Mad_Scientist

I was going to do just the unpublished stuff but decided to combine it into one big location that could be pinned for anyone looking for any sample chapters and books. Do we want explanations for the books or not needed?

Darn mod edits making my post make no sense now...

I'd say there's probably not much need for explanations for any published works, but a little bit of background for the unpublished works would be a good idea.

Liar of Partinel:

Chap 1-3

Updated chap 1 with POV gender switch

Both of those are the same link, actually.

I don't think there will be any big issues with posting links to things that Brandon himself has made publicly available, and Chaos had no problem with it in the other thread. So I think this thread should be fine.

That said, I think we should make it clear in this thread that nothing that is unpublished is cannon, just to make sure we don't accidentally cause any confusion on that issue. Especially considering all the cosmere-ish stuff that can be found in the Liar sample chapters.

EDIT:

I don't think the Well of Acension chapters should be listed in this thread, since that was published a while ago. I'm not sure about Alloy of Law being here either, but I guess since it's not being released officially till later this year...

Important info about Brandon's unpublished works

When reading chapters of something unpublished, keep in mind that nothing in them is finalized, nothing is cannon. Anything in them can and often will be contradicted by published books. They can still provide interesting tidbits of insight into Brandon's thoughts at the time and the direction he was planning for the cosmere, but don't be in a rush to base any theories off of what you see in them.

In case anyone isn't already familiar with the books mentioned above...

Scribbler/Rithmatist

As far as I know, this book is not a part of the cosmere, and thus has no connections to other cosmere books. It's also a book that I think has a pretty good chance of being published, though of course if it does its final form may be rather different than those old sample chapters.

Lair of Partinel

This is a cosmere book. It's related to another unpublished work called Dragonsteel, being one of two books originally planned to take place several hundred years before Dragonsteel, on the same world.

If you're confused about the start of that book, click the spoiler tag below.

Mistborn Alloy of Law

A new book in the Mistborn world, taking place a few hundred years after the end of the trilogy. Unlike the other books listed here, Alloy of Law is being published this Nov, and the chapters linked above are offical sample chapters. So what you read there is cannon.

Wait a second... subtle hint possibly lurking here. Mad Scientist - mentioned that Aether of night magic is what is now used in Liar (light weaving I believe)? and we know at least one magic system in Liar is Hoid's story telling dust thingy, yes?

Actually, the Aethers don't seem to have anything to do with lightweaving. Sorry to disappoint you. But the Aethers are these slivers of... something that people embed in their bodies, and that are actually alive. You never really get a clear indication of how they work in the handful of chapters that can be found on Brandon's site.

But Midius/Hoid doesn't seem to have an Aether inside him, and people treat what he does (lightweaving) as something totally different and unrelated to Aethers.

Aether was cannibalized into Liar, really? I knew it was cannibalized into something but I didn't think it was Liar...

Well, the sample chapters of Liar you mentioned reveal a bit about a magic system that involves things called "Aethers." I doubt it's a coincidence. I can't remember where the blog post that mentioned Aether being cannabalized is, but as I said I'm sure the use of the term Aether in Liar of Partinal isn't a coincidence.

I hesitate to give any import to the pool in Elantris. Going by the annotations that seem to be written at the same time as the text, Brandon does not seem to know himself exactly what the pool was. It certainly does not sound like it has any cosmere wide effects. However, he could have reinterpreted it that way after the Well in Mistborn. I just don't think initially the pool was that important.

EDIT: Cause it's the end of a long shift and I can't spell.

I'm trying to remember exactly what the annotations said, but if I recall correctly it was something along the lines of "I first came up with the pool because I wanted to add some mystery to the Elantrian religious beliefs." So yes, when he first conceived it at least, it wasn't as some grand, important thing.

But I also seem to recall a question Brandon got asked in an interview that related to how he came up with his stories and the cosmere aspects of them, and which came first (ie does he first come up with a story element, than create a cosmere background for it, or does he create a cosmere action, then build a story element around it), and he said it was a complicated mixture of both. So I think it's quite possible that the pool was originally just something he thought would be cool, but then became something more.

If I am not mistaken, it's been harder to get unpublished works recently. I believe that it used to be that all you had to do was send an email to Brandon through his website, and him or Peter would send you some of his unfinished stuff if you asked nicely. Now, I think it's not so common since his popularity increase, and I am sure he doesn't want spoiler floating around on the internet.

I agree though, I always hear references to what happened in Aether on this forum and TWG, and am DYING to read that book. I guess I'll just be patient until he actually publishes it, and deal with the frustration of all the teasing Peter, Chaos, and co. do on the forums just to make us out-of-the-loop folks feel like we are missing a great big secret of the Cosmere. <grumble>

I think Brandon will still give out some of his unpublished works, but Liar of Partinal and Dragonsteel, possibly a few others, are off-limits now because they'd reveal too many spoilers about the cosmere. Not sure how much spoiler potential Aether of Night has.

Regardless, I don't think the chances of Aether of Night being published are very good though, at least not in anything close to its current form. The magic system of the book got ripped out and used for Liar of Partinal, for one thing. Not sure how ingrained in the story and world of Aether that magic is, but considering it's what gave the book its name, I imagine it was fairly important.

Anyways, I figure it's probably not the best idea to try and scour unpublished books for cosmere clues anyways, as nothing in unpublished works is final, and so in some cases it could actually be deceptive.

Or maybe that's just what my mind tells me to lesson the pain of the fact that I haven't read any of his unpublished works.

Anything, really. AIM, Google Talk, or Skype would be good. Google may be best. I am [email protected] there.

I have solved the problem. I am just exceptionally dumb in words that you cannot describe XD. At least, I've solved the Add Article button. The promotion thing shouldn't be happening to you, though. Did my fix solve it?

EDIT: Yes, I did

I'm not sure precisely what you mean by "The promotion thing." I have a "promote to article" button that still appears next to posts, but it immediately brings me to an error message when I click it now.

Setting up Google talk now...

I have investigated and determined that there is no reason you shouldn't immediately get an error message.

Can you IM me sometime? I'd like to test if you can do that, but only if I'm around and can delete them quickly (There are some unrelated things I want to discuss as well). I'm online almost all the time, but I'd like to coordinate this a little quicker than PMs will allow.

Until that point, one question: if you go to the main page, do you see an Add Article button next to Latest News?

I don't have any IM software installed on this computer at the moment, but adding something should be pretty simple. What do you use?

To answer your other question, yes, on the main page I do see an "Add Article" button next to Latest News.

EDIT: All the "Add Article" button are gone now. Did you change something?

i think only the admins have the power (people whose names are red), but i think everyone has the button to do so, and if you try it, it just tells you that you arent allowed to do that. Though, i could be wrong.

If I click the button, it seems like I have the ability to create an article. It brings me to a page that is similiar to the page for creating new forum threads, and lets me preview the article and the like. I haven't actually tried finalizing one yet, but I could test it out and see if it works, if you'd like.

I will do a proper report when I get a chance to review the audio. Full report for you guys, when I'm feeling a bit better.

Are you ill? Hope not, as being sick... well, it sucks. If you are, I hope you'll get better soon (and not just because I want a full report.)

Josh and Mi'ch are actually higher up the totem pole than Chaos. Chaos uses his theories to compensate.

Well, there are worse things to compensate for I suppose.

Hmm. I noticed a couple of things from this thread.

The first is that the "Featured Theories" category is actually empty at the moment.

The second is that I seem to be able to create articles in any category, yet am just a normal member. (Well, a member with normal powers at least. Not sure I'd ever use the word "normal" to describe myself personally).

So, first question: are we gonna have some featured theories in the future? I've seen plenty of interesting theories on these forums.

Second question, am I supposed to have article creation privileges? Is that something every member is supposed to have?

You act like they haven't already read Alloy of Law.

I don't know if they have or not, actually. I'm not sure if Brandon has given out any ARCs it yet, or if Josh/Mi'chelle were among his alpha readers for the book. I just kind of assumed that since Chaos hadn't read it yet (or at least I don't think he has, from the way he's talked about it), they hadn't either. But perhaps I was mistaken.

how was the signing

Probably went well.

My guess: I bet Josh and Mi'chelle got an ARC of Alloy of Law, and have taken turns reading it so that they can post little hints about interesting tidbits about the novel, tormenting us all with stuff like "oh wait until you read what happens in Chapter 7," "Yah, and Wax's scene at the start of chapter 9 has got to be my favorite Mistborn scene ever, surpassing anything in the original triology," "And I can't believe there was such a big cosmere hint at the end. When Brandon said RAFO to that question we asked, I thought he meant we'd read and find out in the distant future, not right now," "I know, it's insane, going to completely change all the speculation related to.. that."

After taunting us with these facts, they'll reveal that they were able to ask Brandon a lot of questions at the signing, and got some very interesting answers. But they can't share them, because they've just "accidentally" revealed that one of the RAFO answers is something answered in Allow of Law, and by getting the ARC they of course agreed not to reveal anything about what happens.

Then they'll laugh evilly at our ignorance.

Err... at least that's what I'd do. But maybe I'm just more sadistic than most.

From the about page:

The site opened its doors in a rocky state in the summer of 2010, and the Mistborn RPG was quickly folded into 17th Shard. In February 2011, we upgraded our software, and made the site about fifty times better (just ask about our initial main page--it was bad).

You probably assumed no one would take you up on your bluff, but you assumed wrong: just what was the initial main page like? Screanshots would be nice, but I'll settle for a nice description of the horror.

(All joking aside, I am honestly curious what the old site was like. Didn't show up here till June of this year.)

Think I'm part of it now. Here's my profile.

https://plus.google.com/?gpinv=IK2Vl8_#113233345244350784564/posts

EDIT:

Checking out the features now, added a couple of 17th Shard members to a "17th Shard" circle.

I do like the circles idea. On facebook, there is a pastor (and his wife) from a church I used to go to on my friends list. I moved away a while back and thus don't go there anymore. They are really nice people, though I don't know them that well anymore since it's been a while since I moved.

Anyways, to the point. I'm not sure they'd appreciate some of the... odder aspects of my sense humor, such as various zombie related things, to give one example. And since they are on my friends list, I hesitate to post such things on facebook. But I certainly wouldn't want to kick them off my friends list.

You're right on splinters. Sorry about that.

No need to be sorry, the terms can be easy to mix up.

I guess one of the things about odium/rayse that confuses me is, why is Hatred one of the most powerful of the shards? and why does Hoid hate Bavadin, whoever that is?

First your second question. I think the answer actually has nothing to do with Bavadin's Shard. Assuming that Hoid is indeed the writer of that letter, it means that he knew people like Ati(Ruin) and Rayse(Odium) long before they got Shards. He talks about how Rayse was a horrible person even before taking his Shard.

It seems to me that whatever grudge Hoid bears against Rayse and Bavadin actually relates to things they did in the very distant past, before they became Shards. But that's just my impression.

As to why Odium is so powerful... I don't think he was actually referred to as the most powerful. Most "dangerous" and most "terrible," but that's not quite the same thing. I think that he's probably pretty close in power to the other Shards, but that the nature of his powers, his strengths and weakness, make him the most dangerous.

One could wonder why a Shard like Ruin isn't the most dangerous, given that it's power is based on destruction. I think that it may be because Ruin is too rigid.

My classification of Shards into Actions/Emotions/Ideals may not have importance, and may not be the "proper" way to classify them, if such a way exists. But it does show some interesting things. Ideals and emotions influence people's actions. They determine what people do.

So Ruin represents an action, but Odium and Honor and Aona's Shard represent reasons for actions. That might make them a bit more flexible, a bit more potent, and would explain why Odium would be even more dangerous than Ruin.

I could be wrong, but that's my current thinking on the matter.

That raises the question, is compassion/charity an ideal or an emotion? Or is it both?

Well, I suppose it would depend on what exactly Aona's Shard is. It's not precisely Charity or Compassion. From a 17th Shard inteview, we have the following:

17S Does Aona = Love or Compassion?

BS: "You have it, it's just a synonym there. You basically have it"

17S Does Skai = Devotion or Order?

BS: "You're not on there. But you are on on the first one [Aona]."

Then we have the following twitter exchange between Chaos and Brandon:

Chaos: So Aona is a synonym for love, hmm? Is Charity the correct Shard name?

Brandon: Not quite. I'm trying to remember what the guesses were for the other Shard on Sel. I may have dismissed them too quickly.

Chaos: How about Mercy for Aona, then? The guesses for Skai's Shard include Devotion, Obedience, and Order

Brandon: Okay, I was right, then. Ha There's something very ironic in all of this.

A lot of people (myself included) think the "ironic" thing Brandon was talking about is that Devotion, one of the guesses for Skai, is actually the correct name for Aona. It hasn't been confirmed if that is the case, but I stongly believe it to be so.

Now, if Aona is Devotion, I'd guess she'd be an Emotion/Feeling Shard. One can be devoted to an ideal, but devotion by itself is not an ideal.

That said, I'm not sure I really like the words emotion or feeling to describe Shards like Aona. Those words don't really seem quite... strong enough for the impression a word like devotion gives me. To me, devotion means more than just an emotion, more than just a feeling. It's an emotion that guides and influences you. Someone can love a person, yet still do horrible things to them in the name of the greater good, or because of (insert countless scenarios here). But if someone is devoted to a person, they love them so much that they place them above most other things. At least that's how I see things.

EDIT: Interesting thoughts on static/dynamic Shards. I understand your groupings better now. Hmm. Still don't agree with the pairings, but I can kind of see where you're coming from now.

First, let me say welcome to 17th Shard!

Now, onto your post.

So I was thinking: Why does Odium want to destroy the universe? Odium means hatred, premature heat death of universe seems like more of a Ruin thing. This had me gnawing on Odium all morning (not the best flavor btw) and I came up with an interesting possibility.

I'm not sure Odium does want to destroy the universe. I know we have the vision between Honor and Dalinar, where Dalinar sees two stars disappear, but I always figured that was supposed to be figurative, perhaps with the two stars winking out representing Aona and Skai, who were both killed. It could also mean that Odium is literally trying to destroy all the stars, though, and some of the death visions from WoK could possibly mean that Odium is trying to destroy the sun of Roshar. So I can understand your view on Odium's goal, even if I don't quite agree.

Assuming for the moment that you're right, then it's hard to know for sure why, but hatred can inspire lots of things. If you really, really hate someone, you may find yourself wanting to kill him. Or make him suffer. Or make him suffer, kill him, then make him suffer more after death. I've always kind of figured that Odium's ultimate goal is some sort of eternal torment for all/most, perhaps something similiar to what the Heralds apparantly suffer between desolations.

You Shard categories are interesting. Shard pairs and categories have been discussed here, but I don't think I've seen someone attempt to classify all 16 like that, or even all of the known Shards. So I like your ideas some, but unfortunately there's a pretty big problem with them. You speculate that Odium and Rayse are different, but Thorondir's post in this thread mentions Brandon confirming that Odium is Rayse. So that proves at least part of your classification wrong.

Regardless, I've always felt that Odium is more the counterpart of Aona than the counterpart of Honor. Odium is a hatred synonym, afterall, and Aona is a love synonym. They may not be exact opposites like Ruin and Preservation, but Brandon said that not all Shard pairs are like that.

If I categorized the known Shards, it would be something like this. First, we have the Shards that represent actions.

Actions

Preservation

Ruin

Cultivation

Endowment

Preservation and Ruin are obviously a pair, being opposites. And I think Cultivation and Endowment are also a pair, but in a different way. They both represent different methods of acomplishing similiar tasks. Both increase what someone or something else has. Cultivation does it by encouraging growth in that someone or something, and Endowment does it by giving to that someone or something.

Next, we got the emotional Shards, those that represent feelings.

Emotions/Feelings

Odium

Aona's Shard (I suspect Devotion)

In this case, Odium and Aona would be counterparts, being near or perfect opposites, depending on what exactly the name of Aona's Shard is.

And finally, we have the Shards that represent ideals or moral views.

Ideals

Honor

Skai's Shard? (I suspect Skai is related to the concept of unity/solidarity in some way)

I'm not sure if Skai and Honor would be counterparts or not.

Obviously, I break things down a bit differently than you, and I'm not sure what the rest of the Shards would fit in. I kind of also feel they might break down into 4 groups of 4, but if so, what would they be in addition to Actions, Emotions, and Ideals?

Also, if it turned out that your categories are corect, I'd probably still keep the groupings I have above, just replacing actions with physical, emotions with cognitive, and ideals with spiritual.

Now, as for your view of Endowment, I've always assumed that she/he was stopping the souls from passing onto the true afterlife, and that this was the reason she was able to bring the dead back to life when Sazed couldn't. But it's never been confirmed by Brandon either way, so Endowment's ability remains a little something of a mystery. It should be noted, however, that somehow the Heralds are being brought back to life over and over again on Roshar, so some other Shard has figured something out related to that.

Also, related to some of your ending Shard speculation, I'm afraid that Brandon has confirmed in an interview that one of the three Shards that have existed on Roshar is Cultivation. I can probably find the exact quote if you want.

Finally, when you speculate that spren are slivers of Honor, I think the term you are actually looking for is Splinters. Slivers are people who have held all/most of a Shard's power but lost it, people like the Lord Ruler (via the Well of Acension) and Vin. Splinters are... well, we honestly aren't totally sure. Pieces of a Shard's power of some sort, though the exact definition is unknown. We know the Divine breaths of the Returned are Splinters, and it's been strongly implied but not 100% confirmed that Seons from Elantris are Splinters or related to them.

Kind of a long response here. Anyways, once again, welcome to the 17th Shard. I like some of your Shard classifcation ideas, even if I'm not sure I agree with them, so I'd be interested to see how you'd adjust them knowing that Odium and Rayse are the same.

I like the diamonds one the best. I would also suggest a ketek about cats.

Why? I like cats...

Purring kitty, so pleasant, is dreaming, and dreams are pleasant, so kitty purrs.

That work?

Wow. That is exceptionally stupid. I'd like to think that kids are much smarter than that.

I can understand why they are doing it though. Harry Potter is huge, and I think they are Pottermore usable by kids under 13, which has a whole lot of legal ramifications (most forums I know of just state in their rules that you have to be 13 or older to join in order to avoid the hassle).

, but enjoyable

Somehow I knew exactly what you were going to link to before I clicked the link. Someone I follow on twitter linked to that very recently.

I kind of wish it didn't have the language, as it's a cute and funny video even with it, but I'd be hesitant about sending it to certain family/friends because of the swearing.

I don't remember an exact quote, but didn't Brandon say that the Dor was NOT uniform in the Cosmere? I thought that was why there was the theorizing that the Dor is a power living in the Cognitive realm, and why you would not want to go to Shadesmar while on Sel.

Brandon didn't quite confirm that that Dor was specific to Sel, though I think his words strongly implied it.

zas678 had a theory that there was a universal "power of creation" separate from Shard powers, that it was what fueled both allomancy and AonDor, and that this universal power was in fact the Dor. But when Brandon was asked if the Dor was the same "power of creation" that fueled allomancy, he said it wasn't. He said it was similiar, but different.

This seems to be in line with the main theory opposing zas678's, which was that there was no universal "power of creation," that the powers of the Shards were the power of creation, and that the Dor was thus related to one or more Shards on Sel. This would fit in with Brandon saying that the Dor was similiar but different to that which powers allomancy.

But technically speaking, Brandon never confirmed that the Dor was Shard or world specific. He just said that it wasn't the same thing as what fueled allomancy. It's always possible that none of our theories were right, that the Dor is neither a universal power of creation or a Shard power. Or it's possible that zas678 was right about their being a universal power of creation, but wrong about allomancy using it.

From what i've looked into, they use a point-cloud matrix (as they say in the video) which is something that normally DOESN'T work terribly well in video games, but apparently they've figured out a way to only render what needs to be rendered and ignore everything else, so instead of it processing billions of extra points, it just chucks those out the window and renders only what the camera can see.

Like i said, i'll believe it when i see it.

A lot of people in the youtube comments were talking about the creator of minecraft's comments on the video, which can be read here. I'm certainly not an expert on this, but his words make sense I think.

Interesting. I like that idea a lot.

I remember that Brandon commented in an interview about there being a "mysterious death" in the book that could bear some looking into, but he didn't say what he meant precisely. Theories as to who he was referring to ranged from Gaz(who may or may not be dead) to Shallan's brother to others, but I've never seen anyone suggest this specific idea for her brother.

Well, we don't know how good Gaz's memory is, do we? I can definitely see why he wouldn't strike most people as the type to be a spy/quote collector for Taravangian... which is why he's so perfect for the role.

As for Taravangian not wanting inaccurate quotes, well, that's true but at the same time I'd think he'd rather still hear the death visions with the potential for some of them to be a bit off, then not hear them at all. He'd just be extra cautious about ones from less trusted sources.

It's not ideal for him, but he's gone far beyond doing what is ideal long ago.

We'll see. At least Gaz is one mystery that will probably be answered in book 2.

The about page went up quietly last week. What do you think of it?

It's the most awesomist thing ever!

Ok, maybe not that. But it does do a good job of telling a new visitor about the site, which is presumably the purpose of an about page, so I like it.

EDIT: Accidentally posted before I finished typing.