Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Nope, partial credit though because it is Shakedpeare, have an upvote.

Right on. The semicolon gave it away... Here's the next delightfully obtuse transliteration of one of the best quotes of all times:

Intriguingly cryptic, is it the Oscar Wilde qoute: Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Awww, that's so sweet!

Sorry @Lunamor, that's not it, good guess though. DING DING DING!!! We have a winner! Nice Job @The Last Post Yep, the qoute was Ghandi's famous one-liner: Here's the full translation chain: My favorite is the Latin that translates to "Only the eyes of the blind eyes will be". Very profound. So, your turn to run a quote through the ole Google translate ringer @The Last Post.

I went mushroom hunting on a clear and beautiful day with my family and my dogs, and we got some amazing mushrooms! We got 6 oz of Golden Chantrells, 3.5 oz of Pigs Ears (the pink ones), 1.2 oz of Cat's Tongues (the pale jelly looking ones) and 22 oz of Lobster Mushrooms. We're going to try the lobster mushrooms in a thai red curry tonight! So delicious! Update: The lobster mushrooms were so delicious that they didn't even make it into the curry. I sauteed them with butter and garlic, and and I was going to add them to the curry, but my daughters gobbled them up in less than 2 minutes!

Aww shcucks, thanks @AonEne, your boon for being so kind is that every where you step flowers will bloom. Your bane is that people get quite annoyed with you at school/work/in the subway/in church, but your life is truly beautiful. (You are also a damnation fine Nightwatcher, by the way). Totally agree with you about @Zath, he does some amazing Nightwatching, and @Honorless that bane with eyes inside my body was super harsh, well played, well played. Since there isn't currently a wish afoot, I'll go ahead and make one: I wish people would read Zath's Time Boots boon/bane post, it's a classic! Or if you would prefer to grant a more traditional wish, I wish that you could buy guacamole that could be dispensed out of a can, kind of like Easy cheese.

Nope, good quote, but not it.

So, I was shopping for a chain necklace on Amazon for my daughter, and the following part of the item description caught my eye: This has obviously been run through an auto-translation routine of some sort, but it is beautiful and poetic nonetheless. So the idea of this game is to take a famous quote, and run it through Google Translate, translating it from English to other languages and back again 4 or 5 times until you end up with something slightly similar but uniquely bizarre, then everyone can guess what it is. For this it would be best to keep the full translation log, and if people are unable to get the quote after 5 guesses, move up the chain of translations, getting closer to the source translation. For example, I used this methodology for creating the Topic Title, I started off with "Guess that Translated quote game!", and here is the full translation chain: To start this off, here is a very famous quote. The person that correctly guesses the original quote gets to do the next one, and if the quote is a bit obscure or is severely and unrecognizably mangled from the original you might want to give an attribution for the speaker/source of the quote. Since this is the first round, I'll also give the preceding link in the google translation chain which happens to be in Swedish:

"Ummm, granted" the Nightwatcher says while scratching her head with a wispy green tendril of mist. "To clarify the power of your new boon, you can now think about something after it has happened. Because I kinda feel sorry for you, I threw in a couple of freebie boons too because, why not? You can now also walk on your feet, and you can use your hands to grasp and manipulate objects." As the NightWatcher's luminous head pulls back into the thick growth of the jungle, a smile plays across her alien features and she says, "Oh, by the way, you can use your postcognition to ponder this-the direction of your alimentary system has been reversed, but now that I've said it you already know this." I wish that I could travel to Enceladus and explore the oceans beneath the shell of ice in the southern polar region, and check for signs of alien life where the geothermal plumes shoot out.

Thanks brother! Finally had some time to do this, so without further Ado (ok, maybe one more ado), I present to you, The Paper Cut (spoilered because it's an animated gif):

Granted! The air before you shimmers as a solid, faintly amber piece of glass spins and seemingly expands into being from thin air. You notice as this 10 foot tall, half a foot thick disc of glass begins to topple towards you that the edges are perfectly smooth and rounded, ensuring that this piece of glass poses no danger to you in regards to its ability to cut you. Though this disc is made of ordinary glass, it unfortunately still has a density of 2.5 g/cm^3 and a volume of nearly 40 ft^3. Meaning that the glass disc that you wished for and which happens to be falling on you (as you do your quick mental calculations) weighs a little over 3 tons. You have just enough time and cognizance to strike a dramatic pose before the 3 ton glass disc squishes you flat. Thankfully for posterity, your pose was suitably dramatic, and now as would be boon seekers petition the Nightwatcher, they do so standing on a glass dias preserving your grisly remains and bearing the inscription: "Be careful, you could get Ene thing". I wish that I could control the physical appearance of my skin like a cuttlefish. I would then use this power to create temporary tattoos, fake mustaches, zebra stripes, fake chest/arm hair, etc. Further I would like to be able to relegate this control of my skin's appearance to my autonomic nervous system so that camaglouge wouldn't need to be willfully maintained, and more importantly if I wanted my eyelids to simulate alert and awake eyes whilst I slept, I would want them to continue to move around on their own realistically while I slept.

Ahhh, Malazan. You have to wait until Corlo's info dump to Seren Pedac before you get a truly satisfactory explanation about what the warrens are. Wait for it, wait for it, it will all be revealed in time. Going through the audio books a 2nd time, Michael Paige definitely holds his own against Ralph Lister, and his voice for Karsa is perfect. I hope that Brilliance audio gets the Witness trilogy, and I hope that Michael Paige reads them. His performance of Karsa saying the oft heard standard refrain "Witness" is so good, it would be hard to hear someone else try and do it.

Hey Ammanas, I don't think this was ever fully resolved, and I am currently reading Midnight Tides, and in Chapter 16, when the the Letherii sorceress Nekal Bara is watching the arrival of the Edur Fleet, she sees the ancient sea god/monster darkening the water in front of the Fleet, here's the actual description from the chapter. "Beneath the lead ships, a dark tide surged forward, spreading its midnight bruise into the harbour." This might be referring to the above mentioned ancient god that Hannan Mosag bound in service to the Edur, it could be was previously speculated be referring to the diversion of the river and flooding of the Nascent and quite possibly it could also be referring to the legion of Tiste Andii wraiths that Emperor Rulad controls through the power of the sword.

I had a hard time believing that Brandon was part Danish. Part Cruller or part Maple Bar, sure, but I guess pictures don't lie:

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.

Way to go @RShara , always so quick with the "Facts". (Just kidding, I appreciate all your work sinking theories that deserve to be sunk). That's my personal favorite too, I thought this was interesting enough to mention it, and the fact that Lestibournes' name "Spook", given to him by Kelsier, literally can mean ghost or an operative of an Intelligence Agency seems like a pretty blatant (probably too blatant) tie-in to the ghostbloods (this was mentioned in @Toaster Retribution thread about Spook being a Ghostblood, the link to that thread is spoilered below). Still interesting to think about, what if Kelsier after 10 years of experimenting with Hemalurgy with Spook, did figure out how to spike out Spook's physical realm connection (but not his actual physical form), and then, say they got another Scadrian who was on his deathbed to allow them to steal his PR connection and spike Spook with this. Then Spook would have a spike that probably would contain his connection to the Scadrian subastral, which he could remove and explore the Universe and report back to Kelsier. And this would give Spook and Kelsier 90 years to work out the details of organization before Spook starts world hopping himself in earnest,, and the intelligence to figure out where the ghostbloods need a major secondary center of operations, namely Roshar. Also interesting to think about, if you could, say, remove your connection to the physical realm, would you still be subject to the decay associated with aging? Is that purely a physical process? Is this the route that some worldhoppers use to attain a seeming immortality? How did Demoux do it, he should have had enough connection to Scadrial (he was an atium misting) to make the travel through the CR difficult if not impossible, right? This is all so completely speculative, that really it's best to think of this all as a fun little thought experiment, like your on an island of pure speculation, far from the realm of plausibility, but it's a fun place to spend some time lost in thought in none the less.

Granted! You feel the strangest sensation as your liberated consciousness flies up and expands. As your mind drifts upward, you see the body your mind used to inhabit start to dissipate into thin swirls of brightly lit particles, like the embers that drift up from a fire, and your mind continues to expand and move upward away from the rapidly disassociating remains of your corporeal form. Soon the town you used to live in looks like nothing more than a speck, and your consciousness leaves the confines of the atmosphere of the pale blue dot that used to be your home and moves ever upwards, expanding all the while. Soon within the mirrored reflection that is your minds eye, the whole solar system stretches out beneath you like a child's play thing, and this too begins to dwindle as your consciousness moves ever on and continues to expand. Soon, your expanded consciousness encompasses the whole universe and your expanded essence now permeates all life. You see the vast and multiplicative expression of the imperative that is Life in the countless alien species that populate the universe. Marveling at the variety and beauty of creation, you notice that every alien civilization includes one and only one common invention. Yep, you guessed it, Ice Cream! As you live your deathless life, able to experience every type of life enjoying every variety of ice cream in the known and unknown universe, you have a realization that is at once simple yet profound. Your consciousness has fused with the consciousness of the Creator of the Universe, and you realize that God created the universe precisely to enjoy ice cream in it's infinite variations. Every civilization's primary teleological function is to produce new and delicious flavors of ice cream, and God sees that this is good, very very good. All of the above occurs in less than the blink of eye, and before the Nightwatcher can dispense a bane to you, you and the force that is responsible for the creation of the universe, cause a very delicious triple scoop cone of ice cream to appear in one of the Nightwathcer's tentacles. As she enjoys her Rocky Road, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, and Cremling Shell Crunch ice cream cone she forgets all about your bane, you leave the window that is her mind as she eats the last bite of her cone and sighs contentedly. Granted! Served up on a nice flat halibut that you are using as a plate (and yes that is a good dish of fish) is a fancy Pure Lake fish, piping hot and smelling delicious. After you eat both the Pure Lake fish and the halibut fish dish, you notice that you're feeling a little gassy. As you bend over to tie your shoe, an unholy wind erupts from your backside. Thinking that was probably just the halibut, you continue blithely along your way. Unfortunately, the Pure Lake fish was a magic fish, and the Old Magic has a nice symmetry, so this fish itself has a boon and a bane. The bane is that from now on, anytime you bend over, a gale force fart is unleashed from your posterior. The boon is that your hair has never looked so shiny, so you have that going for you. I wish that I could control my hair, and have it move en-masse at my command, and further I would like to have it endowed with a strength equal to at least one of my arms (magically so, I don't want a beefy muscular scalp) so that it could function not unlike a monkey's prehensile tail.

Just looking at the survey, 3 out of 7 Malazan readers liked Midnight Tides the best out of any of the Malazan books. I'm currently re-reading the Book of the Fallen series and am reading Midnight Tides right now, for those of you who this is your favorite book, what are some of the things that you like best about this book? Is it the Tehol Beddict and Bugg dynamic? The saga of the Sengar brothers? Lines like when Delisp is asking Shurq Elalle what she is going to spend her incredible wealth on and says "How many variations of sex-assasin attire exist out there?"? The showdown in the Azath house (with Iron Bars and Ublala Pung)? The appearance of Silchas Ruin? The opening scene with the Betrayal of Scabandari Bloodeye? I think this a great book, definitely one of my top 5 favorite Malazan books, but I am curious to hear what you guys liked about it.

There have been numerous threads about Kelsier being the leader of the ghostbloods, all with some pretty compelling evidence, and they all run into the same wall. WoB's have repeatedly stated that Kelsier is too connected to Scadrial to leave the Scadrian system. All that good speculation goes up in a puff of WoBery, or does it? First, I think @Calderis's incredibly well thought out post about Physical life after death gives us part of the necessary mechanic, but requires a little bit of unpacking (link to the recent thread with the link to Cal's theory spoilered below). I think that one of the main objections to Cal's theory, namely that Kelsier getting a Physical body from spiking out another individual's connection to the Physical Realm seems to break the conservation of mass/energy/investiture, can be easily solved, and further that this solution to this PR body problem has some very interesting possible implications. When an individual transitions to the Cognitive Realm their physical body (i.e. the matter that makes up their body with a given mass) is converted into an equivalent amount of investiture of the form that exists in the Cognitive Realm. If you think of the incredible complexity of a human body, a truly composite universe unto itself, made up of 30 to 40 trillion cells and home to some 300 to 400 trillion symbiotic microbes, the sheer difficulty of this transition to and from the CR becomes truly mind boggling. But that's where the magic comes in, right? Investiture knows what to do in this conversion process, namely because of sentient intent. Because the magic of the investiture is handling the specifics of the actual conversion, the only thing that is needed is an equivalent amount of Investiture for the conversion process. Say investiture is measured in units of adonalsiums, you would have to figure out how many adonalsiums is equivalent to a reasonable facsimile of Kelsier's body, and figure out how to steal and store that hemalurgically. We know from Oversleep's "We do not concern ourselves with common uses" WoB that investiture can be stolen by a hemalurgic spike (even the Investiture of a spren, smalll quote spoiled below), so it seems highly plausible that the Investiture that makes up a physical body once it's in the CR could be stolen and stored in a spike. We know from Hoid's corpse boat "Spanky" in MB:SH that non-living body's can transition to the Cognitive Realm, we know from Nazh's real knife and from the silver chain in Celebrant that real world objects can be brought into the CR (the spike), and further we know that Kelsier and Spook had a century to experiment with Hemalurgy. We also know from an Argent WoB that the Spirit Web of a deceased person doesn't completely break down, and that there's a record of the deceased person's spirit web in the Spiritual Realm for a long time, making it more plausible that the stolen and stored physical body of the deceased could be stapled onto another entity with hemalurgy. Kelsier, it seems to me, is selfish but not intentionally evil. The idea that he would take a living person into the CR and spike out their connection to the Physical Realm and the Investiture that is their Physical Form, and leave them a misty wraith doomed to wander the Scadrian Cognitive Realm as essentially a bodyless idea for all eternity doesn't really fit, just like I don't think all Kelsier would need to do is steal an individual's connection to the Physical Realm (I don't think the background investiture idea works because Brandon has explicitly said that the physical body is converted into investiture, not that investiture coalesced into the transitioning body (like a teleporter in star trek, the composite matter is beamed from the ship to the surface, not collected from the matter on the surface of the planet teleported too, nothing comes from nothing)). The long preamble done, here's the shiny theoretical bauble dangling from the long speculative chain. I am speculating that when Spook was nearing the end of his Emperor or Governor days (either bored or dying), he took a composite hemalurgic spike and a corpse with the same relative mass as Kelsier on a trip to the hills where Harmony's shardpool is located and transitioned to the cognitive realm. After Spook and the corpse were converted into Investiture and were in the Cognitive Realm, Kelsier spiked out Spook's connection to the Physical Realm (but not the investiture of his actual physical form) and he spiked out the investiture of the physical form of the recently deceased corpse. Further, to have a deathless cognitive agent capable of exploring the Universe he probably spiked out Spook's connection to Scadrial if this is in fact a separate attribute (it's also likely that the connection to Scadrial comes with the connection to the Physical Realm). This would leave us with Kelsier, enhanced with a greater connection to Scadrial (this might have some benefit) and the extra investiture of a true physical form. When he transitions to the Physical Realm this extra investiture, like Cal explained in his post, would be used to form Kelsier's spiritual ideal body, replete with Hathsin scars. How he got his fullborn powers is probably less rosey of a story, but he's a you can't break eggs without making an omelette kind of guy. That would also leave Kelseire with a biddable and dependable Cognitive Shadow agent, Spook, able to explore and report on the wider happenings of the Cosmere. With his connection to Scadrial spiked out, Spook could venture wherever he wanted and it seems to me that with the clue dropped by Hoid to Kelsier about the destruction of a whole mercantile system that Kelsier would want his new agent to investigate the other subastral economies for a start. Also, if Connection to a particular shardworld was necessary to transition to that shardworld's PR, then Spook could likewise find an agent that would be willing to have their Physical Realm connection spiked out to become a wandering Worldhopper. Since the investiture for Spook's physical body was never spiked out, with the new PR connection spike he could transition to the Physical Realm on the new Shardworld. And if he ever wanted to leave a particular cosmere planet, he could remove his Physical Realm connection spike (we know this is something he could do because he removed his pewter spike). But just to extend this to it's most tinfoil hat extreme, Spook could in fact be Thaidikar, and either there's no spike necessary for Connection to Roshar or the spike for the Physical Realm connection could be hidden anywhere...It's possibly worth paying attention to details about Thaidikar on a reread to see if there are any mistborn like powers that are hinted at or if there's any mention of metal on his person, like an earing... TL:DR Kelsier spiked a chicken, and now he can lay eggs, but because of his fullborn powers (specifically his ability to regulate his body heat with F-Brass) he can lay soft boiled eggs. Man, that's serious power. Spook got a tan, but just on the upper part of one of his legs, so now everyone can see he's Thaidakar, I mean they can see his Thigh Darker. *Edited: Tried to change Kelsier to Spoiler and Spook to Spoiler in the title but the old Spoilery title still showed up in the most recent threads list. Will consider this next time, nice catch John203

Hahaha, totally unexpected. Looking forward to the next 24 installments. Maybe the next one could feature a Tropewakener or a Windrunner fused with a Skybreaker...A Windbreaker. Investiture from the spiritual realm converted to...uhm...wind that gets broken mightily...

Envisager University, Urithiru branch. Motto: At Envisager U we'll give you the push you need to figure out if you can be Radiant*. *The school assumes no liability for underperforming students who fail to stop themselves from plummeting to their deaths when pushed from the top of the tower.

@Toaster Retribution, I'm not Swedish, I just googled Swedish Traffic planning and saw that Sweden seemlessly switched from driving in Left hand lanes to right hand lanes in one day on "Hagen H", and was suitably impressed. I'm from the US, and I think we should a "Hagen M" day where we join the majority of the civilized world and switch to the metric system. I know all you anglophile purists will probably brand me as a Crypto-Socialist for trying to take away your pecks, bushels, hectacres, drams and hogsheads, but you can all take a 50 foot walk off of a 15 meter pier. Here are some really sad Singer forms. Waits patiently in long lines form. Usually attunes the Rythym of Easy Listening. Gets quite uncomfortable in elevators and around large axehounds form. Pretty specific form, not used very often. Can fart with their armpits form, used mostly by adolescent Singers.

Is this the only form capable of this, or is this like mateform where the Singer with this form would become particularly adept at this? I could see how this would be useful if a Singer had inadvertently attuned the Rythym of Constipation. Without direct shardic intervention this form would be doomed to fail, because clearly god-like powers would be necessary to pull off the Rosharan equivalent of Högertrafikomläggningen (the day on September 3rd, 1967 when Swedish traffic switched from driving on the left-hand of the road to the right). Given the rapid pace of developments in fabrial science, this form might be essential for the future of Roshar as the Rosharans are probably not too far out from developing self driving chull carts. I think this form was first created when a Singer accidentally bonded a brochure on the proper fastening of bicycle helmets. Here are a couple of other awfully useful Singer forms: Wokform: The right arm terminates in a fire resistant steep walled carapace pan, the left arm ends in a spatula, and the Singer so bonded is given the special ability to attune the Rythym of Teppanyaki and the ability to fling edible crustaceans with extreme accuracy. Tailgate form: The Singer, after bonding an Alespren, undergoes some fairly drastic modifications to their carapace. Dual drink holder rings capable of holding two mugs of ale sprout from their head. A projection at the back of their elbow can be used as a bottle opener, and their left pinky can be used as a corkscrew. From their waist, 1 wide and 2 narrow shallow trays extend, perfect for holding chips, dip, salsa, guacamole, etc.