Pagerunner

Brandon will be at YALLWEST, a young adult and middle grade book festival happening on April 24th-25th. It's in Santa Monica, California. I don't see a schedule or anything yet, but I presume there will be signing lines and panels and the like. Will anybody be able to make it to this who could record Brandon's events?

Stormlight Four is quickly approaching; it might feel like it's nine months away (because, technically, it is), but before you know it, it'll be October and you'll be frantically trying to cram in a reread. Tor will be doing their big marketing push, and the forums will be exploding with new members. In advance of this surge of popularity for Stormlight, I was thinking we should make a resource to help new members begin the deep dive into the lore that many of us take for granted. Arcanum can be intimidating; there are almost 13,000 WoBs so far, but most of them aren't Stormlight, many are old news that's since been revealed in the books, and others just aren't important. Let's put our heads together and build a list of the ones that will be the most essential or the most important for those looking at WoBs for the first time. Here are my three criteria: Impactful. These should be WoBs that all Stormlight readers will care about. Niche WoBs about linguistics might be some of my favorites, but most people won't care, so let's not include those on the list. Relevant. Stormlight only; no spoilers for the greater Cosmere or for other series. (Well, except maybe Warbreaker, but let's cross that bridge if we come to it.) Substantial. No RAFOs! Or at least, nothing that's just a RAFO; if Brandon says RAFO but gives info anyways, that could be fair game. Yes, it means the list won't have anything about Unity, one of the biggest outstanding questions from book three, since that's been all RAFOs. Oh, well; let's make sure we're getting WoBs with actual information in them. Here are a few to start us off: Flashback Characters The Hidden Ending Cultivationlight And with that, I turn it over to the rest of you. What WoBs do you think are the most impactful, relevant, and substantial for someone who's new to the deep end of Stormlight theories?

I'm hearing that Brandon read a new Lift interlude today. If anybody stumbles across a recording of it, please let me know.

The Pledge Manager for this Kickstarter will be going live soon. Even if you didn't back, you will be able to buy dice. (It just means you won't have any funds already deposited in there.) Again, if you missed the Kickstarter, it's not too late! In some of their other updates, Crafty said that the outbreak in China will affect the production timeline. Nothing for sure, yet, since the country is still dealing with the issue. But there will be some sort of delay.

Glyphpairs and glyphs are two different concepts. A family will utilize a glyphpair which are two glyphs using some components in the name (like khokh and linil for Kholin). The glyphpairs among different members of a highprince's family get stylized differently; Elhokar and Dalinar both have khokh and linil, but Elhokar uses sword/crown, while Dalinar uses tower/crown. That's a similar change that happened with Amaram and Sadeas; tower/hammer and tower/axe, the new glyphpair is visually distinct from the old one. Each glyph in the glyphpair can wind up looking however the individual wants; the name of the glyph determines what components can be used to construct it, but the artists who make the glyphs that form the glyphpair have freedom to make the overall image look like something distinctive. These glyphpairs wind up on banners and such, where it will make them easy to identify to people who don't need to be familiar with glyph components and how they're made. The highprince glyph, on the other hand, is a single glyph, and it is based on the family name. (The most complicated versions we see have every single letter, none excluded.) These are the ones I posted above. I don't think we see them described too often in the books, but they appear on maps; the camp map in Way of Kings, and the Battle of Narak map in Words of Radiance. They appear to be a more information-dense way of referring to highprinces. They're not as easy to distinguish; they all kind of look the same to me on first glance. But they'll take up less space than a glyphpair, so it seems scholars will use them to annotate maps. All that to say, there is only one glyph on the cape, so it's not a glyphpair. And it's not distinctively shaped like something else; the glyphpair we see in Dalinar's chapter heading is immediately recognizable as a tower and a crown. The spears themselves don't appear to be made out of glyph components, so I think they're an actual part of whatever this scene is that's being depicted. (It looks to me like a highprince has fallen, his cape is tied to a spear as a makeshift banner, it's inspiring the other spearmen, and the whole thing is happening during an eclipse.)

The glyph in question: The line down the center is something we've only seen with Highprince glyphs. (We do see simplified versions of these glyphs, where components are omitted, smoothed, merged while maintaining the same general shape.) Kholin would be the one I'd expect, but the KH symbol is inverted with respect to the centerline. We do see simplified versions of many of these glyphs, and Bethab is the one it looks the most like to me, oddly enough. Of course, it's always possible we get a new Highprince at some point who would need their own glyph...

The WoB you linked in Point 1 explicitly says that not all Splinters are self-aware, which contradicts your definition: We've seen Splinters like Divine Breath and the Honorblades which are not self-aware, they're just pieces of power.

The books are action books - basically every scene is either a fight, a party, or related to one of the two. It's still a long jump to describing the mists' behavior that way. But anyways, Brandon has said that Sazed is the one who sends the mists (emphasis mine):

Yeah, but being a mod is for chumps, and I'm no chump. (And there was less need for staff members after the rush of Oathbringer-inspired activity died down.)

It was released in the Hero of Ages leatherbound. There is a more in-depth poster version on the way. (If you compare the Allomancy and Feruchemy tables in the leatherbound to the poster versions, there's much less detail on the book versions, for space reasons.) Like most other artwork, it is an in-universe document. We're just not sure who made it, yet. It is susceptible to error, like the Hero of Ages Ars Arcanum says that atium's Hemalurgic power is stealing "Allomantic Temporal Powers." Which isn't wrong, per se, but now we're learning that it's much more expansive.

Third livestream is up for transcription on Arcanum. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/411-youtube-livestream-3/ Brandon mentioned that these may be a regular event, as he continues to sign these pages for upcoming leatherbound rereleases. One may be coming this month. He's also mentioned the possibility of spoiler streams for different series, but a Stormlight one wouldn't be until after November. Maybe we can hope for a Mistborn one? Or just cosmere-specific. Regardless, Brandon's social media will be the first place to find out about these, so make sure you're following him somewhere. (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or maybe even on YouTube itself; he's got links to all of them on his website.) These livestreams may become the new normal.

TWG 100%: Brandon 100% (116/116), Peter 100% (116/116), Isaac 100% (75/75), Ben 100% (38/38) 17S 100%: Brandon 100% (108/108), Peter 100% (114/114), Isaac 100% (114/114), Ben 100% (103/103) Reddit 100%: Brandon 100% (137/137), Peter 100% (110/110), Isaac 100% (28/28), Ben 100% (91/91), Adam 100% (19/19), Store 100% (9/9) Twitter 67%: Brandon 100% (130/130), Peter 54% (70/130), Isaac 56% (77/137), Kara 69% (82/118), Karen 67% (72/108), Adam 41% (25/61) Blog 100%: Brandon 100% (217/217) Social Media Total: 89% (1842/2070) Theoryland Review: 10% (121/1183) Events and Signings Review: 0% (0/397) Still plugging away. I wasn't able to knock out a ton this month; the YouTube livestreams sucked up a lot of my time. I wound up listening to all of them twice, essentially; once live to experience them, and once to snip them in Arcanum. So that's over 20 hours of time sucked up by that this month. I've wound up working through all the Twitter backlog while I've had a movie playing on my other computer screen (which is a classic tactic of mine), and I've been doing about six months in a 2 hour movie. Looking at the stats above, I've got 60 months left to check, so I may very well have had it done if it weren't for these livestreams. I wanted to have this all done by the end of the calendar year, and it feels like that goal is moving back like it's Wax and Wayne 4. (Heyo.) Eventually, I'll be done, and get to my Theoryland and Events&Signings review, but there are known gaps. It was recently brought to my attention that there are some paraphrased reports from a thread that didn't make it into Arcanum. So feel free to help me out and do some reviews on your own, if you want. (I haven't had a chance to put this thread into Arcanum, for example.) I'll do it anyways, but it's not like I've called dibs and no one else can take a look and validate the content.

But they are still not not normal weather patterns in Era 1. WoA Chapter 1. "The mists continued to spin. They were thick and mysterious, even to Vin. More dense than a simple fog and more constant than any normal weather pattern, they churned and flowed, making rivulets around her." What? You made an assertion on the behavior of the mists. If I'm following the conversation correctly, you're suggesting that the mists in Era 2 are more attracted to fights and to parties than they were in Era 1 because they absorbed part of Vin's personality. That's a statement that requires evidence.

The first was true even in Era 1, and I'm not seeing any element of personality there. For the second, why do you have that impression? Can you provide any passages where that is called out in Era 2?

Patji wrote an Oathbringer letter. He has definitely displayed personality. What do you mean by "the things the mist pays attention to"?

Can you elaborate on your third point? I don't see self-awareness mentioned at all in those WoBs. I see a contrast between avatars who know they are part of Autonomy and those who don't. In Patji's Oathbringer letter, he references Autonomy's many "domains" and "taking your communication to us," so he obviously is aware he's a part of Autonomy. I think the contrast is that an avatar could come about that is not aware it is a part of the larger collective, doesn't understand where it fits into the larger universe, but is self-aware and does have a personality. What would an avatar even look like, if it wasn't self-aware, as a concept distinct from the Shard itself? I think we can safely say that First of the Sun is not Obrodai. In Patji's letter, Hoid is commanded to avoid Obrodai, but he is invited to "these waters," First of the Sun.

For those who aren't aware, Brandon did plan and write a few chapters of another Aether story that's unrelated to Aether of Night. I've collected some information about the subject over in this topic: This book had an early version of Syl as an Aether of Wind, and had the potential to kick off a large series. The planet, Lor, is apparently still planned to be in the cosmere. And after that, Brandon used the magic of Aethers in Liar of Partinel, for a third attempt to do something with it. The released samples don't show a ton of it, but what we see doesn't actually have a ton of parallels to the magic of Aether of Night. There's apparently a lot more than the magic than the specific applications we saw in Aether of Night. So, the Aether Trilogy doesn't necessarily need to look all that much like Aether of Night. If we look at how Brandon repurposes his old books, there are several different elements he can lift: Characters Plot Points Magic Worldbuilding Let's look at an example. When Brandon wrote the Mistborn trilogy, he was combining two of his unpublished books, The Final Empire Prime and Mistborn Prime. He pulled characters (Vin from Final Empire Prime), plot points (kandra spy from Mistborn Prime), magic (feruchemy and allomancy from Final Empire Prime and Mistborn Prime), and worldbuilding (mists). But he also pulled in some worldbuilding elements from other unpublished books (skaa from Mythwalker, Shards from Aether of Night), and wrote a good bit of new content that I, at least, haven't seen in any of the unpublished material I've read (Kelsier's messiah arc, for example). So, what will we see from the Aether trilogy? Since it's called the "Aether" trilogy, I think the magic will definitely be a part of it, especially because the magic is already canon. As far as characters and plot points, I think most of Raeth is available (mistaken identity twin, war movie, The Bachelor), but not necessarily going to be a part of it. The worldbuilding of AoN, on the other hand, has either been largely reused (ancient cities in Stormlight, Shards in Mistborn) or is generic enough that it will need a shot in the arm. But all that to say, judging the future of of the Aether series based on Aether of Night is ignoring several years of development Brandon put into the series. Aether of Night was written around 2001 or 2002. Climb the Sky was worked on in 2004. And Liar of Partinel used Aethers in 2007. And obviously, it's been 13 years since then. So this future Aether trilogy certainly can look very different than a reimagined Aether of Night.

Right, we do see some manifestation of the Unmade in the Cognitive Realm. I'm suggesting, if they are Avatars, we always have to have a manifestation of them in the Physical Realm, as well. As opposed to, say, Cryptics, who are chilling out entirely in Shadesmar unless they're actively transferred over. I don't think the mists have displayed any semblence of intelligence; they were guided by a Shard, but I can't recall any indication they had an active personality of their own, much less a personality that changed in the second era. And we also saw Vin in Secret History for the entire duration between her death and her going Beyond, and I don't see anything in there that would indicate the creation of an avatar. Brandon said the "terminology gets kind of sticky" when distinguishing between avatars and Splinters, and I view this as a function of realmatic theory being the softest magic system Brandon has in his books. The Shards are gods, and the things Brandon writes them to do and to be are reflections, exaggerations, and explorations of various real-life views and doctrines, mixed in with a hearty dose of other fantasy and mythology tropes. So, we start with the goal: Shards are able to do things like create subservient personal manifestations of their power (avatars), they're able to create autonomous magical beings (spren), they're able to give their power to mortals to accomplish magic (Honorblades), they're able to give their power to mortals to create ghosts (Cognitive Shadows), they're able to break another Shard's power so it cannot be picked back up (Splintering). And, with those goals in mind, Brandon is able to create terms like "Splinter" to reflect similarities. But the term "Splinter" itself is descriptive, not proscriptive. It's not, "Here's what a Splinter is and isn't; how does that play out in different scenarios?" It's, "Here are some different scenarios Shards can use their power. Some of them look pretty similar; let's describe them as Splinters." This is in contrast with the harder magics like Allomancy and Surgebinding. I'll take steelpushing and gravitation together as an example. They each provide a specific way to move things, and nothing beyond that. The applications are made more interesting by limitations, taking the finite proscribed power and using it in unique ways; shields that attract arrows, flying using a series of horseshoes, those sorts of things. Those strict definitions let you use them as a narrative device, problem solving and resolving plots and those sorts of things. But softer magic, the other way around, isn't used as a plot device, it's more used for the setting. Splinters enable you to have spren or to have people with magic. Avatars enable you to have additional deity figures. Fundamental terminologies about soft magic will have a tendency to fall apart when you push to find their limitations. This gets reflected in-world with things like Cognitive Shadows, where some people think the soul is preserved, and others think a copy is made of the soul, and there are good cases to be made either way because various types of Cognitive Shadows match up with better with one description or another. And the concept of a Sliver is tied in there somehow, since the only visible impact we've seen from the concept of an "expanded mind" from holding a Shard or a large portion of the Shard's power is that the individual can persist as a Cognitive Shadow. And the Splinters we've seen, similarly, seem to cover a lot of different scenarios. Divine Breath is referred to as a Splinter, like Honorblades. But regular Breath is referred to as Innate Investiture. But Breath can be transferred, passed around, collected like some Splinters we've seen, and it does grant magical abilities. Where's the line between a Shard's Investure being given as a Splinter and a Shard's Investiture being given as Innate Investiture? I think that question itself is flawed; you'll often be able to make an argument either way, but the Shards can do these things because Brandon designed them accomplish these goals, first and foremost. That's why I think trying to understand the difference between a Splinter and an avatar is a bit reductive. Splinters are ways that Shards give their power to others. Avatars are ways for a Shard to grant personality to their power. But not every Splinter is identical, and not every Avatar is identical, and there will definitely be a place in the middle where you're like, "It's got stuff in common with both, and it diverges from both."

In Brandon's recent YouTube Q&A livestream, he talked about his plans for the Stormlight Four tour; specifically, where he may be going, and what changes will be coming to the format. You can find the segment just before the 2 hour mark in this video: https://youtu.be/MbwmDMwCKrs?t=7183 And even though he says to not quote him several times, I choose to believe he's saying that as an expression to mean the plans are subject to change, so I am going to quote him with impunity below. This statement does not mention the release party, but in this year's State of the Sanderson, when discussing possible tour changes, Brandon said, "Note that none of these apply to release parties, which will continue to be the insane and enormous extravaganzas you've come to expect."

Oh boy, there was a second livestream on Monday. Both it and the first session are available on Brandon's YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/brandsanderson And, at the end, Brandon said he's planning another livestream for either Friday or Saturday. If anyone's looking to get questions in, it looks like there's typically a Facebook post, a Twitter post, and an Instagram post, and sometimes questions are taken from the live chat, as well, so those are all potential avenues to get your question in. I'd recommend picking your favorite social media platform and check every half an hour or so, to try to get one of the first responses. There is an Arcanum event for this livestream, as well: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/410-youtube-livestream-2/. The audio is still being processed, but there is still a good bit from the first livestream to transcribe, for those who are looking to do some work over the weekend. I did manage to get a question in this time, one that's been on my mind for a while: "Let's use a time machine and change the past. Let's say you aren't asked to finish WoT, and instead fix and publish Liar of Partinel. How do you think the Cosmere fan experience would have been different if mysteries like Hoid and the Shattering had been explored earlier?" Brandon gave a nice thorough answer that addressed a couple of fronts. Even in that scenario, he may have not written all the way up to the Shattering, but taken a break from Dragonsteel to do another series. He may have shrunk Stormlight to be more Taln-focused, with much of the Bridge Four and Kaladin-like plotlines falling to Dragonsteel's main non-Hoid character. And, even if he wrote the whole of Dragonsteel, it may not have affected our experience of Stormlight much beyond us knowing the personalities and motivations of Hoid and the three Shards a little bit better. So, all in all, a fascinating look into some of the early Cosmere plans, which is always something I always find interesting. EDIT: 1:00 MST on Saturday.

In Oathbringer, we learned about a new Realmatic concept called “avatars.” We don’t have a lot to go on, but I think there is a little we can piece together about them. I’ll begin with laying out all the sources we have on the subject, and follow with in-depth analyses of confirmed and speculated avatars to see what we can figure out. Unfortunately, won’t be able to skim the section headings and skip ahead; I’m going to be building concepts throughout the entire treatise. Stuff I casually assert in later headings, I spend a lot of time defining and defending in earlier ones. So you’ll need to read the whole thing top-down without skipping. Sources The first we learned about them was in Oathbringer, published on November 14, 2017, in a selection of the epigraphs forming a letter written to Hoid. And here’s a list of WoBs, numbered for easy reference. WoB 1. November 28th, 2017. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8606 WoB 2. December 16, 2017. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/314/#e9082 WoB 3. Relevant excerpts from a much larger conversation. March 18, 2018. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/315/#e9385 WoB 4. October 26, 2019. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/398/#e13220 WoB 5. November 26, 2019 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13323 WoB 6. Nov 26, 2019 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13339 Lastly, before I get started on my conclusions, I want to present some Wikipedia quotations about the religious doctrine of avatars. Between things like forum avatars, the Last Airbender TV show, and the James Cameron movie, the word itself is fairly common, but our usage has drifted away from the theological definition, the original Hindu concepts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar The big takeaway for me here is that the avatar is the opposite of something like the cosmere’s Ascension. It’s not a mortal attaining to something greater; it’s something greater manifesting in a limited, relatable fashion. Patji Let’s dive into specifics. We have two confirmed avatars; Patji on First of the Sun, and an unnamed female on Obrodai. We obviously don’t know much about the latter, but we’ve been given a few additional tantalizing clues about Patji in the WoBs I’ve shared above. But before discussing WoBs, I’ve got a few novel interpretations of the Oathbringer letter. You may have noticed that I split it into two sections. There’s no indication in the epigraphs themselves of this, but something has seemed off about this response ever since the first time I read it, and this split into an initial response and a later response was the only way I could finally get everything to click. There’s the question of authorship. There’s a presumption of “past relationship,” which, in my mind, immediately indicated a Vessel from Yolen. There’s also the line about Hoid having written to “one who cannot respond,” on the “insignificant” world of First of the Sun, as if Hoid wrote a letter addressed to Patji, but another, the Vessel Bavadin herself, is writing the response. But that never sat quite right with me. In Way of Kings, Hoid admits to having a grudge against Bavadin, one that guides his actions. “You have accused me of arrogance in my quest. You have accused me of perpetuating my grudge against Rayse and Bavadin. Both accusations are true.” So why is he relying on past relationship with Bavadin to convince her to help? Seems the past relationship would hurt his chances. And why are there oceanic metaphors throughout the epigraphs if the letter isn’t actually from Patji, the avatar on the ocean planet? And though we don’t have Hoid’s letter, I also couldn’t help but wonder, who had he actually addressed it to? Was it Bavadin (the past relationship), or Patji (the one who couldn’t respond)? These questions led me to develop an alternate interpretation: Hoid wrote the letter to Patji, with no intention of Bavadin receiving it at all. The “past relationship” indicates that Hoid knew Patji. The “one who cannot respond” epigraph isn’t saying that Patji is literally incapable of communicating; it’s Patji saying “I gotta ask my manager.” He does so, and then Bavadin says “box that fool out,” and then he writes the second portion of the letter with the denial. Approaching another one of Autonomy’s avatars may have been more successful, one more willing to say “Thumbs up, let’s do this!” without checking in with Bavadin. So, Patji was someone that Hoid knew before he became the avatar on First of the Sun. (Hoid couldn’t have met him on FotS; otherwise, Patji wouldn’t have been surprised he’d been found.” This meshes with one of Brandon’s phrases from WoB 3: “I didn't even get into what avatars are, what Patji was, and what happened to Patji the being--and how that relates to Patji the island.” There was a man named Patji, and something happened to him (something intentionally done by Autonomy, as we know per WoB 4, so something that occurred after the Shattering), and then we wound up with the island of Patji (which is the avatar). This leads me to believe that an avatar is a combination of two things. There is a Physicalmanifestation of Shardic power (something specific, like an island or an individual) using Cognitive residue from a deceased individual. A Mind Golem, of sorts. There are plenty of concepts, both in-Cosmere and otherwise, of something inhabiting a dead person’s body. Like a Lifeless. I think an avatar uses a dead person’s mind to guide its personality as it is created. This is somewhat discussed in WoB 5, about how it’s difficult to Ascend to an avatar because it already has a personality. It doesn’t already have a Vessel; the Investiture manifestation itself has an inherent personality, sort of like a spren. But it needs a real person for its formation; it’s not a personality that spontaneously manifests. So there was a real person named Patji who knew Hoid, and later died on First of the Sun and was made into an Avatar by Autonomy. Anything beyond that would be out of the realm of theorization and into speculation, but I’ll throw two possibilities out. First, he could have been a Yolish individual (he does use Rayse’s name) who could have died conveniently on First of the Sun or been sent there directly by Bavadin. Second, he could have been a Taldain native (like Trell, who’s next up) who was sent out by Bavadin, and Hoid met him either on Taldain or very early on in Patji’s worldhopping career. Trell Trell, from Mistborn, is widely considered to be an Avatar of Autonomy, in large part because of the presence of an individual named Trell in White Sand, the chronologically earliest post-Shattering story, and Autonomy’s “interference with other planets” mentioned in Khriss’s Taldain Essay. And these two clues could fit with the same vein as Patji: Trell was a dude on Taldain, Bavadin recruited him to go off-world and die, but in dying he lent his mind to the creation of an avatar. If he is indeed an avatar, I’m not quite sure how Trell manifests. (Remember, according to the Wikipedia quotes listed above, an avatar makes a “material appearance,” so not just chilling in the Spiritual Realm like a mini-Shard.) Patji manifests as an island. We do have the Thousand Eyes of Trell. And Harmony’s portrayal of him as a red mist. And the red stars forming The Scar in the constellation chart. So maybe Trell literally manifests in stars? But he appears to be Investing on Scadrial specifically, as evidenced by the function of his god metal in Hemalurgy, so I’d expect him to have a manifestation specific to Scadrial. I’m gonna hold off on trying to conclude anything about Trell until Wax and Wayne are finished, at least. [This comment has been removed.] Stormfather Now I’m gonna go a little deeper in the murky depths of theorization. The Stormfather has always been an odd cookie; is he a Sliver, is a Splinter, is he a Cognitive Shadow? He’s referred to himself as some variation of all three. There have been a lot of WoBs on the subject ([A], [ B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [ I], in no particular order, and maybe with an accidental repeat in there). I think an avatar, especially an avatar created from the Cognitive Shadow of a Vessel, can classify as all three, so the lines of terminology get muddled, which causes a lot of this confusion. There are two key WoBs from that list that lead me to suspect the Stormfather is an avatar. First is that the Stormfather has “absorbed” something that made him basically Honor’s Cognitive Shadow [ I]. Second, that the Stormfather was intentionally created by Honor [C]. So he’s a post-Shattering creation (even though the Highstorms themselves predate the Shattering [J]). This is what we see the Stormfather discuss in Oathbringer Chapter 113: So, we learn that Honor did something to create the modern Stormfather around the time of the Recreance; but we also know that some form of the Stormfather predated the First Desolation, at the very least, from Words of Radiance interlude 5 (appropriately called the Rider of Storms): So, we have a latter transformation, where it seems the Stormfather absorbed Honor’s Cognitive Shadow, consuming part of his mental framework (Mind Golem) into his personality. But by calling it a “latter transformation,” I’m implying that there was a former transformation, one where the highstorm absorbed a mind to become more than just a storm. I think the former transformation is told in the story of Fleet. It’s a passage I’ve tried to crack unsuccessfully before. I won’t post the entire song, but selections that seem significant. (In reverse chronological order, but that’s just what works best from a flow of thought.) The ending screams “Cognitive Shadow” to me, one tied to the Investiture of the highstorms. I’m thinking now that his mind was used to create an avatar with the physical manifestation of the Investiture that was the existing highstorm. The God of Storms is not mentioned against through the story. There’s no personification of the storm throughout the race itself. I think the God of Storms is Honor, and this is indicating he was active and aware, preparing to create an avatar during the sequence. This is Hoid singing, so the events of Fleet’s story happened during his lifetime. The timelines fit; Chan-a-rach came from Ashyn, which was destroyed after Odium’s arrival, so Hoid could definitely have been around for it. The end of the story refers to the land of “dirt and soil,” so another indication that it was after humans came from Ashyn. But, if the Stormfather betrayed the singers, then this must have been before the First Desolation. And, if that’s the case, Fleet might not even be a human; he might have been a singer! The song refers to Alethkar and Azir, nations that didn’t exist until recently (in the grand scheme of things), so of course those weren’t the literal names of the locations while the story of Fleet was occurring. But if it was before the human expansion and invasion, then maybe this was a singer who did all this through singer territory? That would add an additional note of betrayal to the Stormfather’s actions. But the singers should have known better than to approach him by relying upon presumption of past relationship. The avatar still needed guiding and shaping by Honor, and who knows what else may have occurred during the events of the First Desolation. I get the sense there are more secrets incoming in the next few books that informed a lot of actions throughout Roshar’s history. Oh, one last thought before I go, on the sense of physical manifestations. The Stormfather didn’t appear in the Cognitive Realm when a highstorm passed by in Oathbringer when the gang was in Shadesmar. He appears to be limited to the Physical Realm, although he is pretty omnipresent in a Spiritual Realm sense. That fits the definition of avatar I’ve been using, as a physical manifestation. Nightwatcher The Nightwatcher is referred to as an avatar by Evi. Is it the same technical cosmere term that’s applied to Patji and the being on Obrodai? Sure, why not! But in all seriousness, I think the Nightwatcher would fit the definition of an avatar, as well. She is also a physical manifestation, the creeping mist that lives in one spot. She’s still learning; Cultivation lets her hold court to “understand” humans. This fits with the Stormfather ‘growing up’ so to speak, and also with the avatar on Obrodai who is beginning to manifest and had her personality guided. That’s always struck me as odd, why the Nightwatcher has been around so long (it’s called the Old Magic, after all), but is still working on understanding people. Maybe she wasn’t guided as an avatar until recently, and she was just a less mindless manifestation. (More on that in the next section.) The Unmade Truth be told, the Unmade weren’t even on my mind as a candidate when I sat down to write this theory. But as I’ve been putting words to the page and pulling together sources, I have no choice but to consider them, and they do fit with a lot of the concepts I’ve been attributing to avatars. We know there’s a parallel between Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and the Unmade [ B]. If the first two are avatars, then so are the rest. Which is what, specifically, was Unmade – nine individuals whose minds were taken and used to create the Unmade, but were never properly developed to make them all fully sentient. Or maybe they had been developed as personalities, and then they were undone at some point. They also fit the physical manifestation element of an avatar – we haven’t seen them lurking in the Cognitive Realm (although we did see their presence there in Kholinar and Thaylen city), they’ve always been in the Physical Realm as well. Even Yelig-nar had a gemstone, which I think is his physical manifestation. This ties the Unmade to Roshar specifically, which is why I think they stayed behind on Roshar after the Last Desolation when the Fused and the Voidspren all returned to Braize. They are a different phenomenon that is tied to Odium’s Investiture on Roshar, not a Splinter tied to Braize like the rest. The Sibling And logic follows that the third Bondsmith spren would also be an avatar. But if an avatar is a manifestation of a Shard… then which Shard? Honor and Cultivation already have their big avatars, Odium has his smaller avatars. I don’t think that we can have an avatar of multiple Shards simultaneously – these are manifestations of the Shard, not an external Splinter like the spren. Maybe Honor or Cultivation has two? Maybe Re-shephir isn’t the first Unmade to switch sides (the mysterious Tenth Unmade that got hinted at in epigraphs)? Maybe there’s an off-world Shard that was like, “Sure, I’ll drop an avatar,” and we’ll get a Letter from that Shard in one of the next two books saying “I already gave you an avatar to help, how’d that turn out for you?” For the physical manifestation, I’m leaning towards the gemstone pillar as being the Sibling’s manifestation. It’s slumbering, so the gemstones are off. This also kind of fits the three kinds of gods in the Horneater myths (trees = Nightwatcher, waters = Stormfather, mountains = Sibling) and the three gods in the Elia Stele (spren = Nightwatcher, stone = Sibling, wind = Stormfather). The Sibling is physically manifested in the rocks, perhaps specifically in gemstones. Perpendicularities I’ll take a break from specific avatars because I need to introduce another concept before I get to the next one. Avatars have perpendicularities; we know there’s one on First of the Sun, and there must be one on Obrodai as well (since Hoid was told not to go back there, and as far as we’ve seen, he still needs to use perpendicularities to transition between realms). I’m wondering if Trell has a perpendicularity on Scadrial, which is how he gets his agents on-world. Trell is Invested enough on Scadrial for his metal to function in Hemalurgy, so maybe he’s Invested enough to have a perpendicularity, as well. The perpendicularity situation on Scadrial is a little puzzling, in and of itself; ettmetal manifests in the South, and god metals have been shown to manifest near perpendicularities (lerasium by the Well of Ascension and atium by the Pits of Hathsin). But the Shadows of Self broadsheets include a Southerner using a perpendicularity in the Northern mountains. Does Harmony have two perpendicularities? Is there no useable perp near the ettmetal source, so they have to use the one in the North? Is the mountain pool actually Trell’s perp, and the Masked Figure is one of Trell’s agents (ooh, one of Trell’s kandra) sneaking in so he can make his way to the South? Lots of possibilities. [This comment has been removed.] The Stormfather manfiests “Honor’s perpendicularity.” Cultivation’s is in the Horneater Peaks (which kind of throws off my assigning the Sibling to the mountains and Nightwatcher to the trees, especially when the perpendicularities lie in the waters that I’ve assigned to the Stormfather), which is pretty far from the Nightwatcher, but it’s possible the two are still associated. And I’ve long thought we had one in the Purelake, as well, and that Hoid’s “false trail” he laid out for the Seventeenth Shard was that he had managed to use the Purelake perp. There only appear to be two functioning perpendicularities during the events of Oathbringer (since they had to rely on either Honor’s perp or Cultivation’s perp), so… maybe the Sibling’s slumber has deactivated the perp? And Hoid tricked the Sharders into thinking he’d managed to use it somehow anyways? We’re getting pretty far afield here, especially since I don’t think an avatar needs a perpendicularity (or else Odium would have nine perpendicularities, one for each Unmade.) But that Purelake bit still sticks in my craw, so I’ll dig it back up every once in a while. Sand Lord Back to potential avatars. This is quite obviously a manifestation of Autonomy on Taldain; I think it may be an avatar, not the Shard herself. I’m tying this in to the perpendicularity logic above (which is why I had to throw it there awkwardly in the middle), and maybe the way she closed her perpendicularity on Taldain was by destroying, disabling, or doing something else nasty to this avatar. Austre Austre, the God of Colors, is who the Idrians believe created Nalthis and sends the Returned. It’s interesting that Brandon has confirmed that Austre is not Endowment [K]. One option is that Austre is Adonalsium, and they have enough holdover belief from that time. I don’t think that gels with the Idrian doctrine and Awakening being heresy, and also it has nothing to do with avatars, so I’m not gonna devote a ton of time here, even though it may very well be the more plausible of the options. I’m gonna instead make Sand Lord parallels; both of them wish to stop the use of magic. That’s making me think of Autonomy, and maybe Austre is another one of Bavadin’s avatars. Or maybe Austre is one of Endowment’s avatars? A specific agent who Returns? (But Brandon volunteers that Endowment is the one behind who Returns [L], so where would Austre even fit in?) I don’t have any clue of a physical manifestation for Austre. Warbreaker 2 is going to be even farther off than Wax and Wayne 4, and I’ve already made my thoughts clear on that. But Austre is one of the last candidates I can think of for being an avatar. Skathan Another kick-the-tires idea, the Emperor on Darkside. Autonomy could have another avatar working on Darkside. Working off the prose, he’s said to have powers to “speak and force people to obey him,” and he doesn’t age. Maybe he’s just a Lord Ruler-like individual who gained power. I don’t think we’ve seen him make a claim to deity. So, I’m not even convincing myself that he’s an avatar, but there’s no harm in mentioning him in the list of potentials. The Fell Twins Aether of Night spoilers below: Magic Systems I don’t have a ton of conclusions to make about how avatars interact with magic systems. Some, like Patji, manifest their own. Others, like the Rosharan avatars, interact with an existing Shard’s magic system. Which makes sense with an avatar as an extension of the Shard, and not a distinct being. Honor has already Invested in Roshar, so creating an avatar that’s also Invested in Roshar doesn’t change anything. I assume Obrodai has some new magic. (Kite magic, perhaps [M]? Although Brandon was developing that in 2019, so that may not have existed when Oathbringer was published.) Maybe the Sand Lord is responsible for sand mastery. We’ve seen the sand on Roshar, but have we actually seen anyone using sand mastery off of Taldain in the modern era? (Since there’s no real magic on Darkside, maybe that’s a sign there’s no avatar there). But if a world already has magic systems, perhaps a new avatar just fits into them, regardless of what Shard it’s of. So Trell joins the Metallic Arts (Brandon hasn’t even considered adding a fourth [N]). Austre, if he is an avatar of an off-world Shard, fits in with Breath somehow. And the Unmade can be bonded to form a Bondsmith, which is why going beyond three was seen as “seditious,” since it required one of Odium’s avatars. This makes sense more from a narrative sense than a realmatic sense; you only need new magic if there’s no old magic there to piggyback off of. But that’s how a lot of these things seem to go, and we’ll have a small enough sample size that I’m sure someone will be able to fit it into some sort of a framework in the end. In Conclusion. I’m pushing 5000 words, so I’ll summarize my main points: An avatar is a physical manifestation of a Shard that derives its personality from the mind of a deceased individual. Avatars can create new magic systems and new perpendicularities on the planets they are Invested on, but they do not have to if they Shard or another Shard has already Invested on that world. Patji was a being Hoid knew before he (Patji) became an avatar. Trell is an avatar of Autonomy who will be made from the individual appearing in White Sand. The three Bondsmith spren and the Unmade are avatars on Roshar. There are a couple other beings through the cosmere who may be avatars, but I don't have much confidence at all in that list, and am more presenting it for the sake of thoroughness.

So, the Sanderson Store posted a picture of the warehouse today, and in the corner of the shot there were some foam Shardblades that are apparently going to be merchandise: Looks like the company that made them is called Forged Foam; their work has been shared on Reddit before. Here's their website; nothing Stormlight-related on it, yet. https://www.forgedfoam.com/ Looking through their current inventory, I'm guessing these will run between $100 and $150 a pop. So start saving up now!

Brandon hadn't decided on a final name for them yet while writing Oathbringer, so we do not have a name for them:

There is, unfortunately, no other official avenues for obtaining the drafts. Brandon's team is aware of it, and we will need to wait until they correct the issue. EDIT: Never mind, it has been brought to my attention that the Wayback Machine has preserved both documents. I didn't think it would grab attachments like this. http://web.archive.org/web/20170716102712/http://brandonsanderson.com/drafts/warbreaker/LiarPt12.doc https://web.archive.org/web/20170716093039/http://www.brandonsanderson.com/drafts/warbreaker/LiarCh1v3.doc

Audio is up for transcription: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/409-youtube-livestream/ For those who missed it, the video is up on Brandon's Facebook page; Arcanum only has the audio.