Pagerunner

Per the general spoiler policy, (and the AU-specific spoiler policy)Edgedancer info is allowed untagged in its subforum and in Cosmere Theories, and hidden in other book subforums. So, for the second part of your statement, Edgedancer spoilers are allowed out here in the open in here. If you're trying to avoid them, you might want to stay out of Cosmere Theories, 'cause I know I've sure been letting them fly. But, yeah, there's no info about Drehy in there. It seems to me like that poster is just shipping Kaladin and Drehy, since he's the only Windrunner we know of.

@Argent, a duralumin-atium burn isn't just supercharging Investiture. The specific function of that metal is to interact with the Spiritual Realm (I think you agree with me on this, if I'm following on your bulletpoints correctly). That's why going crazy with it lets you see into the Spiritual Realm, because you just look into it even more. For a more generic Investiture supercharge, I'd agree with your use of Wax's Steelsight, but I'd compare it to... well, it's because he was using... whatever, I can't talk around it well enough. BoM and SH Spoilers: It's also a very interesting view of Connection. It would be a very vulgar Connection compared to my understanding so far (using a slightly archaic definition of 'vulgar,' more like commonplace or simple, because I think that sense captures the comparison well), so it rubs me a little bit of the wrong way. I've always interpreted Connection as being very historical, what has happened (or will happen) between two things. But, we've got a lot to learn, so I'll admit my understanding may be flawed, but I don't think Steel and Iron utilize the Spiritual Realm. A lot of Investiture, in general, can punch holes through Realms (like perpendicularities). I think we've seen it both ways, punching into Spiritual and Cognitive, so both are possible. Since Lift isn't heavily Invested, I'd lean more towards what we know is special about her, which is her undue presence in the Cognitive Realm.

It brings a whole new meaning to 'spiked eggnog.'

When I follow the Amazon link, it doesn't have a button to buy it, instead saying that "This title is not currently available for purchase." It might be available in some regions, depending on when the AU translation hits, but in the US it's definitely been closed down.

I'm pretty sure no one can sell the SH ebook separately, now that it's a part of AU. (I don't see the Amazon listing, anymore, at least.) So, Arcanum Unbounded might be your only hope. By the way, welcome to the forums, and enjoy the novella when you find it - it's a crazy one!

I'm hesitant to try to speculate on what the Shadesmar looks like on other planets. We've seen two subastrals: Scadrian and Rosharan. The Scadrian subastral seems to make sense in hindsight, that the Shards can manifest their power directly as a mist. But can't all Shards do that? Isn't Stormlight very similar, gaseous Investiture imparted through a weather phenomenon? So why is that so unique to the Scadrial? For Roshar, can we make any connection between how the subastral looks, and anything on the physical realm? It seems to me that the logic being used for other planets don't hold true for the planets we've seen (like, if it was tied to the focus, Shadesmar would look very metallic). Furthermore, the very term "subastral," meaning "below a star," makes it sound like everything below the same star (i.e. in the same solar system) should be part of the same 'expanse.' I agree that the neighboring worlds of Braize and Ashyn should be on there, especially if worlds like Scadrial (which is the only one explicitly confirmed by WoB, unless I've missed something) appear. The IRE had to take horses when they went between subastrals (they were on the very edge of their own, and only made it to the edge of Scadrial's), so since the Rosharan worlds are proportionally so much closer, they should be there, too, shouldn't they? But which direction? Since they occupy the same system in the Physical Realm, maybe there's a third dimension to Shadesmar? (Or, like, a fourth dimension. Depends on how you count them.) Maybe Braize is literally below Roshar, and Ashyn is the literal Tranquiline halls above? The Everstorm, allowing travel between Roshar and Braize, punches a hole 'down' through Shadesmar, and the Highstorm punches a hole 'upwards' to Ashyn, where the Stormfather is? (Maybe Honor was Splintered on Ashyn, and that was the catastrophe that happened to that planet? In the Threnodite essay, we learned that a battle between Shards near a system damaged at least one planet in that system; maybe a similar thing happened to one of the Rosharan planets?) I'm kind of spinning my wheels, but my point is this: we have a lot to learn about Shadesmar. Maybe I'm a little behind, since I haven't read WoR pretty much since it came out, but Secret History didn't seem to answer many of my questions, and in fact raised even more. But as we speculate (and I absolutely encourage rampant speculation), let's be aware that the connections we're making between worlds is tenuous, and tied to semantics. I thought about this a lot when we first learned that the Expanses were Shardworlds, and I could make a case in my mind for all three expanses to be Scadrial (especially since Brandon uses the phrase 'broken sky' repeatedly in Mistborn to describe the falling ash). So, recognizing that semantics is extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias (seeing what you want to see), I'm gonna wait to learn more about how the Cognitive Realm works. Hopefully in Oathbringer. Oh, and lastly, the constellation chart is a 2-dimensional projection of a night sky. If all the stars are roughly situated in the same plane (unlikely, but unless the universe is randomly generated, the probability doesn't mean anything; the constellations could be viewed from a place above the dwarf galaxy's plane, if it has one), then you could easily map Shadesmar to all of them. If they're farther apart, then the 3D arrangement of them can cause complications. Let's say, in the example, that the POV is close to Roshar, but far from Scadrial and Nalthis. Just because those latter two planets are close on the map, they might be much farther away than they initially look ('cause they'd be really far in the page, and it'd be like looking at two mountains behind to the flagpole in your front yard). Don't want to rain on anyone's parades, or anything. By all means, keep going - it's fun to read. But I think there are some major gaps in our understanding (like when Brandon said a while back we don't even know what Investiture is!), which we need to keep in mind as we extrapolate.

I haven't found a good way to exclude WoT info. Typically, however, results will be listed in chronological order (unless they were delayed in getting added to Theoryland, like the annotations), so if you start from the bottom you'll get Brandon's stuff, if you start from the top you'll see RJ's stuff, and in the middle between 2009 and 2013 you'll see Brandon answering a mix of questions from both sides, although from what I've seen it's predominately cosmere for that time period. So, I always go to the bottom of the page and work my way back up. It gets the most recent stuff first, and I'll be able to jump past old comments and WoT-related stuff.

Oh, man, this one seems like it might be significant. If Mraize is aware of the Sleepless, he could be popping them right and left as they're trying to spy on his people. In this case, it could have been one that was watching Shallan. I'll have to look at this passage carefully. Your page numbers are for the hardcover, correct?

It's a good thought, and keeping in line with what we know of Hoid (that he's collecting Investiture). He's got the means, motive, opportunity, all that. Unfortunately, someone already asked Brandon about this one, and he said Hoid didn't take it. He might know who did, though...

I'll be there. It'll be my first signing, so I'm looking forward to it. Not sure how many questions it's good form to ask, but I'm coming with a bunch.

RIP $156, for me. There are a lot of new posters, and I've been waiting to get the Elantris maps. Not sure how I feel about the design though. On one hand, I really liked the black Elantris, and was hoping that the leatherbound editions would all match. On the other hand... this really does look better than the Elantris leatherbound. No doubt about it in my mind. So, I'll have to wait a couple years and see what happens, probably for the Warbreaker leatherbound, to see how everything will look together. I can see Mistborn books as one color, Stormlight books as another color (blue? or green? Oh, I really hope the leatherbounds aren't each a different color...), and everything else black. Or maybe Dragonsteel as a third color. For my personal aesthetic preferences, though, I'd rather have seen a solid wall of identical books, since I keep them in publication order. (Or will keep them, once I have more than one leatherbound. Of course.)

Oh, boy, did they just add some cool stuff to Brandon's store. The AU endsheet, yeah, I was expecting. The Final Empire map, not terribly surprised, with the leatherbound coming out. But the White Sand map? The six AU star charts? Santa with a Mistcloak? Go check them out - I'll probably be buying most of these new things when I order my Mistborn leatherbound. I'll probably pass on the Vin poster for now, but it does look pretty nice.

It makes sense. But, considering similar things exist on earth, I think the simplest explanation is that they are actually visible from somewhere, not just an abstraction.

Not according to Secret History: It seems the sky of each subastral is separate, so even if you could see 'stars' in one, they wouldn't be visible form other subastrals, and you definitely wouldn't be able to assign planets to each star (since they exist in 2D Shadesmar). Constellations, made up of star systems that you can visit, must be observed from the Physical Realm. So, if the constellations are viewed from Silverlight (and I'd like to find the actual transcription somewhere, since there's a chance Isaac might have been saying that the endsheet was painted in Silverlight, but not necessarily the constellations from there)... uh, where was I? Right, if the constellations are viewed from Silverlight, I see two possibilities. First, Silverlight is in a planet's subastral, sort of like the Ire fortress. But, for the second, ancient astronaut theorists suggest that they might be able to poke their heads into the interstellar Physical Realm for just a moment.

I've had very quick turnaround from the contact form for questions that haven't had to go to Brandon himself (i.e. requesting White Sand or Aether of Night), so I think Adam monitors that mailbox. If he sees a time-sensitive question pop up, he might get right back to you if he knows the answer. I monitor Team Sanderson's social media fairly regularly (lurking, of course), and I'd say that tweeting at Peter or Brandon is probably the best way to get a response. Adam also posts things on Brandon's Twitter account, so he'd be able to get back to you there, too. If it's a question about a specific venue, you might be better off bypassing Team Sanderson altogether and using contact information for that stop, which you can find on the tour page on Brandon's website. Depending on what you're asking.

Awesome answer. And that's why you always ask, even if you're almost positive you'll get a RAFO. But how does that jive with the endsheets being from Silverlight's perspective? Is it located in a subastral?

I just had a thought. (No, please, hold your applause.) I'm not knowledgeable on astronomy, but star systems are moving through the galaxy, and can encounter interstellar... things. What if the Threnodite system is still encountering pieces of Ambition (like a giant meteor shower), and every once in a while one of them is big enough to cause a perpendicularity to form? That could explain why they're unpredictable, because you never know when the system will encounter a large enough piece of Investiture. And the morbidity comes from it being pieces of a dead Shard splattering into the system like bugs on a windshield. Any astronomy buffs care to comment if this would make sense on a large-scale astronomical sense?

Here's the source.

@Yata, hurry up and post a new topic for this so you can get the mad rep you deserve. For now, though, I'd just like to let everyone know that Brandon has officially confirmed White Sands' placement in the cosmere chronology. It precedes Elantris.

A Mistborn who can 'slatrify,' except instead of water they turn sand into metal. (I'd like to get some more details on the Realmatics of slatrification, but, hey, it's somewhat plausible.)

Good logic, but several assumptions that can wildly alter the final conclusions. There is a Shard that isn't on a planet. The '10 core Shardworlds' appears to be an out-of-universe description of the 10 worlds that tell the 'overarching story of the cosmere.' It's possible there are worlds with a Shard that do not have a book or a series set on them, so there can be more than 10 worlds with Shards as long as some of them don't play a role in the overarching story of the cosmere. If there's no Shard on Ashyn, then that would be a 'core' Shardworld without a full Shard, but influence from the three Shards elsewhere in the system. We don't know the mechanism of how the Shards dispersed. It might have been that they just needed to spread out since the Cognitive Realm on Yolen was getting too crowded, so there we'd see a fairly even distribution. But maybe Odium started killing them on Yolen, so they needed to spread out so he couldn't get them. That could leave Yolen with a lot of Shards, maybe with some of them Splintered. (I recall one poster a few years back doing process-of-elimination to determine that Yolen had 5 Shards!) I plan on asking about this topic this weekend when Brandon comes to NYC. I hope, since he's opened the door to understanding the cosmere more as a galaxy with this book, that he'll be willing to talk about it.

Right, the terminology can be a little confusing. Brandon's '10 core Shardworlds' quote can be found here. They tell the 'overarching story of the cosmere,' and they all have 'significant Shardic influence,' although that doesn't mean they all have a Shard. I do wonder how many worlds have one or more Shards, and thus have perpendicularities and can participate in the worldhopping community. (This seems to be more in-line with your definition of Major Shardworlds.) Aside from the 6 planets for the 6 planned Cosmere series (we'll leave Yolen and Taldain on that list, even though they're not members of the worldhopping community right now), Mraize's collection implies that there's another world, where the Aethers are from (they probably won't be from Yolen when they finally appear officially). I don't think Dark One's planet will be one of the 10 core Shardworlds, since it might not be in the cosmere. (It's gone back and forth in various States of the Sanderson, and the 2015 edition didn't say either way). It can't tell the 'overarching story' if it won't necessarily be part of that story. I think this makes it difficult to place a Shard there, since what would happen to that Shard in the cosmere canon if the series wound up being non-cosmere? (Granted, Brandon might have contingencies. Like, for an illustration that is FALSE FALSE FALSE and don't take it too far 'cause I haven't even read this story, let's say Ambition was the Shard for Rithmatist while it was a possible cosmere story. When the story wound up outside the cosmere, Brandon had Ambition get killed by Odium before Investing in a planet. All I'm trying to say is that Dark One might have a Shard, but that doesn't mean it's a 'core Shardworld' by Brandon's definition, or even necessarily will stay in the cosmere.)

Last time I had this conversation, after the graphic novel release, we weren't able to come up with anything definitive. The most used quote isn't necessarily referring to chronological order, but possibly the order in which Brandon wrote his books. Peter also suspects it's after White Sand. As recently as April, the final chronological placement of White Sand hadn't been determined, so unless there's something new, I don't think we can say whether or not White Sand precedes Elantris.

Can you cite a source? I've yet to see any official confirmation of where White Sand set with respect to the other books other than 'it's early,' and White Sand is excluded from the chronology in the new FAQ.

Heads up, White Sands prose spoilers aren't allowed in public. I had to use very careful wording to imply that! The concern in many peoples' minds isn't how Bavadin appears, it's how Brandon has referred to Autonomy as a "he" in one WoB. It does seem like Brandon's response was more of an in-universe explanation, that Bavadin has appeared in many times in many ways, but that he might not be aware that the drama isn't coming from reconciling Bavadin of the Taldain Essay with a male Sand Lord or a male Trell, but from the one quote from two years ago. If individuals in the cosmere know Bavadin by different genders or species, that's one thing. If Brandon himself can apply either pronoun to the character, that's a different matter entirely.