Windrunner

Okay, I just today remembered a strange phenomena that we see in Warbreaker Why would this be? How could Returned sDNA or the fragment of the Divine Breath possibly know who will inherit and who won't? It's not sentient, or able to see the future. The answer, I believe lies in the Emperor's Soul Way back when Vo first had his child with the fragment of his Divine Breath, the first of the House of Idris, the child had the Royal Locks. Since the sailors from Chedesh had decided that Vo's line would rule them, the Royal Locks became a sign of the royal line. That's how the Royals themselves viewed it, and so did the people of their nation. Now we can explain why only some of the people in the Royal Family end up with the Locks, even though they were equally close in relation to Vo. Those who had an opportunity to inherit the throne viewed themselves that way and knew that they should have the Locks, since they were the sign of the Royal Line, and so did the citizens of Idris. Since they were viewed that way by both themselves and the people, the fragment of the Divine Breath was expressed. On the other hand, say Dedelin had a brother. This guy would have had the Royal Locks, since when he'd been born he had a chance to inherit the throne. His hypothetical children would have viewed themselves knowing that they wouldn't inherit the throne, and the people of Idris would have known they wouldn't inherit, so they wouldn't get the Locks, despite the fact that they are just as closely related to Vo as their cousins, Siri, Vivenna, and co. I think a really interesting question to ask Brandon here, would be, "If Dedelin and all his children were killed, would the new heirs to the throne suddenly gain the Royal Locks?" Or we can just drop subtleties and say, "Is who gets the Royal Locks determined by how the Royals view themselves and how they are viewed by their nation?" I may pop in here later and tweak the wording to make some of my ideas more clear if I find a better way to express them, but I think I've got the gist of it across. Any thoughts?

Dalinar has been moved to book 5.

Not really interested in that so much. Firstly I want to know about her relationship with Gavilar, which is hinted to have been bad. I think it's likely that her flashbacks will involve her courting Dalinar and Gavilar and choosing between them. What I really want to see is a lot from the POV of an artifabrian.

If I'm remembering correctly, I think book 3 is Szeth and 4 is Navani.

He was asking "how did they know they were siblings?" not "how did they know each other?" I imagine that those four managed to remember their past before Returning, like Lightsong did, while Vasher was never able to. Since they're siblings, I'd hazard a guess that both Denth and Shashara were killed and Returned in the same event, and same goes for Arsteel and Yesteel.

Sorry for the double post in my own topic, but I wanted to quickly bring to light a bit more info that I had forgotten about. So regardless of whether my ideas of what are tying Kelsier to the Physical Realm are true or not, this does prove that there is something Physical that is holding him. This supports my belief that he has a stand-in for a body, so his mind remains.

It's an older fact that I can't find the reference for at the minute. I'm certain it's true though. I'll post as soon as I figure out where it's gone. The Brandonothology is no longer being updated. We've partnered with theoryland, the WoT fansite, on their interview database, which now contains interviews by both Robert Jordan and Brandon. It's pretty sweet, you can check it out here.

I've never taken physics, so correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it theoretically possible for a Skimmer with some sort of wing suit to fly provided they jumped off of something high, like a building or a plane? Just going off my gut, I'd imagine that they'd be able to manipulate their weight for maximum efficiency and take advantage of thermals.

The Reod was caused by an earthquake changing the shape of Arelon, and by extension, the shape of the Aons, which caused all the preexisting Aons, like the Rao that made Elantris, to stop functioning. As far as we know, Odium was not behind this, as he'd left long before the Reod. As for your second question, the Cognitive Realm would probably change a bit, but I can't see why that would make Worldhopping more difficult.

Thought I'd pop in here to say that Shardblades are stored in the Spiritual Realm when not in use.

They have them on Brandon's site, right here. Hope this helps!

You know, I can't quite remember how I picked mine up I actually chose it because The Way of Kings was my first Brandon book, and the intro sequence with Szeth assassinating Gavilar with his Windrunner powers was what convinced me that this was awesome

Also, we don't really know a lot of the theology behind the Church of the Survivor, do we? I seem to remember that most of the things they said were along the same lines as the things he wanted. Even Urteau fell in line with that. You know all the epigraphs are on the wiki right? This is the only bit that really deals with the imbalance. I don't see anything in there that specifically says that the imbalance was what cause sentience, although it can be read that way. Preservation had to give up even more power to create sentient life, so there was an imbalance.

It's actually just that sounds of "th" and "sh" are combined into one character in Alethi.

No problem, it wasn't really all that relevant, just an idle musing on a concept we don't understand well. I guess it might be possible. This kind of gets into a murky territory though. For example, on Roshar, people know about the Shard Honor. But Brandon's said that many of the concepts of "the Almighty" are false. So does that count as worship or not? There's a lot of grey area. It's worth noting that when Spook got the message and when Elend got the power, neither of them really understood or worshiped Preservation. They had faith in people, Vin and Elend. But then again Wax got power from Harmony. That raises the question about how much the people of Scadrial really know about Harmony's nature. Do they know he was Sazed? How widely have the Words of Founding been distributed? I imagine the parts containing knowledge of Hemalurgy would be redacted by the powers that be, but what about the rest? I assume you've seen that I addressed this further down? The conflict is something that we know happens when an Allomancer snaps, so I just speculated a bit on other implications it could have. I imagine if this is true, then one Shard or the other would need to be dominant, but perhaps the conflict would go differently, or not at all. This actually makes me happy. Even if I am ultimately proved wrong at a later date, it'll have gotten some discussion going, raised new questions, and maybe changed our perspectives all a bit. I have no memory of Sazed saying that the imbalance was a necessity, simply that Preservation gave more. If you can find a quote that says otherwise, I'll gladly discount this explanation. There's a decent possibility that I have forgotten something, my member title says it all.

Me too! With such an evocative title it sounds great already. Although I do have unfortunate habit of wishing Brandon could turn all of his short stories into ten book epics.

I think Pathian would probably be a good fit for me as well. I'm not big on converting others or parading my beliefs. I think doing good as worship is a wonderful concept, and I agreed with all the principles Wax mentioned.

I viewed the thrill similar to Inkthinker. Although I wonder if perhaps it's a part of the Alethi lighteyes culture, even if it is a somewhat taboo topic. Kaladin and Szeth wouldn't refer to it as such because they come from different backgrounds.

Or more importantly, ten Shardworlds.

Well Harmony isn't inherently predisposed towards Preservation. I think Sazed says it best, "Harmony, creating a way for as many as possible to make their own choices". So Sazed may not like fossil fuels, and he may try to nudge the world a bit. When it comes down to it, as Shardholders are increasingly driven to follow the intent of their Shard(s), he's being increasingly driven to let the world get by on its own.

You've got some interesting points here, Thought, but none that I think will present any problems real problems with my theory. Well I could always go with the cop-out that Kelsier breaks everyone's rules, even Brandon's about trying to avoid bringing back characters from the dead I think I've got a legitimate answer for this one. I think that it seems likely that the faith is behind this. It's what allowed Kelsier as Preservation to speak to Spook which is a power Preservation shouldn't have, and it's also what allowed Vin to power Elend's Allomancy. Faith allows for connections between people so I'd say it's possible that all the faith from Kelsier's followers is standing in for his Physcial aspect. It's not much, not enough to actually give him anything of a Physical presence, but enough to retain his mind. He's also a Sliver, so who knows what effect that has on it. For all we know, Sazed could be even helping out here, wanting a helper on Scadrial, even if they don't always agree. (I don't really think this is what's happening but I'm just tossing out possibilities) Also TES Spoilers I don't think this is as big a problem as it might seem at first glance. There are a couple ways of explaining this, although I'm not sure at this time which is accurate, because there's no real way to prove this one way or another. First of all, I think animals are more sentient. No one would demand that dogs can think, they certainly aren't as complex as us, but are able to understand tone, gestures, and even their own name. The way I see it, sentience goes like this. nonliving objects (rocks etc.) < plants < animals < humans. There's a spectrum there, and humans have simply crossed a point which we consider to be thinking. On possibility is that one Shard needs to be dominant in something for a Cognitive aspect to form. You could hypothesize that the two halves use all their energy struggling with each other. Once one is "beating" the other, the Cognition can begin. Of my two explanations, I like this one the least. My other idea is much simpler. I want to preface by saying that I don't want to make this a mathy topic, I'm just using numbers here because it's quicker then making a graphic. The idea is that the fact that Preservation is more prevalent in humans is irrelevant, at least for the purpose of creating sentience. It could have been 50%:50% (Or I guess 1:1 more simply) and humans would have gotten sentience. All they would have had to do is expended both of themselves a tad more. What they did instead was to go in more along the lines of 51%:49%. They still hit the magic number of 100% of the energy needed to make a human sentient but Preservation just helped more. Regular objects that would be created with their power (rocks other nonliving stuff) would be somewhere along the lines 30%:30%. Other living things like plants and animals would be, for example, 40%:40%. (I imagine this amount would be a spectrum, depending on whether the living thing was a plant or an animal, and how smart an animal they were making). The fact that Preservation gave more only matters when it comes to the fact that Scadrians are primarily of him. He wanted to create people that he could be in contact with and that could be used to fight Ruin. Ruin demanded that he get a chance to destroy so Preservation just contributed more, to push the humans from non-sentience to sentience. Had Ruin and Preservation not been fighting, it very well could be that they could have made a human that was sentient. I'm not really sure how to respond to this. Are you suggesting that this model has relevant information?

The caverns under Elendel have supposedly been turned into a museum for "The World of Ash". Ranette is almost certainly a lesbian. Where did you get the indication that Scadrial doesn't have fossil fuels?

He should also have a short story called "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell" which is a part of GRR Martin's "Dangerous Women" anthology which comes out sometime around Mayish. We're pretty sure that it's cosmere.

Just because it's "difficult" to use Shadesmar to go elsewhere from Sel, doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible to do.