Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

@Wit Beyond Measure I think the way to think about this, is this whole communal process of theorizing and speculating is a means to move forward, it's the progress of mankind in Microcosm. People with new ideas come online and create new connections, and everyone that is on here has some unique perspective/talent to add to the collective efforts of deepening understanding. I, like you, try to reach for the sun, try to fit crazy bits of disparate things together to come up with novel formulations, that most the time turn out to be totally off. But that's the fun part. The other users on here use there expertise and skill to shoot down thoeries that really are only half-baked or that haven't been thought through to what they mean at their logical point of completion. It can feel adversarial at times, but the thing to think about is that this the place where the Esoteric fire of knowledge of all things Sanderson is held and tended. These amazing folks at the 17th shard have dedicated their lives in a truly remarkable way to the tending of this fire. Part of authoritative knowledge is quickly shutting down lines of speculation that are wrong and could mislead others about the true nature of the Cosmere. @Calderis is a master of WoBs. @RShara is the queen of canon facts. Others have unique gifts to offer to cut away the erroneous assumptions, to strip away the false conjecture, and most importantly to look at the primary sources and the WoBs and the WoPs to assure that a theory is truly inline with the intent of the Author. Wild speculation is fun, but good information is ultimately better. You are amazing at finding great quotes, and your theories are really fun to read. I'd try not to take it personally when people argue against your theories, it's just part of the collective process of finding the truth, and ultimately that's what everyone hear values most.

Interesting, kind of like how the Parshendi got their Connection and Identity restored by the Everstorm. I like it, Adolin should take his shardblade and jump into the pool in the Horneater Peaks where Cultivation's perpendicularity is. Temporarily out of upvotes, but I'll get you one later when they roll in, very interesting idea.

@Kaleid that is truly beautiful! And the fact that her last act in OB is to forgive Dalinar just reinforces what an amazing person she was. The world is dimmer place without her light, but just like Adolin's name means born unto Light, her light shines on in the world through her children and the man that her husband became. This is my favorite part by far, actually got a little teary reading this.

I agree that this is unlikely. I generally agree with this, but I'm still trying to figure out how the Dysian Aimians work. The single biggest clue that something strange is going on with the Alleyway is that Lift gets disoriented. This could be explained by the shifting movement of a mass of Hordelings, but an alleyway described as long without any mention of twisting around, seems like a very hard structure to get disoriented in. The other supporting details (the oil like wall, the unnatural impenetrable darkness, and the unusual length of the alleyway) add up, at least in my mind, to the conclusion that something strange is happening with the physical reality around Arclo. This could totally be wrong, but at the same time the way I read the scene this all added up to the impression that reality was bent and warped around the Aimian.

Very nice! I'm going to have to get my box of kleenex for this thread I think. But she went to the great beyond, and there's no greater mystery to explore than what is behind the veil of death, explore the infinite beyond Eshonai, you were a leader and a hero to your people, but your burden is now lifted and your soul is set free.

Freaking awesome! Once again amazing quotes @Wit Beyond Measure! I am currently out of upvotes, but when they trickle in I'll give you one for those quotes. This one is my personal favorite that you found: Nice work, as per usual.

Happy 2018 sharders! So Oathbringer came out in 2017 and not every character made it through to 2018, so in honor of the newly departed, I thought it would be nice to start a Eulogy thread where we can attune the Rhythm of the Lost and express our feelings about the recently departed. Here's a list of Characters that died in OB, starting with all the E characters because there are a lot them (will update as characters that I miss are pointed out) Elhokar Kholin Eshonai Eth (Last Name?) Evi Kholin Noro Sah Beard Jezrien Aesudan Kholin Meridas Amaram I'll start with Jezrien's death scene and his final words: And here is the inbook Eulogy by Brandon, which is really nice: And of course, here is the beautiful painting of Jezrien by Howard Lyon, Rest in Peace Jezrien, hopefully your soul is now at peace. *Edited* Added another E character, Evi as pointed out by @Toaster Retribution

@Wit Beyond Measure found the quotes about the strange reality bending powers of Arclo the sleepless from Edgedancer (all from Chapter 18): Then later: Then later: And finally this one, which is the best sample that shows something truly strange is going on: These taken together seem to imply that Arclo has the ability to warp physical reality. The alleyway being unnatural dark (I know this is explained by the lack of spheres and possibly the darkness of the storm, but this seems like a special more enhanced kind of darkness) and the alleyway being unnatural long. The part where the walls seemed to moving and sliding around could potentially be explained by the synchronized mass movement of the hordelings, but the part where they were "sliding like they were covered in oil" doesn't seem like a description of a surface covered with synchronized cremlings, that would be discontinuous and bumpy, oil is smooth and viscous. And finally, the fact that Lift gets disoriented in the alleyway, heavily implies that some kind of strange reality bending magic is at play, because Alleyways are simple by design, two directions forwards or backwards. Also interesting to note is that the Sleepless seems to have dispatched the Skybreaker squires in a peculiar way. The woman is covered in a silky substance and seems to be stuck to the floor, while the male Skybreaker is suspended from a shanty, body immobilized with his head rolling to the side. I also think that this quote is very interesting, kind of like a living hive mind version of a Coppermind: I also think this bit is incredibly interesting, when starting to talk about the philosophy of the Omnithi: Seems to heavily imply that Arclo at least is a worldhopper. With his self-described attempt to build a philosophy as his immortal goal, maybe he has something to do with the World Singers? I would love to see Hoid have a chat with Arclo, hopefully that's slated for a future book.

Interesting idea @.S.A.M.K.M, but for Investiture to do work I think that it has to be willed to do something and dead shardblades seem to be mindless. This might be a viable way to revive Mayalaran if Adolin was also there.

Awwww man, I wish it was a cover of Long Way Back From Hell, oh well. Granted you are a full mistborn and an aluminum ferring, but along with your powers the Nightwatcher gave you a full frontal lobotomy. Enjoy! I wish that I will never loose my wallet.

Some very nice analysis @Varion, but how I've always read the Singer rhythms is that they are pre-defined modes of communication that have a resonant effect. What I mean by that is that an individual Singer has volitional control over what rhythm they attune to express the emotional content of what they are trying to express. So the rhythm is a qualifier, like an extra shared emphasis that conveys emotional intent. So using your radio analogy, if a Singer accidentally bumped into someone they have a choice of which radio station they tune to have playing in the background that adds additional context to their statement that the Singer implicitly understands. So taking this example further, if their response to the Singer they bumped into is "Sorry" and they have attuned the Rhythm of Peace, their radio station would be tuned to easy listening Jazz and the Singer they bumped into would have this extra emotion-centric information to interpret their statement, and realize it was just an accident. But if they said the same thing attuned to the Rhythm of Derision, their radio Station would be tuned to a death metal or punk rock station and the emotional intent of piss-off implicit in this attuning would be conveyed. Honestly I'll have to think some more on this, just read a WoB that is very interesting and relevant to this discussion.

As always, awesome quotes, thanks @Wit Beyond Measure! I was looking specifically for the descriptions of the strange things happening to physical reality around Arclo, I'll look it up in my physical copy, but man it's a pain to manually type in book quotes.

You are given the voice of Ray Orbison, the guitar prowess of Jimi Hendrix and then transported instantaneously 60 miles above the surface of the earth. In the Mesosphere, where the air is decidedly "thin", you can summon your electric guitar. At a temperature of -100 degrees Centrigrade, you better start playing some hot licks. Assuming you don't freeze to death, you only have a little over 27 minutes to enjoy your golden voice and godlike guitar ability before you're turned into a grisly splat in some poor Iowan's cornfield. I wish that store bought donuts were as good as donuts from donut shops.

@The Allomantic Metalhead I got that the essences were about balance and not necessarily about the color of the magic. If this is a self contained book that is only going to be a single volume, then there's probably no need for a parrallel magic system, with the worldbuilding, politics, invading undead hordes you'd have more than enough ground to cover in a single book. But if you envision this as a multi-volume series, laying the groundwork for a parallel magic system in the first volume might be a good idea, and the physical manifestation of the parallel magic system being drastically different would make for good contrast. The other magic system could be a derivative application of the same fundamental forces, but with a different physical presentation. I do like the setup a lot, Gothic horror fantasy. And the magic system sounds awesome too, this is just totally along the lines of thinking about the long game, if you are planning this to be multi-volume series that is.

This sounds rad, one possible suggestion would be to add another parrallel magic system and maybe call it something along the lines of Polychromatic ______ (touch, focus, burst)?? Maybe it's practiced by an esoteric sect of Monks that live off of the coast of the frostlands, something to contrast with the Monochromatic paradigm of the magic of Essencewielding. I think this story has great potential, it's a very good setup.

Ok, so here goes. You are a mistborn, but you are in a different galaxy than Scadrial is, and a different God has created your galaxy such that foreign Investiture cannot penetrate the boundary of your Galaxy. It gets turned into fluffy bits of stardust, shaped like butterflies that flutter briefly before they drift apart and are lost in the vast emptiness of space. Sorry about that. You are a werewolf, but wolves on your planet are really what on are planet would be referred to as hamsters, so on Nights of a full moon you find yourself pushing large spherical boulders around and twitching your nose a lot. You have been given the power of the grey essencewielder, but unfortunately the Nightwatcher dispatched a courier to the Church of the high Dawn, and a group of sunburned Albino zealots arrives at your house and tears you limb from limb. I wish that I could be as cool as Alec Guinness.

Granted, you used to be a werewolf (gotta watch your verb tense when your talking to the Nightwatcher), but now you are a plumber living in Hoboken. The one carryover you have from your former days as a werewolf is that on nights of the full moon thick matted wolf fur erupts from your ears and nostrils. So you still have a great capacity to frighten people once every 28 days. I wish that I had a robot that did my work for me.

I've been meaning to reply to this post for awhile now, have to get some work in every once in awhile. I really like your formulation here. Wit/Hoid is one of the best characters ever written, and the stories he tells can be viewed on multiple levels. On their surface they are cautionary fables, highlighting a principle that is open somewhat to interpretation. The genius of this device is that it is a scale-able metaphor, it can exist simply as a morality tale, it can be showing a protagonist the principle behind an important lesson that they need to learn, and it can reveal shadowy hints of the deeper secrets of the Cosmere. Also, his stories are always amazing. The whole Girl Who Looked Up cycle in OB is one of my favorite things ever written. The initial story told by Shallan with her lightweaving, the retelling of the Story by Hoid contextualizing the central crisis that Shallan experiences about how to keep going when life is pain and failure, with the slight modification at the end where the story is fully personalized for Shallan and she changes from the Girl Who Looked Up to the Girl Who Stood Up. That is powerful story telling. I love your interpretation of the Wandersail story, I was stuck on the mode of interpreting it solely as a lesson Kaladin needed to learn about responsibility for his actions and also the Cosmere secrets angle, but I think it total fits the moral crisis that the Radiants must have experienced when they realized what they had done to the Parshendi. I like the Moon story being an Origin story for the Aimians a lot, but I think that they are more Cultivation than Honor. The Dysian Aimians are a collective being, made of individual semi-aware pieces, but this would imply that their is some means of coordinating these constituent elements. My guess is that like the Singers, but even more so, they have a portion of their being permanently in the Cognitive Realm. Possibly they have super charged Connection and Identity, this might be the nature of their magic. Whether they were created out of whole cloth or if they were sentient beings that were converted into the deathless Sleepless is unclear, but their ability to readily dispatch skybreaker squires heavily implies that they have some sort of powerful magic they can access. The scene in Edgedancer where Lift sees Arclo in the alleyway, Arclo was doing some very strange things with the light and the apparent physical reality of the alleyway. If they exist primarily in the cognitive realm, possibly one of their magical abilities is to warp physical reality. If you think about it they exist really as just the idea of self, with the ability to project that Identity onto other semi-aware organisms. The individual cremlings are interchangeable/replaceable, so this heavily implies that they exist primarily in the cognitive realm (this is all just my own personal observations, WoB and textual references to the contrary would be awesome). @Wit Beyond Measure, if you have the Kindle Edition of Arcanum Unbounded, would you mind looking up the scene in the alley with Arclo and getting some good quotes out (you get the best quotes!) The Siah Aimians also exhibit strange behaviors that would imply that they also exist partially in the Cognitive realm. They can change almost anything about their physiology except the color of their eyes and nails (there is probably something important to this detail, as the eyes are the window to the soul). They also cast shadows in the wrong direction (which seems like a big hint that they are somehow existing in both realms simultaneously or partially, whatever the ratio is). If Siah Aimians exist in the both the Cognitive and Physical Realms simultaneously it would be a far more interesting thing to do to track down all of the spren like Axies the collector is doing. The other interesting thing about the Siah Aimians is that they are generally disliked because they have a proximate curse effect, people around them experience bad luck. With the above, I think, as I have said before, that Aimians seem like they are mostly if not entirely of Cultivation. We know also from the back of the book writings (which I think has been confirmed to be written by the Dysian Aimians) that the Sleepless are keeping an eye on the new orders of Radiants, and that they also seem to speak of the future with some awareness, which might be tenous proof that they are of Cultivation or working closely with Cultivation at the very least. Maybe the reason for the boon/curse paradigm of the old magic is that she is primarily manipulating Fortune, but the net effect in the system of Fortune has to be neutral. The good lord giveth, the good lord taketh away. If this is correct (again, total speculation here) then possibly the Bad Luck (or negative Fortune/bane) of the Siah Aimians is offset by the Good Luck (or positive fortune/boon) of the Sleepless. Also, we know from Taravangian's talk with Odium that Fortune is one of the qualities of Investiture that allows access to Future sight, so maybe the Sleepless are Cultivations gardeners extraordinaire and the Siah Aimians are the schlemiels that you stick behind the enemies ranks so that they stub their toes a lot.

The Ketek is such a beautiful and high minded art form that it seems truly remarkable that there hasn't been at least one fart joke so far, so here is my humble attempt to lower this art form for the enjoyment of the common man.

You suddenly realize that you live in the modern world and wigs and colored contacts are readily available. Your bane unfortunately is that you're always to poor to buy these modern marvels. But there's always a rainbow, right? You figure out how to use condiments to color your hair, unfortunately you no longer have any friends other than the pigeon that lives in your hair. I wish that all cancers could be readily cured so that I could smoke around babies.

Granted! Unfortunately your now on death row, and you only get a chance to metabolize one meal before you get the chair. Granted, unfortunately you're now Rush Limbaugh and you have to listen to your own incessant, maddening drivel. I wish that I had the cool sunshine triggered sparkly skin like the vampires in Twilight without having to be a vampire.

Granted a 10th of the human population magically has their pigment drained from their skin and all the new Albinos know that you were the one to bequeath this condition on them. Unfortunately due to the absorptive nature of 700,000,000 new pigment-less skinned humans more of the radiant heat from the sun is trapped on the surface of the planet, which in turn speeds up global warming which in turn intensifies the radiant heat of the sun. The cycle spirals out of control, until an army of angry sunburned Albinos comes to your door and tears you limb from limb. On the positive side, they are able to use your SPF 50 blood to temporarily block the harsh rays of the sun. I wish that I had a magical can of pop (the specific type that I like) that I could drink from whenever I wanted to that fufills the following criteria: Never runs out of pop The pop is always perfectly chilled The pop is always carbonated

Thanks @Ammanas! I actually forgot to make it first person (duh), pretty hard to sound like a hard boiled detective when the story is in 3rd person. I edited it, and I think it's a lot better now, sounds a lot more like Veil Marlowe in Urithiru.

RAYMOND CHANDLER: Veil Marlow Spoilered because it's a scene from OB *EDITED* so that it's in first person, duh.

Well, BAM might only have a proximal ability to provide voidlight, and Odium seems wary of manifesting directly on Roshar, because as the SF explains to Dalinar in OB Chapter 16, Wrapped Three Times: So with Odium hesitant to intervene directly, and BAM possibly imprisoned in a perfect gem, having a backup source of Voidlight would be a useful thing to have. Even if BAM were released, BAM probably can only provide voidlight to Ok, so I just saw this WoB that mentions that Gemhearts are in fact Investiture: So Gemhearts are physically manifest Investiture. To convert this physically manifest investiture into kinetic investiture (voidlight) would probably still require some other form of Investiture (possibly provided by the everstorm) but it might only require a small initial spark of this catalyst Investiture to trigger a slow continual conversion, but the fact that gemhearts are coalesced investiture makes this seem more plausible. This all in the realm of Tinfoil hat speculation, but it is interesting to think about.