StrikerEZ

It depends. Having my connection to my physical form severed would pretty much mean death no matter what. At least while I'm being manipulated, there's a chance I could be freed, just like Marsh was. However, if my connection to the physical realm was severed, but I became a Cognitive Shadow, then I'd probably go with that option. Would you rather be an Aluminum Gnat, or a Duralumin Gnat?

Well, most of it is from reading on the forums and reading WoB's (Words of Brandon) from theoryland and reddit. The best in-book description of the three realms, in my opinion, is in The Emperor's Soul, the Elantris novella.

That's kind of what it is. The basic idea is that magic, in all shapes and forms throughout the Cosmere, come from one of 16 shards' Investiture. These 16 shards (such as Ruin, Preservation, Honor, etc.) come from Adonalsium, which was shattered long before even the earliest canon Cosmere book (which is Elantris, I believe). So, each magic system is separate, but they all work by allowing the users some way to manipulate Investiture and the world around them. There's also the three Realms: Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual. Shadesmar on Roshar is the Cognitive Realm for Roshar, though not every world's version of the CR is the same. That's about all I can come up with right now, I'm sure someone else will come and explain better than I did.

No, he was excluding the bondsmiths in trying to guess how many shardblades there are currently after they were left behind from the Recreance. Plus, they wouldn't have any shardblades anyway, since they're bonded to "godspren" so to speak.

Ah, okay. Makes sense. I almost, not really, have something like that in my own universe I'm building.

Ah, okay. Makes more sense. Sorry, I didn't get very much sleep last night, and I had a long day (even with it being summer).

Ugh, we lost a metallurgist. That really sucks. And what does the RP part about there being two killers mean? That two elims tried to kill the same person? Or can the elims only do one kill collectively? Sorry, I forget how elim killing works. Honestly, this was kind of shocking for me. Not quite what I expected. I'll get back on later once I've slept and thought about this.

Hmmm...I'm not sure what I think of this. The implications for the story are really cool, but something just felt off about this prologue. I have no idea what though. So...I'm confused though. This society has both really advanced technology, and also fantasy technology?

Welcome to the Shard! I'm also a big fan of Stormlight as well, though I'll admit that I started that series after all the other Cosmere books, because I was afraid of how big the books were, and I was still in school at the time (of course, I ended up reading them over a couple weekends near the very end, whoops). When you say 2 novellas, do you mean The Eleventh Metal and Allomancer Jak? Do you know what the Cosmere is? Either way, I recommend that you read Warbreaker, which you can find here on Brandon's website at the bottom of the page. Warbreaker is a really good book, plus it has some things in it that will make certain events and/or characters in the Stormlight Archive make more sense. After that, I'd recommend either reading Elantris, a standalone novel, or The Alloy of Law, which is the first book in the Wax and Wayne series, which is set 300 years after The Hero of Ages in an early industrial version of Scadrial.

I already made another post in the other thread, so you can go look at that there. Welcome to the Shard!

@Realitytripp Besides what's already been mentioned from Sanderson, I'd recommending reading Elantris or The Alloy of Law, the first book of the sequel series to Mistborn, as well. Or, if you want to venture away from the Cosmere, there' she Steelheart and The Rithmatist. For non-Sanderson books: Jackaby by William Ritter is absolutely fabulous. It takes an amazing spin on Sherlock Holmes, combining it with fantasy elements. More traditional fantasy elements, like fairies or werewolves, but it's still really good. This one has two sequels out right now and a fourth book coming out in August, I believe. The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer is another really good one as well. It's a fairly simple time travel book, but it certainly gets confusing at some moments. Besides that, it's a really good book. This is the first book in a four book series, I think. I think it's only four books. Everlost by Neil Shusterman is really good. It's got a simple premise, but Neil runs with it and does some really cool stuff. This is the first book in a trilogy. Sabriel by Garth Nix is definitely at the top of my favorite books. Nix is definitely an amazing fantasy author, probably up there with Sanderson as well. This has one of the most interesting fantasy worlds, besides Sanderson's, I've ever read before. There's four other books, two of which are direct sequels (Lirael and Abhorsen), a prequel (Clariel), and a sequel set after the main trilogy Goldenhand). The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen is a really cool book as well, and is full of plot twists and secrets, if you like that kind of stuff. There's no magic, but it definitely feels like a fantasy world. This is the first book in a trilogy. I see what you did there

I think I'm fine with two of them being the same size. Honestly, what's more important for these planets is that the have to be as close to being like Earth as possible, with th exception of the hotter one, while still meeting the requirements I've already mentioned. It's important for story reasons.

Oh yeah, we make up our own things all the time. Usually, we do it when we're bored and just come up with random stuff on the fly, but sometimes we keep playing it for days, weeks, months, and even years. Several of my book ideas started because of these roleplays we would do. Of course, they've changed a lot from their original versions, but they're still inspired by those original roleplays.

Hmm...that's kind of an interesting question. I'm not quite sure. From what I've gathered, it seems like people exist in all three Realms, but I'm not sure if their Cognitive selves are actually them or if it is just an echo of them. I wanna say it's somewhere in the middle, but leaning more towards actually being them, because an echo would be less coherent than it actually being the person, and we can tell from a certain someone who died that it doesn't seem to be that way. That's just my 2 cents.

I don't necessarily have any characters I pretend to be from the Cosmere, but that's mainly just because I haven't really had time to make them yet. I do pretend to be characters from tons of other books, TV shows, movies, etc. And my brother and I like to mess around and play these "games," which are just us role-playing, and we have one set in the Reckoners universe.

Yeah, the other three are basically Earth equivalent in water coverage, though one of them may be a little less or more. I'm not quite sure about the exact amount of water coverage on that one, because for the map I drew of it, which is based off of Earth's map, I took away some land, so there'd be more water, but I also added more land as well. I want to say I added more water than I did land, but it's probably not enough to have any noticeable impact on how it appears. I just want to say, what would it take for an Earth-like planet to have a sky that isn't blue, and what effect would that have on how it appears from one of the other three? I don't really want them to appear all the same size though. I know, based on the current system, that two of them will always appear the same size, but I want the other one to appear a different size. The "smallest" of the three moons should appear slightly larger than our moon. I'm not sure if that makes the other two too big, but tell me what you think. Also, should I move this discussion to the Creator's Corner thread?

I kind of like the first idea. It fixes the problem of having one planet dryer. I might think about using the part about the mars-like surface absorbing a lot of the water. Of course, there's still a lot of water left. But it's more like 35% of the surface, I think. I think these things work better for what I have in mind about the planets' creation, as this one of the four is kind of a failed experiment for trying to emulate something. Assuming the four planets are in a plus shape, and they all look a lot like Earth (lots of blue and green), what would the other planets look like from the dry planet?

I don't think I'm as fast of a reader as you, @The Flash, but I can read pretty fast as well. I'd be able to read and finish books faster if I could read them all at once, but I'm usually busy with school or sleeping. Of course, now that it's summer, that won't be a problem. Except, sadly, I've finished all of the Cosmere books, so RIP.

Congrats! That's so cool! That is like one of the best proposals I've heard of in my entire life. I hope you two have an amazing marriage! Also, sorry, I meant to upvote you, but I accidentally downvoted you. Then I un-downvoted you, and I ran out of upvotes so I can't upvote you now.

You're welcome.

Absolen was quite horrified. It was not every day that you become part of a mob. He barely remembered what had happened, but he remembered that several of the guards, himself included, had gone out for a drink. He didn't even remember how many drink water he had, but he must've been coerced into having a few too many. He shivered, remembering the horrible things they'd done to Booken, all because they had believed that he had been a Venture spy. He'd try to protect as many people from now on, because he figured that the Ventures must've had some sort of hand in this unfair killing of Booken. I'm still not sure what to make of this whole situation. I don't think Orlok is an elim anymore. That would've given them away. But I honestly don't know what to think.

Oh...I've never really been a fan of the 'classics', so to speak.

This is amazing. I'm assuming it's based on an actual song, but I don't recognize it.

Well...that's not quite what I was expecting to learn from that lynch. I can't believe we wasted a Seeker. Darn. Well, tonight's gonna be an interesting night, I guess....