Scion of the Mists

No problem. And the Arcanum is, indeed, quite awesome. Fantastic work by the Arcanists

@Narcoleptic Axolotl You can use the "eye" button (between the "code" and "emoticon" buttons) to create a spoiler.

Not sure why this is directed at me. I just quoted Niteshado's post. I was just elaborating on other magic systems Hoid has used, seems poised to use.

As Weltall mentions, we also have a parallel in Allomancy. Any metal that is considered "inside" of you is burnable. I would guess that swallowing Yelig-Nar's gemstone has the effect of merging its spiritweb with that of the host. @Steeldancer has an excellent Spiritual Realm post that goes into these things in more detail.

In Oathbringer,

Thanks for the info - I knew it had to be something like that.

Are these Cosmere terms, or real science terms, or something else? I've never heard of these before.

There's the Prose version of White Sand, which you can get by signing up for his newsletter.

For things like book signings, this is mostly true (although sometimes things are added later). However, the big thing are the General XXX 2018 type events (e.g. Reddit, Twitter), which are updated continuously over the course of the year, but keep the same Jan 1, 2018 date. I understand that read functionality isn't an easy thing to add. Maybe a "date updated" field somewhere or a "recently updated" tag would be helpful. My current solution is to attempt to memorize how many entries each of these 5 events has to see if it's changed. As my memory is terrible, this doesn't work very well.

I am having issues when searching the Arcanum for simple words like down, up, or the. If I type just one of those words into the search bar at the top of the page, I get no results. If I search the same word using the advanced search, it returns all 8933 entries, whether they contain the word or not. Additionally, this impacts AND searches as well. If I search for hoid+own (I was trying to find the one about him owning the mansion), I get all 524 hoid entries.

Eshonai is gone for good. It has been (finally) put to rest in this WOB last weekend. Also, apparently Jebus has to eat a shoe.

We do have a couple WOB about him owning the mansion. They don't get into the how/why.

Rithmatist was originaly in the Cosmere, but Brandon removed it because he didn't want Earth to be part of the Cosmere. A lot of the magic has roots in Cosmere-style magic.

Close, but not quite. The Radiant spren exist on a spectrum between Honor and Cultivation (that is, they are a blend of both).

A couple of recent theories have prompted me to wonder this. While the Arcanum has informed me that animals and inanimate objects have spiritwebs, I came up empty when searching for spliters.

I agree that Venli is more interesting than Eshonai, because she is more dynamic. By the time we meet Eshonai, she's already willing to work with Dalinar to find a peaceful solution. Venli, by contrast, embraced the more aggressive route, tricked her sister into the Stormform transformation, resulting in her death. Then everything blew up in her face, as it turns out she's been manipulated by the forces of evil, and now she has to make amends. Basically, she's the bad guy turned good.

I recently stumbled across this WOB that I hadn't seen before, that I think is somewhat relevant:

Do splinters have spiritwebs? I tried searching the Arcanum, but came up empty.

According to various WOBs (spoilered below for length), Adonalsium's investiture was already distributed across the cosmere, and magic already existed on different planets prior to the Shattering. However, it was changed by the Shattering.

This is a cultural tradition that does not exist in all societies. The fact that it seems so obvious to us just underscores how deeply rooted these things are. Trying to avoid spoilers, but let's just say that, with regards to this topic, the last part of Oathbringer will be very interesting for you to read.

Our real-life gender roles and traditions have very little to do with "women being considered intellectually inferior." (To be sure, it is a cause, but not the only cause) What do clothing norms, behavior expectations, anatomical acceptableness (toplessness, soles of feet, middle finger) have to do with intelligence. I, for one, think that this is a masterful way of sidestepping biases and getting people to look at these things in a new light. They see all of these bizarre social norms in Roshar, and think "that's silly." Then, maybe, they start to tie it to our world and start to wonder, "why do we think girls can't do math?" or "why is it unmasculine to cry?" This is a great question, and one that we should be asking about our world.

I think that this is a parallel to our world. A lot of our traditions and gender roles don't really make sense and are still in existence due to cultural inertial. Brandon has talked about how one of the things he enjoys about writing fantasy is that he can discuss these kind of sensitive topics (gender roles, etc.) without getting bogged down by all of the real Earth baggage.

I don't remember any technology close to that level on Dayside in the prose. IIRC, they were still using lamps and fireplaces. Of course Darkside had gunpowder, but it was a relatively new invention (in our world, firearms drastically predated electric lighting, much less radio). I wonder why the change was made?

So, I was rewatching Doctor Strange last night and discovered a very interesting parallel between the movie and the Heralds/Oathpact. (Spoilers for Doctor Strange) During the climax, Doctor Strange willingly traps himself inside a different dimension with the bad guy. He is forced to be tortured/killed endlessly, but his sacrifice prevents the bad guy from invading the world and destroying humankind. Sound familiar?

Good game everyone! I'm also in for Round 4. I'm available to be a spymaster, but would prefer to let others have a chance first before I went again.