Saodar

As of right now, we know of 15 of the 16 Shards. I have a theory about the last Shard's Intent.

We know from WOB that there's a shard that "just wants to survive." There are also WOBs that could contradict my theory for sure.

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Chaos

Give us the name of a Shard's intent we have not seen before.

Brandon Sanderson

There is one who just wants to hide and survive.

General Signed Books 2011 (Nov. 8, 2011)

"Survive" sounds like it could be an Intent but we know that it's not. Shardic intents seem to sometimes go to extremes of their areas: "odium" could be considered extreme hatred, "ruin" could be extreme decay/destruction, etc. So what if "survive" is the less-extreme version of this shard?

The Shard I propose is Ferocity.

When I think of something that just wants to survive, I think of a cornered animal. A cornered animal is ferocious, but not malicious. They'll do anything they possibly can to survive, maybe even escape. But there's no malicious intent. Just a need to survive.

An aluminum-foil hat for sure, but what do people think?

29 minutes ago, Invocation said:

...so unless it would send that to another level, I don't think they'd necessarily need a 5th Ideal Radiant to pull that kind of thing.

This is exactly what I'm theorizing: an existing function of the spren, boosted and powered by the strengthened relationship with the Radiant.

I'm typically of the frame of mind that new abilities don't come out of nowhere, they build on what is already present. This feels like a natural progression, as we've already seen Syl becoming more "advanced" in the physical realm (i.e. changing her dress's color)

There's a lot of thoughts going around as to what new abilities might be gained at the Fifth Ideal of the Windrunners.

One possibility I thought of is the Radiant spren is brought enough into the Physical Realm that they can Surgebind almost on their own. For example, a spren could lash an item toward the Radiant, almost acting as a form of telekinesis.

I'd be curious to hear what other people think of this idea!

I was doing some digging around on the Coppermind and I had an idea.

We know already that metals used to make fabrials often have similar effects as the same metal's use in Allomancy. For example, iron in a fabrial housing makes an attractor, while steel makes a repellent.

We see the Fused making use of a fabrial that blocks Radiant powers, and Urithiru has defenses that block Fused powers. What if these fabrials are using chromium housings? Chromium is used in Allomancy to wipe out someone else's metal reserves, but there's also this little tidbit:

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A Leecher could prevent a Shardbearer from summoning their blade, and can prevent a weapon using Investiture from working.

These effects can be seen:

All this being said, I can't actually remember if the metal in the fabrial used by the Fused was identified or not. So I might be entirely wrong.

Not sure if I need to spoiler tag things, but I did just in case...

On 11/24/2020 at 9:41 PM, Nameless said:

So, when Rock says that he is leaving, he says that he and Kaladin "will not see each other in this realm" and that if they meet again, it will be in the realm of gods. I took this to mean that Rock gets sent off to either go to other worlds, or to do some job in Shadesmar. What do you guys think?

I interpreted this as seeing each other again in the Spiritual Realm, i.e. after they both die. I don't think there's any Worldhopping implications to it, but I might be wrong.

On 11/20/2020 at 3:48 PM, Jaconis said:

My initial reaction was very similar and thus annoyed/scared me. Rereading the entire scene makes me feel like Wit expected this, or at least something like this. 

His little show literally right before his interaction with Odium is about fooling people by making them focus on one thing while you do another. What was the point of all that if not to foreshadow that this was a plan by Wit to fool Odium. 

I had this thought too; after all, I think it's significant that Mr. Sanderson ends the section emphasizing that it "had gone exactly as he had imagined," and saying it twice in total.

But I also think it's significant that it's going as he imagined, not as he planned. I think this distinction might be vitally important: he could have imagined all kinds of terrible things, and knowing Wit he probably planned for them. But not necessarily.

Yeah, this is really really terrifying to me. The Cosmere implications of a lot of this book are staggering.

3 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

In the Warbreaker audiobook, it was extremely mild mannered and even toned. Actually, Invocation's answer matches up with that pretty well.

That's a good point actually, I hadn't considered that there would be an audiobook version. Do people consider those voices "canon?"

I'm curious to hear how others of you guys would describe Nightblood's voice. What qualities does it have? Does it sound like someone else in your mind?

I'll mark this as spoilers just in case.

On 8/6/2020 at 0:43 PM, Karger said:

Warbreaker is kind of confusing.

It is, but that's part of what makes it so fascinating to go back and look through!

For reference, this is The Way of Kings chapter 25

I'm doing my reread of the Stormlight Archive to prepare for Rhythm of War, and I came across the chapter where Lirin references the various throws in the game breakneck. I was wondering what other people thought the game was like. In my head, it's throwing six dice over and over, kind of like Yahtzee. What do you think?

I just happened to glance at the back flap of the book jacket of The Way of Kings and I noticed something interesting. Under Mr. Sanderson's bio, the jacket art is credited to Michael Whelan (pretty normal) but his author photograph is credited to Nazrilof. Just a fun little easter egg, most likely. But what if it meant something...

I was wearing some glasses earlier, and I wondered what - if anything - I could Awaken them to do. I'm not sure if anything cool would happen, but I'm curious to hear what other people think.

4 hours ago, Booknerd said:

oh yeah. woops

Hey, no worries  The fun is in the discovery, isn't it? This was fun to think about, thank you.

On 4/17/2019 at 8:24 PM, Awaken Returner said:

Simpler, can you make Ents using Awakening?

I don't think it would create a Lifeless tree, at least not how you're thinking.

I think what you're looking for is simply an Awakened log that's told - via it's command - to act as an Ent would.

My understanding of Lifeless is that they're awakened with one breath and it acts similarly to how it acted when it was alive. A Lifeless tree would therefore - in my understanding - turn grey, continue to lie on the ground, and maybe grow a little bigger over time.

I don't have all the answers of course, but I think you're confusing Lifeless with regular Awakening on one important point: making things Lifeless does not make them act human. We see that when Vasher (I think it's Vasher, it's been a while) creates a Lifeless squirrel.

Hopefully this is helpful.

I had a thought: speaking the words to an Ideal are probably meaningless, unless you have the right Intent. Bear with me here, but words that need Intent are also necessary for Awakening objects. We know that at Awakeners of the Sixth Heightening have "instinctive awakening," making them able to do basic commands instinctively. So my question is this: would a person of the Sixth Heightening instinctively know the words for Ideals, and spren bonds? Or maybe only the First Ideal?

5 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

One of the Truthwatcher gems from the Urithiru Gem Archive reveals that at least one other Truthwatcher was able to see the future:

It's unclear what exactly that means.  It could mean that all Truthwatchers can see the future, but then it wouldn't be such a secret.  It could mean that Sja-anat "enlightened" a Truthwatcher spren in the past, but it's thought in the book that that was impossible.  

We know that spren have bonded with two Radiants in the past - an old Radiant and a new one - so is it out of the question that Glys himself has been bonded to someone before?

26 minutes ago, Grim said:

I picked up Elantris at the end of July on a whim...... I just finished reading Skyward and read the rest of the Cosmere (novels, novellas and short stories) works in between. So I thought I'd come check out the Sanderson community maybe ask for some recommendations of other authors the community enjoys.

I always recommend Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind if you haven't read it.

Posting makes me feel like I have a chance at winning...

We know from a WoB that allomantically burning aluminum would heal you from the withering caused by Shades. Could burning Aluminum also heal you from a shardblade wound? Obviously not a life-ending one, but if my arm was killed by a shardblade could I burn aluminum to restore it?

Considering that Coppermind states era 2 is set about 300 years after era 1, I would guess immortality is more likely, but that seems like something that wouldn't happen. Perhaps they can compound like the Lord Ruler did?

Edit: Perhaps Harmony gave them the ability to compound to help him run the civilization in the beginning

What we know:

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kalamitous_emoashions

Obviously, we know that spren look different in the Cognitive Realm, as opposed to in the Physical. Seons, from Elantris. Do they look different?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

So, what do they look like? Do they look like people, or something different?

OB spoiler:

12 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

Most magic systems do not have a way to directly access the Cognitive Realm.  In fact, I believe Roshar is the only ones who have a confirmed method (the Surge of Transportation).  Selish magic can probably manage it, because it seems like they can program the Dor to do basically anything.  

The majority of Worldhopping happens via Perpendicularities (i.e. Shardpools).  These are places where so much Investiture is collected that it "pierces" between the Realms, allowing access between them.

 

I might be wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that any magic system could do it, just some of them we've never seen it happen/don't know how it would work. Again, I could be totally wrong

What would happen if you were Cosmere-aware and Commanded an object to move to a different realm? Would this be possible?