Argent

But that's boring...

It's not like I had ever given up on it or anything. But I am a theorycrafter at heart, so those are the threads I prioritize when my time is limited. Add a month-long vacation on top of that (during which I didn't touch the forums)... well, by the time I felt like I could go back and catch up on some art, you had drawn a few zillion things. Which I don't want to look at unless I've also read the snippets you have, because I think that's important when evaluating the art. So... one day.

One thing I feel we should address when considering all this is that we (or at least I) don't know whether the highstorms orbit the planet, or get launched from the Origin every so often. Furthermore, in the former case we don't know whether the strength of a highstorm is directly proportional to its (surface?) distance from the Origin, or inversely proportional to the amount of time it has been "alive." In other words, I see three - well, four - scenarios: Highstorms are generated at the Origin periodically, and then launched leeward, towards the supercontinent Roshar. They lose strength the farther away from the Origin they are, ultimately dying off sometime after they pass Shinnovar. There is only one highstorm, and it orbits the planet Roshar. It is strongest at the Origin, and strong enough to not dissipate completely by the time it goes around the entire circumference of the planet. In this scenario, the highstorm continues losing strength until it returns to the Origin, at which point it recharges. This means the highstorm is weakest just as it is about to reenter the Origin. There is only one highstorm, and it orbits the planet Roshar. It is strongest at the Origin, and strong enough to not dissipate completely by the time it gets to the other side of the planet. In this scenario, the highstorm continues losing strength until it becomes diametrically opposite of the Origin, at which point it starts gathering strength again. In other words, this means the strength of the highstorm depends entirely on how far away it is from the Origin - which would suggest it is continuously (and remotely) recharged from it. I don't remember what this scenario was, but it was a minor deviation of the ones above. Not important. Then again, maybe it doesn't matter what the nature of the highstorms is, since we are trying to predict them based on past data points, not based on understanding the laws the govern them...

Hmm. The divine attributes look good. I envisioned them separated by a vertical line, but I think that would look weird on a curved line. The Surge glyphs feel distracting to me. I would love to see them somewhere (maybe even the same place, just shrunk significantly), but they don't work for me the way they are right now. The essences and gems fill the space really nicely, but the way they are positioned implies they belong to the same category, which is not the case. I don't have a solution to this, unfortunately. The dark version also seems difficult to read; the grey most of the text uses blends with the black, I think. All this being said, I should mention that I am being nitpicky. This is your art, and I want to make it very clear that I am trying to offer feedback I believe will make it better (at least in my eyes); I am not criticizing. Even if I suck at at conveying all that implicitly.

Yeah, I don't know what happened to that theory. I know I was going to ask Brandon at one point, but I don't think I did.

Honestly, I just forgot about the gemstones. Would be nice to fit those somewhere as well... Are you sure there isn't enough room for the attributes between the name of each orders and its glyph? I am eyeballing it, but it looks like plenty (with the current typeface and size).

By "sequel" I meant the last book. I was thinking of this one, but it looks like it is just a short story. The Crystal City might be the last one.

Ah, see, this is better. I like I think it's a sensible theory. My only objection to it, as I understand it, as that the highstorms would hit at exactly the same dates each two-year cycle because it's just the same function repeating over and over. How would you introduce variations while keeping the Weepings fixed?

I've had a very similar theory (but I don't remember if it was refuted in some way). I believed that Splinter of Endowment, the Divine Breath, might be the driver behind each Returned - the mind behind the (reshaped) body of the deceased. In other words, Stennimar and Lightsong are two different entities, with a tiny bit of Stennimar occasionally bleeding through for whatever reason. But really it's Lightsong, the Divine Breath, that's driving things.

Went through The Guns of Empire pretty quickly, and found it every bit as enjoyable as I remember the previous books in the series to be. A little heavy on the battle descriptions early on, but it eased off those about halfway through. Great ending too. I am not sure why I thought this would be the last book in the series, but it's clearly not so, and that's a good thing. Having fallen behind on my reading challenge, I decided to pick something short for once, and so I plowed through Mark Lawrence's collection of short stories Road Brothers. Fans of his first trilogy, The Broken Empire, will likely enjoy this a lot, as it is very focused on Jorg and his companions. I am now back to a series I started more than a decade ago (Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker) and had been postponing finishing for something like half of that time. I am currently reading The Crystal City, the sixth book in the series, and will likely jump into its sequel immediately after so I can finally put the series to rest.

Pretty cool, I wouldn't mind them turning into PC (shush, Mac people, your machines are PCs too) wallpapers. A couple of points of feedback on the latest versions though: The divine attributes could maybe fit right below the Orders' names (I imagine them on a single line, delimited by... something. A diamond, a star, a vertical line, etc.). It makes more sense to me this way, I imagine the proximity will allow for the attributes to more intuitively describe the orders. I like the numbers, but some of them are a little difficult to see at the moment because of the shadow on the inside of their circle. I would've liked to see the essences somewhere too. If the attributes move up, perhaps the essences could take their place. While I am a huge fan of minimalistic and/or clean design, I can't help but feel that if all of my suggestions are accepted, too much of the more important order information (Surges, Essences, attributes) will be just plain text. I think at least one of those entries should have a little bit of decoration to distinguish it.

I'll say, while I don't have any kind of degree in math, I understand a lot of it pretty easily, and your original write-up is... confusing. I think it would be more interesting to more people if you explained your theory (and I'll be honest, I am most interested in why you chose the functions you chose) in a way that does not require a degree. Unless you are looking only for feedback that has nothing to do with the math; then it's your show.

Heh, you remind me of myself when I was around your age (which, in retrospect, is a super old person type of thing to say; 26 is the new 60!). Welcome to the Shard, I expect you'll enjoy it here. Also, make sure you recruit your classmates for the Sanderson Army, we could always use more theorycrafters.

Also confirmed by Brandon as canon.

Yeah, Cusicesh has been bothering me for a long time. I don't know whether size and power are correlated in spren, but super massive spren are definitely special. I don't believe it to be a cognitive shadow of a Shard however, or anything similar, mainly because we know there have only been three Shards on Roshar, and we know them. Its collection of faces leads me to believe that it is somehow related to (some of?) the people on Roshar. I've had the pet theory that it is somehow related to the Recreance - it's the only event I could think of that could be related to a specific time (since Cusicesh appears at exactly the same time every day) that could have an impact to Shadesmar, maybe large enough to spawn a new spren. Alternatively, I could see it being Roshar's spren, with its faces being all the people on the planet - but I think this hypothesis a little less likely.

We value knowledge, not how it's presented <3 I believe we knew the answer to your second question already, but the first one is news to all of us. So welcome, you passed the initiation trials!

Ah, good. I've been wanting to discover a new galaxy.

That's... kind of exceptional. Also, did everyone start in the Euclid galaxy?

So, am just about to buy the game now that it's out for PC, and I had the brilliant idea of naming everything after the Cosmere. And then I realized there isn't enough Cosmere to name all the things after!

Oh, like 2 months ago

So, it's been a while since my last update. Almost three months, in fact. Because I've been reading Steven Erickson's Fall of Light, the second Malazan prequel. It took me three months to read less than 900 pages. You can decide for yourselves whether I would recommend this... On a lighter note, I also read Mark Lawrence's last book in The Red Queen's War series, The Wheel of Osheim. And I liked it a lot. If you've read (and liked) the previous books in the trilogy, you will like this one as well.

Actually, they are. There is symmetry around the origin. Keep in mind this is not canon. We don't know anything about this image.

I am going to have to revisit this thread, there is a scary amount of research and new content since the last time I checked it out...