Yezrien

Here's a simple solution: flashbacks. They don't have to be full scenes or chapters, but he can easily reminisce (internally) about previous experiences where his muteness was more impactful. He could think about how much nicer his current station is. Or, simpler still, you can just tell the reader that he's mute. This is one of those cases where show-don't-tell might be more trouble than it's worth. I'm not saying you, the omnipotent author, should address the reader directly. You can just create a situation where it makes sense for him to think about it. Like this: I'm inventing terms and making some assumptions about the world, but you get the idea.

Thank you! I forgot about that.

Are the manyhearts the only way to access the Forces? And could you give the villain some limitations on his destruction/corruption powers?

Whenever I think about this, I always come to the same conclusion: there's nothing I'd rather be than a gold compounder. But I think a Leecher-Steelrunner would be interesting. The ultimate anti-allomancer operative.

This possibility has come up before, but I want to address it more directly. I think the Everstorm is more than just an invested cloud, or an angry perpendicularity. I think there has to be some kind of spren inside it, holding it together, perhaps controlling it. In other words, the Everstorm has its own version of the Stormfather: the Everstormfather. And I think this Everstormspren plays a much more vital role in the Everstorm than the Stormfather does in the Highstorm. The evidence of this is highly sarcastic, but (I hope) compelling nonetheless. It has been the case, time after time, that when a magical mystery appears on Roshar, the solution is always the same: it's a spren. Where do the Knights Radiant get their powers? Bonding a spren. What are shardblades? The spren. Shardplate? Probably spren. Fabrials? Spren. Parshendi forms? Bonding spren. Giant crustaceans? Antigravity spren. Weird goings-on in Kholinar? Prophetic death rattles? The Thrill? Just some giant, sinister spren. What exactly is the Everstorm, and how can it be stopped? I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that the answer will have something to do with... a spren! Probably a big, evil Odiumspren. Probably an Unmade. We're told that the Everstorm is definitely something new, but old in design. It was conceived a long time ago, perhaps during a previous Desolation, but not implemented until the present day. But why? The Everstorm, by constantly reviving the Fused, makes the Desolation permanent. It seems like a huge advantage, which they should have deployed the moment they came up with it. As far as we know, all it requires is some singers in Stormform, which were probably abundant in the Desolations of old. So why didn't they do it? Occam's Razor would probably point to either Honor or the Oathpact. One of those two things somehow prevented the Everstorm from forming, or threatened to swiftly dissolve it. The simple answer is that the Everstorm is only possible now that Honor is dead, or now that the Oathpact is weakened. But I'm going to propose another factor. Maybe creating the Everstorm requires something we can't see. Maybe it requires that something be sacrificed. Odium wasn't willing to make this sacrifice back in the olden days, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He has finally chosen to sacrifice one of the Unmade. My theory is that one of the Unmade had to sacrifice its freedom and its identity, and be transformed into the Everstorm. It is one of the Unmade that are presently not accounted for: Chemoarish and Dai-Gonarthis. One of those two lives inside the Everstorm, holding it together. And Dalinar, or another Bondsmith, will eventually destroy the Everstorm by trapping this Unmade in a gem. It could also be Moelach. As far as I know, there have been no Death Rattles since the formation of the Everstorm. If this is true (someone please tell me if it's not), it's the only real evidence behind this theory. In the ancient Desolations, Odium chose not to make this sacrifice because it wasn't worth his while. If Honor could simply destroy the Everstorm, or if the old Oathpact prevented it, then it wasn't worth the sacrifice of an Unmade. Or perhaps he was satisfied with Desolations as a cycle, and saw no need to make a permanent one. The evidence in Oathbringer does suggest that things were going well for him. Maybe he thought he was just a few Desolations away from total victory, so he saw no need to speed things up at the expense of one of his most powerful servants. This was all changed by the Melishi Incident. The lobotomy and enslavement of the Parsh deprived Odium of his armies, and the Everstorm was the only way to get them back. No servant, even an Unmade, is as valuable as an entire race. That's why they dug up the "old design." The real purpose of the Everstorm was to restore the Singers. Continually resurrecting the Fused was just a convenient side effect. Thoughts?

Feruchemical nicrosil is one of the great mysteries of the modern cosmere, so it's hard to speak with any confidence about it. But I'll say this much: all compounding draws huge bursts of investiture from Preservation. A nicrosil compounder and an iron compounder are both doing basically the same thing; the only difference is that the iron compounder turns that investiture into weight, and the nicrosil compounder turns it into... something else. Drawing this quantity of investiture from Preservation does not seem to affect the Shard itself in any noticeable way. And even if the soulburster was storing investiture from a foreign shard, like surgebinding, the compounding would still draw power only from Preservation. It would be using Preservation's power to mimic Honor's, but it should not affect Honor. I think.

The only part that strikes me as problematically Mistborny is the Yellowbloods. Other than that, I like it.

Yes, well, my above point only applies to live action adaptations. With animation, anything is possible. I maintain my belief in Stormlight: The Animated Series.

This has been discussed in the Stormlight adaptation thread. We'd all like to see it, but it's unlikely to happen because epic fantasy is grotesquely expensive to film. Adapting any cosmere work would cost a lot more than the arrowverse.

Okay, that makes more sense. Can you tell us why the other clerics take vows of silence? Because maybe they're corrupt, and they don't take their vows too seriously; they talk when they're alone, and occasionally they let a word or two slip in public. The true mute doesn't because he can't, but people will assume that he's just the most pious of them all. But if he's actively hiding the fact that he's mute, do you need to convey that he's different? You can convey it to the reader through internal monologue, but it seems like it shouldn't be expressed much in-world.

BranDune Sanderson As far as I know, there has never been a thread devoted to this topic, so I'm going to start one. Brandon is known to be a huge fan of Frank Herbert's Dune. He credits the book as a major inspiration, and on Writing Excuses Brandon frequently cites Dune as an example of great writing and worldbuilding. The purpose of this thread is NOT to accuse Brandon of ripping off Dune. It is a just-for-fun thread to discuss parallels between Dune and the cosmere, and to build theories based on the possibility of future parallels. I'll get the ball rolling. (Expect minor cosmere spoilers, and major Dune spoilers.) White Sand (obviously) Prescience Chasmfiends Miscellaneous connections and theories

I think the voice-in-your head thing might be a problem. If he can communicate that easily, he's basically not mute. He isn't significantly different from other people because he doesn't have to work around his disability. The signspeak is the same; it creates a situation where his disability doesn't matter. In other words, I think you've made life too easy for him. I recommend severely limiting the use of the telepathy (perhaps restrict it to certain people), and force him to interact with lots of people who don't know signspeak. Make his muteness an obstacle for him, which he can only partially overcome. Show his frustration and sadness. Watch The Shape of Water. Also, sign languages are often grammatically different from spoken language. For example, if you want to express "I am going to the store today," the actual signs you make might just translate to "me go store today." It would be interesting if the signspeak scenes were actually written that way. That doesn't specifically help with this problem, but it would be cool.

Sadly, scientific principles were conceived to explain the physical universe — not to help fantasy writers. If you’re going to use the four fundamental forces, you need to apply an enormous dose of Brandon’s 2nd Law. Controlling those forces is like controlling the four classical elements (which this is basically the modern version of); having a vague notion of “control” over any one of them makes you instantly overpowered. The fundamental forces are actually worse than the classical elements because they can’t be limited in the same way. You can make earthbending manageable by saying “you can only control earth that’s within 20 feet of you, and only 500 pounds at a time.” What are you going to say to a StrongNuclearForcebender? “You can only create explosions of a magnitude lower than 100,000 tons of TNT?” “And only right next to you?” If you really want to go this way, I recommend doing what Brandon did with the Surges: compress each force into a specific, limited superpower. If you want your characters to feel more godlike, I recommend you ditch the fundamental forces entirely. If there’s an actual God in this universe, and the magic is part of his power, it should feel very natural to make things more mystical, and less scientific. Build the powers around themes and divine attributes.

Good stuff. I voted for Aurell because I like the mystery plot. And because her situation feels very Brandonish to me. Casteal is intriguing too. What's going on with her internally?

That'll be a short story in the next Arcanum Unbounded: "The Eleventh Princedom." There was once an eleventh princedom in Alethkar, but eleven is unholy asymmetrical number, so one of them had to be destroyed. But the remaining ten princes couldn't agree on who would claim the land, so they just let all the local highlords become semi-independent. Do we know that the area was called "Crownlands" before Gavilar's conquest?

Names aren't that important at this stage; you can always change them later. Could you tell us a bit more about the story, and who these characters are? I promise a few sentences of explanation will not spoil the whole book. (as long as you don't give away the ending, of course.)

Brandon's three laws are a great place to start. Try the coppermind page on them. It's a good summary. Based on your opening post, I suspect you already understand the First Law, but the Second and Third are just as important. Feel free to tell us more about the system you're working on. You've come to a place where magic systems are always welcome.

Well, some of this is just writerly common sense. Kaladin and Shallan dominate the first two books, so they have to be different from each other to give the story some variety. It would get monotonous if they were too similar. But you could also make the argument that they are similar. They're both Radiants with enormous responsibility, both case studies in mental illness, both broken people haunted by their traumatic past. I think that's a big reason their romance never got off the ground; they're both emotionally shaky and high-maintenance, and they both need someone a little more stable to steady them. It's a pretty realistic situation, and it explains Shadolin pretty well.

She's going to be one of the main characters in the latter half of the series, but Brandon doesn't want her to come out of nowhere in book 5. He's easing her into the spotlight and building anticipation for her flashback story.

That is correct.

Good catch! The culture I associate most with halberds is imperial China, which used them centuries before Europe did. And Azir, with its expertise in bureaucracy and civil service, is a decenty close analogue, especially compared to the more feudal society in Alethkar. It might be appropriate to say that the halberd is a weapon of full-time professional soldiers, which the centralized Azish government would have a lot of. In Alethkar, the professional soldiers are mostly lighteyes, who prefer swords because of their cultural cache. The darkeyed troops, being more of an ad hoc militia than a proper standing army, just don't match the historical profile of the typical halberdier.

Remember the interlude about the Ardent reading the romance novels? Remember how defensive she got about her preferred male lead? I wonder if there was more to that story than we thought. If Odium knows how much passion we humans have for our fictional characters (and their love lives), he might use that to sow dissent and turn human nations against each other. There's probably an Unmade who lurks around forum threads and whips up flame wars. Like Nergaoul, but nerdier. It's Nerdgaoul!

The Alethi spears are probably a little different from many real-world spears. They're seen as universally inferior to the sword, which tells us that they probably don't have a huge length advantage. Based on the amount of skill that goes into wielding one (consider Kaladin's "kata"), I'd guess it's a short spear with a long blade, and at least some slashing potential. The Alethi have an obsession with swords, and I think their "spearman" is engineered to emulate the functions of a swordsman. So the Alethi spearman's combat style, as well as the spear itself, just aren't part of the lineage that eventually gives rise to halberds. Maybe Azish troops, with a completely different military tradition, will have something more halberd-like. That's my theory, anyway.

Yeah, this is a very confusing issue. I have four theories, which I'm sure someone more cosmere-aware than me shall rip to shreds: The timelessness of the spiritual realm is confined to the spiritual realm. Nightblood can make it so that your soul never existed, but not your mind and body. If there are beings that exist entirely in the spiritual realm, they will forget you, but beings in the cognitive and physical realms will not. And your actions on those realms will not be retroactively erased. The timelessness of the spiritual realm means that all souls are permanent, and cannot be truly destroyed. Nightblood can destroy your soul today, but your soul still existed yesterday. And in the spiritual realm, yesterday and tomorrow are one and the same. That which existed yesterday will continue to exist tomorrow, even if it was destroyed today. Nightblood cannot eradicate your soul from all times at once unless he enters the spiritual realm. And if that happens, the entire cosmere is in serious trouble. Changing the past just isn't possible in the cosmere. Nightblood's spiritual destruction should ripple backwards through time, but there are forces in place that prevent this. It may involve the web of spiritual Connections that binds all things: you can't change one thing without changing everything, and even Nightblood doesn't have enough power to change everything. The timelessness of the spiritual realm isn't as complete as we might think. Things can echo or connect backwards in time, but actions in the present cannot directly alter the past.

A recent WoB discusses the possibility of teleportation through the Spiritual Realm. If you find a reliable, stable way to enter the SR, and then exit at a point of your choosing (and not destroy yourself or the universe on the way through), you can probably go anywhere in the cosmere in the blink of an eye. That might make spaceships obsolete.