Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Great episode!

I liked the discussion about the specialized mandras that bond with Larkin, I thought your idea Chaos about the mandras in Aimia possibly being unique due to the unique perception of the Siah and Dysian Aimians was interesting. I think there might be a more direct link, with mandras being known as luck spren and Siah Aimian's suffering from the Curse of Kind. Seems like a sort of balance is being reached with one population having a bit of extra luck, and the other being painfully deficient. It's pretty interesting to have a whole species of shclimazels, it was just a matter of time until something bad happened to Aimia. 

A couple ideas about the traitorous three (sounds like a Tarantino movie), there are a couple of ways that they could be considered traitors that aren't necessarily abandonment of the defense of the Dawnshard. They could be an opposition faction that rejects the authority of the First and has a different vision for what the Sleepless should be doing to protect the Dawnshard, or they could be traitors in the most obvious sense and are actually working with Team Odium. It's a total martyr plot, but if they keep the knowledge of the Dawnshard from Odium, then his solution for bumping off Cultivation by destroying Roshar would be a pretty final end to their mission of protecting the Cosmere from the Dawnshard. This traitorous faction could see the plural s in protecting Worlds from the destructive power of the Dawnshard as their primary objective. 

So cool! I just ordered mine (glad there were still some left), and I am getting it signed for my daughter who loves the Stormlight Archive.

I also opted for the personalization, I think this is a good model going forward now that Brandon is getting as busy as he is. Kind of a no brainer to give some extra money to his charity to get to ask a question and have the book signed for my daughter. I was worried that personalizations were going to have to go away, but trust Brandon to figure out the perfect way to keep it going.

That was as good as the first half, fun stuff. This was the first time I watched a ship it or rip it (shipping's not really my cup of tea) but it was really fun. I was dying during the Rashek and Alendi one, Gray's one liner was classic, and that was such a funny pairing with Human and Sarene. I was suprised the rip it crowd didn't mention that Sarene probably couldn't have handled the weeping bloody tears in Human's skin (ick).

I'm definitely going to have to go back and watch the ship it or rip podcasts now.

I like the idea of livestreaming during the release of Rythym of War, don't know if it would possible with Twitch and if dragonsteel would ok it, but a livestream during a major signing where you get updates from a field reporting Sharder would be awesome.

I missed the Livestream because I was out of town, but that Shardcast was a ton of fun!

I got home at 3am and was going to watch the Shardcast while I fell asleep but you guys were so funny and the episode was so good I ended up staying up til 5, and I think I woke my wife up a couple of times because I was laughing so hard.

The new overlay is great, but with the screen filled with Shardcasters I can't help but feel like you should do a Brady Bunch style intro:

"Here's the story
of some meg-a-faans,
bringing you the news and info that you need.

All of them loved
Works by Brandon,
That's the way they all became the shardcast bunch."

In our honor or your 10th anniversary, here's a quick little mod to the shardcast overlay (spoilered below):

Looking forward to Part 2!

@Chaos your proposal was so unbelievably sweet! I'm so happy for you guys and your capital c Connection!

Not only is this the most intelligent fan forum on the net, but it also has the nicest people and I know that stems from the intelligent, kind and dedicated people who run it. 

Thanks so much for all you guys do!

I'm really looking forward to the theory explosion that's coming with Rythym of War!

The art for Volume 3 looks surprisingly good!

You can use the look inside feature at Amazon to see some preview pages, but spoilered below are some examples of how this artwork is leaps and bounds better than anything in volume 1 or 2.

I never thought I'd say this, but I am actually looking forward to reading volume 3, nice job on the artist switch Dynamite/ Dragonsteel, that was a great call.

26 minutes ago, Argent said:

@hoiditthroughthegrapevine, this is marvelous!

Right after you said that Warform comes with built in umbrellas, this image popped into my head. Brilliant!

I also like imagining them being able to open and close their umbrellas by furrowing and unfurrowing their brows. So if you startle a singer in Warform, by sneaking up behind them and saying "Boo", their umbrella would pop open and hilarity would ensue.

Great Podcast!

Since this podcast covered the songs of Listing and Revision, I didn't think it was going to be that informative, but as per usual you guys had some great analysis.

In honor of @Argent's penchant for homonym hilarity, here's a little picture of Warform with the built in carapace Umbrella:

The Warform singer can collapse/open their carapace Umbrella using their frontalis forehead muscles, and keeps their hair and beard dry even during a High Storm. So the Singer ladies can have super dry beards...

Great podcast!

A couple thoughts about Hemalurgic Chromium and the stealing of Destiny, completely in the realm of pure speculation.

Destiny implies inevitable future events that are outside of the control of the individual experiencing these inevitable future events, and further more is classically ascribed to beings that are powerful and able to manipulate said destiny. What if the quality of destiny that chromium can spike out is part of an indvidual's spirt web that Shards use to push a specific individual to take a certain future action?

As you guys mentioned, the prophecies in Mistborn seemed to imply that Preservation was able to manipulate Elendi's, Vin's and Sazed's destinies. This could be happening in a couple different ways, this could be a particular push on a specific indiviual's destiny, to ensure that a specific crucial action is taken at a specific time, or it could be that  a pre-destined sequence of events is set up, and this predestined track starts to pull individuals with compatible destinies towards it. The latter would imply that the Shard in question would be creating a destiny construct, and that this construct would pull and shape the individuals caught up in this pre-destined track towards the pre-defined end of the sequence of events.

This could potentially have consequences for Era 3 mistborn, where Trell and Harmony are both trying to shape the course of events along a pre-destined course using their future sight and pushing on Individual's destinies in order to achieve their future aims. What if the agents of Trell, using knowledge from Trell's future sight, were able to find out who certain key actors are who will be instrumental to Harmony's long term plan, and spike out their Destiny? Maybe this is the reason that era 3 is about a serial killer, maybe this is a long term structured attack on Harmony's future plans by the faceless immortals. Also, if an agent wants to be completely free from a Shards ability to meddle with their volition, they could self-spike out their destiny, assuming they have a means of healing after this operation.

As to Atium needing to be refined, I think it's just the case that with feudal level technology the process of extracting the Atium from the geodes introduced chemical impurities into the Atium end product. When the veins of pure Atium are condensing within geode they are probably forming within some other material matrix and the Era 1 Scadrians probably lacked the mining technology to separate these veins of pure Atium from the substrate they were embedded in. So even though the Atium itself would be chemically pure, it would still need to be refined to separate it from the extraneous matter that was harvested along with the Atium.

Great podcast!

I did a little searching and it turns out there is a book called The Seduction Vector, here's the cover image that I found:

Awesome podcast as usual, fun to put faces to shardcast voices.

I was really wary about reading this book, Brandon's other YA books aren't really for me. I went to the Skyward signing in Seattle really just to ask Brandon some questions, but because it was a ticketed event I ended up with a copy of the book (which I wasn't planning on reading).

Your review of Skyward @Ooklalord Jebus was the tipping point for me, and the fact that my young daughter was reading it and was really liking it. I ended up getting the audiobook too so I could listen to it while she was reading it.

I thought the Chaser reveal was great! One point I think that got missed about the Chaser bit in the podcast was that he was direclty mentally manipulated into seeing what the Krell wanted him to see, essentially a 3-D holo simulation projected straight into his brain. He saw his friends' ships as Krell ships. So when he said that he was going to destroy them all, he was referring to the phantom krell ships that were overlaid psionically over his friends' ships. Also, the fact that Spensa as a living FTL engine has a weakness that she can be mentally manipulated is just how Brandon builds his magic systems. The greater the power the greater the exploitable weakness.

I also thought the talk about Detritus being a Dyson sphere was really cool, I think after your clear explanation I have a pretty good handle of how Detritus works in conjunction with the near planetary objects. I drew a little schematic of how I think it all works:

The small little circled speck is M-bot flying out of a crack in the Dyson Sphere. And with Gray's description of M-Bot really standing for Mushroom-bot, I got a pretty good visual sense of what M-Bot looks like.

Also, thinking about this more, I think I've figured out something pretty important about M-Bot's old pilot based on all of the directives that M-Bot was given.

Stay out of fights, look for mushrooms, wait for me until I get back. M-Bot's old pilot was probably a spaced out, mushroom popping, laze-about hippy. He probably forgot where he parked M-Bot and crashed on some Krell's couch for the rest of his life. Poor M-bot.

That is so funny, I listen to ALL of the shardcasts, you guys do an awesome job, but sometimes I listen to them when I'm going to bed and I think I might have fallen asleep before the WTCC (that's the acronym)

Totally missed that you did my Human one on Who's That Cosmere Character, a friend of mine told me that they heard you doing it. IT WAS SO GOOD.

I'm glad you had to have the fifth clue, there was a point where Windrunner said "This character is Human" that I thought for sure was going to be the moment when the proverbial jig was up, but oh man, that was some five star listening.

It was amazing to hear you guys working on that one, I'll have to think of some more good ones, this is fun stuff.

Awesome podcast as usual, I think you guys really should do a splinter podcast, and in honor of that here's a header you could use for the first episode of Shardcast: After Dark, based on Argent's line:

@Shusun these entities are called the Svrakiss, here's a link to the coppermind article:

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Svrakiss

Awesome podcast, like usual.

What if Vax is just a name for the vacuum of space?

3 minutes ago, whattheHoid said:

I sort of assumed that the Everstorm was Odium's perpendicularity and that Highstorms was Honor's perpendicularity. I assume that there can be more than one perpendicularity for each Shard. Unless there is a cosmere/shards law saying each shard is granted only 1 perpendicularity

Yeah, I assumed that too until I heard this shardcast. I still think it's the case that the 2 big storms are moving perpendicularities, and I think it's interesting that Odium has more active control over the everstorm, possibly because it isn't part of the fundamental ecology of Roshar.

5 minutes ago, whattheHoid said:

Or perhaps Honor told the Stormfather the region where you could find a potential Bondsmith. It seems rather specific to know that a Kholin would be a Bondsmith. Why didn't Adolin for example, receive the visions?

This was totally just a joke, in reference to how all of the Kholins and everyone around them are Knights Radiant. I think that the Stormfather was just broadcasting visions, kind of like an AM radio station, and only people with broken spirit webs that were possibly compatible with becoming the SF's bondsmith were tuning into Stormfather Coast to Coast.

Dalinar didn't get the visions until after he got the cryptic message from Dalinar about the most important words a man can say, and I am pretty sure it was only after he started reading the Way of Kings and had his mind pruned by Cultivation that he started getting them. He had to tune the dial to the right station with the wisdom of Nohadon and with a little help from the big C.

I'm writing this from the spiritual realm, where time doesn't exist, so this isn't really a super delayed response...

@Wind Runner, and @Steeldancer I think that Honor's perpendicularity is in the Highstorm, and I think the way to explain it's unpredictable location is that the north/south component of it's location is variable. The east/west location of perpendicularity will essentially be fixed as being in the functional part of the highstorm (i.e. the portion capable of replenishing stormlight) which would be somewhere close to, but east of the stormwall. The highstorm itself is a bound phenomena, it has a western verge (the stormwall), a z bounds (the ceiling which is lower than Urithiru) and an eastern trailing edge (the riddens). But it also affects all of the Rosharan subcontinent and there isn't any mention of a diminished effect of the highstorm anywhere on Roshar with the exception of Shinovar, but that seems like there has been some shardic invtervention there to dampen it's effect. Also, from the Wandersail tale, it seems like the effects of the Highstorm also extend to the ocean, so if Honor's perpendicularity was in fact in the highstorm with a variable N/S coordinate, it would make a lot of sense why it's hard to find and unpredictable.

Also about Odium's perpendicularity, I have a feeling it's in the Everstorm as well. @KChan's point about Odium only talking to Venli during the Everstorm, the fact that Taravangian also talked to Odium during the Everstorm, the fact that the cognitive shadows of old singers that were heretofore trapped on Braise take over singer bodies during the highstorm, and most telling of all, the fact that the Everstorm stopped at Thaylen City where Odium was at his most manifest suggest to me that this is possibly more than just a Super storm filled with Odious Investiture. Also, with the Pool on Patji being associated with Autonomy, do we know if Shards can have more than one Perpendicularity or not? We know that travel to Taldain is not advisable (because of the scrutiy of Autonomy), but if it's not advisable it would imply that it's still possible. So this seems to imply that a shard can have more than one Perpendicularity. All of this is to preface the fact that I think that Odium has one on Braise and that the Everstorm is a mobile perpendicularity, like the Highstorm (facilitating the perpetual replenishment of the Fuzed, and allowing Odium to touch Roshar more directly).

On Dalinar's small caps Ascension, the quote that you guys brought up about how Dalinar created Unity with the remnants of Honor, the Will of the Stormfather and Dalinar's soul I think goes a long way towards explaining what happened with this mini-ascension. The reason his mind wasn't expanded was that the Stormfather is the will, the remnant cognitive piece of pre-existing Honor that is still filtering the raw shardic power of Honor. But some of this power is being directed by dalinar's soul, explaining his ability to supercharge radiants (like he did when Kal went looking for his Gavinor and his the missing bridge 4 squires).

Possibly, his ability to create the perpendicularity (or rather more specificially to combine all three realms), is similar to when he forced the stormfather to turn into an Oathgate key in Vedinar, but for him to do something similar in the future he would have to overpower the stormfather's will to achieve this very special effect.

That was an interesting point about the Death Rattle, and the visions sent from Honor appearing to people other than Gavilar and Dalinar. I think the simplest explanation for this one is that the Stormfather sent these visions to anyone who's last name was Kholin. The potter that died most likely was Dalinar's second cousin or something. And maybe, this is another of the hidden imperatives of the Unite them phrase, to gather all of the Knight's Radiants into the Kholin family (either through employment, like Kal, or through Marriage like Shallan).

Hahaha, so I just recently sent off an email to [email protected] before I listened to this shardcast, this was the second question, which would have been the ultimate red herring chain:

1. This character is Human and is originally from Scadrial. (obviously you can’t mention the capital H) (probably will guess Felt)
2. This character is not currently a member of the 17th Shard. (probably will guess Ixatl)
3. This character is pierced by metal. (probably will guess Kelsier)
4. This character is seen acting out the plans of another.
5. You’ve already been told what the character’s name is in an earlier clue.

Thought this was pretty original, guess not!

More metaphors should involve Barber shop quartets, nice Shardcast as per usual.

I do think there is one example of an Identity compounder, but not in the cosmere. His name is Dan TDM, and I think to increase his compounding ability he's going to include another inset window of himself with real time reactions in response to his own videos. I'm pretty sure he gets his aluminum from the trace amount that leeches from the can into his cola.

I think that @KChan figured out Hoid's purpose in the Cosmere. It has to do with removing Large Sticks in Certain Places.

I spat some pop out when I heard that bit, funny stuff.

I also really like the Fanfic idea for backseat sharding, might be best if the new shard is the son or daughter of the cognitive shadow of the old shard who is sticking around eternity to point out their failings. Thinking something along the lines of a Jewish mother who could say things like "Back when I held the power of Preservation, strawberry jam stayed fresh for 3 weeks, but look at your jam, just look it at. It rots in a couple of days. And you call yourself Preservation".

Thanks for the long guided tour through the Oathbringer release tour Words of Brandon, I thought all 3 episodes were great.

WeiryWriter, I really like your analysis of Mist Spren possibly being truthwatcher spren due to how similar they are to Nightwatcher, nice observations.

One other thing listening to the podcast, when you were all discussing the strange super amped power burst that Windrunner's get when swearing their 2nd order ideals and higher, there is one other similar but slightly more muted instance of this. When Szeth swears his third ideal:

Quote

"Not yet. I swear to follow the will of Dalinar Kholin. This is my oath."

At the words snow crystallized around him in the air, and then fluttered down. He felt a surge of something. Approval? From the hidden spren, who only rarely showed itself to him, even still.

Spren are a proportional mixture of H+C cultivation, with some spren like the High Spren and the Honor Spren claiming that they are most like Honor. The burst of energy that the Windrunner's get have extra built up potential/pressue because of the still free Investiture of Honor's loose on Roshar due to his splintering. This mini-manifestation of the oath supercharge that Szeth gets from swearing his ideal could be because the High Spren are likewise made mostly of Honor's Investiture, but gauging by the effect, probably not as high of a percentage of Honor as the Honor Spren.

Can't wait for the next WoB roundup podcast, might be fun to come up with some classification terms to categorize the qualitative aspects of Brandon's answers, here are a couple possible ones:

• WoBfuscation–Intentionally vague answer designed to conceal something he would rather RAFO
• WoBtuse–Where Brandon answers the question technically accurately, while ignoring the real question.
• WoBble–Where Brandon seems to say something, then qualifies it, so that the net effect is an non-answer (this category of WoB has a lot of observations by the questioner of Brandon hemming and hawing)
• WoBomb–A huge reveal, like the Patji revelation.

I think this is relevant to the discussion, I originally posted this on the Oathbringer Memes page, but I think that they might have a new expletive on Roshar:
 

I really liked the analysis from @Comatose about Moash being torn between throwing the bridge four badge into the fire, and then thinking about throwing himself into the fire, and how this narratively came full circle with him shedding the identity of Moash and becoming Vyre. I like it so much in fact, that I made Vyre's first death metal cover, here it is:

Here's the tracklist:

1) Wasn't I a Dick?
2) Yeah, I'm Probably Still a Dick
3) Vyre, Yeah It Rhymes With Fire You Dick
4) O-di-um Be the Death of Me (a slight reworking of the Velvet Underground song Heroin)
6) It's a Long Way Back From Braize
7) Cremholes in the Stream (a duet with Ialai Sadeas)
8) Countdown to Desolation
9) Crazy Herald Train

If you get the remastered version you get some pretty interesting outtakes where he's spaced out on voidlight and mumbling incoherently about passion this and passion that. Track 17 where he's eating chouta while totally spaced out on voidlight is definitely worth listening to, trust me.

Freaking awesome, sign me up!