Scion of the Mists

1 hour ago, Bopushaq said:

I think my mistake here was that I assumed that this was a condition of holding a Shard, instead of a Rayse-only type thing. Looking at it now, if all the Shards were held to such agreements, then they probably would have died when they broke the agreement to not settle together on planets.

Shards are bound by Oaths.  The not-settling-together thing wasn't an Oath.  

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Nameless36

All the Shards basically agreed not to settle on the same planet. Six of them - that we know of - immediately, basically broke that.

Brandon Sanderson

So... they did not make an oath to it. There was a suggestion made... and perhaps the people who made the suggestion did not understand that, if you want the Shards to do something, you need an actual Oath. And they did not get one.

Tel Aviv Signing (Oct. 18, 2019)

5 minutes ago, Shard of Reading said:

Can I ask what YA is actually supposed to feel like/be?

Here's Brandon's take on it (and his argument for Game of Thrones maybe being YA).  

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marathyu316

Those are all good possibilities [for a novella Brandon is working on], but it could also be the one he mentioned during the first Book 4 update where an apprentice of Hoid is stranded on a minor shard world with an umbrella-based (Edit: oops!) magic system.

Brandon Sanderson

Please. It was a KITE based magic system. An umbrella-based magic would just be silly, now, wouldn't it.

I'm tempted to plot that one as a YA book, to be done after the Skyward novels. I'd like to do something YA in the cosmere, but have been waiting for the right moment.

coolRedditUser

Would Mistborn Era 1 not count as YA? I got those vibes from many parts of it, though most/all traces of that vanished in Era 2.

Brandon Sanderson

Mistborn Era One walks the line. (Having a teen protagonist for one of the viewpoints does indeed give it the vibe--and we did a YA printing of it, with YA covers.) Really only the first book would fit, though, and it's kind of a stretch.

Generally, YA is defined by the age of the protagonist, and the conflicts they're seeking. Vin's quest to find a home where she can trust the people around her is a YA style plot, but by the second book, it's drifted more toward adult style plots.

A lot of sf/f walks this line, though. There are arguments for some Game of Thrones to be YA for similar reasons. (Be aware that in the industry, content--meaning sex/violence/language--is not a descriptor of whether something is YA or not. It's age of the protagonists and the nature of the conflicts.)

General Reddit 2019 (May 27, 2019)

1 hour ago, spaidapig said:

It's by minute 57 on average during a writing advice to foreshadowing.

Thanks! I've been missing out on the live streams.  

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By the time Rhythm of War comes out, I think we will have canonized all 16 or very close to all 16.

I'm pretty sure this is just internal, Dragonsteel canonization.  

I would not combine this statement with the earlier clarification that "published works are the true canon" to mean that all 6 new Shards will appear in RoW.  

20 hours ago, Kesamijr said:

Dope! Then that means that yeah they're confirmed to appear in RoW or Dawnshard, barring some like surprise release of Dragonsteel on November 18th or something.  But yeah that makes sense given that we say the other planets named in last weeks chapter, I can see the Ghostbloods having a lot of cosmere/realmatic influence and we get the shards from them somehow for sure!

This seems like a massive jump.  I find it very unlikely that Brandon would name-drop 6 brand new Shards in Rhythm of War, even if their names have been finalized.  

What exactly did he say on the live stream?  

On 8/30/2020 at 2:42 PM, Kesamijr said:

So I just watched Brandon’s Live Signing Session from Thursday and just saw the part where he said that by ROW we’ll have all (or close to all) 16 shards canonized! This seems like a big reveal to me as we only have 11 or 12 IIRC!

Did he say that they would appear in RoW or just that he'd have finalized them himself?  

We have had a few resurrections in the cosmere, but none that would apply to Gavilar.  

Jasnah

Was actually a fake out, as she jumped to Shadesmar.  She didn't leave a body behind.  Gavilar's body/death was seen by many people, including relatives (Jasnah, Navani) who recognized him.  

Szeth

Szeth was revived by Nale almost immediately after his "death" using a special fabrial.  We don't see anything of the sort happening.  

Kelsier

Kelsier was able to survive because he was infused with Preservation's Investiture in the Well of Ascension.  Had that not happened, he would have gone Beyond after a relatively short time.  For something similar to have happened to Gavilar, someone would have needed to have found him in the Cognitive Realm and gotten him to a large source of Investiture quickly.  No Shardpools were nearby, and his assassination was unplanned.  

Returned

Returned are directly revived by Endowment blessing them with a divine Breath.  We have no indication that any of the Rosharan Shards are doing something similar.  Returned also wake up relatively quickly after their death, which Gavilar did not do.  

21 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

In 2019? What would he he spoil if he just said Dalinar? Or 'a Bondsmith' ? This has merit by not naming the Windrunner. But the Bondsmith? By the end of Oathbringer there is only one, whose identity is well known.

He didn't even name Kaladin - he said "the Windrunner who is the main character."  Kaladin's revealed to be a Windrunner in book 1.  

55 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

WoB on air transport by Windrunners

The wording looks suspicious to me.

OK, this is quite convoluted. Are we getting a new Bondsmith?

If you look at the full text of that WoB, it’s pretty clear that Brandon is avoiding spoilers by not naming the characters. 
 

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Questioner

I also read that you went to visit the United Arab Emirates, and you wrote the Alloy of Law while you were on the plane.

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't write the whole book.

Questioner

What did you write on the way here?

Brandon Sanderson

I wrote Stormlight Four on the way here. Let's see if I can give you a non-spoiler version of the scene, so you can know when you get there. In the scene, the person who's a Bondsmith is being flown about by Windrunners who are not the Windrunner who is the main character. So when you get to a scene that this character's being flown about by Windrunners and moving to a different part of the world, you will know that scene was written on the flight here.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

1 hour ago, Karger said:

It seems like it would lead to a lot of mutual upvoting.  I upvote all of your stuff you upvote all of mine type deals.  Also it would encourage pandering to specific groups of people rather then the form as a whole.

That's what I thought too.  I always side-eyed the "Upvote for you sir!" posts.  They seem like they're fishing for a reciprocal upvote.  

I really like it.  My main complaint was that it felt like half of a season.  It didn't seem like enough happened to justify all of the set up.  

I have digital copies of most of the Cosmere books, but can't for the life of me figure out to copy-paste from Amazon Cloud Reader.  

You can access the pages directly by appending the page number, e.g. https://www.17thshard.com/news/shardcast/?page=2

1 hour ago, Nesh said:

So is the "Cosmere sequence" the in-universe chronology?  If so, there's a major, retcon/continuity error there with Warbreaker.

Definitely not. Dragonsteel is a prequel series. Brandon’s clearly lumping the various trilogies/series together. 

It’s my favorite of the non-Cosmere books. It is self contained, although there’s a clear set up for a sequel, which has been long delayed. 

I really like the premise - it’s basically Harry Potter, except the protagonist doesn’t have magic. 

The magic system is fascinating. After reading, I immediately started thinking about how amazing it would be as a video game. It’s simplistic enough that it could actually be realistically implemented (vs Mistborn or Stormlight), but would also be a ton of fun. 

The other thing that sets it apart from most of Brandon’s other books is that it’s truly a Young Adult book. And I don’t mean that in the negative way that most people use the term YA. The book only has a single protagonist and is only told from his POV. It’s focused on one person at one school. You don’t have to learn about 10 different nationalities and cultures and politics. I love the complexity and epicness of Stormlight, but sometimes you just want a single, normal-sized book. 

But really, what do you need to know except that it’s a Brandon Sanderson book?

On 10/2/2019 at 3:54 PM, Kalaksbreath said:

this is somewhat unrelated but what if a radiant wants to manifest a bow would they have to use their own arrows or could the spren manifest as both a bow and arrows.  

There are a number of threads dealing with this topic. The general consensus was that shard weapons are inflexible and can’t be split into multiple parts. 

On 9/29/2019 at 9:20 PM, Dragonangel said:

Is it way off to try to assume that the ancient Radiants had tv's or computers? 

This theory comes from Oathbringer pages 146 and 147.  "Teshav had finished pointing out the strange glass panes on the inner walls that seemed like windows, only clouded.  She moved on to the pairs of discs on the floor and ceiling that looked something like the top and bottom of a pillar that had been removed - a feature of a number of rooms they'd explored.

Could the glass panes be screens and the discs be the outlets?

Only if they turn it into a Graphic Novel...

16 hours ago, retrorocket1 said:

hmm now i wonder if the way it went from vasher to nin is that vasher gave the sword to the Nightwatcher because of what it meant to him. Then maybe Nin went to the Nightwatcher in his madness and the nightwatcher offered him the sword which he took. Only issue I can see with this is Nin doesn't seem to have a curse?

 

We know that there were multiple people between Vasher and Nale:

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Questioner

How many hands has Nightblood passed through since he left Vasher?

Brandon Sanderson

Since he left Vasher? More than you'd expect. *later adds* It's been a while.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

4 hours ago, Quantus said:

Now that you mention it, I could easily see an argument that F-Gold would specifically be less likely to produce Savantism than almost any other form of Feruchemy.  Unlike most of the other ones that are skewing some aspect of the Spiritweb one way or another, tapping F-Gold is all about channeling Investiture to Assert the Spiritweb itself, to Reinforce it.  The "warping" description of Savantism implies bending the spiritweb out of it's true shape, but Gold (specifically) does not put the Spiritweb under that sort of stress. 

I kind of doubt this. The most obvious example of savantism’s downsides come from Soulcasting, which does not seem to involve modifying your own Spiritweb. And we know that cosmere healing wouldn’t fix that, per this WoB, because there’s “nothing wrong” with you. 

16 hours ago, Invocation said:

That was not about Scadrian magic, though. That was Kriss and Nazh looking for Nightblood. They even signed it with "Ask for K or N."

We’re they talking about Nightblood though? They specifically asked “metal tools.” 

Also, there’s this WoB that directly confirms its possible. 

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Questioner

Can a metalmind be made into a sentient object?

Brandon Sanderson

It's already got Investiture in it? Yes.

Skyward release party (Nov. 6, 2018)

I believe that if you were to pack enough Investiture into the metalmind, it would eventually gain sentience. One of the broadsheets from Era 2 mentions talking pieces of metal. 

7 hours ago, Karger said:

So as of the end of Oathbringer we know that Honorblades can be used to open Oathgates, that Oathgates can transport directly between each other without having to go to Urithiru

Now that I think about it more, I’m pretty sure that this is not possible. Aren’t there 10 different Oathgates in Urithiru, one for each city? And they just get swapped between the city and Urithiru. So you can’t go directly from city to city. 

3 hours ago, Trick said:

Hi, also new here. It seems to me like Cough does raise a good point. Even if Nale is not the criminal that Azure is after, someone had to get the blade to him. So how did that happen? Did Vasher give it to him before splitting up to avoid Azure, or was Nightblood stolen by someone and then somehow made his way to Nale? There are a lot of unknowns here that make it impossible for us to say who exactly the criminal is that Azure is hunting. Although the WoB that said that she was looking for Vasher does heavily indicate that it is Vasher, it does not necessarily pin him down as the criminal. I am loving the mystery of all of this. It is what makes me love Sanderson's work so much. 

A hot-off-the-press WoB indicates that there were a number of possessors between Vasher and Nale.  

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[suggestion]

Questioner

How many hands has Nightblood passed through since he left Vasher?

Brandon Sanderson

Since he left Vasher? More than you'd expect. *later adds* It's... It's been a while.

DragonCon 2019 (Aug. 29, 2019)

1 hour ago, Karger said:

So as of the end of Oathbringer we know that Honorblades can be used to open Oathgates, that Oathgates can transport directly between each other without having to go to Urithiru, that Odium has an honorblade, and that Odium has four Oathgates in his custody.  This means that he can use the Oathgates provided Moash sticks around one of them.  Will this have any effect on Rhythm of War's plot?

Do we know that the Oathgates can go directly from city to city without going through Urithiru?  I vaguely remember a passage about discontent about Oathgate taxes being assessed from Urithiru, which wouldn't make sense if you could easily bypass it.  

I agree that it's not likely that we'll see voidblades, simply because there's been no mention of them so far.  However, I believe that it should be theoretically possible for it to happen.  If Seons/Skaze can turn into blades, then voidspren should be able to as well.  

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Sir Jerric

Could a Seon or a Skaze turn into some sort of Shardblade on their home planet?

Brandon Sanderson

That is theoretically possible.  They work under the same fundamentals but they would need to have something to pull them more into the Physical Realm.  

Words of Radiance Omaha signing (March 13, 2014)

15 hours ago, TheBeast22846 said:

Sorry, guys, this is a crackpot theory here, but is it possible that a super charged lashing could be where the legend of the radiant teleportation got started?

Teleportation seems much more likely to come from Transportation than Gravitation.