Necessary Eagle

Or... the message isn't actually from Harmony. (Saze did imply in BoM that Paalm's Trellium spike would have had permanent effects even if she'd had it removed... wonder what would happen if a human got a Trellium piercing, hm?)

If Gavilar's Stormfather is Tanavast, I'm heavily on the "he didn't lie, Gav just made assumptions" train. And even then, I have a hard time picturing late-stage Tanavast as being manipulative enough to lie by omission for so long. (*puts on aluminum hat* the entity that Gavilar is talking to is the Stormfather, Ishar, Tanavast, and -why not?- Sja-Anat holding a conference call. You heard it here first, folks)

Odium wrote four secret novels.

That's always been my assumption.

to be fair to Gav, he was busy dying at the time.

Hmm... if only there was some way we could take turns killing him. I suppose we could turn him into some sort of auto-resurrecting Cognitive Shadow. Have words, new body poofs into existence, then the next person has words. I mean, man wants to be a Herald. An unending cycle of pain and reembodiment is close enough, right? Practically the same thing.

There was a lot of speculation that maybe Gavilar wasn't dead dead. This does not appear to be the case, and I for one am disappointed. Because that means I can't kill him. At least not without swiping Nale's soul-stapling fabrial. I had my extra-hardcover copy of Nohadon's Way of Kings all ready to repeatedly whap him with and everything.

oops wrong thread somehow

It's possible that I shouldn't be posting emotional OPs while sick. My head still isn't quite clear. That being said, I really did get the impression from the reading that Nomad's issues were long term. All that stuff about broken oaths and "he'd done things that he once would have died rather than do" and stuff, just really gave me the impression that the boy's been down in the crem for a long time.

Dear Branderson, Knowing that Sigzil- Sig!- turns into this grim and gritty beat-down wreck of a man, haunted by broken oaths and hunted by worldhoppers, angry and bitter and calloused? Yeah, that's going to affect their my ability to enjoy the character going forward. It's like seeing Happy Kaladin in a flashback and knowing he's going to be a Sad Boi- but at least we see him in a better place by the end of the same book, and his arc is presumably going to be resolved within SA. The Sunlit Man isn't going to be out until the end of next year, and it's not part of the main series. In short, I think the way this was handled was a miscalculation.

Brandon, you absolute... *trying to find the right word here* ...you Brandon!

Sorry, it's been a while since I've dropped in. (Mods?)

Every character once held a Shard offscreen. Yes, even that one. Characters that have held a Shard onscreen secretly had another one you didn't know about. Match the person to your crazy-chull non-canonical cosmic force- go! Wayne: Shard of Hats Lightsong: Shard of Oversleeping Adolin: Shard of Fashion Shallan: Shard of Dad Jokes Kelsier: Shard of God-Punching Stick: Shard of Memes

For a book that wasn't Cosmere, there sure was a lot of Cosmere with the serial numbers filed off.

whoops, started a thread and then forgot to check in on it for nearly a week. But yeah, the points that I was going to to mention have already been, well, mentioned: So I'll just let out a joyful screech of anticipation and leave it at that.

I came here to join the discussion that was surely happening about the released prologue, and I surprised to see there wasn't one. Am I looking in the wrong forum? Are we not supposed to talk about it yet because Spoilers? Or is the Shard just going through a real slow couple of days?

I've been having a lot of fun recently making Cosmere characters in Hero Forge; I've collected them here. (As of this post I have twenty-eight minis; I may or may not add more based on random inspiration or HF's weekly updates). Some highlights:

All right then, folks, let's get the Riot Squad tuned up to "Extreme Fun Times"! edit: Odd that Soothing would work, though, I'd have thought dialing your emotions up to 11 would be required.

Specifically wondering about Era-1 Snapping, since that's when the noble houses used to beat their children half to death (or all to death). There was a discussion on this week's Sanderlanche Podcast about whether you could maybe emotionally scar kids instead, set up a fake murder scene or something, and I'm taking that thought even further: what if you just made the kid feel traumatized for about thirty seconds (or however long it takes?) Bring in a Rioter, have them zap the kid with a full-strength angst-beam, no one dies! Well, unless they have a heart condition. Still, gotta be a much lower mortality rate than punching them into Allomancy. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?

Wait, what was her reaction to Taravodium? You can't leave that out! (Besides cheering on Sword Ninny, which I take as a given).

Okay, so, I'm sorry. I really am. "Crablor" is a meme in the Silmarillion fandom wherein Maglor, during his years of wandering in regret by the seashore, turns into a crab cryptid. They have a whole week for it and everything. Last night, whilst dreaming, my subconscious put two and two together and came up with crab. And so I woke up with the dumbest crossover bunny ever, and I must exorcise by writing it down. At least it's brief.

Shardblades are scary-- but they're not Nightblood-level "gods tremble at his name" scary. Freakin' Hoid is scared of Nightblood, and he told Jasnah that her living shardblade couldn't hurt him.

I mean it's already a very sad story: Vasher kills his wife in order to prevent her from unleashing an army of soul-eating swords on the world. But it potentially gets even worse. Because there's a number of WoBs suggesting that making Nightblood was a lot more complicated than "insert 1000 Breaths, get most ridiculously-Invested item in the Cosmere" and I'm getting the impression that something went into Nightblood's secret sauce that his creators weren't aware of. Like there was a Shard meddling, or some sort of disturbance in the Force right as they gave the Command. Which would mean that Shashara's recipe-- the one that Vasher killed her to prevent her from releasing it-- wouldn't have actually been able to forge Nightblood 2: The Invested Bugaloo. Her death would have been pointless. Vasher killed the woman he loved, and it didn't even make a difference. If I'm right, well, way to twist that knife, Brandon.

I think you misunderstood me. What I meant is, if someone Snaps a) can that person tell without burning metals, and 2) if there isn't a way to tell from the inside, is there some test that can show they're an allomancer? EDIT: Wait, are you referring to the initial discovery that cadmium was one of the missing metals? Because that's a good question, but I'm talking about an individual person in a society where cadmium is a known thing. You're right, it was probably discovered feruchemically. I wonder who they roped in to test what it did Allomantically. Maybe Lord Mistborn volunteered?

Since AoL was originally conceived of as a standalone, I wonder if Brandon looked over his first draft, saw a bunch of cliches, and decided to play with them instead of throwing them out. Or even "Rusts, I need those plot points!... I'll just give them some depth in the next book."