Pagerunner

Reckoners 2 was 8 months after WoR. Shadows of Self was 18 months after WoR (although he did write BoM at the same time). Apocalypse Guard by April 2018 would be fast.

You cannot read the whole thing; you can find get the first few chapters. It's not great, and there's no satisfying arc for anyone or anything. But the little we have lets you get some useful insights into some pieces of life that have appeared in Stormlight, Warbreaker, and Arcanum Unbounded.

Religions are interesting in Brandon's books. It would be simple if people just worshipped the Shards of their planets. But they don't - they worship all sorts of things, and they very rarely know the truth behind what they are worshipping. We have not seen Endowment directly worshipped on Nalthis. In T'Telir, they worship the Returned; in Idris, they worship Austre, who is not Endowment. On Sel, the Fjordell Empire worships Jaddeth, who will rise from beneath the ground... which some of us think is actually the developing soul of the planet itself, which has begun to achieve sentience (base don the Ars Arcanum, of course). On Roshar, the Heralds are often viewed as gods (and I think the Divine Attributes in the Ars Arcana are referring to the Heralds, not to Honor and Cultivation). Religions in the cosmere can develop in many ways: proscribed by a higher power (like Pathism or Sliverism), a response to a higher power (the Purelake religion, where I see Honor as the true one they worship and Odium as the one they pay lip service to), created by an individual (Survivorism), or just developed from the natural world (like Sazed's religions that worshipped the stars or colors or what-not, or the Pantheon of Sixth of the Dusk). Shards will often be responsible for one of the first two kinds, but the second two kinds have also come about. So, the question is, are there any religions that were either proscribed by Adonalsium or a response to Adonalsium? I don't think we've gotten a good look at any people groups who would not have had a more recent of influential interaction with another Shard. Who might still remember Adonalsium from before the Shattering? Yolen is a good candidate, but we haven't seen them. Minor Shardworlds, like First of the Sun, might not know of Adonalsium, if he was even the one to create them, but they definitely wouldn't have forgotten Adonalsium in place of a new Shard. The God Beyond (or the Unknown God, as he is sometimes called) is an interesting candidate. It has popped up on many worlds, but quite telling is that Hoid uses the term. So, either it's a new religion that Hoid picked up, or it's something that predates the Shattering. Maybe Hoid has been the one accidentally propagating it the entire time! One last thought. If you track down the sample chapters for the Liar of Partinel, you will get a glimpse into Hoid's origin, before the Shattering. (Brandon did not like how the book turned out, so it's not canon, but there are many elements that will still be canonical when the Dragonsteel series finally gets written.) The gods had already died, and the inhabitants of Partinel cursed by "the Betrayer." (I believe Hoid references this somewhere in Stomrlight, saying he came from 'a land where gods have died.') Adonalsium might not have even been worshipped on Yolen. There is a lot we have yet to learn. So, after all that theoretical stuff, no, outside of potentially the God Beyond, I don't believe we've seen any religions that worship Adonalsium.

I like when Rand invades Illian; I think it was A Crown of Swords. Everyone else in the world is beating their heads against various walls; the White Tower split, the Bowl of Winds quest. They've spent all these books talking about Sammael, and how he's totally entrenched in Illian, and how he'll be better prepared than Rahvin in Andor... and then the Asha'man invasion just totally wrecks him. Trigger every gateway alarm weave in the city, making them all useless. A highly organized assault, carried out correctly. Dumai's wells was more impactful, since that was the introduction of the Asha'man, but I always like the contrast they brought with the Aes Sedai in terms of teamwork and efficacy in battle.

It's hard to discuss the last three books without the rest of the series! The last three are mentioned specifically only because those are the three Brandon wrote; the entire WoT is fair game.

The aluminum used in the Vanisher's guns was indeed an alloy, and was still Allomantically inert, so you can have a bullet containing enough aluminum to inert that will be stronger than pure aluminum. It looks like you can actually use pure aluminum bullets, but they don't fly well because they're so light and deform so easily. And they'll also have less stopping power, just because of their weight. But, when your alternative is not hitting an Allomancer at all... well, I'll go with aluminum.

Hello, everyone. If you have any questions about the Oathbringer release or the tour in general, feel free to post them in this thread, or look through what has already been asked in the thread. I'll try to summarize some of the Frequently Asked Questions: What are the tour dates we know so far? Nov 13, Provo, UT Nov 14, San Diego, CA Nov 15, San Francisco, CA Nov 16, Portland, OR Nov 18, Houston, TX Nov 21, Chicago, IL Nov 28, London, UK Nov 29, Birmingham, UK Nov 29, Liverpool, UK Dec 1, Leeds, UK Dec 1, Newcastle, UK Dec 2, Edinburgh, UK Dec 2, Glasgow, UK More information about the US stops, including times and bookstore information, can be found in the Tor announcement. Information about the UK tour can be found in the Gollancz announcement. I will add in links to 17th Shard topics for each event as they are created. What's the chance that Brandon will come to Los Angeles/Timbuktu/Mars? Brandon's agent schedules his tour events. If you'd like to see where he has gone in the past, you can check out ccstat's helpful map of them, or to look through Theoryland's event database to see where Brandon's other large tours have been. In the past year or two, he has been doing several smaller tours a year (for YA stuff, Arcanum Unbounded, two Mistborn books in quick succession), but since this will have been almost a year since any other major releases, I suspect the Oathbringer tour will look more like one of the three Wheel of Time tours, with lots of stops. Big cities tend to get a lot of love, and Brandon's geographic location in Utah means that there tend to be more stops out west than there are in the east (and obviously outside of the continental US). Denver, Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, and San Francisco seem to be the cities getting a lot of visits. Two big cities that seem to not get their fair share of tour visits are Atlanta and New York. The former is probably because JordanCon is held there, so Brandon has plenty of opportunities to visit them. New York has been odd, and the anecdotal reason that I've heard is that signings in the Big Apple are in absurdly high demand, and even a big-name fantasy author like Brandon is still a very small fish in that pond. Brandon could get in when he was working on Wheel of Time, but hasn't really been back too many times since he's finished it up. For outside the United States, Brandon just finished up a tour through Europe (Bulgaria, Poland, and Germany). He's said he's planning on going to England, but that might not preclude some other European stops. Anything further would be pure speculation on my part (although I seem to recall Brandon is a big hit among teenage girls in Taiwan...) How do I get a numbered book? Do I need to be at the Midnight Release? Brandon typically outsources the sale of numbered books to Weller Book Works. He will make a blog post when they can be ordered; here's the Bands of Mourning announcement. Brandon expects that you will be able to preorder from them in September. UPDATE: Here is the link to the announcement. You can order them online from Weller's Book Works, or get them in person at the BYU midnight release or at the San Diego signing on the 14th. Any way to get the book early? I'm not good at that sort of thing. If you order on Amazon, you might be able to get it a couple of days early. In my experience, I get it a couple days late, so I usually go to B&N the day of. (Actually, I usually check on Monday night, if they're putting it out before they close, but I haven't had any luck with that.) Why can't I buy it in paperback? Books like this will typically have a paperback version released 1 year after the hardcover. It's because the publishing industry is full of greedy people, and they know that you'll pay for the hardcover if you have no other choice, and it lets them leave the ebook price well above what paperbacks typically go for. (But in all seriousness, this is standard practice for a new release. It's like paying for four movie tickets vs buying the DVD.) So, you can expect to see the MMPB around November 2018. Of note for this particular book, it's long enough that it may not be possible to release as a single paperback; we might get Oathbringer Part 1 and Oathbringer Part 2. This has been pretty standard for various worldwide releases, but pretty atypical for North America, where the fantasy market is so strong they don't need to fudge their numbers by double- or triple-counting book sales. The hardcover will still be a single volume, even if they need to shrink margins and stuff like that. It's my first signing, and I'm overwhelmed. Help! Don't panic! Here are some specific questions you may be wondering: Where can I find more info about a particular signing? This forum will contain threads for each event, once more information is known. You'll be able to reach out to the bookstores that will be hosting and ask about any specifics that aren't available on their website. Do I need to buy a ticket? This depends on the event host. Bookstores around the country host events, and they may decide to ticket an event to allow them to rent a larger space to hold the signing. They also may require you to purchase a copy of Oathbringer from them, or just give a free ticket with purchase. There are two reasons they do this: first, they shouldn't lose money hosting an event like this (because if they do, they will stop doing them). Two, imposing a price tag will reduce the number of attendees and make for a better experience for those who are willing to pay. (Somewhat analogous to Uber's surge pricing.) Not all bookstores will ticket their events, but it's good manners to purchase something from a bookstore that hosts a free event. Take care of some Christmas shopping early, if you can, and you'll thank the bookstore for their work setting up the event. How long a turn will I get in the signing line? How many books or questions can I bring? This also depends on the bookstore, and the size of the crowd that turns up. Sometimes, the bookstore will have Brandon pre-sign books, so you can just snag a copy and go. If you're bringing books you already own to get signed and/or personalized, be aware that the bookstore may limit the number of books that you can take with you in the line. You can pretty much count on getting at least 3, though. While he's signing and personalizing books, you'll be able to chat with him, ask questions, or get a picture taken. I have it on good authority that waiting to go last means you can slip in a few extra questions... if you're willing to wait around all night for them. What questions should I ask? We maintain (and by "we," I mean "I think somebody does") an Ultimate List of Questions you can feel free to pull from, and if you ask in one of the event threads, people will be sure to offer suggestions. I recommend you pick something that you're personally interested in. And you don't even need to ask any questions - you could always share a story, or something else to make things a little more personal. Can I give Brandon any gifts, to show my appreciation? He likes magic cards. And fish sticks. But he repeatedly says that he doesn't really need the gifts to feel appreciated, he'll just mention them as outlets for those who love to give gifts. (Also, he hates fish sticks.) When do sample chapters start coming up? Tor typically posts those two months in advance. Everything Brandon has read at signings and conventions can be found here. UPDATE: You can find released preview chapters using this thread.

Not like anyone should be really surprised at this. But I think this is the first official word that the WoA leatherbound is on its way. What would you guys like to see in it as bonus content? Obviously the art gallery, and we'll probably get the same updated Final Empire map (but now with a town named for good old Chaos), and maybe a new map of Luthadel too. I'm hoping we'll get the alternate ending scenes, with maybe a little bit of deep-cosmere information to go along with them, like the meaning of the multiple mist spirits. Along with an intro that explains why he changed it, something like the Mad Prince sequence from the Elantris leatherbound. I don't have my Mistborn leatherbound at hand; it has the Allomantic table in it, right? Or did it get kept out because of spoilers, as though anyone would read a leatherbound for their first time through the book? If it was in there, then I'd like to see the Feruchemical table in this one, if only because it means they'd probably need to put a Hemalurgic table out in time for 2018's HoA leatherbound. What is everyone's thoughts on colors? Do you want it to look very similar to the first Mistborn leatherbound? Or would you prefer each successive leatherbound to look distinctive? I was a little bummed when Mistborn wasn't black; I thought it'd be nice to have the whole row of leatherbounds look exactly the same, with a nice and neatly organized bookshelf. (I'm keeping an eye on how to make your own leatherbound versions, just in case I decide to go that route at a much, much later date.) At this point, I'd still prefer if each series looked the same, so I hope this new one shares much of the last one's design. But whatever Team Sanderson decides on, I'm sure it will look great. (I'll admit the Mistborn leatherbound looks much better than the Elantris one.)

It might be intentional, it's very hard to tell. The Alcatraz series, in particular, is just Brandon having fun and messing around, so he might have had an idea for something in the cosmere that wouldn't be a good fit thematically, so he used it in Alcatraz where he can be silly. (I know he has done some other goofy stuff, like having some people in Alcatraz speak a language from Dragonsteel. No deep meaning, he just thought it would be a clever joke no one would pick up on for years and years.)

The specifics of Steelpushes have never been intuitive for a number of us, the most glaring concerns for me arising when I recently reread Era 1. If you're pushing with your arm, you are never surprised by the amount of force you exert; you feel the resistance and adjust accordingly, otherwise you just slap the coin against the wall and hold it there. But that doesn't mesh with the first lesson of Allomancy that Vin learned. This gets back to Sanderson's first law, and how I found myself skimming past all of Zane's and Vin's contests because their Steelpushing seemed fundamentally different to me than Wax's. (Why doesn't everyone just cap their maximum force so they're only slinging coins and aren't thrown back on accident?) Because my intuition didn't match what the author had wrote using his intuition, I found the passages to be entirely too detailed. Because Brandon devoted so many words to the specifics of Steelpushing and how it interacts with the surroundings, it's not surprising that some of us can't help but look 'too closely' at the topic. When we see inconsistencies, it is not a satisfying resolution to step back and say 'don't think about it that much.' Rather, fitting a Frankenstein's mathematical monster to the situation lets us more accurately grasp the behavior that Brandon writes Allomancy to manifest, letting us engage more in the line-by-line of the battles. If you can read through all of Mistborn and never wonder "but wait, shouldn't that have done this instead?" then more power to you. I could not. For a while, it meant I just read "bla-bla-fly-through-the-air" instead of the actual text of the Allomantic battles. But now I think I see a better way to understand how Brandon designed Allomancy to behave. Which is the goal at the end of the day for those of us who make these models. Like I said before, I don't think that Brandon has the mathematical formulas to describe this behavior, and pulls them out to check whenever he's writing Mistborn. He has an internal understanding of what Steelpushing is, which never quite matches up with simple explanations that we consider the first time around. My model hopefully captures the key idea that I think has been missing - that the maximum speed is inherently tied to the maximum force in a way unrelated to the actual physics - and does so in a quantitative way that assuages our quantitative-based questions.

Certainly.

The effects of a Shardblade on aluminum has been a point of contention among Team Sanderson. The latest statement I can recall was that a Shardblade could not cut aluminum the way it did stone or dead flesh. But it is still a sword, so it could still damage a weak piece of aluminum without needing any funny Realmatics.

Mechanical engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.

He has mentioned it before, I seem to recall, going back and forth with a short fiction collection every five years or so, alternating cosmere and non-cosmere. He has one Legion story left to write, correct? He might make that the Edgedancer of this collection. But regardless, I expect you'll see something like that in the next few years.

I've been pretty vocal about how much I don't like this WoP. Not because it's superseded by a WoB, but because of the final conversation between Nale and Lift in Edgedancer.

I believe the term you're looking for is "Investiture," believe it or not. As Taravingian put it, 'the consequences of their potential Investiture,' or as Khriss said in the Drominad AU essay, 'I am becoming more certain there is Investiture here.' (Both quotes are paraphrases, but they each definitely use the term, even if I can't recall the exact words around them.) I believe this usage of 'Investiture' is the act of actually obtaining the magical abilities (which is different than Kinetic Investiture, the raw power of a Shard acting in a specific manner). Initiation (for which we are only given two concrete examples, genetics on Scadrial and a Shard's decision on Nalthis) will determine who can and cannot receive Investiture in this manner. Like I said before, I don't think Initiation always results in Investiture. (There are many people who could be Allomancers, but only some who truly do gain the abilities.) But for a magic system with an Initiation, it will always precede Investiture. (If you do not have the proper genes, you will not Snap into an Allomancer.)

Lots of good stuff. Lots of stuff I disagree with, but that you have anticipated disagreement on and already addressed (which came first, Radiants or Honorblades). I also disagree with your interpretation of Honor, but that's because I have a different interpretation of Honor that I am quite fond of, not because I see anything wrong with yours. (And they're actually not that different, when I think about them.) A few questions/comments: Why do you say that ancient fabrials don't appear to have spren in them? In the specific example of the Oathgates, the Blade that was used to operate them was not one of the spren that could grant Transportation, so how could it have accessed that Surge (if that was what truly happened)? There must be additional spren involved, either one of the kinds of spren that can grant Transportation, or the spren that match the Surge of Transportation itself (if you hold to that interpretation). They must have been hanging out in the lanterns or elsewhere in the Oathgate until it was filled with Stormlight and activated using Pattern. (I think requiring a live Blade is more of a lock, as opposed to an inherent function, but that's neither here nor there.) I like your distinction between Voidbinding and the Voidbringers. However, I don't quite like your definition of Voidbringing powers; I think Listeners must be able to bond spren of Honor. The Stormfather betrayed the Listeners by abandoning them, along with the other Radiant spren, so I think the Listeners must have had ancient Forms of Power with spren associated with Honor. (That's the phrase I use to refer to what you call Voidbringing powers.) The phrase "of Honor" or "of Odium" doesn't actually mean all that much; the first place we saw it used, with the Kandra, said that even though everyone thought they were "of Ruin," they were actually "of Preservation." But they were still created using Hemalurgy, Ruin's magic system. I've always taken the phrase to mean "on such-and-such Shard's side," which can be true even if they use Investiture of another Shard entirely. I think Listeners take on any spren, adopting the characteristics of the spren they bond, whether it be of Honor, Cultivation, or Odium. When they bond a spren that can cast red lighting, they can do that, too; it's not like it's a magic system, any more than the spren's ability to act like that is part of a magic system. More powerful spren make more powerful Listeners, but also open up the Listener to Cognitive Realm influence (like Hemalurgy does). Whether or not Odium creates his own Splinters, or corrupts other spren... it's an interesting question, but I don't think it's really necessary for this topic. But I do think this whole phenomenon is a thing of the Listeners, predating the arrival of the Shards, so it shouldn't be aligned with any of the Shards in particular even though it utilizes spren from some or even all of them. As for Voidbinding itself, I hesitate to separate that from the Surges. We know that the glyphs on the Surgebinding chart are the names of Orders and Surges; but since we don't know their Rosharan names, we can't actually decipher the letters. But we can see that the same building blocks are used for the Surges and the Voids; even though the symmetry is different, it's still built out of the same letters, in the same arrangement, so it's the same word. The Radiant/Voidbinder glyphs are even more similar - most of the time, it's the same shape, just spread out (not even rotated or flipped). I think Voidbinding needs to be a very similar thing to Surgebinding; kind of like Hemalurgy, which by definition grants the same powers as Allomancy and Feruchemy. For Initiation, I think you're not quite using the term correctly. I've recently come to understand that Initiation isn't when you get the magic, it's who can get the magic. The Initiation of Allomancy isn't Snapping; it's described as genetic. Not everyone who can become an Allomancer does. Same with Returning; Endowment chooses people, but they are given a choice to return, so that means that not everyone she chooses will Return. That also shows it's different among magic systems on the same world; Hemalurgy has a universal Initiation (anyone can learn and perform it), while Allomancy and Feruchemy are limited to a specific gene pool. I think you're right that fabrial science has a universal Initiation, as well; but I would limit the Initiation of Surgebinding to behavior. Not everyone who acts according to the ideals of the spren will attract one. But you will not be able to attract one unless you act in the appropriate manner. As for Focus, can you go into more detail about why you believe gemstones are necessary? The kind of gemstone determines the kind of spren you can capture in it, true, but that seems to get back to spren again. In Hemalurgy, you need to place spikes at specific points, but the spiritweb isn't the focus, it's still the metal of the spikes. That's how I see gemstones fitting in; it's an important restriction of the capture and application of spren, but at the end of the day, it's still the spren.

Here you go.

WoB Count: 998 Reddit: 100% Twitter: 29%, 28/97 months Blog: 79%, 114/145 pages Interviews: 2%, 8/485 So, big news this past month for WoBs. The Shard admins finally announced their new database. I posted all my Reddit WoBs, because I got tired of people asking me to find something for them. Good times. As you might not be surprised to hear, I have been tapped as one of the beta users for the new WoB system. I'll be adding what I have while seeing if I can break the system, and make any suggestions that I feel are relevant. I haven't gotten into it yet; they're still finishing up some work before opening it to the beta users. But, since one of their goals is going through and collecting anything old not in Theoryland, then what I've been doing with Reddit and Twitter has been helping. (Exactly as I have foreseen!) I'll keep pushing through with checking through the old stuff, although it will go a little slower. I might not be able to say much, since they like their privacy a lot more than I do, but I'll keep you all up to date on what I can. I will be discontinuing my work on a database front end, and on pulling in everything from Theoryland, since those are both covered by Weiry, Mestiv, and their team. I'll table some of my longer-term plans that I'd had for my WoB database; if I had ever gotten it running, I would have liked to build separate tables for Theories and Questions that would use the same tags, but also be able to cross-reference with WoBs. I'll run some stuff by the staff, see if there's anything they want to do with it down the line. I might not get to all that much stuff in the next month or two. Aside from backfilling the new database, I've got a lot going on in my personal life right now. I'm moving across the country in two months, so I'm finishing up a lot of with my job, I'm packing up and selling my house, I'm spending a lot of time with my siblings and my niece (who is super cute, and who I like more than all of you combined). I've got a lot on my plate, but I should be able to get back in the swing of things at the end of the summer. When Oathbringer comes, we'll be in good shape. I'll close out with an interesting WoB from this year's Leipzig signing:

Welcome to the Shard, Chris! Happy to have you here. It's not that the Coppermind is out of date; it's just that it is limited to being strictly factual information, so while there are some pretty prevalent ideas about Hoid and Mraize and Vax and Silverlight and all that stuff, the Coppermind isn't the right place for them. The best tidbits come from the Theoryland Interview Database for now, which is a huge repository of signing reports that we use all the time to build theories. For the Vessels, those changes look mostly good. We know that Odium visited Sel before he visited Threnody, though. Ambition was the Shard he wanted to kill first, but he couldn't find it. So he took out Dominion and Devotion first, then he found Ambition. And then eventually he ended up on Roshar, although he might have stopped somewhere else along the way. (But we'd have know way of knowing that.) I'd actually remove the Survival Shard from the graphic, and put it below. (I'll mention it later on in this post.) As far as Observers and Activists, that's where I think the lines begin to break down. It's not like Khriss went from Taldain to Sel to Scadrial to Nalthis to Roshar, exactly in that order. We know she was on those planets around the time of the stories (because she was writing the Ars Arcana), but that order exists because that's the chronological order of White Sand, Elantris, etc. Hoid is going places he knows he needs to be (which he has an innate sense for), but Khriss is studying, which probably means a lot of research trips based out of Silverlight. We also know that Hoid has a home base in Shadesmar (which I suspect is also Silverlight, but might not be), so his chart probably doesn't look quite like that order, either. That would require a pretty major restructuring of the chart, so I definitely understand if you just want to keep the format and do some minor modifications. If you do that, then you may want to remove Khriss's visit to Threnody. From the AU essay, I took it as her saying she hasn't been to Threnody, since she doesn't know much about it, and Nazh worldhopped on his own and met up with Khriss later. For the full chart, I'd recommend discussing major worldhopping groups and where we've seen them active, instead of drawing lines. You have a war between the Threnodite Shades and the Ire, which appears to take place entirely in the interplanetary Cognitive Realm, so it doesn't really match up with people visiting any world. The Ire visited Scadrial's Cognitive Realm in Secret History, so that would be the line to add. The Seventeenth Shard has a population drawn from many worlds, and their mission is to prevent interference among Shardworlds. (Which is why they're trying to track down Hoid, who is quite meddlesome.) They're aligned with Frost, who is on Yolen (and, really, all that's important about that is that we know Yolen still exists), so they may come from there. But so far, we've only seen them active on Roshar. Khriss and Nazh are kind of doing their own thing, involving a lot of travel. Mraize has a lot of treasures from other Shardworlds, so you may want to still mention him, even if you don't draw any lines. Silverlight and their Universities are another major worldhopping group to talk about. The city is one of the largest in the cosmere, and it is located entirely in the Cognitive Realm, no Physical realm correspondence at all. This is where Iyatil is from; her ancestors are from Southern Scadrial, but she was born in Silverlight, even though she's active on Roshar right now. Silverlight is also possibly connected to the 'mercantile ecosystem' that Hoid said Kelseir destroyed when he broke the Pits of Hathsin, in Secret History. I think, while I've been typing this up, several other of your questions have already been answered by other members, so I'll leave them be. But I'll just quickly address the last four points of your article: 1) What the heck is going on with Sel? I don't see what's so different about Sel. Hoid and Khriss have each visited pretty much every planet, Odium was going after Shards (so his motives were different than other worldhoppers we've seen), and we've seen more individual worldhoppers from Scadrial and Nalthis. This seems like the most original research in the piece, so I totally see why you'd want to keep it in. I'm just not seeing it. 2) Timelines? This has an answer. Wax and Wayne happen after Stormlight 5. It might be before Stormlight 6, it might be between a couple of later Stormlight books. But Wax and Wayne are concurrent with Stormlight. Hoid will need to get away from Roshar to make it onto Scadrial, but we'll have to wait and see what the situation on Roshar looks like a couple of books down the road. Opening the door to chronology goes down another rabbit hole... that might be a separate article you write. (And we're here to help if you ever do!) 3) Where are the other Shardholders? It might be good to leave 'Survival' off the graphic entirely and put it and the other worldless Shard (We know that Ambition and at least one other Shard reside in interstellar space) here. "We know 10 Shards and where they are; we know some slim information about two other Shards, and the last four are a total mystery." You could also mention that First of the Sun may have had a Shard in its ancient history, which is why it has a Shardpool (although that gets a little more into speculation and theorizing). You could also mention planned books that might have those missing Shards: Aether of Night and Dark One. (This is somewhat low-profile information, but Brandon recently talked about his original 36-book cosmere outline over on Reddit.) 4) Does Yolen Exist? Yes, it does; Frost is hanging out there. It is hidden, but not destroyed. People still may have needed to evacuate it, so this might be a good place to discuss some deep Rosharan history like the Iriali Long Trail or the four major language families, or the maybe Taldainian influence on Scadrial (did you notice Kenton St in Luthadel?). If you're interested in going that in-depth with theorizing, I'd be happy to point you in some good directions. But at the very least, we do have a confirmed case of travel to and from Yolen after the early days is this: someone's delivering letters between Hoid on Roshar and Frost on Yolen. That might be an important line to draw. Hope the information we're giving you is useful. Let us know if we're being too hard on you over here - I think we're all just jealous that we're stuck on the forums while you get to publish articles that everyone is going to read!

These two situations are very different animals. FAQFriday was like seeing people in the park tossing a football around, going over to them and saying that that their form is terrible and that you can show them how to do it much better. There's nothing wrong with being a casual fan, and that is the group that Brandon chose to target with these questions. Trying to insist that anyone who throws a football learn to do so well, will come across as pushy, and make people not want to talk to you (even if you can actually help them improve). Today's article is more like Mark Sanchez's Butt Fumble. It was a professional situation, it was well televised, and boy, no Jets fans wanted to see that happen. Then, I don't think it's out of line to discuss among the fans. Which team was it that had the terrible play where they all lined up on the sideline, and snapped the ball in the middle of the field surrounded by the opponent's defensive line? Was it the Colts? I had no idea what was going on when it happened, but when I researched it online, there were some helpful explanations that put it in context. (They were trying to confuse the defense into adopting an illegal formation, and they could snap the ball to get a penalty call on the other team.) It comes down to acceptable targets. FAQFriday, the targets were fans who hadn't read up on WoBs. I think that was bad; there's nothing wrong with only reading the books and following on Facebook. This situation, though, it's someone in particular who wrote an article on the publisher's website containing factual errors and excluding important information. That, there is something wrong with, and posting corrections and opening a dialogue with the author (who has written other articles for Tor, so I'm sure this won't be the last we see of him) are good ways to fix something that actually has a problem. (Oh, it's not just you personally for the FAQFriday polls. I saw lots of people on here, on Twitter, on Discord, trying to figure out how to 'fix' the polls. But they're not broken, they just don't give the answer we want.)

Depends on the format. During signing lines, to keep things moving, Brandon will often limit people to three or four questions. But some of us have had luck waiting until the end of an event, once it's officially closed and everyone else has gone, and Brandon is willing to stick around and keep on talking. (Whether that's just staying late after the bookstore staff have locked the doors, relocating to the lobby after the university closed the lecture hall we were in, or even standing on the street outside the library and getting interrupted by a homeless person!) So, don't count on getting a ton of questions, but it never hurts to have plenty prepared. As far as what to ask, this is the advice that I give. Brandon seems to be able to tell when someone is asking a question from a list, and when someone is asking about stuff they've come up with. Don't act like a 17th Shard footsoldier, asking what you think is best for the community. When Brandon can tell you're excited about a topic, he'll open up and really engage with you. But if you're carrying along a message from your internet overlords, he's more likely to just give a short answer and keep the line moving. Even if you ask a question that's been answered before, it's not the end of the world. In one of the recent Facebook FAQ polls, the winning question was one about WoR that those of us on the Shard have known the answer to since, like, one day after it was released. But in Brandon's answer, he didn't just give the simple facts, he talked about why he had included that scene, and how it was influenced from the first draft of WoK. You can get some good information from old questions, even if it's just because Brandon can say more once Oathbringer is out. Our priority for signings is often to get facts. Brandon's priority is not to give facts; if he wanted to, he could do that much more effectively by spending more time doing Reddit AMAs or that sort of thing. His priority, why he wants to keep doing signings, is to interact with his fans face-to-face and share the excitement and enjoyment that we all get from his works. So pick questions that will do both; stuff that you don't know the answer to, and that you can genuinely and earnestly converse with Brandon about. Yes-or-no questions can be good, but be prepared to follow up with either answer, so the conversation doesn't die.

We've only seen the word used twice: Elantris Ars Arcanum (appears to be a planet), end of Secret History (appears to be a person). I find it very hard to reconcile Ati's use of the word in SH with it being a planet. I find it easier to believe that Vax is a Vessel, who Kelsier looks like, and that the Initiation in question is tied to that Shard instead of a planet (maybe because Vax's Shard forms the foundation for Silverlight).

Two false-WoBs that I have recently encountered: 1) Learasium is green. I've found word-of-mouth going back to the TWG, but can't figure out where it originally came from. It is depicted as gold on the Allomantic Table of Elements. 2) We will see a new Windrunner swear oaths in Oathbringer. While I agree it is likely, the WoB in question only refers to 'a future book,' not Oathbringer specifically. (It had bizarrely become conflated with the WoB that said we would see Drehy's partner on Oathbringer, making the two the same character.)

It's an article written by a contributor. It is no more or less authoritative than something like the Coppermind, which is part of the Official Brandon Sanderson Fan Site. But it's not written by Brandon, it's written by fans, so you need to be ready for when fans are wrong. And, boy, if that fan had posted his thoughts over here, we'd have learned him a thing or two. Ruin visiting Vax is a huge problem, considering I'm not even completely convinced Vax is a planet. Odium actually making it to Roshar is a big assumption, too; I suspect he was trapped on Braize, and is sending his spren to Roshar to try and free himself. The second Shard not on a planet hasn't been included on the chart; we do know it is distinct from any of the Shards we currently know about. But at least he didn't draw Autonomy in Scadrial; while that might be what will happen, we know for sure that Harmony is the only Shard on Scadrial at the moment. The section about Sel is quite misguided, in my mind. Sel is the most dangerous place to worldhop to, because of its Cognitive Realm, but the author treats it like a major hub. Galladon is from there, the Ire are from there (and are at war with the Threnodites, showing there is much we don't know about the goings-on of the Cognitive Realm), but it's not like it's the first place Hoid and Khriss visited, it's just the second-earliest story chronologically! (After White Sand, which Hoid will appear in, so really it wasn't the first place he visited, either.) I don't see anything making it special in the grand scheme of things. The omission of Silverlight is big. That will mess with Khriss's and Hoid's movements, as well as the members of the Seventeenth Shard and Nazh and Iyatil and... well, probably just about everyone. The author appears to believe that worldhopping is rare. But there are whole mercantile ecosystems, so the charts will be mad complicated, even when you only track a few prominent individuals. This isn't like when you sell your house and buy a new one; this is taking a cruise, coming home, and then going somewhere else for your next vacation. I would have done without arrows - just show where people are from, and where they've been spotted. But even then, there are a couple of major worldhoppers he has ignored, like the Ire or the Five Scholars. If we're including theories like Ruin was on Vax, then how can you exclude the Iriali Long Trail? And to not mention the existence of the Seventeenth Shard is just a crime! How do we know Mraize has been to Sel? Sel is one of the places we don't have any definitive artifacts from in Mraize's collection. Pale sand (Taldain), thick hairpins (Spikes from Scadrial?), golden hair (Royal Locks from Nalthis? Iriali?), tree branch (possibly Selish, but we don't know), silver knife (Threnody), flower (Nalthis), crystal (Aether's planet)... of all the connections to draw, Sel would have been last on my list (well, after First of the Sun). Why does the author ask if Mistborn and Stormlight line up, when Hoid's appearance in BoM in MBE2 is the whole reason why he's got the line from Roshar back to Scadrial? That's something we have WoBs on, that it's currently planned to go in the 15-year gap between SA5 and SA6, or possibly after SA6 or SA7 depending on how things actually play out when Brandon writes those books. I think I'm gonna invite Chris over here to defend himself. It looks like we'd be glad to help him develop a better piece on worldhoppers, with some real citations instead of the Coppermind.