Argent

While I sympathize with your problem, and while Brandon himself has said that's kind of okay if you pirate his books (if you are struggling financially and make an effort to buy them at a later date), I don't think we, as a website, can endorse a conversation about this. I am afraid I will need to lock this, but I do wish you luck in getting your hands on a copy.

Welcome, do join in! There's certainly plenty of discussion to go around.

Welcome, welcome! Let me see if I can give you a few pointers about how to use forums: New topics go in the subforum most appropriate for them. Mistborn in Mistborn, Elantris in Elantris and Emperor's Soul, and so on. Topics that span more than a single world usually go in Cosmere Theories or Cosmere Q&A (depending on whether you are posting a theory or a question, obviously). When posting a topic, it's usually recommended you do a quick search and see if a similar one already exists (though I'll be honest, this doesn't always work well, so if you can't find a similar topic with a quick search, nobody is going to yell at you for creating a new one; at worst, a moderator will lock your topic and direct you to the one already dedicated to the same idea). When replying to topics, avoid posting multiple replies in a row - you can edit your previous reply with additional information instead. You also hide your replies, for the rare times you post something by accident or no longer wish a post to be visible. Have fun! As you don't repeatedly break any rules, you should expect a community that's excited to meet new members (unless you go in the theorycrafting part of the forum, we theorycrafters tend to forget that not everyone comes in here after years of studying the Cosmere - but we mean well!). For (a lot) more in-depth rundown, you can check out our site rules.

Jasnah? More like Yasssnah! I am particularly fond of how scathing she is towards Amaram.

Subtle, @Pagerunner. Subtle. You should've actually edited your post though @Volratho, Words of Radiance answers your first two questions positively. I suspect the answer to your third question is also positive, but there may be some interesting information there (and I myself have a similar question).

Excellent, excellent. We have @Pagerunner's shoulder and @Draginon's hat. Soon my collection will be complete!

The 17th pierogi.

A bit tenuous but it could work. I would like to reconcile the fact that the listener songs claim it wasn't them who destroyed Stormseat and shattered the Plains with the fact that cymatics are a very musical - singer - thing, and so would fit with the listeners powers much better. But the application of Division could work nicely with our newfound knowledge that the humans messed up the planet they came from with Surges somehow. Division could be blamed there.

There is so much information in this book, we'll all need to go through a reread or two before we feel confident in our knowledge

I believe this is correct. One of the epigraph excerpts from Mythica suggests that Bo-Ado-Mishram was able to do the same thing, and it sounds like the thing that ended the False Desolation was the Radiants trapping this Unmade. @Mondaysjelly, I believe that in at least one of Dalinar's visions (maybe the one where he brings Fen in?) he finds some spheres on himself, as he is inhibiting the body of a Radiant.

Oh wow, you are one of the long time fans - longer than myself even, and I am practically ancient 'round these parts! Did you get a chance to see Brandon when he was in Poland earlier this year?

Journey before destination, Radiant.

It begins indeed. I used to be able to keep up with pretty much everything going on in these forums a few years back, and sometime in the last two years I had to put my foot down and decide that I am only reading what I am most interested in, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do anything else ever...

Hey, no problem, health over anything else! Glad you are getting better, hope you are enjoying Oathbringer.

Hey there, I don't think I've seen anyone here from Venezuela - you need to recruit some people so you can talk with them about Oathbringer both in person and in here

Hey there, welcome! You are jumping in at quite the busy time, Oathbringer has us all whipped into frenzy Hope you enjoy your stay.

I don't know if we are assuming anything but to me Cohesion makes a little more sense for Bondsmiths. You have the metaphysical / Spiritual idea of binding things into a cohesive whole (which is obviously something at least one Bondsmith is pretty big about), and that feels more in line with some of the other Orders' Spiritual abilities (such as the Windrunners' tendency to attract lots of squires, or the Lightweavers' transformative effects on other humans). Again, just a hunch. The Ars Arcanum has been wrong before, and while my "evidence" is nowhere near conclusive, I would be neither upset nor surprised if Cohesion and Tension end up swapping either names or positions.

I think those may have gotten flipped since this WoB. Don't we see Dalinar in Oathbringer do pretty much exactly this - soften stone?

It's still relevant, I just want to make sure this doesn't turn into a conversation solely about mental illness - for the same of talking about mental illness. Carry on.

Fundamentally, the underlying mechanics are the same - if you want to be able to speak another language, one of the easiest ways is to use Connection - a Spiritual attribute, which (by virtue of being Spiritual) permeates the entire Cosmere. The medallions in Mistborn allow you to Connect to the land, while Dalinar seems to Connect with specific people who in turn are Connected to the land, but the net result is the same. As to how exactly a Nalthian (or a Yolish, for that matter) would accomplish the same thing - we don't know, unfortunately. But I would imagine there are magitek items available to worldhoppers, tools similar (or identical) to the medallions that enable Connection on demand.

The Unity moment hadn't happened when Dalinar was learning the Connection hack. Actually - have you read Mistborn? The Bands of Mourning specifically? There's something similar going on there and it may be easier to explain if I could use examples from Mistborn.

As fascinating as this conversation is, perhaps we need to try to bring it back to The Stormlight Archive?

As is a tradition of mine, I post the questions I intend to bring to the signing some time in advance in order to give people a chance to look them over, suggest changes, offer their own questions (which I sometimes take), and occasionally submit answers that I had missed in the past. Unfortunately, Oathbringer has been a little crazy, and I've been busy with both it and Arcanum, so my list is not as curated as I would like it to be - which means I will probably take all of the questions with me and choose what to ask on the fly. I apologize for this. But if you want to look it over, here's a link to my list. I think I've disabled comments on this link (and if I haven't, I ask you to avoid commenting on the Google doc directly) because I want to keep discussion about the questions here. Be warned that there are Oathbringer questions in there, but they are in their own section, so you should be able to avoid them. This being said, I think I am most interested in more Oathbringer questions, as I am not entirely happy with my own assortment.

How does Dalinar speak Azish?

I guess we did see that in Words of Radiance, yeah... Dangit. Stupid Shardblade guards keep evading us.