Andrew the Great

The best part of that video is the comment section. "I had no idea that was even possible. She must have some sort of DNA deformity or something." Oh, dear. What is this world coming to? Someone posted this up on dragonmount, and I thought I'd share the love. Driving directions from Sydney, Australia to Sacramento, CA The best part? "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean - 6,243 km"

Well my download kept dropping about halfway through until I tried it in ubuntu, but then, my internet is also about five times as fast in ubuntu as it is in win 7 (I frequently tell people this to make linux sound awesome, though I doubt it has anything to do with linux and everything to do with windows). I'd say this is likely a me issue rather than anything to do with the site. Though it's interesting that Silus had the same issue. Great interview, lots of interesting stuff. Now carefully locked away amidst all my other files.

I'd say that it's probably a bit obscure for what we're doing with them. Actually, no, the purpose is to remind people who've read it before of what they read, and that's a nice touch. So that wouldn't hurt. I'd say we should probably throw the illustrations in there too. Though we should also probably get permission from Brandon before we start putting any of the various pieces of artwork up. And I'm not actually sure if it would be him who could give us permission on those, since he didn't design them. I think Isaac is the one who did the chapter headings, but the illustrations could be tricky. I hate copyright law. So confusing. Although I suppose it is kind of a good thing, most of the time. Sorry I've been so slow on these of late. I'm swamped with midterms. And I just read Antiphon, which took 4 or 5 hours out of my reading time. I'm finding that I spend about an hour per chapter (though about 5/6 of that is in my notes, which are now extensive and will eventually be organized), so this could be a while, but I'll try to get three or four chapters done this weekend, and I'll do one more tonight if I can swing it after I finish my homework. i do feel obliged to warn that come November, all progress on this will stop. Towers of Midnight will be out, which will eat about three days when you factor in the time that I'll spend doing homework to make up for the homework I didn't do while reading, and I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. I expect to have no time whatsoever. And if I do have time, it will likely be spent doing something else.... like maybe having a social life or something.

Also, it could be that she's ashamed of what she did on some level, and actually wants to eliminate herself from history as ever having existed. She's trying to make it appear that there were only ever nine heralds. Granted, that seems like it'd be near impossible to do, and you would think that with Vorinism as widespread as it is it actually would be impossible, but it sounded like decent motivation to me. I doubt that she'd actually care enough about making the point that she's turned her back on being a herald to do something as pointless as going around destroying art, especially 4500 years after turning her back on being a herald. It could also be possible that she's trying to avoid being recognized, though since no one actually recognizes her, that doesn't seem like a good possibility.

That seems rather low. We know from Kaladin's discussion with the apothecary that the conversion in marks can't be less than 3 to 1 from one level to the next (otherwise the price wouldn't be two (insert essence here)marks). So with 5 chips = 1 mark, that means the conversion couldn't be less than 15:1 for the chips. Unless my thinking here is flawed, as is entirely possible, since I haven't slept nearly enough in the last week. Though granted, doing it this way requires a huge number of chips. To go from diamonds to the next level would be 15 chips. Then, to get a single gemstone on the third level, you'd have to have 15*15 diamonds. So to get a single emerald, you'd have to have 15^10 diamonds. Which my calculator shows as 576650390625. Although it could be possible that it's not possible to convert directly between marks of different gemstones without also giving change in chips. In fact, this seems likely. Also note that if you take the tenth root of 40, it's 1.446...... This makes it rather unlikely that our actual conversion factor between gemstones is a set pattern between levels, as it would mean that 1.5 of the lower sphere equals one of the next. Which is not particularly practical. It also doesn't seem likely that it's all based off of diamonds, and other conversion factors are arbitrary. Doing it this way would mean that 4.444 diamonds is one of the second level, 8.8888 diamonds is one of the third level, etc.... In fact, I can't see any way that the 40:1 conversion factor works out nicely and is consistent between levels. So that makes me wonder if the conversion from marks to broams if different.

Way too many assumptions there for me to seriously consider Hoid reuniting Adonalsium as our most likely option. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? We don't really know enough to say. And I know that Rayse didn't want others to capture them. What I was asking was more directed at what you answered in the last paragraph of your post. I actually quite like the idea that taking the other two shards would make him too much of a target for the other shards, though admittedly, killing off and splintering two shards kind of does that too. Where Rayse is described as holding the most terrible shard, and Odium seems to be the one doing the damage, and Bavadin is kind of only briefly mentioned in passing, it seems most likely that Rayse/Odium is acting independently, or maybe with a loose alliance with Bavadin. It seems unlikely that he would take orders from Bavadin.

*Immediately saves image of translated character set* Though admittedly, Peter says part of the character set is wrong. But the translation itself is good, which therefore means it's possible to figure out even with the slightly erroneous character set. I will have a printed copy of this with me while I'm reading book 2. Which actually won't be for like three years. Sad day for books coming out while I'm on my mission.

One of the Death Quotes from Taravangian's (I think that's is name....The King of Kharbranth) hospitals mentions a man with his head of wavy lines or some such. Apparently Elhokar isn't the only one that can just see them. I think he's most likely of the same order as Shallan is. He might also be further along in his progression of becoming a soulcaster than Shallan was. After all, Shallan was specifically trying to learn to soulcast. There's a good possibility that she learned faster because of that.

The only problem with this theory is that presumably several of the Shards have been splintered. Which would make it rather difficult to hold them and reunite them with the rest of Adonalsium. On that note, why did Odium splinter Aona and Skai? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to take their shards for himself? We know that it's possible for one person to hold two shards. The only thing I can think of is that you have to take both shards at the same time. Or that Odium was so twisted by his shard that his nature was incompatible with the other two shards? That's pretty much all i got at this point.

I like truthspren better. Also, I'm not quite clear how creativity is in any way linked to honesty. In fact, in my experience, creativity tends to go better with lying, as you have to be creative to lie, whereas to tell the truth you don't really have to think. At all. EDIT: Oh, never mind. You were talking about the ten essences. That makes SO much more sense. Ok. I could maybe see that then...

Personally, I think him splintering the shard would be more likely to cause the actual damage. Especially given what we've seen with how Arelon seems to be linked quite directly with Aona's power. Splinter the Shard = splinter the land.

If you're going to argue that Sazed holds the seventeenth shard, you should technically argue that he holds the eighteenth, as Vin held Preservation for a bit. Given the evidence we have, you really can't substantiate this at all. There's a lot more against it than for it. Although I'd love to see Sazed getting involved at some point. Just kind of in the background ish. Yes.

Of course, we haven't really seen their cousins interact with much of anything, so therein lies a large part of the problem. The way that I saw it, the spren can see everything that humans can. We never see them seeing anything more or less. Although it would be interesting if Syl could see the wavy line spren.

That being said, this is a truly awesome theory. Now that we've gotten past the Dula drama, we should start pestering Brandon with questions about whether we've seen heralds other than Taln in Way of Kings (not counting the prelude) and then try to work it down from there.

I'd like to go back a ways in the conversation and voice agreement that the other heralds are not, in fact, dead. I saw it mentioned somewhere that Brandon signed a book with "Where's Jezrien?" I doubt he'd ask that particular question if he were lying dead never to be seen again. In fact, with Jezrien being the Stormfather, I still see him as the most likely candidate for who spoke to Kaladin, though it could certainly be others.

Preservation's kind of a unique case, though, as he sacrificed a large portion of himself to imprison ruin, and had to give part of himself in creating humanity as well. Although admittedly, Ruin had become, well....ruinous. As to what the other shards are doing, I imagine the same thing all the other shards except Rayse we've seen running around - let's just hop to this planet and act as God for a while.....

I don't know. Both Stormlight and Shadesmar are very broad, with a lot more involved than the wavy line spren. After all, the spren don't appear to be attracted to Shadesmar or Stormlight in particular. They just allow someone to use both of them. Most likely, they're spren attracted to some given personality trait, as we've seen so far. Although I'm not really sure what trait that would be. Intelligence?

I don't know the exact quote, but I remember hearing him say the same thing, so wherever it came from, I was there/listened to the recording. That still leaves a whole bunch of options, but just the fact that I also remember it should at least provide some additional verification. Though of course there's always the possibility that I'm just delusional and making things up. It has been known to happen....

A slight correction needs to be made here - Every other time we've seen Hoid, he's been not doing something particularly important. However, we've seen through the eyes of the people who are probably most significant on that planet at that time, so Hoid apparently has an uncanny knack for finding the right people. Also, we have absolutely no idea what he's been doing. If I recall correctly, in the first draft of Well of Ascension, it was his footprints that led Vin to the Well. The point is, we don't see him doing anything important because the characters don't see him doing anything important. There's nothing to say that Hoid's problems are strictly related to the characters at the time. He could be doing something universe-altering and we'd never know. Just the fact that Hoid appears in every book is a big point against saying he has a nonintervention policy in my book. Wow, that's a terrible pun, and I didn't even mean it to be.... I still vote for the letter being written by Hoid.

I don't know that we can claim that the spren are related to any one Shard. But if they were, a shard related to change would certainly be a good bet.

We have a lot more reasons to believe that the element is not lerasium at this point than we do otherwise. Another thing that I just thought of - it's entirely possible that the people on Roshar wouldn't even be able to use Lerasium. After all, preservation was critical to the creation of the people on Scadrial. I can see how they might be more attuned to its powers than someone on Roshar. I seem to recall a Brandon quote from somewhere that talked about how skaa don't have normal human anatomy, or the nobles, or possible both. I'll try to dig it up. In any case, we don't even know if the people on Roshar could use lerasium. I really like the idea that Hoid has somehow made the element part of himself, whatever that may entail. It hadn't even occurred to me, but the line about, "You might say I protect it like my own skin" makes a lot more sense in that context.

But not pulling them out. Just taking their equipment. Theoretically, there should be quite the stash of bodies built up in the bottom of the chasms after six years of nearly constant fighting. Hence the necessity for chasmfiends eating them. Which actually makes a lot of sense, as it gives chasmfiends a source of food. What I want to know, is what did chasmfiends eat before the war? There doesn't appear to be much food available down in the chasms...... although who can say what a chasmfiend requires to subsist? Maybe they eat rocks or something....

My mind is currently telling me that Talenel, the herald at the end of Way of Kings, has dark eyes. That could be totally unfounded, but if it's true, I wonder what role it will play in future books? I agree, I think it's likely that Elhokar has the potential to become a soulcaster, though I don't think he will for a while, just because Brandon will want to avoid magic system overload where all of a sudden everybody and their dogs can use some form of magic....

Maybe I'm in the minority on this, but on the forums at least, I would make the 17th Shard logo a little smaller. It drives me insane to have to scroll down as far as I do every time I open any page on the site, and it's kind of huge. On the main forums, even, I like it, but when I get into individual threads, I'm sitting here going, "Yes, I know that I'm on 17th Shard. I've been here for the last 20 minutes. Don't want to deal with quite so much scrolling if it can be avoided." Note that this is much more of an issue because I'm sitting on the lawn outside the Fine Arts Center and using my laptop's mouse rather than an actual like.....mouse. If I had a scroll wheel instead of having to use the scrollbar or clicking on the page and using the arrow keys/page up/page down, it wouldn't be nearly so annoying. In fact, it's not, since I use a real mouse when I get home.

I just noticed that on the main page, all of the other books are referred to by series, but Way of Kings is referred to as Way of Kings, not Stormlight Archive (Do we even have a page for Stormlight Archive?). Do we want to put Stormlight Archive on the main page instead of Way of Kings?