LewsTherinTelescope

There's a couple accidental non-letter characters present only in the EPUB, not PDF: Chapter 10 (p. 65): Chapter 49 (p. 356):

I don't really love calling it "atium[-electrum]" and "pure atium", but I think it's the least ambiguous naming scheme right now, because otherwise people who don't know the fan names are going to just keep calling the alloy "atium" anyway, so you end up with people using the same word to mean different things. Hopefully in Era 3 we can get a proper canon name for both... Always liked the sound of "hathsinium", myself.

You used a quote block rather than a spoiler block, fyi.

This seems likely, since Rlain mentions Kaladin's Plate is always present, just invisible, or something like that.

Interesting. My guess would be that you form the bond with the spren the first time you summon it, so if the bond is already established you're fine, but if it's not you're tough out of luck because there aren't any spren nearby to bond to? Since Kaladin describes the windspren choosing to enter the Physical Realm and Connect to him.

It was a specific chunk of his power, though. Ruin was still able to use the Shard, just not the Investiture cycling through the Pits. (Weird side note, apparently he'd have to manifest and literally eat and digest the atium to reabsorb it, if I'm remembering the WoBs correctly.) That same WoB also says that the Vessels cannot access it all. (Also, as mentioned in the forum policies, please do not double-post. You can quote multiple comments in one go by pressing the + button next to Quote, or by quoting it normally but cut-pasting it into your last message as an edit rather than sending a new post.)

It wasn't actually unkeyed, just dampened. We know Vasher has not figured out how to Awaken using Stormlight, so I don't think he's managed to convert it to Breath. Far as we know, it's just that Returned can be powered by Stormlight (the WoB you linked compares it to Nightblood, so they may be working on similar mechanics).

While it doesn't use the term "power", the Investiture that makes the atium was stolen to put them on even footing again, which doesn't make much sense if it's not referring to the power of the Shard. There's also a distinction drawn between what Preservation normally did and when Leras used his own essence to render Ati powerless, the use of which left him nearly impotent.

The Stormlight Archive board is for Stormlight-focused questions. I've moved this to a more appropriate spot.

Preservation explicitly was at a disadvantage due to Investing more of his power: How this makes sense... I dunno. It's confusing. But it's also an essential part of the backstory to Mistborn that it's the case.

(Disclaimer: These are my personal thoughts, not a staff-discussed opinion.) I do find this idea interesting, but I worry it would be absolute Damnation to enforce. Remembering what is WoB knowledge and what is book knowledge is hard when you've been discussing things for a while, and even people who aren't deep into WoBs but are around those who are absorb ambient info. Some examples of things I expect would be pain points (full Cosmere spoilers): My experience with the series-specific boards is that people are truly terrible at spoiler-tagging content, and other users are loath to report violations, meaning major cross-series spoilers regularly are out in the open unless a moderator happens to stumble across the post. So, to be blunt, I simply don't have any confidence whatsoever that such rules would be respected, nor that people would be willing to draw staff attention to violations. Furthermore, even if people try their best not to mention those things, they influence your thinking and bias the way you theorize about related topics (which is why I personally strongly encourage people who have read the full Cosmere to theorize mainly in Cosmere spoiler areas, to avoid accidental knowledge leaks). So if by some act of Harmony people follow the policy to the T, I expect it still wouldn't be truly free of WoB influence, and theories would still revolve around information from them, just without any backing anyone can cite. Which is unfortunate, because I do agree it would be fun to try theorizing with only the books and see what we can come up with, and having a space for people new to the fandom to post their ideas in peace would also be nice. I just don't see it realistically working well without a.) a serious shift in community attitude towards spoilers and b.) everyone being very careful to check everything they say can be cited back to the text (which is slow and difficult). That said, what you bring up with how people respond to new theories is in my mind a real problem (and unfortunately one I've contributed to before myself, though I've been trying to improve on that front). I think the solution there should be to, as a community, discourage people from just dumping a WoB on every theory they see, unless they've specifically asked to know if they're right or wrong rather than just theorizing for fun. On the other hand, people do sometimes appreciate knowing that stuff because it can also open up more doors and introduce new ideas, so... it's hard to balance sometimes. At the very least, there are more welcoming and encouraging ways to inform people of information they haven't seen than copy-pasting a quote or WoB with no other comment, and I think people need to work on that. The issue is, people who have read the books engaging with theories from those who have not tends to lead to either lots of vaguespoiling and ruining things by giving away too much info, or trolling by intentionally saying something completely off-base, both of which can be problematic. So "nice theories, keep reading!" is pretty much the only guaranteed safe response. On Discord, there is a #tagged-spoilers-only channel where you can specify what you've read, and every message must be behind spoiler bars and labeled. Could be worth looking into an analogous New Reader Corner section on the forums, that's something that we'll have to discuss internally and see if we can make it work (and if we'll be able to moderate it effectively; see above). Though, given that dedicated traditional forums have been falling out of style for a while now, I think most new readers would go to Reddit and/or Discord instead, so I'm not sure how much use it'd get. While theorizing to work out what will happen in future books is very common, theorizing for fun is also pretty common. For a lot of people, talking about and dissecting their ideas in more depth than "nope, author said you were wrong in a YouTube livestream a year and a half ago" is enjoyable even if they're ultimately incorrect.

Indeed, and this is actually a strong reason for why we're posting this. As Argent and Chaos discussed above, diversity is a useful trait with its own merits for teams of many kinds, and it's something we think is important to have. However, when a community has a meaningful majority of one group (be it race, sexuality, ableness, etc), simple probability makes this diversity less likely to arise on its own (the ten blue skittles problem you reference). And when said community is entirely pseudonymous and online, it's hard to notice this, much less try to correct for it when picking out moderators. As such, we're testing this form out as a way to draw attention to those candidates who are qualified but otherwise by simple chance (or other reasons, such as feeling uncomfortable putting themselves out there publicly) may not be seen "organically". We don't know whether it will work or not, or whether we'll keep it around, but our current system is clearly not producing the results we need as a team and as a community, so we're trying something else and seeing if that improves the situation. Edit: My bad, that message was sent while I was still typing and I didn't see it until after posting. I'm still going to leave this response up, however, for anyone else that may have this concern. I will note that this is likely partially just exposure bias. The staff members who do a lot of different things (such as Shardcast, moderation, and writing articles) are more likely to be seen all over the place, while the staff who mainly do just one thing (such as coding or policy discussion) aren't as visible. In fact, I'd go as far as to say most staff do one or two things. That said, that appearance is a very real barrier of its own, and unfortunately one where the solutions have their own tradeoffs, as Chaos mentions. We appreciate the feedback, as it's often hard to judge things when they're just hypotheticals on what people might think, and having actual opinions is useful for deciding how to approach things. We'll be sure to keep this factor in mind and consider whether there's anything we can do to help it.

Moved to the Cosmere Discussion forum. The 17th Shard Discussion forum is for talking about 17th Shard things such as Shardcast or the website itself.

There's actually also one other thing which @mdross81 pointed out when I first posted the breakdown (don't remember where I posted it, never got around to making a thread): there's a Sanskrit word (explicitly one of the source languages for the Dawnchant) which is sometimes romanized as "mishra", and which according to @asmodeus (I think) actually would be "mishram" in one of its grammatical forms. And what does this word mean? "Blended" or "mixed". Yet another route to the same conclusion. We also may have reason to believe that "maram" specifically was once a word before that A -> E shift, because it may survive in Amaram's name, the way "Kalak" survives in Kaladin's name. While unfortunately there's no source, I've been told by someone else of a WoB that claims Amaram's name is based around the Alethi word for "bravery", which seems to me to be a word that would likely be closely related, especially with how Amaram's standard is merem and khakh for "honor" and "determination". Huh. This... makes a surprising amount of sense. I like it! And not just because it supports my own theory I think the Eila Stele is relevant to the BAM theory: "Wind" being Stormfather, "spren" being Mishram, perhaps? I think this also helps explain why the Sibling was so much more strongly affected by Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment than anyone else we've seen, if they were strongly Connected beings that in essence were two halves of the same concept (spren connection to the beings that imagine them). Spitballing, maybe the reason deadeyes happen now is that (total guess, we don't know if this is how it works) the bonding process involves kind of partially switching over from "general belief about this Ideal" to "this being's belief about this Ideal", and without BAM, who under this theory is an embodiment of that Connection to the wider population, they can't switch back and fill the hole left by their bondmate abandoning belief in the concept the spren embodies?

Oh yes, so five things then.

As a side note, I refuse to call the event Dragonsteel 2022 no matter how often they repeat it, lol. There's now four five things referred to as just "Dragonsteel" (the original book, the future series, the company, and now the con, and as Oversleep pointed out also the in-world material), please give it a more unique name I beg you. Too confusing without very clear context!

The Stormfather says this, but is also clearly either lying or making heavily misleading statements already, so I don't think that can be trusted. I think he's probably in the proto-bond stage, like Kaladin for much of WoK, Dalinar for much of WoR, or Elhokar for pretty much the entire first three books, and the Stormfather is bending the truth (it may very well be that prior to the First Ideal the Radiants didn't consider the bond to be fully functional) because he is suspicious of Gavilar and doesn't want to hand him knowledge of the powers of a Bondsmith. That he knows of. It took both Kaladin and Dalinar a little while to work out it was happening, and Elhokar seemingly didn't realize what was going on until right before his death. And for those three, it usually only happened when they were wounded or needed the Light for something without understanding it, so if Gavilar hadn't fought in a long time, he likely wouldn't have been in a situation where he'd instinctively take it in like the rest. From the sound of it, he did at first, though he lost that: And the change Dalinar noticed in him to a focus on forging a united kingdom and lasting nation started almost twenty years before his death, so there was a long while where he probably was close to the Bondsmith Ideals imo. Sure, he was also a selfish prick who wanted glory, I'm not trying to say he was a nice person, but I don't know that that's inherently opposed to the Words. (I mean, the Stormfather thought the burning of Rathalas was chill and fine until he got further into the bond to Dalinar, neither Honor nor Cultivation necessitates good.)

Yeah, it seems he can see in an area around the person he's bonded to. For example, in Rhythm of War he has Dalinar walk back over to one of the bodies in Ishar's tent so that he can see it. I don't know why he'd make that lie either, but there seems to be some reason he really does not want to tell Dalinar what's up with the Heralds, so I imagine it plays into whatever that is. See the fact that even though he knew Dalinar was looking for them, he only reluctantly gives a tidbit about Ishar after trying to wiggle out of the question and being pinned down by Dalinar, and only confirms Ishar's Tezim after Dalinar already works it out. And I can't imagine he doesn't know anything about Nale or the Skybreakers, but he never mentions them at all, nor does he mention Kalak's apparently repeated attempts to get the Radiants going again.

The parallels are definitely interesting. I have no idea how such a thing would occur, but... well... this is Brandon lmao. He can probably make it work, if so. SteveMcQwark on the Discord had an interesting observation about this, though I don't know enough myself to add much to it.

It's what we're told is the cause. I don't know that this is really a decision he's made. If he just goes around Ruining stuff, I can't imagine the Shard of Preservation would be happy with him, and I can't imagine the Shard of Ruin would like it if he just stopped everything from changing. We do know that Harmony is not the only combination of the two you can Ascend to, but given that the implication is that that would be a result of being unable to control the two, I don't know that he'd really have an easier time getting things done, if he's actively warring against himself.

There's a mention by Moash that he's relatively certain that there's some very subtle changes to the balance and such depending on the circumstance, which I'm guessing may be what @ShardlessVesselis thinking of?