Johnny Silverlight

Another intriguing Word of Brandon: The Aethers do not believe that they were created by Adonalsium.

Another fascinating take-away from this evening's stream: Brandon visualizes the twelves moons of Lumar as being evenly positioned around the planet, sort of like the vertices of a 12-sided die. He also said he had a report from some scientists he's consulting with about whether such an arrangement is in any way plausible. But an even distribution of the moons around Lumar was what he had in mind when he wrote the story.

Concerning the Iriali: 1. The Iriali lived on Tress's World long enough for their language to change so much that its earlier version is considered "Old Iriali." 2. Did the Moons/Aethers arrive at Tress's World 300 years ago, and was this the reason the Iriali decided to leave?

We have no idea how long the Iriali had lived on Tress's World before they disappeared. We do know that the Iriali have been on Roshar since the time before the Recreance (they were one of the Silver Kingdoms). The Recreance occurred at least 2,000 years before the events of the Stormlight Archive. To put this in perspective, Old English was spoken some 1,200-900 years ago. Apparently, the Iriali lived on Tress's World long enough for their language to evolve into a substantially different form. The term "Old Iriali" is probably used as a contrast to the version of the language the Iriali were speaking before they vanished. The people currently living on Tress's World would probably refer to the most recent version of the language as "Iriali" rather than "Modern Iriali."

Sorry about that! I did indeed mean the fourth secret novel. I'll go ahead and correct the title of this topic.

I think the term "Old Iriali" refers to the language written on the cup, not to any specific group of Iriali people. It's like we refer to "Old English" or "Old Irish" or "Old High German" here on our world.

Technology levels would not necessarily increase at the same rate on these various worlds. And the available resources on a world would greatly speed up or slow down local rates of tech development.

One very important fact that we're currently lacking is the density of these moons. I have a gut feeling that these "moons" are not masses of rock like most natural planetary satellites in our solar system. I think they are actually enormous living organisms of some kind that are secreting these waterfalls of spores as part of their biological process. If they are living creatures, then their density would probably not be anywhere near as great as it would be if they were composed of rock. Another fact we're not sure about is how far from the surface of Tress's World these moons are. The Lunagrees come across, in the text, like gigantic waterfalls of spores. For this effect to occur, the moons must be very close to the planet's surface so that the planet's gravity can pull the spores down in this manner. They also cannot be too far outside the planet's atmosphere, because I can't see how the spores could pour down they way they do if they have to travel any significant distance though the vacuum of outer space.

I finally found a high-resolution image of the temp covers of Brandon's secret novels. It is submitted here for your consideration: Look very, very carefully at the cover of the book on the right. I think those two objects in the air to either side of the figure in the foreground are.... two floating cities from Ashyn! There seem to be upside-down buildings on the two objects, and other structures on top of them. In the opening chapter of Silence Divine that Brandon has read to us, there is a reference to "farms and orchards" on the skyward side of the floating cities. What do you folks think?

Hoid could be "translating" the fauna on Tress's world into rough equivalents that would be understandable to the person(s) he's telling this story to.

Hello, everyone. Long-time lurker here, first time poster. Looking forward to being able to take part in discussions here with other Sanderfans!