king of nowhere

Why do you have it already when offically it is released on the 24 (according to amazon, where I tried to get it as soon as I noticed this post)?

I've been offering this same criticism to many other theories in the past. And many times, it is correct. But sometimes, brandon hides stuff just like that. It's like a treasure hunt that we are playing with him, where he hides clues and we have to unearth them from all the unimportant background. There will be nothing in most places, but you know there is treasure hidden somewhere. And now we have a somewhere that is more likely than other elsewheres.

I think there are specific words of brandon stating that it would not be impossible to revive a shardblade and that a new person can, in fact, bond a dead spren. Also, I wonder why the spren care so much if their dead are used to fight voidbringers, and if they'd rather see odium wins. I don't know you, but if it turned out that my dead body could be turned into a superpowerful weapon to repel, say, an alien invasion, I'd be totally cool with letting them using it. Now, I fully understand why spren frowned upon humans using shards to kill each other, but a desolation should change their perspective.

Ah, there he is, at 12:40. I don't know why you complain about the audio, I understand it perfectly - and I can't fully understand most of the videos he's posted on youtube. I think I recognize my head a couple of times, btw, but I'm never visible.

I actually was thinking of that event And just came with the idea that maybe there was a recorded version of it Too bad.

thinking about it, there were cameras pointed in the room when brandon made his talk on saturday. were they actually recording? any way to actually get the uncut material?

Not going to happen, seasons on roshar are not extreme. as weltall mentioned, they are not real season, just temporary variation. all of roshar has the equivalent of a temperate marine or tropical climate on heart, with small annual variations. so shallan comes from the mountains, it is colder there, you can imagine an average temperature of 10 degrees (all celsius) and it can vary between 0 and 20, so it can snow when it's particularly cold. taylenah is probably colder, average temperature around 5 degrees. but nowhere on the continent there is enough cold to accumulate snow for long. it can make a snowfall, but it melts in a few days. only place where it is cold enough is the icecap. By the way, related tidbit: while brandon denied the existance of other major landmasses, there must be at least another continent, underneath the polar icecap (we have no mention of a northern icecap, but if there is one, there should be another continent too). You see, if it was all sea, the currents would circulate water and keep it too warm to freeze. on earth, the northern polar icecap only exist because the polar sea is relatively isolated, cut off from the rest of the oceans, and so no current exchanging cold polar water with warm subtropical water could form (partial exception for the gulf stream, which in fact keeps even the svalbard, 2000 km north of the northernmost point of alaska, from being frozen all year; you can see on google earth how the whole polar sea is like a giant cul-de-sac) think if the bering strait was bigger and allowed passage of another similar current). To develop an icecap you need either an isolated sea, or a continent where snow can accumulate.

I think with the mind speed and clarity of feruchemical zinc, and with tin flared to notice all the little details like dilatation of the eye capillary or such, you could get pretty good at discovering liars anyway. Living and dabbling in politics for 1000 years helps too.

Am I the only one to be somewhat surprised that several worldhopper expeditions disappeared on patji? It means one very important things: worldhoppers, with few exceptions like hoid, are not particularly powerful combat-wise. That's why they stay in the background, and that's why hoid remarks that the 17th shard wouldn't know what to do with him were they actually to catch him. In particular it means that healing powers like feruchemical gold or stormlight are exceedingly rare among worldhoppers; the greatest dangers on the island, for the unwary traveller, are all the poisonous insects and plants that they wouldn't know to avoid, and healing powers deal effectively with those.

As far as we know, breath is investiture, stormlight is investiture, and vasher has figured how to use stormlight in place of breath.

I bolded the part about adolin dropping the blade to emphasize the fact that it had been dismissed, not because there wan anything strange to it. As for the time... really, ten heartbeats? Eshonai tackeld adolin, which is when he noticed her and the earliest he may have started resummoning the blade. then she struck him twice while he was unarmed. At the third strike, he summoned the blade. Eshonai was trying to take advantage on an unarmed opponent, she surely was striking fast to hit as much as she could before adolin could get his blade back. Isn't it odd that she only managed to do it twice? Plus, adolin being an experienced fighter is actually going to make his heart beat slower, not faster. A quick heartbeat is for those who are paniking or who are in bad shape, and adolin is neither. I doubt he was past 100 beats per minute. As for the fact that it was added to make it read smoothly... Do we have any instance in the two books of a point of view character summoning a dead blade without a mention that he started to summon? I can't recall any. In fact, the only time I recall it is when Shallan kills Tyn... which is done with a live shardblade, further corroborating my point. It would really take a lot of bite out of my argument if someone could produce a relevant counterexample. EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying that adolin reviving his blade is a certainty. it may as well be a feint from brandon. I'm just saying that this evidence pushes it from "just another theory" to "something quite likely to happen"

when rereading WoR, I noticed this particularly interesting tidbit that may bring great support to the idea that adolin will revive his sword. During the battle of Narak, when Adolin is engagedby Eshonai (chapeter 83, page 1002 of english hardcover edition): So you see, first adolin drops his blade. then he is surprised. And then he summons the sword again. No mention of preparing to summmon. No mention of counting heartbeats. And quite a short time to summon a blade normally. It really would seem that adolin can summon his blade without the heartbeat thing. Not only that, but the "thank you" is strongly reminescent of a similar scene, when shallan is in the chasm and she is trying to cut handholds with her blade (chapter 72, pag. 863). She thinks that the blade is too big to cut while climbing, and it shrinks. And then the story goes Which would be quite the coincidence otherwise. So, theories that adolin will revive his blade have been around for a while, but I think I found a solid piece of evidence that he's already started the process.

I was rereading WoR, and I sudddenly connected the mathematics: Taravangian could expect to have another such day in 2000 years. And a rosharan year has 500 days. So the chances of Taravangian waking up that smart are... exactly one in a million! And we all know one-in-a-million chances happen if you really need them (source: Terry P.) Though, on the other hand, I favor a different idea, that the opposite one-in-a-million chance will happen, and T will wake up really dumb, but gifted with incredible compassion, and that will make him do something drastic that will actually make it all work.

Me! I remember you. Looking forward to reading your interview, even though it was for the broad public and so it probably mention only stuff we already know.

Oh, a few more things I forgot mentioning: Somebody asked brandon how he felt as J.R.R. Martin said brandon was the best fantasy writer of this time. Brandon didn't know that and he was quite dumbfoundedat finding out. Too bad I wasn't fast enough with my camera to take a picture of how he looked like. Anyway, I cannot confirm whether J.R.R. Martin really expressed such opinion. Brandon's speech is clear. I was worried I may not be able to understand him because I have problems with some of the american accents, but I could talkk with brandon just fine. I still can't understand very well his videos, but that's clearly something related to the recording and reproducing of voice. I didn't make the connection between the black coat and obliteration, but thinking in retrospect, it really was the same style. At most, I thought it could have fit as a matrix cosplayer I was calm and collected when speaking to brandon. I only got excited after talking to him, in a "wow, did I really do that?" way. I still am, to some extent. @ yata: I knew you were in there somewhere, but with all the people queuing up to get a book signed, there was no one who stood out enough. and i could not just shout "hey, is anybody here yata from 17th shard?". For a moment I suspected you could have been the girl with the tattoo, but she mentioned not being active on this forum.

the 17th shard could make for a good spy organization, because we have men everywhere. Everywhere. So much so that we infiltrated not one, but two operatives at the Lucca comics, and the second was me. I refrained from asking questions in the early signing because there were too many people in line, but in the evening there were much less people and so I was able to listen to some questions and in the end talk with brandon a bit longer, and I dutifully took notes. Here is what I got. First the random questions from other people - when asked when he will publish his next book, he said "in another year". that confirms that he has no other project before the end of stoormlight 3. - he was asked if adolin had been broken in a way that could make him become a radiant. he RAFOed this. So the theory that adolin will revive his blade, among others, is still on the table. in fact, brandon has been giving nothing but RAFOs on the subject of adolin and radiantship. - he was asked if Joel could be a new type of rithmatist, and he said that it was possible. But when he saw that I put that in my notes, he said "no, he's not. I just didn't want to say it outright. Joel is not a new kind of rithmatist". He may have denied that joel could be a rithmatist at all, but I don't remember the exact wording, so I cannot confirm. - when will he write hoid's story (the dragonsteel saga)? After stormlight 10, before mistborn sci-fi. - then I got my big question, one that has been in the back of my mind for over two years, since i posted it in this forum and got no good answers: the lord ruler moved scadrial closer to the sun, and orbital dinamics dictate that so its time of revolution would also become shorter. how did that impact the ages of the characters, and how did it impact the 1024 years of refilling of the well? He said that arcanum unbounded will contain all the calendars and that peter made actual orbital calculations. Brandon also confirmed that the characters ages were really earth ages, and that the lord ruler kept the old calendar in the final empire, even though it did not fit with the lenght of the year. That sounded very strange to me, but then I remembered that we already have the islamic calendar who doesn't follow the year, so a calendar not coinciding with the year is something never seen before. he also confirmed that modern scadrial has an earth-like year duration, which we already knew. he said that people only started asking that in the last year and he was surprised it took that long to ask about that. - then I asked him about jasnah in shadesmar. he said that he still is not sure whether to include it in the book or not, but he most likely won't. the reason is that he fears it will lessen the impact of something that will need to happen later in the book. so, it implies some characters will visit shadesmar and have some important adventures there, which jasnah's story may spoil. he is looking forward to showing shadesmar on roshar; we saw it on scadrial, but on scadrial it is mostly uninhabited, while in roshar there are all the spren. - he commented that he thinks it is a mistake to have vin burn the mist in the end of mistborn 1, because it feels too much like a deus ex machina. that, confusing tin with silver, and confusing clubs with another character, are the three mistakes he think he's made there. nothing really new, but some may not have heard of that. - finally, remembering the big line I saw in the early afternoon for the signing, i jokingly asked him if his hand hurted from so much signing. he said no, that wasn't that much signing, but there was a time when they made him sign 5000 copies in one day to ship them to libraries, and that did actually hurt his hand. Also, not cosmere-related, but some nice anecdotes that brandon told: Brandon considers John Scanzi his nemesis, though it wasn't clearly explained why so. Once, when he was brandalizing books at an airport, a guy saw him, and brandon explained and tried to sell him a book. Since that guy wasn't into fantasy, but expressed a preference for sci-fi, brandon suggested him - and eventually got him to buy - a book by Scanzi. Later, at a convention, Scanzi approached Brandon and said "hey, I heard you sold one of my books, here are your royalties" and threw some coins at him. Brandon's 6-yo child knows that his father is a writer, and since they keep plenty of books in the garage and occasionally gift one to guests, the kid figured that those in the garage are the actual books for sale. he wrote a book and put it into the garage, hoping he could contribute to the family's income. Finally, there was a very nice girl at the signing with a really nice tattoo. She also brought chocolate for his wife very nice

exactly because it is more powerful. odium is trying to get rid of sazed before he learns to use his powers fully.

Also, while I dislike cash grabs as much as the next guy (more than most guys, probably), I really don't see Brandon making one. I mean, the guy gives good money to charities; if he was that greedy, he'd be more likely to stop donating first. Furthermore, he became succesful when he was appproaching his thirties; he got used to little money, and now I have no idea how much he earns, but it must be in the 6 digits. He probably doesn't even know how to spend all that money. That's what happen with most people who become rich later in life. Ok, Brandon may be an exception to both of those general principles, but it is more likely that he's going to run his business with honor.

yup, that's me. I haven't read many of those stories, and I cheer them being published all together. especially since i don't like ebooks for reasons tied to the byzantine stuff they go through in an effort to fight piracy, so this is my first chance to read most of those stories as paper.

that raises a question, though: was the set a group created by external forces to subvert scadrial, or it was a scadrial-native group that was subverted by "trell" for its goals? The first would be more straightforward, but it seems to me the emphasis on trell was increased in the later books, which would point more towards another shard taking control of a group that was already there. In the first case, the leaders of the group have always been worldhoppers or non-humans, while in the second the original leaders wouldhave been powerful scadrians who gradually lost their power to the new forces. maybe some of them were even swapped with trell-kandras?

David wins cause he's the protagonist. <ducks>

The orbit of the moons was discussed in a thread a long time ago. The best explanation was that they were in highly elliptical orbits, with periods of 20 hours, and going in the opposite direction of the planet's rotation. that way, from the point of view of those on the planet, they would rise and set twice each day; in the night, they would streak over the continent very fast, because in an elliptical orbit a body moves faster when it is closer to the planet; therefore, the moons could all rise and set in a matter of hours. During the day, the light of the sun would make them invisible instead. The moons could be at lagrange points of each other, but either way they are fairly small, and the reciprocal gravitation is weak. While such a configuration would be unstable over astronomical time scales, it could very well be stable for tens of millions of years.

yeah, but we're talking 5.5 g/cm^3 for earth against 5.4 for mercury, for an internal composition of 30% silicates for mercury against 45% for earth, and mercury is much smaller than roshar. On going from earth-sized to roshar-sized, compressional effects should cause a change of density lower than 10%. So a density roughly equal to that of earth is still likely.

here i was dreaming of being a physics teacher and ask my students to calculate the geostationary orbit of roshar, when somebody did it already. ah, well, i'm a chemist.. at most i could ask the volume change of soulcasting air into stone...

that would imply a density close to that of earth, and a radius in the upper range of that estimation, because 18000 = 25000 *0,72 and among spherical bodies of the same density, the surface gravity is directly proportional to the radius (physical demonstration under spoiler) to be smaller, roshar would need to be even more dense than our planet, and earth is already very dense - the most dense body of any size in the solar system, close to iron. To have a planet of higher density, it would need a nucleus made mostly of a more dense element, but no such element is very abundant in the universe. granted, the shards could have made one with a lead nucleus, but I think a circumference of 18000 miles (which translates to a radius of roughly 4500 km) and a similar composition to our planet is the most likely guess here.