Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

I think it might be different this this, and more similar to how Preservation's Investiture works on Scadrial. Elantrians have to be of Aonic descent, and they are selected by the Shaod. This implies that the Investiture is keyed to their Spirit Web, like Allomancers are keyed to Preservation's power through their spirit web. I think that the Elantrian case is like Scadrain Allomancy in that the key to accessing Devotions Investiture (the Dor) is a genetic (or spirit web) based trait. But, like on Roshar, an Investiture reactant is not necessary to access this Investiture because the Dor is in a heightened energy state (it is kinetic, free investiture instead of stored investitue). So the drawing of Aons by an Elantrian to access the power of the Dor is just a cognitive channel that allows the Investiture to be directed by the Elantrian (similar to how a nahel-bond to a spren creates a cognitive channel for access to the kinetic, free investiture of Stormlight). The Dor can exist in this free, kinetic state because it is trapped somehow in the Cognitive Realm, so the Cognitive energy needed to release it is smaller due to the pressure of a higher energy state being forced into a lower energy state. How I think this works on Roshar is that Kinect free investiture exists in the form of Stormlight, and it can exist in this kinetic, more readily usable form because it is contained within another form of stored Investiture, namely the gems. This WoB (spoilered below) says that gemhearts are Investiure that has leaked into the Physical Realm: The fact that Stormlight is housed in another form of stored Investiture allows it to exist in a higher energy state and because it doesn't have to be stored like Endowments investiture in Breath, Autonomy's Investiture in Sand microbes, or Preservation's Investiture in the Spirit Web, this allows the surgebinder to use this stormlight Investiture by using the Nahel-bond of their spren as a cognitive channel to direct the Kinetic Energy of the Stormlight. This is not a cannon explanation (I haven't seen any WoB's that directly contradict it, but I am not the most well read on WoBs), but to me it makes the most sense of any of the models that I have thought about or seen. If there are WoBs that prove this untrue I will redact and revise this, but I personally like the Potential Energy model of Investiture, where Spiritual Energy has the highest Potential energy, Cognitive Energy is also Spiritual Energy but in a lower energy state, and Physical Matter is Spiritual Energy that exists with zero potential energy.

If you travel a lot for your comedy, you should get the audiobooks for Wheel of Time, there are 14 of them, all 30+ hrs, and they are read by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading (Michael Kramer does the audio books for Mistborn, and Michael Kramer and Kate Reading do the audiobook readings for Storm Light Archive as well). They are two of the very best audiobook readers out there, and they are a married couple in real life, pretty cute. The Wheel of Time is a great series, it's also the series that Brandon Sanderson was brought in to finish after Robert Jordan passed away before the series was completed. Sanderson did an amazing job wrapping up Wheel of Time and I started reading his books because he did such a good job with the last 3 books of WoT. I know how you feel about Song of Ice and Fire, it's hard to wait for the next book, but I hope that GRRM has a long life, he's such an amazing writer and I don't think anyone else could really finish his series, it's just such a product of his individual genius. Also, if you like audiobooks, the first 4 books of SoIAF are read by one of the best audiobook narrators of all times, Roy Dotrice, a welsh actor that does every voice perfectly. His Tyrion Lanister was freaking amazing, sadly he passed away in 2017, but the first 4 audiobooks of SoIaF are some of my favorites of all times. It's always difficult and scary trying something new, I think that's awesome that you are going for it, and wish you the best of luck with your comedy!

This is amazing, I saw your deprecation of this on the Cosmere the Musical thread, but I think this is one of your best @Personification, truly moving. You are a very talented, and I love your work.

This begs the question, what did you trade for comedy? Totally kidding, as long as it wasn't your soul, those trades don't work out very well in the long run. Welcome to the shard, if you haven't read Stormlight Archives, I truly envy you. The best 84 consecutive hours of your life are still in your future, then you will be like the rest of sods, waiting the next 21 years of your life for CLOSURE. I started the Wheel of Time when I was in high school and didn't get to finish the series until I was middle aged and laid up with a roller skating injury (yeah, I broke my ankle taking my little girls to the skating rink, my ankle snapped like a dry chicken bone). If you are in for the long haul (which I think you should be) then the Storm Light Archives is possibly the best thing you will ever read.

This is totally up to you, how you would like to phrase your question, I was just trying to clarify. The thread is still young and your post is editable, feel free to make any modifications to you that you want (any form of this question would be great to ask, but if there is more specificity that you want add it in now).

I think this is really to build overall interest in Aimia, the Kaza interlude stongly suggests that something interesting is being guarded there, Akinah is a cymatic city (implying it was probably around before Adonalsium was shattered), and one of the Gem Archives talks about it explicitly. This is going to be an imporant spot in the next novels I think. @Tobbzn I have a theory about the Siah and Dysian Aimians, if you are interested you can check it out: In a nutshell I think the Dysian Aimians and the Siah Aimians are the boon and bane of cultivation, one is a positive fortune influencing force that spys/manipulates events for Cultivation the other is negative fortune Schlemiel force that causes enemies shoe laces to unlace so they trip while they are running, but both are working with cultivation.

This is going to be an answer signed in a personalized book @The Thinking Herald, so it will be a written reply. I don't think we'll be able to tell anything by the way in which he writes his answer, but who knows, the angle of penmanship of written WoBs and their signifigance might be some sharder's special area of expertise. So just one thought on your question, it could be potentially phrased like this: Is the current desolation the 16th desolation? If not, how many desolations have there been? This has the purpose of getting a solid answer on the most important question, and the possibility of pinning down the exact number of desolations. Both of these questions stand a fair chance of being RAFOed. But your strategy, now that I think about it, might be the better one, the broad up front question that gives Brandon more wiggle room, is still useful for narrowing down how many desolations there might have been, with the additional question being the specifically right one, might (if it's right) get him to add something amazing. This is like the danger of future sight in microcosm, the possibilites and permutations branch out in a dizzying array of self-recrimination and alternating visions of brilliance. Who can say, it's your question to pose, these are just some thoughts about it really.

I think the more appropriate term would be chemical reagent, something that is required for a reaction to occur but that is consumed in the process of that reaction. Here is the breakdown: Awakening = Breath (stored investiture)+color(chemical reactant) = magical effect Allomancy = Lerasium in SpiritWeb(stored investiture)+metal(chemical reactant) = magical effect Sand Mastery = Infused sand microbes(stored investiture) + water(chemical reactant) = magical effect The thing of note for all of these systems is that once the reagent is gone the reaction, or magical effect, can no longer occur. The thing that is different from these systems than what we find on Roshar is that Stormlight needs no chemical reagent to function. This suggests to me that Stormlight is inherently in a higher energy state. A real world analogy would be that Stormlight is like electricity flowing through a power line, it needs a channel (or circuit) to direct the energy to do work. The other systems are like batteries that require an electrolyte to create an energy differential to release the stored energy of the system. @Confused I love your Cosmere Magic Theory but I think it suffers from the inappropriate use by Brandon of the term catalyst, I think Brandon was using it in the colloquial non-technical sense as something that is necessary to start a reaction. I think the better term (and more useful) would be reactant, this is a specific term that implies that the so-called reactant is consumed in the reaction. This fits the data (as far as I can tell at least) better than the term catalyst, which as Calderis pointed out, does imply that it is not consumed by the resulting reaction.

Yeah, I know, I've got two girls. Too much kids bop can't totally make you go bugnuts.

Here's a song, sung to the tune of "Timber" by Kids Bop, just for you @RShara: It's going down—the theory Timbre Is Eshonai, and she's Alive Let's set it straight, so y'all remember that Eshonai is dead and gone

Rad question, gave you an upvote @MountainKing

Just wanted to clarify this @MountainKing, could this question also be phrased as: "If I awaken an object near an illusion made from investiture, will the awakening process drain the investiture from the illusion as well?"

------------- *EDITED* This is now closed, the deadline has come and gone. @RShara's question got the most votes: Thanks for posting all those great questions! ----------- Hi All, My birthday is coming up in February, and I am going to be ordering 3 signed hardcovers from Brandon's store, I already have 2 questions picked out for personalizations, but wanted to give you wonderful sharders the opportunity to ask one of my 3 questions. If you have a question you are dying to ask Brandon, post it here, and the question that is related to Stormlight Archives with the most upvotes by 12:00 am PST on Sunday the 28th of January will be one of the questions that I will submit with my book order. The question can be tangentially related to Stormlight Archives (like "Is Stormlight really Endowment's investiture?") and it can be a 2 part question, but I'm not sure if there is a character limit to the questions, so try to keep it to around 240 characters including spaces and your username (I'm going to put that in the question so that the WoB will list the source of the question). Excited to see what some of the smartest people on this planet or any other (I think) come up with! EDITED* Feel free to post as many questions as you want!

Here's the continuation of the scene from Chapter 59, Bondsmith: We saw Dalinar use the normal surge of Adhesion in Urithiru to stick a chair to wall to use like a step ladder to investigate the ventilation shaft (and he also used it to stick Kadash to the ground during their fight), and we saw him use Spiritual Adhesion to learn foreign languages. The Stormfather explains how learning languages is possible with Adhesion by saying: So the continuation of the scene from Chapter 59 heavily implies that his pulling together and reforming the temple was a power that Bondsmiths specifically had. Given that we've seen the surge of Adhesion (in both it's physical and spiritual aspects) I was just assuming that this was the other Bondsmith surge of Tension being used to pull the broken pieces of the building together. It's interesting to note in that scene that Dalinar can feel the temple wanting to be whole again, which implies a Connection to the temple, almost as if he is talking to the shadesmar bead of the temple. So I always read this scene as Dalinar using Spiritual Tension (tension being the force that is exerted on the connection between things).

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: 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.

EDIT THIS JUST IN!!! I was looking up the point in part 5 where Szeth swears his 3rd ideal, and looky what I found in Chapter 120! So from the above quote we know two things about the surge of Abrasion: An external object slicked with the Abrasion lashing does glow The slicked abrasion lashing is specifically keyed to the person applying the surge, and for them alone the slicked object will be manipulable. The pendulum swings back to the magical cushion of Investiture theory on how the abrasion surge works! Yay primary sources! My original misguided post is spoilered below, and is TOTALLY WRONG. Only read it as a cautionary tale for how convoluted speculating can be without referring to primary sources: @Tobbzn, in regards to tension glowing, there's this bit from OB, Chapter 59 Bondsmith, when Dalinar uses the surge of Tension to pull together the temple of Battah, right after he He-manned the doorway back into place: That's an interesting theory about glowing being related to whether a property is being augmented, versus not glowing if a property is being diminished, I'll have to give that idea some more thought... You're totally right that we don't know much about voidbinding, but what the Fused seemed to be doing is a hacked form of surgebinding, using Voidlight to access one surge, so I don't know that I would consider what they are doing Voidbinding as of yet.

Rad! This is so good, I love how you thematically fit the story of Dalinar and Adolin to the thematic progression in the song, brilliantly done!

Ahh, ok, that makes a lot more sense. There is a stark divide in the morally gray fantasy of writers like GRR Martin and the writing of BWS that is written with a moral imperative. Your outline doesn't have explicitly where you are going to draw these comparisons (unless you are planning to do a parallel investigation of both types for each point). Structurally, I think you are best off by examining the work of BWS first according to your general outline, and then having a conclusion for each major section where you show how brandon's writing is different than the other type of morally gray epic fantasy. Also, for points where the divide between the two is specifically wide, you might do some textual analysis of the morally gray fantasy. I love Brandon's work precisely because it's written moral imperative, and the comparative religions that he creates for the Cosmere function as background screens where small nuanced elements of belief stand out in high contrast. I like your general outline a lot, I have quoted it below (spoilered, with suggestions for individual points in red) Totally take these for just the suggestions that they are. I don't think I fully addressed how to pull in other fantasy series to contrast your points, but I think you have a very solid framework outlined and I think you are on your way to making a great dissertation. One final point, the only work that is comparable in construction and effect to the works of Brandon Sanderson is Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Like Brandon, Plutarch shows the contextual framework in which the subjects of his Biographies lived, what they believed, what their characters were like (strengths and weaknesses) and draws very obvious conclusions about how their character, morals and beliefs affected the outcome of their lives. Might be something to bring in for comparative purposes (it's epic history though, not really epic fantasy, though the Story of Timoleon reads like an amazing fantasy novella). Best of luck!

So, here's a WoB that @Calderis dug up off of Arcanum, that could possibly be read to imply that the Dysian Aimians are not native to Roshar (emphasis added): So this does open the definite possibility that the Dysian Aimians are refugees from another planet (possibly Ashyn, possibly another planet entirely). I personally think that they are working closely with Cultivation, kind of like her master gardeners/super spies, but this could be the case even they came from a different planet. As far as BAM goes, I think we suffer from a serious lack of information and we have to build a very shaky speculative superstructure to try figure out what her origin is. I am incredibly interested to learn more about what she is, but what we've gotten so far is a bare minimum of foreshadowing I think. I do think all your points about Mishim are very interesting, and the fact that Ishar is shown in front of the 3 moons of Roshar in the endpaper painting does imply a connection of some sort. That's the fun about speculating, you get to see how close to the mark you are eventually, and it's going to be a long time before book 4 comes out, a lot more time to reread the first 3 books and see how small details could possibly add up to a larger whole. Like reconstructing a new type of dinosaur from 3 teeth and a fossilized footprint. Fun stuff.

I appreciate the support, but I think the one item that makes the investiture cushion theory of slicked abrasion a lost cause is how the King's Drop was slicked by the Fused during the battle of Thaylen city. Szeth notes that the Fused is trying to trick him by slicking the King's Drop, and this would imply that there is no visible manifestation of stormlight on the Drop. Szeth had previously practiced with the Edgedancer Honor blade, so he had a good idea that it was possible to invisibly make something slicker. Looking at this more closely, the slickness was applied to a large perfect gem in such a fashion that it was not visibly apparent, and further, the Fused was able to bypass the magical reduced abrasion of the Drop and hold onto it like a football. This suggests two things: It's not a magical phase transition to the thing that is slicked, or if it is a magical phase transition it is cancelled out upon contact with a similarly phased substance (the hands of the Fused). Like interference waves, overlayed, producing a flat wave form. Maybe the underlying principle at work is closer to Light weaving, which unlike adhesion, tension and gravitation, can be applied to external objects without visible manifestations of stormlight. Most likely this would be something similar to @Leyrann's electromagnetic repulsive field theory of abrasion at work. There's also the fact that once Szeth retrieves the drop with Lift's cloak, it is still magically slick. So direct physical contact by the user of the abrasion surge does not need to be maintained to affect the slickness of an external object. I think the most likely is option 1, and like @Tobbzn mentioned, the surface becomes ethereal (modulating waves) and when the Fused is grabbing the King's Drop, the surface of their hands are likewise ethereal, but that these two series of modulating waveforms nullify each other and the result is that their is a field of normal abrasiveness where the Fused hands are in contact with the slicked Honor's Drop. One test of this postulate would be if one of the abrasion using Fused were to grab Lift while she had slicked herself to be un-grabbable. If the Fused could grab her while she was slicked, we would know that it wasn't a function of the user of the abrasion being unaffected by an object that they have personally reduced the abrasion of, and further it would lend more credence to abrasion being a possible self cancelling surge.

So, my daughter was interested in Lucid dreaming (she's 8 years old) and I have been paying a lot more attention to the state of consciousness that exists when you are in the intermediate stage between the conscious state and the dream state. One of the observations that I have made is that as you are laying in bed, waiting to transition into the dream state, there are luminescent patterns of light (mostly green with a mild purplish nimbus) that seem to move through your field of view, like the after images burned into your retina from exposure to too bright light. These patterns of semi-light undulate and modulate, sometimes coalescing into forms that are similar to visual sense impressions, but the more you scrutinize them, the more they disperse into abstract patches of light. These are fairly common, but over the last couple of nights I have been more aware during the transition to unconsciousness, and have noticed something peculiar that I was wondering if any of you have experienced. At certain times, I noticed that the vague sensory impressions of a seeming scene were completely replaced by a fully featured scene, but the thing that was interesting was that it wasn't a visualized scene, rather it was the whole sensate impression of a scene (the idea of a particular moment, with all of the details contained in the idea) and only after actively reflecting on this idea of a scene did I visually sense the particulars of this scene. So my question is, has anyone else experienced this? I think that this might get to the heart of what dreaming actually is, it's a pre-encoded whole package sensate matrix, that exists simultaneously on multiple levels, and only later when you are trying to interpret it, does it expand into manifest specifics (like visual details, emotional resonance, etc). Would love to hear your thoughts on this or to hear some of your more interesting dreams, because I think it's one of the reasons an intelligent creator would create an intelligent species, to see the manifest beauty of their creation reflected in the subconscious mirror of personal experience. Do we dream to give God a better sense of what he is? Do we dream to explain the mysteries of life that are hidden from God himself?

Totally love where you are going with this, get some sleep (unless your cremlings never sleep) and dig a little deeper, would love to see what you come up with.

@Varion had a very cool theory about what the moons signify. Check it out, pretty awesome stuff. BTW it's only 7 pm where I'm from, so the night, relatively speaking, is still young. (Also, why don't you go out and get a slurpee at 7-11 or something, this is important stuff)

I feel like you are close to approaching something important here, but I can't quite square the circle. What do you think this all inplies?

Another possible implementation of this would be to create a J Srcipt object that is a Date Object. You could have properties of Years, Months, Weeks and Day, and could implement object level functions that convert one Date Object to another (or have methods that add dates to get a new date). I don't know how google docs work, but if this was something you were trying to do in Excel a pretty basic VBA script could accomplish the date modifications. If this is something that is a serious time suck for you, let me know and I can probably develop a simple VB script that can do the calculation for you (you would fill out a VBA form with the details of the date that is known, and then fill out +X number of years,weeks, days, months and it would output the date formatted like you want it).