Argent

I was wondering when you'd show up in this thread Let's address your points. Do windspren cause the wind or are they attracted to it? My interpretation of the bindspren scene is that Kaladin - through Syl - is manipulating Surge of Adhesion (temporarily, using Stormlight), and that action is attracting bindspren. I am not saying that those spren are necessarily gravityspren. Syl and Kaladin have a short conversation, I don't remember in which book, about how Syl doesn't seem affected by... gravity, I think, is the specific example (i.e. how she can "walk" on air). She says something to the effect that the Surges, the laws of nature, are more like agreement between friends - not something she really has to obey. So you don't need to be a gravityspren in order to invoke Gravitation - which we already knew, since neither honorspren nor highspren are that. I think this might be just semantics. Proto-Surgebinding, if you will. Free Surgebinding. Natural Surgebinding. Yeah, I've been very actively trying to avoid that topic because I don't have good explanation for it. I need to spend some more time on it before I get back to you. My instinct is that it's the Listener-spren bond that's special, not the human-spren one; but the only piece of evidence (if you could even call it that) comes from the Oathbringer prologue, and it's a flimsy one anyway, so I think I'll just let this one sit unanswered. As I suggested above, I don't think there needs to be a connection. I think it was more along the lines of certain spren types looking at certain Heralds and going "I am going to do that for someone." I believe, though I am not fully confident, that all spren have some control over all of the Surges, but only the greater ones have enough control to be able to bond effectively with humans, and even they can only bestow two - maybe because of cognitive influences. I am doing a lot of guesswork here, but the core of it is that I don't think you need a gravityspren to play with Gravitation. So, this is a two-parter. I think honorspren had control over all of the Surges, but could express that control in the Physical Realm very weakly. And when they decided to imitate the effects Jezrien's Honorblade, they did just that - restricted themselves to only two specific Surges. Now, I am not saying Syl can just choose to give Kaladin full control - I think her limitations go beyond her control - but she probably still has a little bit of control over all of them, just not control she can share.

I've always assumed that it's named after whoever discovered it. As to why sources external to Roshar use the same term - I think this can easily happen if those sources learned about it from Rosharans. Similarly to how the term "Shadesmar" is becoming a Cosmere-wide term for the Cognitive Realm even if its origin is purely Rosharan.

Um. Isaac's response? From a few replies earlier?

Perspective is not from Silverlight. My - and many others' - money is on Yolen, but that doesn't have to be the case.

Honestly, I think the color and light representation of the stars is just based on the stars' luminosity... =\

I've been talking (mostly monologue-ing, to be honest) about the nature of Surgebinding with some guys on the /r/Cosmere Discord, and some things about spren, Listeners, humans, bonds, and Surgebinding all clicked into a theory - or an understanding, really - pretty nicely. So I wanted to share that with you. The important points are bolded because I don't have enough time to format this more prettily at work. We start off by establishing a foundation we can all (hopefully) agree on: Surgebinding is a magic system (what Khriss calls "a manifestation of investiture") on Roshar This means it's a result - intentional or not - of Shardic influence on Roshar. For now I am not interested in whether it is a result of Honor's influence, or Honor's and Cultivation's. Surgebinding manifests as control over the Surges - the fundamental laws of nature as interpreted by the Rosharans - the same way Allomancy manifests as a set of very specific effects. I believe Surgebinding is a lot more variable in the level of control it allows for, but that's not important right now. Okay. Foundation laid. Now, a postulation: I say that control over the Surges is not exclusive to Surgebinders, Radiants, and Heralds. I say that every symbiotic relationship between (one or more) spren and a living thing in Roshar's Physical Realm results in some form of Surgebinding. A lot of those forms are somewhat limited and low key (e.g. the greatshells' ability to grow far bigger than they should be able to do - the greatshells are not Surgebinding to the level Kaladin is, but I do believe their relationship with the spren allows them to use the Surges (a little) and help themselves overcome the square cube law), but I argue that they are still Surgebinding. Alright. This is going to be important in a moment. So these less... spectacular manifestations of Surgebinding, they could've easily been present on Roshar prior to the arrival of the humans. They - the manifestations - may or may have required Honor's and Cultivation's presence either - I will acknowledge (but not really address) that it's possible all this comes from Adonalsium, and so Surgebinding is really just about what the humans can do, and the other, more primitive control over the Surges, a... proto-Surgebinding, if you will, could've come from Adonalsium. It's a possibility, but not one I am interested in. What I am interested in is that there is a very good chance that the Listeners had been making use of this Surge control for some time before the humans showed up. But then the humans did show up and something made the spren who had previously been fraternizing with the Listeners abandon them and begin bonding with humans. This is the first part of my theory (if you could call it that): the Nahel bond is exactly the same bond spren already form with a lot of other creatures on Roshar. The only special thing about the Nahel bond in the context of the Knights Radiant is that it's a bond between humans and spren, not other native species and spren; in other words, the secret ingredient are the humans, not the bond. So humans show up, maybe some time passes, and then something prompts the spren to start bonding with them. I think we can all agree that this "something" was either Honor's act of granting control over the Surges to his Heralds (by giving them the Honorblades), or another event that happened at just about the same time. Either way, the spren decide to abandon their previous best source of whatever it is that spren get out of the whole bonding business, the Listeners, and go bond with humans. This has an interesting implication - that the spren we identify as Radiant spren (honorspren, cultivationspren, inkspren, cryptics, highspren, etc.) may have been Listener spren in the past, with their own forms (Honorform, anyone?) - otherwise why would the Listener Song of Spren speak of betrayal? But why would "the smartest spren" (as the song calls them) choose to mimic what Honor had done with his Heralds and, as a result, abandon their previous hosts? I believe it is because there is a direct relationship between the level of Surge control a spren can grant to its physical bond-partner and how much the spren benefits out of the bond - the greater the access to Surgebinding, the happier the spren is; which is why you don't see honorspren bond with chasmfiends. So what I think happened was that the more powerful spren, what would soon become the Radiant spren, saw how much control Honor gave his Heralds and (correctly) deduced that if they bonded with humans, they would get a lot more out of the bond that the Listeners could ever provide. It's possible that this is all about the strength of the bond (so humans can, inherently, form stronger bonds than Listeners), but I think the end result is the same - spren figured out that humans are a good source of... whatever. What do spren get out of the bond anyway? Creatures native to Roshar's Physical Realm get control over the Surges, but what do spren get? We've seen several effects (stronger mind, personality, memories, control over small physical objects), but I think we can, for the purposes of this theory, say that the spren get pulled closer to the Physical Realm. I use this phrase specifically because the Song of Spren says that the Listeners are "too close to [the spren's] realm". So, thinking a little less abstractly, I think the reason humans are more desirable targets for bonding is simply because they can pull their spren further into the Physical Realm. Listeners are closer to Shadesmar, so there's only so much physicality they can provide; humans, being further away from Shadesmar, can simply provide more. --- --- --- This is, I think, all I got. Just a series of realizations I had, reinforced by a little bit of (educated) guesswork, that all seem to fit pretty well together. Rosharan life naturally making use of the stupidly high levels of free investiture, Listeners being best buddies with the spren, and the spren (after observing the Heralds) figuring that there was a new cool kid on the block and giving rise to the Surgebinders we know. What do you think?

Brandon's thoughts on the topic

Not that I can recall. I keep hearing that Miles Hundredlives was a gold/gold savant (which I can totally believe), but I can't recall a WoB on the topic. Wax was planned as a savant of the combination of both of his powers - i.e. not an "Allomantic steel" savant, not a "Feruchemical iron savant", but a "savant of the combination of Allomantic steel and Feruchemical iron." However, Brandon is concerned that he hasn't added enough (or any, really) downsides to Wax's supposed savantism, so this might be one of the things he changes (i.e. Wax might end up being canonically not a savant; we'll see). I don't think anyone else has been confirmed to be a savant - though we'll get an interlude from the POV of a Soulcaster savant in Oathbringer.

Before I give you the answer, I need to preface it with a warning - Brandon is almost certainly changing something about what constitutes a savant and how savants work. So anything I tell you might get changed in the future. This being said, savants are magic users who have gotten really really good at what they do. So good, investiture - the stuff of magic - has built up on their soul and is changing them in some ways. Spook, for example, is our first example of a tin savant - his ability with Allomantic tin is far beyond what a regular Tineye or a Mistborn would be able to accomplish, but it comes with a cost. If you've read Words of Radiance (no spoilers, I promise), there is a brief scene where one of the characters sees a group of people whose skin has started (at least visually) turning to stone - those too are savants. That's the short and not-too-technical answer.

This is something I saw on Facebook a little earlier today and thought it could be fun. Make "And then the murders began." the second line of a story. There are some good examples, such as: For fun I looked at a few of Brandon's books and - unsurprisingly - they produced similarly funny results: Some of the others are actually strangely... not funny. A good number of Brandon's books apparently start with a line that already sets up a murderous mood (e.g. "Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king" from The Way of Kings (yes, yes, that's the prologue, not the prelude; sue me) or "Marsh struggled to kill himself." from The Hero of Ages) - and so appending the "And then the murders began." doesn't have the same juxtaposing effect. And then there is this: Got anything else funny around?

I think we may need to do the whole "agree to disagree" on this one. I see the Song of Secrets as a fundamentally more knowledgeable song that teaches things the Song of Histories has no business discussing - such as the dangers of of smokeform and the fact that the surges come from spren, not men. I see the similarities and go "of course, they were written by the same (group of) people". I am finding it difficult to accept your interpretation.

It is no secret that Brandon wanted his novella Legion to turn into a TV show. Some time ago, however, he said that the chances for that were slim - for all the regular reasons, plus an extra one - that a show called Legion, one set in the Marvel universe, was coming to TV. What's more important, it was about a "schizophrenic" whose schizophrenia was not a mental disorder but just how others were describing the abilities he has. The way Brandon made it sound, his Legion and Marvel's were too similar. Well, that peaked my interest and I decided to give the show a shot when it came out - which it did, a few weeks ago. Episode 5 comes out this week. So I wondered if others here were similarly intrigued by the idea of a show that is similar enough to Brandon's Legion - or just of what I think has the potential to become a pretty great show for a somewhat niche audience (the cinematography feels... well, appropriately insane).

I don't know, but it's always made sense to me that if the entire nation is going to depend on heat medallions for their daily lives, they would need colossal amounts of it, and Allik kind of credits the Fire{mothers|fathers} for their survival. The names suggest (Feruchemical) heat. There would need to be more to it, just a few brass Compounders wouldn't do the trick (they would need to create the medallions, after all). But I think it's a component they have.

I've always assumed that the Firemothers and Firefathers Allik mentions are brass Compounders.

Or, you know, he was like a human in this regard - complex and with many different emotions.

Sure, the second one is more cautious towards smokeform, but I would expect something out of the Song of Histories to be a little more focused on plain information. I mean, compare the other excerpt we have from the Song of Histories: against some of the stuff we see in the Song of Secrets: Once again we see Histories being more timid, more about an objective account of what was, while Secrets is more cautionary. The other available stanzas from Secrets are not as extreme in this regard, but the only form mentioned in them is nightform, and it (like the Order of the Truthwatchers) might be a bit of a special case. So I stand by what I said - I think the reason the songs convey different messages is simply because they serve different purposes.

Why do you think one is corrupted? The way I read them, they both cover the same ideas - smokeform is a form of power, it grants abilities like spren/surges, it's of the gods, be wary of it.

Ha. Hahah. Silly @Chaos, how young and innocent you were

I actually disagree with this premise: If I recall my WoBs correctly, we only know that some Shards can be considered pairs. If true, I think it invalidates a lot of your theory. I do like Mercy and Purity as Shards though - or maybe a single Shard.

I would've loved to see that in the Cosmere...

Oh, right. The whole copyright thing. Yeah, probably don't monetize it then... Though donations would still work, yeah?

Okay, now that we've done some gushing, let me share some thoughts: You should be able to monetize this a little bit (if you wanted to). I don't know if this the right move, and there might be a certain amount of backlash from the community, but I personally would be more than willing to dish out a few bucks - even though I don't have a Vive. If you can reenact the scene where Kelsier takes Vin to the walls of Luthadel and gets her to jump and down, that might give you a nice anchor in the story (as well as a few tutorial goals that are described in the book). Adding a time dilation element when the player picks a metal would be nice. Adding the names of the metals in English would also be useful. I am going back and forth on whether it would look cooler if you put the full Allomantic table of metals in front of the user, even if they don't have access to all the metals (which you can easily represent with glow/fade effects - which you already use for the selection process). Should you decide to go with presenting the player with all 16 metals, you could allow them to select any metal, but have some result in the character saying (i.e. printing to the screen) something like "I don't have duralumin" or "Why would I want to destroy my metal reserves?" or "There is nobody around to Soothe/Riot". It's a tiny bit more than work just a no-op, but it adds flavor. I think you can amp up the mists a little bit. Depending on how much you care about them, you could even change the way they look (my impression is that they are a little more... fluid, in a way. They are often described as swirling, forming abstract shapes. In my mind they are more similar to clouds than actual mist. Though this photo looks good. I really look the ambiance in the first video and the mistcloak shadows in the second one.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, THIS IS THE DOPEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE

It's been a couple of months since I last updated this, but they haven't been good reading months for me. I got stuck on Night of the Dragon for a long time - it was just not a book I felt like reading. I did follow it with Brandon's Snapshot, which I enjoyed. Just before or just after (I can't remember) Snapshot, I read Brandon's Oathbringer chapters from Unfettered II, which he calls The Thrill. If you haven't read them, they are the first (I think) several flashback chapters for Dalinar, back in the days when he and Gavilar were doing the majority of their Alethkar conquest. It was interesting to not only see this side of Dalinar, but to also read a number of flashback chapters back to back, to see the story they tell. Most interestingly, perhaps, is that I finally got to read the City of Miracles ARC I won from Goodreads. My review on the website is extensive enough, so I'll just say that it was really good. I am now back to my World of Warcraft novelization (re)read with Arthas: Rise of the Lich King.