JesterLavorre

Guen tries to duck, but he isn’t in time. As the thing hits him, his two mouths both call out in unison: “Help!”.

Ara picked up the rune from the ground, and the illusion vanished. Turning, she followed the group to the market, fishing in her bag for what was left of the money she had stolen from her family. She still felt guilty about that. Her sisters said her parents were terrible people anyway, but Ara still clung to the thought that they had just had a hard life. If was all she had left to hold onto. Ara had only stopped to buy food once since her escape, and that had gone very poorly. Maybe these people could help her, this time. Talnic, the Shadow, seemed nice, and smart. Maybe she could ask him what was a fair price for some food once they reached the market.

Chapter 2! Prompt: Shadow Here's the previous chapter, if you missed it (prompt: tree):

Guen has stopped his trek toward the city, and is waiting for the others.

“Sort of... I can do other things too, but I’m best at illusions. I’ve sort of had to hide to survive these past few months. Hopefully I won’t have to anymore if we’re successful.”

"Of course not! More the merrier, so they say. I mean... if everyone else is okay with it." As Ara speaks, her illusion, a picture perfect copy of herself, is still behind her, now skipping in place.

OK, this is way more whimsical than I usually write, but let's go (for the prompt: tree): Sequel coming tomorrow!

I will join as Jes-son-Laal (secretly the Kandra JesLaal). Wait, if I’m a Kandra... does that mean if I get the Kaladin role Jes spiked out Kal’s bond to Syl and then took his bones...? Anyway, this will be my first LG so it should be fun.

Yes, but if I remember correctly, that also got villagers killed in the meantime, and you were hesitant to kill Gears. This seems like a very good way for an elim TLR to play, actually. Contact someone they suspect as elim, then get that person to advocate for them as they post incorrect scans. Dannex

So, in RoW, we obviously got a lot of new shards. I always have fun coming up with fusion shard names, so let’s do some using the new shards from RoW. Ideas: Mercy + Odium = Sympathy. I feel like this would actually be a really good pairing. I have an ongoing idea that Mercy is somehow the “virtue that gives Odium context” (in reference to Frost saying Odium is god’s own divine hatred separated from the virtues that gave it context). Whimsy + Odium = Tantrum? That’s not an actually good shard name, but I think it sums up what this would be pretty well. Invention + Cultivation = Experimentation Valor + Honor = Determination/Conquest. The “unstoppable force” of shards plus the “immovable object” of shards. Mercy + Devotion = Salvation/Worship. I feel like this could be something like “Compassion ”, but has the potential to also be really scary. The “cult” shard. A base of unquestioning devoted followers with a deity who performs miracles... add dominion and this becomes truly terrifying. Whimsy + Honor seems like a really bad combination. Any ideas what it would be called?

@Ookla The Female Chicken, can you add me to the secret Santa PM? We’ll see if I have time for it.

Can I be added to both these, please? This sounds like fun.

“I have some magic. It’s not much, and I can’t say I’m experienced at using it in combat. I’ve only done that once before.” Ara shuttered at the memory. “Anyway, I’m mainly experienced with illusions.” Ara pulls out a small piece of metal, engraves with an intricate carving. She throws it on the ground, and a full-size image of Ara appears above it. “They can talk, but I have to program them ahead of time. It can take hours, sometimes days.”

Ara walked up. “Hello! Orpheus, right? I’m glad someone else is here. I worried everyone would run off.” “So, Orpheus, what is it that you can do? Do you have magic? Do you use swords really well? Are you sneaky?” All these people were so interesting. The best thing about this quest would be getting to know them. Ara was excited.

Ara still wasn’t used to the shoddy inn beds and food. She had grown up a noble, enjoying silk sheets and feather mattresses. As Ara walked to the meeting place, she tried to convince herself that was why she was so tired today. Not because she had stayed up late tinkering again. However, her efforts had paid off. A new type of heat rune, one that would ignite a concentrated blaze in a single direction. Ara wasn’t skilled at aiming a bow or swinging a sword, so she needed something that would require slightly less... precision. Memory whispered to Ara. “This is good. You need to be able to kill. Defend yourself.” “But I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Ara whispered back, as she approached the meeting place.

Is there a reason no one is talking about Aman? They were a prime suspect before The Whole RB PM train thing, and then they were mostly inactive after that. I’m not super hard set on this. I’m mostly voting to encourage discussion. I feel like there’s something I’m missing about why nobody talked about Aman in their posts. Was he cleared somehow and I missed it?

“Let’s hope it’s one of the people we’re trying save, and not one of their captors.” Guen begins cautiously making his way toward the city, trying to be stealthy, though he isn’t very good at it.

RoW Spoilers: I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.

I was about to make this thread myself! Here’s my ideas: Ok, let’s start with change. I think this is the easiest to do. Ruin, cultivation, and preservation all fall into this DS. This gives us the shards of positive change, negative change, and lack of change, they all seem to fit together. For the other shard, I would say either endowment or whimsy. Whimsy, by definition, requires randomness and change. It’s the shard of chaos. Endowment, meanwhile, would be the shard of changing others. This leaves us with this for the change dawnshard: Now, I think it is very likely the next dawnshard is Unity or bind, or something similar. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the main reason is a quote from an in-world document that says one of the dawnshards was known to bind any creature, voidish or mortal. So, taking this, I think we can say that Devotion, dominion, and honor all fall squarely in this DS. Dominion is binding others to you, devotion is binding you to others, and Honor is binding to an oath. It seems like this DS has a similar “symmetry” as the change DS. Each shard seems to very clearly be an aspect of the DS. They all seem to fit well together, like puzzle pieces. For the final shard in unity, I would say either whimsy or autonomy. They are both the breaking of bonds or prior commitments. Endowment is also a possibility for the fourth unity shard. Endowment is taking one of your bonds and giving it to someone else. So, the unity shard is as follows: So, the remaining shards all seem to focus on very human aspects. This makes sense. One of the primary properties of investiture is its ability to take on conciousness. The question in how to break up these shards. I would also be looking for some sort of symmetry in these dawnshards, similar to how the shards composing the other two Dawnshards fit together so well. So, what I came up with was a Dawnshard of consciousness. Consciousness is often defined as something like the ability to think about and contemplate your situation. This would be the Dawnshard that creates sapience. I think the two shards I like most for this are Invention and the Hypothetical “wisdom” shard. Here, these shards fit so well together. Wisdom is inner contemplation, self-reflection. Invention is outer contemplation, creativity, thinking about the outside world. Next for this dawnshard is Odium and Mercy. Odium is passion, your base emotions. Mercy, meanwhile, can be interpreted as morality, your conscience. This gives new context to Frost saying that odium is god’s divine anger, separated from the virtues that gave it context. What if Mercy is that virtue? All together, I think these shards seem to fit together well. They make up what makes us human. Our ability to contemplate our situation and feel emotions in response to it. I would name this dawnshard something like contemplate, feel, think, or live: Lastly, we have three shards that seem live human traits, but don’t fit into any of the other Dawnshards. These are Autonomy (which could be in Unity), Ambition, and Valor. The one thing I notice about both ambition and valor is that they are both forceful traits that want something and involve the acquisition of a goal. Ambition is striving to become better, while valor is striving to succeed/persistence. They are both about the process of reaching a goal. This gives me the idea for a dawnshard like “Drive” or “Motivate”. While the “Feel” dawnshard gives life awareness, the “Drive” dawnshard gives life meaning, purpose: While I think it’s highly unlikely much of this is exactly right, I do like the idea of mercy being “the virtue that gives Odium context”. It gives a whole new angle to Sazed finding mercy “worrying”.

While he could be tapping fortune, I don’t think it’s due to his Bondsmith powers. Taln has that moment in WoR where he catches a dart from mid air, so he also has a similar ability without being a Bondsmith.

The theory I think is most likely (though it is by no means original or unique to me) is that Mercy would try and save Odium, and possibly has done so before. We know Odium is wounded, what if Mercy stopped Ambition from killing Odium, allowing Odium to kill ambition as a side effect? Mercy could be the kind of shard that will try and stop killing on either side, and that is not necessarily good for a shard coalition that is trying to shatter another shard. I think all the other theories here are more interesting, though, so I hope I’m wrong.

Ooh! This is fun! I went more of the “Cosmere knowledge and science” route than pure combat effectiveness/magical powers. Scadrial: Vin. Good relations with Kelsier. Very sneaky, so she fulfills the “Rogue” archetype. Also a really good fighter capable of fighting foes with gravitation without the fear of falling. Marsh. Very proficient with hemalurgy, so we can have that magic system on our side. I’d very much like to see how we can steal various surges from fused. Also is a full feruchemist and allomancer, so he’s practically immortal. With both Vin and Marsh, I think we can rely on Kelsier to help, but not take over. I think we can count on the Marsh-Vin tag team to keep him in line. Nalthis: Nightblood. For very obvious reasons. The question is who to wield him? It’s possible that Marsh’s compounding could allow him to hold Nightblood indefinitely, which is somehow scarier than Szeth with Nightblood. Vasher. Another Cosmere scholar. He can help Marsh with all his hemalurgy. Taldain: Khriss. Again, getting all these Cosmere scholars together to take down one goal seems very promising. Roshar: Dalinar. I feel like with Khriss and Vasher here, Dalinar will catch up on the Bondsmith training he’s missed and come up with some interesting uses of connection. Plus whatever’s going on with him and honor’s splinters/unity. Navani. She’s a second Bondsmith, plus she knows probably the most about fabrials out of every living character. My main reason for including her is actually for cohesion (no, not the surge). A lot of these people have very strong personalities that would grade on each-other, and I think Navani could help smooth some of that tension (pun very much intended)

I really like this idea, that Cultivation can’t act in an instantaneous manner. I’ve always thought of the cultivation shard as having very few downsides, and this weakness seems like something to fill that hole.

He may not know that Thaidakar is Kelsier now, though he may be the one to tell Shallan about Kel once he finds out. Another reason for the lack of knowledge about worldhoppers is that it is in their best interest to keep it secret for two reasons: If you were the first one to break the news that other worlds existed, you could get a lot of attention, and not all of it good. If you keep the number of people traveling between planets low, it means the resources you’re selling are in higher demand, because less people are selling them.