RedBlue

As far as I remember, objects are easier to Awaken if they were ‘life-like’ to begin with. That is, it helps if the object is made of organic material, or if it’s person-shaped or at least animal-shaped. Metal requires more Breaths to Awaken. It can be done, but the limiting factor is the difficulty in getting hold of enough Breath. The upshot is that Awakening can be incredibly powerful — just look at Nightblood — but the resources and skill needed will limit how much people can actually use it.

I didn’t get the impression that a Shard was directly involved, and I’d be shocked if Harmony had anything to do with it. I’d guess the feeling of warmth was linked to stuff happening in the Spiritual Realm as Kaladin’s Spiritweb changes and expands to accommodate the new Herald features.

I’m not sure how well that would work as a global defensive system. A force that can destroy a continent or planet shouldn’t have much difficulty breaking through a layer of Plate.

The weapon sounds like some kind of laser cannon, so this looks like a far-future possibility. If this scene ends up happening at all, I don’t think it will be in the Stormlight series.

Moash would lose a philosophical battle against Moash.

Maraga is an investigative journalist who is capable of working to professional standards as accepted by the industry. Her skills are real and credible. She has a personal interest in the sensational, which is why she ended up with a tabloid, but she isn’t the sort of crazy that involves hallucinating fairies. If the golden-skinned people she references aren’t the Iriali, then what are they?

It’s really not a thing outside of the segment of fandom that really likes shipping. Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel about Kaladin and Leshwi. Their dynamic read more like a rivalry with mutual respect than romantic chemistry. And given that they seem to have chosen different paths — Leshwi has thrown in her lot with the Listeners, and Kaladin will be doing Herald stuff — I don’t know how much opportunity they will have for interaction in the future. Some, I hope, but I doubt they will be around each other enough to progress a relationship.

My understanding is that everything in the RPG is considered canon except for the dice-related stuff, stat-related stuff, and anything else with exact numbers. So, for example, the RPG will tell you exactly how many units of Investiture you need to fly a certain distance, but the exact number is not canonical.

Killing off the plant life would cause total ecosystem collapse, which I’m pretty sure Retribution can’t do without breaking his agreements with various nations. A mass extinction event wouldn’t respect political borders.

Could you elaborate on why a lack of Light would cause mass death? As far as I recall, humans don’t rely on fabrials for food, water or to protect themselves from the elements. Long distance communication will be hit hard, which will likely result in big political and administrative problems, but not on the scale of wiping out most of the human population. The Listeners use Light to grow food, but nobody else uses that technique as far as I remember.

I happened to come across an old WoB relevant to this discussion: Just to be clear, I’m not here to attack anyone’s views or headcanons, and I understand people have strong feelings about Kaladin — I just think this info might be of interest to some of the people here.

I would definitely prefer the RPG to get its own sub-forum within the Cosmere forum. The Stonewalkers campaign book, and presumably other campaign books that get released in the future, will have canonical content that people will want to talk about in the context of the books. Characters, setting and lore details, plot stuff. It would feel weird to put that with the forum games.

I have no idea what a merged Dawnshard would look like, but I suspect they might have once been one single whole thing that got broken into four pieces, presumably by Adonalsium. The term Dawnshard is highly suspect. Shards of … what? Dawn? As in, some kind of metaphysical concept of, I dunno, creation or beginnings?

If anyone is going to see Kaladin in the Spiritual Realm and know he’s alive, it will be Lift. She has a history of seeing things she shouldn’t in the SR. Beyond that, Vasher, Jasnah and Renarin all have a good chance of working it out from the clues available to them. Wit too, assuming he investigates when he comes back.

I’m asking this question because I recently ran the Bridge 9 introductory adventure, and I noticed there’s no obvious place to discuss it here on the forums. I know this is unlikely to be an issue before the full game release in September, but I thought it would be good to clarify what the plan is in advance. Where should posts about the Official Cosmere RPG go? Will they get their own sub-forum in the Cosmere section? I don’t think RPG discussion should go on the general cosmere discussion board. I doubt general cosmere readers who don’t play will want to see posts about game mechanics and GM tips. And I know there’s already a forum called ‘roleplaying,’ but that’s for playing forum games, not for discussion of official games.

I’ve been going through Dawnshard speculation threads to try to get a better idea of what people are thinking and which theories are popular. There isn’t really a strong consensus when it comes to sorting the Shards into four categories, but there are a few general trends in terms of naming the two unknown Dawnshards. The most common approach is to have one Dawnshard that relates to the ‘feelings’ Shards (usually including Odium and Devotion), and another Dawnshard that’s a bit harder to pin down but relates to exercising power in some way (usually associated with Dominion and Honor). Some theorisers take a radically different approach, so I’ve included a third category in the poll (with multiple choice enabled) to represent those ideas. I can’t include every synonym that has been suggested on the forums, but let me know in the comments if you think there’s a serious contender for a Dawnshard name I have overlooked. Also, feel free to sound off about which Shards should be grouped with which Dawnshards. Credit to the posters whose topics and comments were helpful in creating this synthesis post (in no particular order): @Roscoe @Ripheus23 @Dofurion @CMac716 @TheoreticalMagic @adouloumis @the_archduke @i’m in the details @Quantus @LordOfStorms

I don’t think we can assume that a Dawnshard has the exact same effect on all its previous holders. Especially since it appears that Dawnshards warp the soul of their holders gradually over time, not all at once. That suggests the lingering effects will be to a greater or lesser degree depending on how long you held it for.

The Codes are general advice for officers during wartime. Wear a uniform. Don’t get drunk. Don’t duel. These are good, common-sense standards for behaviour. They were never magical, they were never going to give any mystical power to the faithful, and they were never presented that way other than by Dalinar at the very start of WoK when he didn’t know anything. Gavilar cynically followed the letter of the Codes in an attempt to impress the Stormfather, which was never going to work because the Stormfather has no specific attachment to the Codes. (Ironically, Gavilar’s ploy might have worked better if he’d made a big deal out of formally swearing to live by the Codes, rather than trying to be subtle about it. That would have at least fit the Stormfather’s view of what honourable behaviour looks like.) Dalinar stuck to the Codes because he believed (wrongly) that Gavilar had found some big mystical secret, and the cryptic comment he made to Dalinar before he died seemed like a clue. Adolin followed Dalinar’s lead to support his father and commanding officer. Following the Codes didn’t magically help Dalinar or Adolin because the Codes were never special. They were never an inherent moral good. They were always just general advice that somebody wrote down a long time ago.

This is a very minor detail, but I love that Gaz has a mostly-offscreen redemption arc scattered throughout five books. Back in WoK, he was just a pathetic problem gambler who took it out on Bridge Four because they were the only people he was able to push around. He deserted, and wound up in Shallan’s group of lackeys, almost by mistake. He was a terrible person who was too weak and unimportant to be a target for comeuppance, so he became the butt of a joke instead. From there, every time we see him, he’s getting a little bit better. He confronts the fact that he has a gambling addiction, and looks for ways to manage it. He becomes a Lightweaver. And now, as of WaT, he’s processing feelings of guilt over what he did to Bridge Four way back when. And Bridge Four haven’t given him a moment’s thought since he stopped being immediately relevant to their lives, naturally. It’s really cool how even a random extra like Gaz feels like he’s having his own journey, just out of sight, while the main characters do plot stuff.

This is wild and baseless speculation … but If there is one Shard that cannot be held in conjunction with another Shard, it’s Autonomy. It might just say ‘nope’ and resist being combined because of its Intent. Retribution is more likely to have an opportunity to grab an extra Shard than Harmony.

I do recommend reading Sunlit Man. It’s a good read and it focuses on what happened to two side characters who were kind of left in the lurch at the end of WaT. That said, I think fans tend to overstate the importance of the Kaladin mention in Sunlit Man. People want to read it as ‘confirmation’ of whether Kaladin is still alive or not in the space age, but it just isn’t confirmation one way or the other. The text is deliberately ambiguous.

Words can be synonyms and still have different connotations. And I find that dictionary definitions are often inadequate for capturing the nuances of how certain words are used in practice.

TBH, the way Hoid is right now, he is not a guy I would trust with Shard levels of power. His attitude is very ‘I know better than you, I will make decisions on your behalf, and everyone will thank me later’ even though he is clearly far from infallible. He has a level of self-awareness about it, but that doesn’t stop him from making the same mistakes. To give just one example: the way he messed up Sigzil’s life.

@bdoble97 The kickstarter bills it as a 144 page campaign book. I expect that to include plenty of art, maps, stats, tables etc for the purposes of playing the game.

Not harming Wit was part of the contract that no longer binds Taravangian because Dalinar revoked it. Taravangian chose to leave Azimir and the Shattered Plains alone because that helped make Honor accept him as a Vessel, not because he had any further need to stick to the contract. Honor doesn’t seem to have any objection to attacking Wit — it actually seems to view Wit as a threat, and approve of taking him out — so Taravangian has no reason to hold back.