TheOneKEA

Brandon just tweeted that Words of Radiance is #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List! I checked the NYT site but it hasn't updated yet, so I'm guessing that Peter or Brandon's agent told him.

Which magic system powers Shallan's Memory ability?

I find it very important that Brandon specifically said "Rayse is terrified of Sazed's" instead of "Odium is terrified of Harmony". That suggests several interesting points about the relationship between the cognitive and spiritual aspects of a Shard.

True, but I would expect that people who aren't familiar with those types of characters but still fans of fantasy series like The Dragonriders of Pern would read a segment about a dragon breathing ice and think "Our Dragons Are Different!"

What an interesting tidbit! It is certainly reasonable for a dragon to be named Frost; The Silmarillion has dragons that breathe ice instead of fire, and I would not be surprised if Brandon subverted another set of tropes with ice breathing dragons in Dragonsteel.

This is a very interesting theory. Someone should ask Brandon if any large collection of Investiture in one place can ever self-organize and gain a functional cognitive aspect, and if the mindless powers on Sel are capable of doing this. If he answers in the affirmative (or what passes for that with some WoB) then I think this theory has some legs.

I think both of these are true, and Rayse, already being a pretty terrible person, was goaded or influenced into taking control of the Odium Shard because of some mistaken belief that it might overwhelm him or otherwise make him controllable in some way.

I referred to it as The Second Letter immediately after finding it. I made this thread this thread in the WoR forum with my initial thoughts on what the letter is telling us.

Thanks Argent! My immediate reaction is that Harmony or someone like him is writing this. It sounds like a naked plea to keep Odium leashed by whatever agreement it made with Honor and the risk that he could be loosed. The only thing that makes me think it isn't Harmony is that the author acts like he participated in the process by which Rayse assumed control of the Odium Shard, so unless Harmony's cognitive aspect has expanded further to include the cognitive remnants of Ati and Leras left on the Ruin and Preservation Shards, I doubt Harmony wrote this letter.

Has anyone collected the entirety of the Second Letter yet? There are new mentions of Rayse by name and his murder of his fellow Shards, and a very blunt statement of his "godly hatred" and its separation from "the virtues that gave it context".

I was shocked when Syl and Pattern revealed themselves as Shardblades and even more shocked when Syl transformed the way she did. There are so many parallels between the brain-dead spren that from most Blades and the brain-dead Seons of people affected by the Reod on Sel. Someone REALLY needs to ask Brandon if the injury to the cognitive aspect of both is the same.

This. All of this. ALL OF THIS, EVERY TIME.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you. I decided that Wayne and Marasi's cognitive perception of their bubbles are such that light is specifically not affected by the time dilation, thus preventing any acute red shifting or blue shifting of the light entering or exiting the bubble. I don't recall any textev describing any changes in lighting when inside one of Wayne's bubbles. If this is true, and cognitive perception controls how the bubble affects light crossing its border, that may have major implications for Kurkistan's FTL theories. I'd love to ask Brandon what would happen if someone aimed a green laser at an object from inside a bubble of both types, and then aimed a green laser at an object from outside a bubble of both types. It sounds like a massive RAFO Bait question.

It's not clear, but the structure of the description of Szeth watching Gavilar suggests that there is a delay of some type. There's at least enough if a delay for Szeth to notice the guards yelling in the background after Gavilar's death.

Well, that's embarrassing - I obviously meant to say heartbeats and said seconds instead :-/ This raises even more questions though - how does a Shardblade get involuntarily summoned if a wielder's heart stops or their brain activity ceases as a result of dying? Is it entirely Spiritual?

I've just started a reread of The Way of Kings, and I immediately noticed that in the first chapter, after Gavilar dies from his wound there is a delay before the king's Shardblade materializes. This suggests to me that the ten second interval between the request to summon a Blade and the actual summoning also occurs when it is involuntarily summoned after the wielder's death. This leads to a number of follow-on questions: - Does the involuntary summoning of a Blade start after the last heartbeat (death of the Physical body), the last coherent thought in the dying wielder's mind (death of the Cognitive mind) or after the wielder's Spirit goes somewhere? - What happens if a wielder's heart stops long enough for the Blade to appear and then the wielder's is resusciated? - What happens if a wielder's Cognitive activity ceases (e.g. oxygen deprivation) long enough for the Blade to appear and then the wielder wakes up?

How about a different effect: duralumin savants can enhance the effects of a Investiture applied to them in any of the three Realms. For example, what would happen if a duralumin savant flared their metal at the same time that their emotions were being Rioted or Soothed? What would happen if they flared while they were inside a time bubble?

I have a different theory: Soulbearer Ferrings can store Investiture that has been applied to them in any of the three Realms by another magic user, and in doing so, the effects of that Investiture are eliminated immediately. Stuck to a wall with a Lashing from a Windrunner? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and the Lashing dissipates. Receive a bunch of Breaths? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and you lose whatever Heightening you gained. Find yourself being affected by emotional Allomancy? Fill a Nicrosil metal mind and your emotions return to normal. Given how little we know, it's certainly a possibility...

We know from the Reddit AMA on April 15th that planets in the Cosmere have souls. We also have WoB that Shards had some influence in the worlds that they traveled to, but that they did not have free rein to go wherever they wished. Does this mean that the Shardworlds in the Cosmere have cognitive aspects that are complex enough to be sentient and aware, and that the Shardworlds influenced the Shards to come to them after the Shattering? I find this to be quite interesting, because I have a persistent headcanon now of Sel's mind waking up and coalescing the Splinters of Devotion and Dominion into a new Shard called Unity; I'm also curious if Scadrial's mind has tried to talk to Harmony...

WoB has already confirmed that Hoid is a Feruchemist, or at the very least practices Feruchemy (which, knowing Brandon, is probably not the same thing in Hoid's case). What we don't know yet is whether or not Hoid is a full Feruchemist, or only a Ferring.

Keep in mind that Brandon has alluded to the possibility that a Duralumin Misting could use their power to cleanse themselves both of physical poisons and unwanted Investitures if they knew what to do. I have a headcanon visualization of a duralumin savant cutting his finger, touching a charged Hemalurgic spike and then burning his metal to either deplete the charge or destroy the spike. Someone else on the forum sketched a scenario where a duralumin Misting welded a steel wire to a bridge, stabbed the wire into their head and burned duralumin to destroy the entire bridge...

Whoops, I should've searched more carefully. That thread is quite fascinating!

That's certainly a possibility, but it looks so much like the inside cover symbols that I initially assumed that Brandon asked Whelan to put it there.

I was thinking about the sorts of mechanistic, nuts-and-bolts science-type questions that I'd like to ask Brandon someday, and one that I came up with was this: "How disruptive would the introduction of coherent light technology (such as lasers or LEDs) be to the culture, society and magic system of Nalthis?" I'm interested because I'd love to know what would happen if you aimed a laser at a wall and then drew forth the color in that wall to perform Awakening while the laser was shining on it. Since Brandon is already going to explore the interaction of magic and technology on Scadrial, I'd love to know how this type of interaction would occur on Nalthis.