name-drops a number of Shards and makes it clear that whoever is interfering with Scadrial isn't one of the ones he's been talking about, and can't be Odium because that was the whole subject of the letter and it would have been the perfect evidence to use to get other Shards invested in Hoid's plea for help. Note how the one Shard he doesn't mention is Autonomy...

I wouldn't expect Autonomy to come messing with Roshar any time soon, she seems pretty busy right now trying to meddle on Scadrial and we know that's happening during the timeskip before the back half of SA. Also, at least some of the Death Rattle references to burning seem (post-Oathbringer) to be from the perspective of the humans who were the original 'Voidbringers' so talk about burning is likely a reference to Ashyn which Khriss even calls 'the burning planet'. It's possible that this one: is also a metaphorical reference from a singer perspective to the humans bringing the darkness of Odium and the flames refer to their arrival from Ashyn. Or as Jasnah and Shallan discuss at the end of WoK, it was from a human perspective and referring metaphorically to the marbled skin of the singers. I mean, the way things are shaping up now and with Brandon going from 'all of SA is intended to be (mostly) self-contained' to ''the back half of SA is going to open things up more' it's likely we'll see more interactions with the wider Cosmere in the back five (especially since I doubt T-Odium wants to wait six books to make with his grand plans to 'save' everyone) but I don't think that necessarily means these particular Rattles are foreshadowing that.

Hence 'without the secondary effects'. Forget controlling the Fallen since those are likely to not be part of the future books, forget enhancing the power of Amberite because that was a weird situation also tied into a plot thread that might not survive the transition from AoN to Cosmere canon, just go with the obvious power of teleporting yourself versus Illuminous' power of teleporting other people and you'd have something that could work without being overpowered.

Per the RoW Ars Arcanum, it's entirely possible that there's some trick to manipulating Aethers and Mraize is simply incapable of it due to a lack of Connection or what have you. Even if he can't use it, an Aether is something from another world and shows off Mraize's worldhopping credentials so it's a worthy display piece. I mean, he can't do anything with a braid of the Royal Locks either but he's got that in his collection, if the flower is one of the Tears of Edgli it's probably not directly useful either and if those 'hairpins' are hemalurgic spikes then they're almost guaranteed to be decayed to the point of uselessness for anything except giving Harmony an opening to commune with you. In other words, not everything Mraize shows off needs to be useful to him as a tool in the way that the jar of Taldaini sand is. That said, I definitely agree that if the Ghostbloods do have the means to use Aethers themselves, they'd want to give people Amberite. I didn't consider the possibility that he's already got some other Aether, which is entirely possible. Since you can only have one of the 'base' Aethers it doesn't even need to be incompatible in the way that you had two opposing sets in AoN (which may not be Cosmere canon), any other Aether would do.

I mean, we've only seen a couple of Aviar talents so it's kind of hard to answer that one but Sak's ability seems more targeted than A-Electrum since it specifically shows you only fatal danger and doesn't require active effort on your part or a constant supply of metal. We also know that at least one species would be useful for navigation, That could be anything from 'here's the best way to get where you want to go' (which miiiight be replicable with F-Chromium depending on how that works) to 'here's a vision of the space ahead of us and what's waiting' or something similar.

Bumping this because it's the most relevant topic for this info, I just came across a WoB where Brandon appears to have decided on the number of Aethers for the reworking: Combined with the earlier WoB about how he's adding new Aethers, it seems we have our upper limit on how many we're gonna be looking at, though it's also possible that instead of there being twelve distinct Aethers we'll be looking at something more like an internal/external or pushing/pulling distinction where you have fewer Aethers but multiple associated powers. Either way, it gives us something to work with. Oh, and based on that older WoB I'm guessing that Bestarian is one of the ones that "didn't work as well", being kinda just there as far as the Aethers go. Ferrous to me sounds like it would be super-interesting Realmatically so I'm hoping it stays even if it gets tweaked a bit. Amberite's basically canonized thanks to WoR and while cultivationspren seem to have been inspired by Verdant I don't see any reason that one couldn't be tweaked a bit and still used. The real mystery is whether the 'God Aethers' would remain despite the rewriting since the way the whole system works is likely to be very different now. Since teleportation is still a cool power I could easily see Night and Illuminous being reworked but without the secondary effects.

That was a great moment, you can just see everyone else thinking 'What the ****? Get back here!' as that happens. <gets popcorn ready>

We don't know how you get Initiated with Aethers in canon so it may not be a power that's easy for people to make use of in the same way that anyone can get access to BioChroma via Breath transfer, or an Aviar if you can find one of the birds. In Aether of Night you just need a bud of the appropriate type to start things off, but there's no guarantee this is still the case and an ambiguous line by Khriss in Rhythm of War's Ars Arcanum suggests there's something tricky about them. Also, the Aviars we've seen have interesting Cognitive and Spiritual effects which may well be in higher demand than the various effects of the Aethers; assuming for purposes of argument that everything seen in AoN is still mostly true their powers mainly operate on the Physical level. There's also a possible prestige factor: Per Arcanum Unbounded the scholars of Silverlight still haven't figured out how to get to First of the Sun and back without everyone dying horribly. Being able to say 'Hey, I have a magic bird from a place that even Khriss doesn't know how to reach' would probably make for one hell of a conversation starter at fancy worldhopper clubs.

Yeah, I opined in one of the older topics that the Gol and especially the Viglix were likely mentioned to establish their existence (particularly the latter who have no onscreen appearance or further mention) so that Brandon could use them in future books that never got written. We also get mention of human cultures who play no direct role in the story and might have been set up for later, particularly the Seaborn; About the only things we know of them are that they live on islands south of Mahallen, have dark skin and apparently make nice rugs. There is a mention that they commonly raid the southern shores of Mahallen in the spring, which sounds like a setup especially since the Imperium is being run out of there at the end of the book. The Harrmen are similarly a background element (though the impact their raiding has on Kavir makes them an important one) and would probably have been explored more in the obviously set up sequel had it ever been written. When the Former is giving everyone a history lesson, he mentions how his sons tried to create weapons to fight each other and each time, the one twisted the other's creation in some way to neutralize the danger it posed. The Gol were created by Makkal to be super-soldiers, then Agaris twisted them by giving them the minds they had originally lacked and a love of beauty, ruining their effectiveness as soldiers. Later Agaris created a virus that sterilized anyone infected (with no other effects or outward signs) and Makkal twisted it to also cause visible discoloration of the skin which made it obvious who was infected. The descendants of those people became the Shentis. Well, not literally descendants but you know what I mean. The Viglix aren't mentioned here so it's possible they existed before Makkal and Agaris started competing for control of Vaeria, or they might have been another of one brother's creations and the Former simply didn't think he needed to list all of them. They were kind of pressed for time after all.

One possibility is that nobody is using the Amberite but it's delicate enough that some of it crumbled and stained his clothes the last time he handled it for whatever reason. Shallan does note that bits of it appear to have flaked off so it's possible some of those flakes caused the staining, rather than someone using it or another Amberite bud and Mraize getting the resulting dust on his pants. One thing we do know for certain that if anybody is using that piece of Amberite, it's not Mraize. That said, assuming that it works the same in the canon works as it does in Aether and it is possible for someone not from whichever planet their on to use them, Amberite is a very nice power to have and would be really useful for a group like the Ghostbloods. You get extremely strong armor that's probably got some Investiture-shielding properites (in Aether we know that opposing bonds repel one another) and you can make weapons or useful tools out of it, even impromptu artificial limbs.

You realize Brandon's never going to confirm or deny that, right? Anyhow, we have Word of Isaac that some of the stars seen in the Arcanum Unbounded chart aren't contained within the Cosmere, meaning that space outside of it is visible to its inhabitants. Depending on how good their astronomy is, various worlds either know or are capable of learning the physical dimensions of the Cosmere and its relation to the wider universe. Brandon hasn't used that term for years, he's corrected it to calling the Cosmere a star cluster. Mind you, given the number of stars Brandon has said it contains (one to two hundred depending on when you ask) it's still a very small cluster.

Exactly the same thing that XSEED did with Oath in Felghana:, take the fan translation, use it as the basis for the official localization meaning that they might go through and edit things so it won't be the exact same text but they aren't going to retranslate everything from the Japanese all over again.

Maybe if you read their announcement before opening your mouth... That's thrice in one day. Wanna try for four?

So Val, how does being proven oh so wrong twice in the same day feel? https://geofront.esterior.net/2021/06/25/from-fantasy-to-reality-our-partnership-with-nis-america/ Yeah, I wouldn't order the 40th Anniversary merchandise that NISA is selling right now, they (or rather Falcom since it's their stuff) used art from after Hajimari was released and there's a visual spoiler in it. Or order it and don't look at it for, like, two years if you care about spoilers.