Pagerunner

I think we need to look a little bigger-picture to connect Heralds to Fools. The Fools are the antithesis of the Heralds' ideals, and Nale's behavior isn't necessarily counter to his ideals (or at least the ones connected to the Divine Attributes of his row in the Ars Arcana table). I'd connect Eshu to Battar (Wise/Careful). I don't see anything as clear to connect Cabine to anyone, although it does maybe make me think of Jezrien.

One of mine that's topical, probably not RAFO-bait, and that I didn't have time to ask: "In various Ars Arcana, we have seen errors in the magic systems or worldbuilding, due to being in-universe documents. On a scale of 1-10, how accurate are Khriss's essays in AU to the true history and mechanics of the cosmere?" It was specifically Khriss's explanation of Cognitive Shadows that got me wondering. She hedges her bets on a lot of other things, especially historical events, but it seemed she didn't view Cognitive Shadows as having been a part of the person, merely a piece of Investiture that copies their mind. That didn't mesh with my interpretation of Secret History, that Investiture was an anchor for the soul. So, I'm wondering what kind of wiggle room we've got. But, I'd say ask the RAFOs. He was really generous at the most recent signing, and he's been pretty active on Reddit, too. Maybe it has to do with finishing up Oathbringer, so he's in a good mood. But you never know if you don't ask. EDIT: Whoops, wrong thread. This signing hasn't happened yet.

Brandon actually already has that elsewhere on his website, under the "Artwork" tab for Arcanum Unbounded.

No, that's exactly where I'm going, except I'm thinking the spiritual components are more fundamental (i.e. protons, electrons). Alkali metals get more reactive as you go down the table because the lower shell of electrons will repulse the single valence electron, making it easier to remove. (Lower ionization energy, but a quicker reaction rate.) If Ettmetal is a real metal, its volatility could be increased if that electron shielding factor was strengthened, if the electrons had an additional factor for repulsion based on whether they were a Ruin electron or a Preservation electron. Full Ruin electrons, normal. Full Preservation electrons, normal. Half and half, and they're pushing against each other even moreso than usual, so the outermost one can fly off.

Is there anyone going who's knowledgeable about chemistry? I just learned at the Hoboken signing that ettmetal is Harmonium, and Brandon was talking some about how its reactivity is an 'electron thing,' not protons or neutrons in the nucleus, because of the polar opposites embodied in it. I was ill-prepared to follow through from a chemistry approach, but Brandon was offering information, so now that it's out in the open he seemed really willing to talk about it. After sleeping on it, I came up with some thoughts on reactivity and electron shielding and ionization energy that I'm kicking myself for not having ready at the time; if those terms mean anything to anyone and you're interested in carrying the torch, you can feel free to PM me, and I'll give you some more specifics.

The longer answer makes it sound like Harmonium isn't a Lerasium/Atium alloy, but a whole new metal. He described it as "super-cesium," and that its volatility was based on electrons, not on protons or neutrons. So, the Lerasium and Atium are combined at a more fundamental level than that. There was a following conversation about this topic, about how a lot of the elements were there before Honor arrived, but he coopted them. So, Stormlight is there, but there are big differences now. So, modern Stormlight might not be Adonalsium's Investiture. But there was probably ancient Stormlight that was. I'll wait until we get the transcript taken care of, since I was still on cloud 9 from the Harmonium reveal and the Herald reveal. That was my thought as well, and I closed that question by asking if Surgebinding was around before Honor arrived. Which it wasn't. 'cause that would have blown a whole lot of collected wisdom out of the water. Whoops... I thought I mentioned that. I was telling everybody who would listen! I guess I'll just blame it on how late it was. I realized on the way back that I hadn't heard your questions, either. Everyone always says how the best part of signings is the other fans. It's so true - it was great to be able to talk about this stuff in person, to share in the experience as people were getting all kinds of WoBs, to geek out. I might have made a few recruits to the Shard, I might have recruited a girl to my old college, and I got to compare my list of questions with @Segren's list (which might have been the highlight, aside from my actual signing turn). One fun story: right when the signing line had begun, I saw the lights starting to flicker. So, I got a joke lined up and ready in case it happened again. A few minutes later, all the lights in the room went out. (We think they were on a timer, or something, since it happened right at 6:00, IIRC.) Pitch black, and I shout "All right, who sucked the Stormlight out of the lights!" Brandon is a total boss - he finished his reading at around 5:30 or so, and then said he'd be there at least 2 hours to get everyone through. The line finished up at midnight, exactly. What a pro. Okay, so here's the in-depth story of my Harmonium signing (some liberties with descriptions may be taken for comedic effect, and not an exact transcription): P: *holding out list of Allomantic metal symbols* Is ettmetal's symbol one of these 4? *Points at the unused ones* B: No. It has a symbol, but I don't think you've seen it yet. No, you haven't seen it. P: *making connections internally* Oh, that's interesting, since we have seen Harmonium's symbol. B: No, you haven't. Have you? P: Yeah, we have. *momentary staredown* P: It looks like the double lerasium. *waves hands around in the air like an idiot to pantomime the axis of reflection* B: *looks crestfallen* Oh. Right. Then, I guess you have seen ettmetal's symbol. P: *cackles internally* So, ettmetal is Harmonium! B: *sadly* Yes... P: Am I allowed to tell people? I can keep it a secret if you want. B: No, you can tell people. P: *almost ditches the rest of his signing turn to go tell people* I got through my other questions, with good conversations on all of them (but none quite as much fun as this one!), he finishes signing my last book, and I realize: I didn't get RAFOd on anything! I say it out loud, "aww, man, I didn't get a card!" (1st world problems). He says, "Ask one more." After our discussion on Stormlight and ettmetal and looking at my pages of printouts, I'm sure he knows I've got some RAFO-bait. So, I ask, "Are the Cognitive Shadows on Braize the mythical Shades of the Knights Radiant?" No words, just hands me the card, I say my thanks and head out. That must have been 6:30 or so. I stuck around, chatting with other people in line, until it closed. It was great. I had some people pull out their copies of AU and read the Taldain essay while they waited, since they were wondering about Odium/Trell. I'm like, "You should really read this..." So, I'm really looking forward to his next signing. I might also think about going to JordanCon, if this is representative. I had a lot more fun that I expected.

I had an absolute blast. Really glad I went. Several interesting points from the general Q&A: Odium locked the Selish Shards in the Cognitive Realm to keep them from achieving sentience or someone Ascending. The in-world explanation for the safehand is that some men found an old book that said 'masculine arts are two-handed, feminine arts are one-handed' and used it to keep women from getting Shardblades. The women retaliated by not letting men write. And, from my turn in the signing line (not verbatim yet, though someone has a recording) ETTMETAL IS HARMONIUM. It's chemically reactive, not nuclear. (Electrons, not protons.) There was a point when the Heralds didn't need to draw Stormlight from gems, although the stormlight-in-gems predates Honor's arrival. Ambition is not on a planet, but he/she is not the Shard Brandon has previously referred to as the one not on a planet. So, there are two out there. Back 5 are still planned to be the same five, but when he gets to those books he reserves the right to change them. I really like the story of the Ettmetal = Harmonium confirmation, but I'll post that another day. He didn't mean to give away that much.

I can see that, somewhat. There were spren and Investiture there before the arrival of Honor and Cultivation, so of all the worlds that might have a Perpendicularity left over from Adonalsium, Roshar would be the place.

Good point - I guess we haven't gotten official confirmation. I've just seen it thrown around so much, it's so popular, that I assumed it was fact. I can't imagine it wouldn't be, with the common cold there and the 17th Sharders looking for Hoid there. But that might be a problem with my imagination.

I doubt it - we know where two Perpendicularities are on Roshar (Purelake, Horneater Peaks), and there are no Nexuses near either of those.

Considering they correspond to locations on Roshar (as opposed to the Expanses, which are off the edges of the map), I don't think they match other planets. I suspect they're spren cities (but, then again, that's what I used to think the Expanses were, too).

Here's a very relevant quote for Sel: So, it definitely does have an Expanse in the Shadesmar map, and that name provides a hint to why it's dangerous to travel. Process of elimination: Broken Sky: In Secret History, we saw Ruin and Preservation up in the sky. Two 'Broken' Shards, up in the 'Sky.' That loose power can fall down (looks like Chicken Little was right) and kill people. Vibrance: We learn in AU that the two Shards are polarized, and their conflict powers the Dor. Aons glow, seals glow, there's light coming from the Dor. It's possible the Dor actually glows, filling the Cognitive Realm with light. The power of the Dor, the power of conflict, is pulsing around up there, and you'd better stay away from anything too bright when you worldhop. Densities: This is super vague. Would it mean there are things like black holes in the Selish subastral? Those would definitely be dangerous. So... I managed to not narrow anything down at all. Way to go, me. But, this kind of goes with what I've been saying all along, that it's really had to be definitive. Brandon himself has said that the logic works in really odd ways.

Once it no longer contains any world-shattering spoilers, I think there's a good chance we'll see it in Arcanum Reloaded or another short story collection. (What other good titles did we come up with for Arcanum Unbounded 2? The Arcanum Strikes Back? Khriss and Nazh's Bogus Journey? Arcanumman 2: The Legend Continues?)

Yeah, I follow what you're saying. We don't know what percentage of the night sky is shown in the star chart. It might be a projection almost the whole thing - something like this starmap. From what I understand (and I'm not an astronomer, so I may be incorrect), the AU endsheet can encompass a good portion of the night sky, but not all of it based on its shape. Silverlight being well away from the rest of the main cosmere planets is one explanation that would help interpret the star chart, true. But I don't think the star chart definitively states that.

Minor fact-check on the Elantris sequels. In an ancient proto-State of the Sanderson, the plan at one point was for Brandon to do the Elantris sequels before Stormlight Five, and do the Modern Mistborn trilogy in Stormlight halftime. The behind-the-scenes cosmere bits are groundwork in the Elantris sequels, and need to be there before Brandon goes to the next Mistborn trilogy. With the surprise expansion of the Wax and Wayne era to fill the gaps between early Stormlight books, Elantris sequels (and the subsequent Mistborn trilogy) all got pushed back. It doesn't affect anything in your theory, since Elantris still precedes Stormlight by a fair bit. I've been hesitant in general in trying to map the constellations to the Shadesmar map, since there are many orientations that the stars could be viewed from that wouldn't match up to Shadesmar. But, then again, this isn't random - it's well within the realm of possibility that Silverlight's placement was done intentionally by Brandon so that their night sky would be roughly the same as Shadesmar, so we can take the two maps and line them up. It's definitely possible. But, as I said in another thread on the topic, there's a lot we don't know, so I'm reluctant to agree with anything definitive regarding Shadesmar right now.

Someone who went apparently recorded it, but they say they need to edit out some stuff that Brandon doesn't want online. The reading, I assume. I've just been watching the thread over in Events and Signings.

I don't like to double-post, and I don't like to reference WoBs from a signing without having a transcription, but I'm going to do both since I hear that Brandon spoke about this topic at the Seattle signing. Szeth's soul was returned to his body, but it isn't sticking very well, and that's why there are afterimages. He is not a Returned, who actually become Cognitive Shadows and are then attached to their bodies.

The Southern Hemisphere has some different constellations; we can't see through the Earth to look at them here in the Northern. Unless you mean how, in other places in the Northern Hemisphere, they take the same stars and form different shapes or stories. That wouldn't be possible across worlds, since the stars would be in a completely different arrangement from a different point of view. Don't get too carried away with the phrase 'Restaurant at the End of the Cosmere'; AFAIK, Brandon himself has never used it. He referred to a place where worldhoppers gathered, and emphasized that it was a place, not necessarily a planet, and fans coined the term as a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We believe this place is Silverlight, since it ties all these concepts together. But we don't have any information for where in the galaxy Silverlight is located. One of the recent signings, we did learn that there are systems that haven't been marked on the map. No specific word on whether or not there are additional constellations, but there are more systems we haven't seen yet, so they didn't put them on the map. (Which, not gonna lie, I was really hoping to get some name-drops that way.)

It's not quite the same: It's not a sustained phenomenon, like Lift sees, just a literal bright flash of light as Jasnah Elsecalls.

@Brightshade the Cunning, it's a popular question: we've had several threads discussing this very topic in the last year. [1, 2, and 3] I suggest you read through those, and see what we've already come up with; maybe something in there can address your question. The way I understand it, it has to do with the meaning behind "Preservation." The Shard isn't about saving things for later; it's more along the lines of perpetual motion, keeping everything working unchanged forever. But, since perpetual motion machines aren't possible, there's always energy required; Allomancy adds energy to the system, end-positive, staving off the heat death of the universe. Hemalurgy removes energy, have an accelerating effect; end-negative. Feruchemy neither gains nor loses power, so it doesn't affect the total entropy. And that's what @Spoolofwhool's quote is illustrating above, that the Shards' intents are tied to the concept of entropy.

Ym used Progression, so he's developed to the point where he has take in Stormlight and channel it to a Surge. At that point, he must have either been an Edgedancer or a Truthwatcher, since they're the two Orders with that Surge. If he's not an Edgedancer, he must be a Truthwatcher. I was in the Edgedancer camp, and very firmly so. But our ideas need to adapt to the text and to special revelation, and I don't see a way to reconcile Brandon's latest statement with Ym as an Edgedancer.

"Ten Levels of Voidbinding" is how I recall they were referred to in the Ars Arcanum. I don't think it's inconsistent, since magic systems arise from an interaction between a planet and a Shard. If Voidbinding is an Odium/Roshar magic system, then 10 would still fit. (I doubt there would be a magic system on Braize if it there is no one there but spren and Cognitive Shadows.) Also, when Way of Kings was first coming out, he described it as having either 30 magic systems or 3, depending on how you counted them. 10 Surges or Surgebinding were the ones we knew about then. Fabrial science is the second big one, with 10 different kinds of fabrials suspected. Voidbinding and its 10 levels would fill the remaining third of Roshar's magic. But, yeah, I thought the same thing about the number of the Unmade when I saw that quote.

Can you source her relationship with Tanavast? As far as I know, they went to Roshar together, but anything beyond that is speculation. I think "cruel" is a bit of an unfair description, like the Nightwatcher is capricious in what she does, trying to twist peoples' requests to give them the worst thing possible like an evil genie. That's one possible interpretation, but some have thought that what she gives actually benefits people, even though they don't understand it and view it as a curse. Which is a very mother-like thing to do. (You'll eat your vegetables, and like them!) Are you thinking of a Reddit post where someone (I think it was @Argent) asked about Ambition, and Brandon said he'd be tight-lipped about her? I'm pretty sure he was answering about Autonomy, since that's what the rest of the comments in that chain were about.

From what I understand, this comes primarily from the First Letter, where Hoid refers to Odium as "God's own divine hatred." I don't recall any other specific information or quotes on this; whenever I've utilized this idea, I've only pulled it from this one source (albeit a very strong and clear one). It's an interesting thought, that the Shards' Intents have been shaped by the reasons their Vessels participated in the Shattering in the first place. I don't have any specific comments, since I have some disagreements on some of your assumptions (I think people are elevating the fain life to an undue level of importance, and I disagree with the specific interpretations of some Shards). But I do like the concept as a whole.

You feel right. (That came out wrong.) Not sure if it's Oathbringer, or another Stormlight book, though.