Pagerunner

Here's the source for Harmonium's symbol: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/45901-shadows-of-self-byu-midnight-signing/?p=336901

Brandon has given a clear definition of a Worldhopper. From the Chicago SoS signing: Frost is definitely Cosmere-aware, but Brandon does not consider him a Worldhopper; therefore, he has not travelled to another world. EDIT: Typo. Deer mucus has no place in this thread.

Frost is not a worldhopper. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cuu7zlb?context=10000

I just reread the story, looking for clues. Right there in the intro, we learn that Isaac, Brandon's art guy, named the world after reading the novella. So, there might not be any deep clues about other Shards or the history of the planet; it might just be a poetic way of saying it's a graveyard. However, Isaac is on Twitter, @IzykStewart. I don't have an account, but someone else could ask him about how he came up with the name, and what the meaning behind it is.

I re-read it last night. A few things jumped out at me, so I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see if any of it sticks. Please feel free to tear these apart - mostly, I'm just spitballing, so I won't take it personal. Timeline. I'm trying to reconcile the time line of this story with Nazh and his actions in the rest of the Cosmere. We definitely know that Nazh was born prior to Mistborn. But he swears with "Shadows" and has a silver knife, which indicates (to me) that he comes from Hell, not from Homeland. Silence's grandparents were the among first to land on Hell, so let's generously say that SSFH happened 70 years after the first Forescouts went there. If SSFH is after Mistborn chronologically, that means that the Forescouts can only have settled Hell, at most, 70 years before Mistborn 1, most likely much less (depending on the when Nazh and Silence were born). So, I'm not even sure if SSFH happens before or after (or concurrent with) the original Mistborn trilogy. But, we have confirmation that the story happens in the "back half" of the Cosmere sequence, prior to Stormlight. Does that mean that Mistborn is also in the back half of the Cosmere sequence? What is the first half, anyways? Dragonsteel, White Sand, Elantris? Also, Hoid had to be somewhere else during this story. What would tie him down, so he couldn't even stop in for a cameo? What if he had to be on Scadrial? What if SSFH happens concurrently with Mistborn? Mistborn: Secret History. Well... spoilers. Homeland. Since the book was inspired partly by the Puritan settlement of the New World, my original interpretation was that the Evil was a social or religious event (possibly supernatural in nature) that had occurred on the mainland, and the Forescouts had fled to another continent to live under their own laws. I also thought the Evil had been responsible for the Shades; a mass Cognition that changed the very land the Forescouts went to. The second read-through, however, raised some questions. The Evil killed; Silence states that explicitly. It could be Spanish-Inquisition-like executions, or it could be Alderaan-like destruction of a planet. Much vaguer. The Shades (and Hell) had existed well before the Evil; the Forescouts knew it was Hell before they went there. So, I need to amend my interpretation. Now, I think Homeland is gone, not just hostile to the Forescouts and their descendants. And even though there are clear allusions in the text to travel across the sea (A major fort is Lastport, and it's referred to as the most powerful fort on "this continent"), I'm not sure that Homeland and Hell are actually on the same world? We've seen large Shardpools before - the Purelake on Roshar is a huge Perpendicularity, and three members of the 17th Shard used it to Worldhop. What if the Forescouts Worldhopped on accident, winding up on another world (Threnody) while leaving behind their own world (Homeland)? Heck, there are very few references to how the Forescouts and later settlers arrived; maybe they knew they were Worldhopping, and just didn't mention it to their descendants? (Since we only get Silence's point-of-view, it may have just been that her grandparents didn't think it necessary to mention to her all the details of how they got from Homeland to Hell.) And, as one final point in this rambling section, they never refer to their homeland as "Threnody." There is "Homeland," and there is "Hell." The name of the planet is only mentioned in the author's introduction. So, to sum it all up, Homeland is destroyed, it might be another Shardworld. (If you look ahead to the next point, it might even be a major Shardworld.) Justice. "Justice died in Homeland." This helped drive my previous interpretation of Homeland, that it was a religious or social corruption that denied justice to those who left to Hell. Discarding that interpretation, it takes on a very different meaning. Since we're hyper-aware of anything that might sound like a Shard, I'm sure this jumped out to a lot of us. But, then, we learned there was no Shard on Threnody, so this couldn't be a Shard of Justice. But if Homeland is a different world than Threnody, a Shard of Justice could have died in Homeland, while the inhabitants of the world escaped to Threnody. (The fact that I recently proposed Justice as a new Shard in another thread is immaterial to the topic. Please move along.) Concrete. Is this an anachronism, for a 1600-s American analogue? Silence uses it to mount silver rings into the ground around her waystop. Could it have come from another Shardworld? God Beyond. Silence mentions "old books," which talk of the God Beyond and call the "this land the home of the damned." The God Beyond is a concept going across the Cosmere; I wonder what else is in these books. It might give Hell a broader context throughout the Cosmere; it might not just be the souls of people from Homeland, but from all the fallen worlds. (Who was just wondering if svrakiss were Shades?) Questions for Brandon. If anyone sees these before going to a Calamity signing, here are some questions that I think would be fruitful (unless they've been answered and I've missed them, in which case please point me towards the answer and ask something else): When does SSFH happen with respect to Secret History? How long after the Forescouts landed was Nazh born? Is Homeland on Threnody? How did Silence have concrete? It seems out of place technologically.

Huh, you're right. The Hunter's ship does use mechanical Feruchemy by using a cube. I had missed it, since the passage goes across a page-break between "changing" and "machinery," so I must have been too busy turning the page to pay attention to the last few words. It looks like cubes can capture Feruchemy, no hacking involved!

Secret History Spoilers:

Sorry to interrupt, but what exactly do you guys mean by "source of the power." Is it where the properties of the magic system came from originally? Is it how individuals gain access to said Magic (Initiation, I believe, is the term given in the Elantris Ars Arcanum)?

Yata, do you have a direct quote or a link to the WoB you referenced? I see you've mentioned it a couple times (including your thread on the subject), but I'm unable to find it anywhere. EDIT: Found it. The transcript it came from, apparently, has never been posted, but the quote is floating around. It actually seems to go against the point you're trying to make - there is no direct connection with Ruin, so no reason to connect Threnody to Scadrial.

No, nothing made the plane lighter. The individuals stored their weight, so the plane only had to keep its own weight in the air. It was basically a glider - small amount of fuel, absurdly small engine in the cube/rotors, and no weight from passengers, meaning that it didn't take much lift to keep it in the air. (I'm at work, otherwise I'd quote the text - I promise I'll come back later with a direct quote!) EDIT: Allik is the SoScad guy's name. EDIT 2: FWIW, here's the quote:

I found a quote that implies there's no splinter, just "ambient magic" on Threnody and First of the Sun. You might be thinking of Ashyn, of the unpublished The Silence Divine - that's been theorized to have a Splinter of Honor. There are a lot of worlds without Shards on them, so I don't think every world created by a Shard needs to have that Shard stay there. We wouldn't necessarily need to match an Intent with all these acts of creation; the Shardholders could have gone bonkers when they first Ascended, and then as their Intents began to overcome them, they stopped creating new worlds and began settling (or killing, or hiding, or whatever it was they did.)

We haven't seen any Feruchemy, have we? Just Allomancy - Steel, Cadmium, Bendalloy, Chromium are the four kinds of Allomancy I can remember having been copied by the Cube; no Internal metals, no Feruchemical applications. Wayne used F.Gold, and everyone was using F.Iron, when they were around cubes, and it didn't imprint on the cubes. As to the original post, I would connect the "beat" of Allomancy or Feruchemy to the pulses sensed by someone burning Bronze. Where a Seeker would just sense the pulses of someone using Allomancy, the cubes might resonate with those pulses, directing how energy from ettmetal can be used. That being said, Feruchemy is very difficult to detect with Bronze (though technically possible), so the pulses from Feruchemy might not resonate as well with the cubes. Because compounding is still Feruchemy, just drawing power from elsewhere, I don't think the cubes would be able to copy it. Or, to put it more plainly, Normal Use: Power A (Preservation) being used with Magic A (Allomancy), and Power F (stores in metalminds) being used with Magic F (Feruchemy.) Cube: Imprints when someone is using Magic A, but provides its own Power E (ettmetal). Compounding: using Power A to use Magic F. Since there's no Magic A involved, there's nothing for the cube to latch on to.

Nice work on the linguistics. It's crazy how many secrets Brandon buries in his books. I'm pretty sure that there's no shattered Shard on Threnody. We have WoB that there is no Shard on Threnody; even though Devotion and Dominion were left shattered on Sel, Sel was described as having Shards. Have you considered that it's not just a memorial for a Shard, but for Adonalsium itself? Secret History Spoilers:

There's a second batch being printed, which should hit Brandon's store end of this month or beginning of next month. (I'm waiting along with you, and kicking myself that I didn't move more quickly.) Every couple of weeks, Peter will respond to a Twitter question about it.

In Secret History, we definitively see Rashek move Beyond - that's what I thought the actual spoiler was.

And then Sixth of the Dusk is in the Shadows Beneath anthology. Brandon sure doesn't make it easy for us...

The Roshar system includes Roshar, Braize, and Ashyn. Ashyn is the setting of a planned novella, The Silence Divine.

I'd like to make a case for Justice being distinct from Honor. (And probably Mercy being distinct from Honor, as well.) Users of a Shard's magic do not necessarily act according to their Shard's intent. You have people on Scadrial reusing spikes (Ruin's magic, acting according to Preservation). You have Vin throughout the second and third books (Preservation's magic, killing people according to Ruin). You have Awakeners hoarding breath (doesn't sound like Endowment to me). A Shard's intent is a property of itself - how that Shard acts. Yes, in some cases there might be a necessary response in its followers (say, Dominion), but a Shard's Intent can also have nothing to do with humans (Odium, trying to kill other Shards). So, just because the Skybreakers are concerned with justice doesn't mean that Justice is a facet of Honor. What does Honor have to do with "remembering those who are forgotten"? Or the secrets that Shallan is keeping, or the way that Lightweavers were renowned as making great pieces of art? The Knights Radiant aren't all representing aspects of Honor; only Kaladin has attracted an honorspren. (Well, and Dalinar has The Actual Honorspren.) What does "Honor" actually mean? The technical definitions of a Shard's name aren't always the best indication of what that Shard means. Think of Devotion, which Brandon said he used to refer to as Love. Devotion and Love are two very different things, but somehow both could have been applied to the same Shard. So, instead of going on dictionary definitions of honor, let's look at how the Shard of Honor behaves, and see what piece of God it most closely resembles. I was leaning towards Self-Sacrifice for a while, that Honor might have given himself up to protect his system, but then I remembered some of the terminology in the books. Oathpact, Oathgates, Oathbringer... there are promises. I think Honor represents the part of God that makes and keeps promises. Tangent alert: Flaws of Shards What does Justice actually mean? People get what they deserve. To tie this to Honor, the laws of manking would have to be a compact with their God, the ways that they would live. However, if this is a world of absolute morality, where there are inherent laws, then no Oath is needed to make these laws; they exist apart from the Shard, and Justice is just acting upon them. The Shard of Honor makes agreements with people and acts according to that; the Shard of Justice gives to people what they have brought upon themselves.

I vote merge. I know I've contributed different points to the same conversation in various topics, depending on how the posts were going.

I've also been thinking about this. Is the bomb an actual bomb? Is the explosion due to the chemical or nucular (fine, nuclear) properties of the metal? Or is it a magical bomb, where it uses the Investiture from ettmetal to power a massive Steelpush, one that would be strong enough to affect trace metals in stones, bodies, and what-have-you?

It's an exercise that's been done before. Unfortuantely, not all Shards have direct opposites. So, yeah, while it can be a lot of fun to try to figure out what the remaining Shards are, we're left with precious little to use in our inference. One thing to keep in mind is that these are aspects of Adonalsium, not necessarily of humanity. Odium was referred to as God's own divine hatred, if I recall the quote correctly. What does a god hate? Other gods, maybe, which is why Odium is splintering other Shards. Same for Ruin; if people didn't die, if their lives didn't end, they wouldn't be able to move Beyond. (In Tolkien's Silmarillion, there's a possible analogue, where some elves are jealous of mankind, because while the elves live forever in Middle Earth, the humans move on to a mysterious afterlife.) So, there might not necessarily be a "good" Shard paired with a "bad" shard, but more like a theodicy problem, where the question is how do Adonalsium's attributes interplay with one another? There might be places where it's a "Good" vs a "Bad" (Preservation vs Ruin), but there might be one where neither one is really "Bad" (Dominion vs Autonomy, which I think you did a good job identifying the contrast in; Cultivation vs Autonomy might also be a good contrast). So, without getting too far into real-life theology, what other aspects of God might there be? I don't think Ambition, Indecision, Fear, or Courage would really describe a deity. These are all Good/Bad pairings, which as I said above, I don't think are necessary for Shards. Decay is aligned with Ruin (and was actually Ruin's original name, when he was first used in Brandon's unpublished book Aether of Night.) Greed and Narcissism, in my mind, could be connected to Odium; this is God, how dare someone try to take His place? They'll get what they deserve, and God will take back what is rightfully His. So, I think a good chunk of your new "Shards" might already be covered by existing ones. So, what do I think are the remaining Shards? Trying to take a step back from my own beliefs and consider various concepts of "God" from around our world... A Justice/Karma Shard is the most likely, in my book. I used to think Glory was the fourth Shard on Roshar (God helps those who help themselves) based on how modern Vorinism is about elevating yourself over others, where Honor is putting others before yourself. (That was before I'd seen definitive WoB that there were only three Shards on Roshar.) I still think it would make a good Shard, one that's not really seen anywhere else, but might be close to Selfishness, which you mentioned above. Tribulation would be a very cool name, for a God that tests his followers to make them stronger (Job or Abraham in the Bible). This might be a counterpart to Endowment (God gives, and God takes away) or Devotion (God only tests the ones he loves) I want to apologize, in case anyone feels I'm misrepresenting their religious views. For what it's worth, I'm intentionally misrepresenting them (my own included), bringing out a single aspect out of context to see where there might be areas of similarity to the fictional Adonalsium in the Cosmere.

Hey, here's a question: does this count as a Conflux novella? (IIRC, that was the term that Brandon used for a hypothetical crossover book.) He said that he might do them for release only online, since there'd be a smaller audience for them, so Secret History might fit the bill.

Balanced that out for ya. I'm inclined to trust Wax's description of events. He is knowledgeable about Feruchemy (Marasi's thoughts after Wax explains Nicrosil tapping: "This was fascinating... but the Metallic Arts was not one of her areas of expertise. Waxillium had a passion for it though.") Also, I'm pretty sure that Wax tapped a medallion at the beginning of Chapter 22: Yes, we go on to discover that Wax wasn't actually sleeping, but that doesn't mean he wasn't tapping warmth while he was pretending to sleep. If the Nicrosil portion of the medallions doesn't use Feruchemy, Wax doesn't notice the difference. EDIT: Fixing quote tags.

He tried to burn a bolt from Nazh's stool, with no luck. So it appears he can't use Allomancy.

I think they do tap Nicrosil when using medallions. After they escape in the lifeboat: And then, when Wax is using the Bands: There are finite stores of Investiture in the Nicrosil portion of the bands, which Wax taps to gain his abilities. Since it's the same phenomenon as the medallions, it stands to reason they are also Nicrosil metalminds. Which still doesn't explain how anyone can tap them... but it is definitely Feruchemy at play.