Yezrien

I think this is just how Brandon likes to name things. You could say the same about Sunmaker, soulcasters, honorblades, or any Radiant order. Also, welcome to the Shard!

Personally I agree with you. I think killing is wrong, and there’s almost always a more moral alternative. But that’s my code, and perhaps your code. Adolin might live by a different code, a set of morals uniquely shaped by the militaristic culture he lives in. And the fact that he might disagree with me on a few points does not make him immoral or amoral. We can’t impose our own rules on others, or condemn them for not believing exactly as we do. Adolin committed murder, which is wrong. He is not a saint. But I don’t think you can declare that he has no moral sense based on legalistic technicalities and subjective definitions. I think you’re making assumptions about Adolin’s motives. I don’t think he was just trying to protect his family’s power. There was so much more at stake than just Kholin dominance of Alethi politics. Sadeas was a threat to the monarchy, and the unity of Alethkar itself. By undermining Dalinar, he would have undermined the world’s readiness for a desolation. This doesn’t make the murder defensible, but it makes Adolin’s motives less selfish and petty than you might think they are.

I’ve never weighed in on this issue before, but... doesn’t the murder prove that he is a moral person? He may not follow an external code, but he is clearly driven by a sense of morality. He didn’t kill Sadeas because of a personal grudge, he did it because Sadeas is a deeply immoral person, who explicitly intended to continue hurting good people for his own benefit. The rules and codes of society failed to stop Sadeas’s crimes, so Adolin took the matter into his own hands. It’s vigilante justice, but it’s still justice. It sounds to me like the real question here is how you define morality. Is it moral to protect good people from bad people, even if that means getting your hands dirty? Or is it moral to obey the law at all times, even when an unjust law allows evil men to get away with murder? Are you a Windrunner or a Skybreaker? (No wonder those two never got along.)

Like many before me, I have tried to predict the names of the remaining unrevealed Shards of Adonalsium. This is what I’ve come up with. First, read these two WoBs. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256-oathbringer-london-signing/#e8689 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/247-ancient-17s-qa/#e5518 When asked if all shards have direct opposites, Brandon says no. But when asked if all shards are paired, he gives it a RAFO. So these are clearly two different questions, and “no” is only the answer to one of them. Here’s my interpretation. All shards are paired, but not all pairs are direct opposites. I propose that there are two different kinds of shard pairings: Hard Opposites and Soft Opposites. Hard Opposites are directly opposed to each other. Their intents are in absolute conflict. The obvious example is Ruin and Preservation, destructive change and benevolent stasis. The conflict between them is Irreconcilable. If the intents of Hard Opposites are like enemies, the intents of Soft Opposites are more like rivals. They ultimately seek the same goal, or address the same issue, but with different philosophies. I believe Devotion and Dominion are Soft Opposites. They are two opposing philosophies on God’s relationship with his people. Dominion thinks God should rule his people, and Devotion thinks God should serve the people. It’s easy to see these two forces warring in the mind of the original God, Adonalsium. But despite their conflicting values, they are not entirely different from one another. They agree that the people-God relationship should exist. They would both be against an atheistic world, where gods keep to themselves. They have differing views, but common interests. Simply put, Soft Opposites have conflict, but they could probably settle on the same planet without killing each other, unlike Ruin and Preservation. Their intents can potentially compromise. Now that I have these terms defined, the next step is to look at all the unpaired shards we know of, and figure out if any of them are actually each other’s counterparts. Odium Honour Cultivation Autonomy Endowment Ambition I think I see a match. I think Autonomy is the Hard Opposite of Endowment. Autonomy is all about noninterference. She doesn’t want any cosmeric stuff to interact with her native people. That’s why Khriss was allowed to leave Taldain, but not to return. And I might even theorize that Autonomy doesn’t want her people (or people in general) to have magic at all, and that she constructed the astronomical weirdness of Taldain specifically to isolate her own magic system on the Dayside, and allow the Nightside civilization to develop magic-free. Endowment is clearly the opposite. Not only does she elevate people to godhood on a whim, she gives every human on Nalthis a little bit of magic to play around with. Endowment interferes, Autonomy doesn’t. Endowment gives power, Autonomy withholds it. Direct opposites. This is where things get highly speculative. We have four shards left with no obvious opposite, so I’m going to propose some hypothetical ones to complement them. Odium’s is the easiest. Odium is hate, so his opposite is love. Or, to use a more shardy-sounding name, Adoration. A Hard opposite. I know the love shard is an unpopular guess because it seems too easy, but bear with me. Adoration is not too similar to Devotion. Devotion is divine, paternal love; Adoration is personal, intimate love. Devotion is a philosophy, but Adoration... is Passion, Dalinar. Ambition’s opposite is Humility. This one also seems a bit obvious, but I think it works. Ambition always strives to achieve more, Humility is content with what it has. They are the two halves of God’s self-image. Ambition is the justifiable arrogance of the most powerful being in the universe, and Humility is the part that empathizes with the little people, and might even be appalled by its own power. Ambition wants power, Humility doesn’t. Ambition would have fought hard against the Shattering, Humility might have welcomed it. These are irreconcilable attitudes, and therefore Hard Opposites. I think the Hard Opposites are easier to figure out. Honor and Cultivation are more complex concepts, without an obvious opposite, which, I think, means they’ll have Soft Opposites. Cultivation’s is Artifice. I propose that this pair is the part of Adonalsium that dealt with creation. Creation is their shared priority, but they approach it in different ways. Cultivation is creation by encouragement, pruning, growth, and evolution. It’s the slow, organic, gentle kind of creation. Artifice is creation by construction, assembly, engineering, gears, and wrenches. Artifice builds things. Artifice will probably be found on a constructed planet, with perfect geometry in its geography, and whole species of golems. It’ll be a world where no one would ever conceive of evolution because everything was so obviously designed. Artifice’s magic system will probably resemble a crafting system. In Arcanum Unbounded, Khriss says “[Scadrial] is one of only two places in the cosmere where humankind does not predate the arrival of Shards.” I propose the other place is Artifice’s planet. Artifice would insist on creating her own variety of humans from scratch. Honor’s Soft Opposite is Conviction. Maybe there’s a better name for that. My first thought was “Ruthlessness,” but that doesn’t sound very shardy. Honor and Conviction are both committed to right action. They both encourage doing the right thing. But Conviction believes in “the ends justify the means.” Conviction encourages getting results by any means necessary, especially underhanded or devious means. He encourages healthy competition, and the survival of the fittest. Honor, of course, is committed to consistent rightness, in both ends and means. He is the thing you don’t sacrifice in pursuit of your goals. He believes in unity and cooperation. In other words, Honor is Dalinar. Conviction is Sadeas. We now have fourteen shards. Honor and Conviction Odium and Adoration Ruin and Preservation Devotion and Dominion Cultivation and Artifice Autonomy and Endowment Humility and Ambition That means we’re missing one pair. And this pair should include... the Survival Shard. Looking at what we have so far, I think we can group the shards into categories, each with four. Divinity Shards, which deal with the role of God in human society. Devotion, Dominion, Autonomy, Endowment. Physical Shards, which deal with creating and maintaining the physical universe. Cultivation, Artifice, Ruin, Preservation. Attitude Shards, which deal with God’s own values and morals. Honor, Conviction, Humility, Ambition. Emotion Shards, which are pretty obvious. Odium and Adoration. Look at that! One category is missing a pair. And you’ll notice that each category contains a pair of Hard Opposites (marked in bold) and a pair of Soft Opposites (marked in italics). So we need a pair of Soft Opposite Emotion Shards. I propose Sorrow and Fear. This idea comes from some old mental health wisdom, and I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out exactly who to attribute this to. It says that depression is when you’re fixated on the past, and anxiety is when you’re fixated on the future. Some people get stuck in one of those. Some people oscillate between them. I think Adonalsium was one of the latter. Sorrow is God’s depression. Fear is God’s anxiety. And Fear, which constantly obsesses about the future, is the shard with the most powerful precognitive abilities. It has foreseen things none of the other shards know about. Things so terrifying that it flees from them, fearing for its own survival. I could (and perhaps will) create a table of shards, like the allomantic table, which divides them into quadrants and into Soft vs Hard Opposites instead of Internal vs External metals. Thoughts? Scathing criticism? Insults?

Simply put, Kaladin can fly (Gravitation), and he can also stick Lopen to a wall (Adhesion). Nale can fly, but he cannot stick people to walls. Instead he can burn them alive. It’s confusing because the word “lashing” describes two different surges.

For Stormlight, he’s created systems for naming in different cultures. The simplest is the Vorin names, which are palindromes (Ialai), or palindromes that are one letter off (Shallan). (Diphthongs, like th, sh, and lh, count as one letter.) There’s a different system for Alethi names, which you can see bits of in Oathbringer. It involves suffixes like -din and -rin, which mean “son of” and “born of” or something like that. But you don’t need to speak Alethi to come up with Alethi-sounding names. Thaylen names have lots of consonants (especially V) and very few vowels.

Maybe Odium’s human followers will start bonding Voidspren, and that’ll create Voidshards. Maybe Moash will be the first. Maybe next time his friend Leshwi dies, she’ll try forming a Nahel bond instead of taking a new parshman host.

He could break Odium's prison...

Humans will leave Roshar for the Singers, and Dalinar will reforge their original homeworld with his stone-healing powers.

Maybe you could explain the background a bit more. What powers did the founders have? What gave them these powers? Where did they go? Why are their children, the Firstborn, running things, and not the founders themselves? Could you tell us about the project as a whole? This is some good worldbuilding, but what's the story about?

I hope you can share some of of OSC's insights into the Stormlight Archive! I bet he'll catch some things most of us missed. Even if it's just an LDS-based analysis of the work, I'd be very curious. (As a non-Mormon, I can't easily engage with Brandon's work on that level, and I've always wondered if I'm missing some of the subtext.)

Thanks! It was necessary because I let my daily wordcounts drop so much in the middle of the month. I got off to a really good start, then got overconfident and started to get lazy. I got up on that last day thinking the best I could hope for was to hit 45k, but I must admit that seeing your victory post inspired me to keep going. I saw how excited you were to have won, and I pushed myself to get to the same point. So I doubly thank you.

I also just won NaNo for the first time! And to make it across the finish line, I had to write 10,000 words today. I didn't think I could do it, but I storming did it. I have never been so exhausted. But now I can read Oathbringer!

DONE. 50165. The novel's barely halfway done, but I broke 50k. I finally won NaNo. Now I can finally read Oathbringer. There is no better reward.

Mother of Tanavast. This is our Rosetta Stone.

This is clearly cosmere. The Krell are from Trell, and Stupid Raj McCaffrey is hoid.

This is a great question. Every situation is different, but I think there's one universal solution: make a decision. It doesn't have to be the right decision, it just has to be made. The more time you spend deciding what to write, the less you spend writing. Make a decision, and write it. If it doesn't work, now you know. Sometimes that's the only way to know what works and what doesn't. That's what first drafts are for. Make your mistakes, then try something different for draft 2.

Agreed. They need to expand and build something new. So far, Disney Star Wars is bogged down with repetition of old ideas and images.

I'll add The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. For middle-grade readers, Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix. I haven't read the Thomas Covenant books, but they probably belong on here as well.

Is this for a particular story? It might help to let the needs of the story shape the magic system.

That's very weird. Why is there Mistborn content on the wiki of some random RPG? But I like that vibranium is on the list. Maybe Captain America's shield is actually a metalmind.

Welcome to the Shard! You may want to check out this thread.

I never read the scene that way, but I like the theory. That glare he gives her could be more than meets the eye. But I doubt he'd actually kill her. He's committed to the law, which means he can only kill people if he's been legally empowered to do so, like he was in Azir. Unless Gavilar gave him special sheriff privileges, the worst he could do is report Jasnah to the authorities. When I saw this thread's title, I assumed it was about shipping. I only clicked on it to see if people were using "Jasnale."

Yesterday was day 6: 1210. My running total is 16,891. If today is a productive day for me, I credit this morning's amazing Oathbringer chapters for inspiring and invigorating me.

This is incredible. On the back of WoK, the Aimians say "Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return." That implies that "Shardwielding" is something that's gone away; it's more than just fighting with plate and blade. I think we just got our first glimpse of what shardplate can really do. And I can not wait for epic battles fought entirely in the sky. The battle for the Shattered Plains is over. The battle for Roshar is about to begin.