darniil

http://brandonsanderson.com/blog/1039/Darrell-Sweet

I think I remember Brandon saying that the chart was written "in-world", much like the map of Middle Earth was drawn as if made by people form Middle Earth. In a sense, Hoid isn't "in-world" when it comes to Scadrial, so we could say that, even though the chart shows up in the AA, and the AAs of all the books were written by the same author, the chart was drawn up by someone native to Scadrial. (And maybe it was, and the AA author just decided to include it rather than making one him/herself, and without commenting on the name of atium.)

One thing to keep in mind is that different Shards have different levels of precognitive strength, and Ruin couldn't see as far/as well as Preservation could. Beyond that, very interesting thoughts.

Fixed. (No offense intended, of course.)

Can you imagine what the mosh pits would be like if the bands had Rioters in them?

Whew. Getting in just under the wire.

Actually, it was leather. Chapter 14 Summary Chapter 15 Summary

I believe Brandon has said that drabs can't Return.

I've liked the stuff by Stephen Hawking that I've read - the stuff he's written for us common-folk, that is. (I'm sure he's got some seriously over-my-head stuff that he's written, too.)

A belated happy birthday, Peter. Thanks for all you do.

That would make sense, since Returned as we know them are sterile, right? (Even Susebron, IIRC. It's been a while since I read Warbreaker, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

Heh. Vibranium. Good thoughts, though. Makes sense. Although, if there's a "Harmony metal", that seems to suggest that the Shards of Preservation and Ruin aren't as distinct as they were at Sazed's ascension.

Ha! Very awesome. Nice catch. That even fits with atium and lerasium: their dots aren't inside or outside the main circle - they're in the middle.

It's aluminum in American English. And "zee", not "zed" for the last letter of the alphabet. (And ton(ne)s of other stuff. )

lor-DOFS-o-up?

Q: How many artists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Trout. Q: How many graphic artists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Squid. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square. (That is to say, just because something was performed only once does not mean that it was any good.) Although, in your defense, GHM, one reason why some may agree with Tan is because nostalgia for that once-ever performance makes it seem even better than it was, regardless of how good it was.

I read that as cadmium. >_>

If Alendi were influenced by Ruin, I'd say it was a more indirect influence. "This kid here will react to a certain set of circumstances in the way I want, so I'm going to make sure he's the one who does all the stuff that will lead to me being freed." Something like that. And yes, he could have been a powerful enough Seeker to feel the Well on his own, but the comment about the Piercings of the Hero sound like that, too, could have been a manipulation of the prophecies by Ruin so as to get a hemalurgic spike in Alendi. Hmm. When Ruin was appearing to Spook, he was only able to do so when Spook was Spiked. Alendi saw "ghosts" as he was on his journey to the Well, though one did eventually attack one of the men in his retinue. Eh. I still think he had a Bronze Spike as one of his piercings. /shrug

I'm not sure, actually. When you type a reply, there's a lot of common formatting that's available right above the text-entry field, and if you're using the full editor, there's also some options after the field. Most things seem to work on standard BBCode-inspired, er, code. As for the spoiler tags, they too seem to be based on BBCode. It's just a matter of surrounding the spoilers in a spoiler tag, much like one would surround a quote in a quote tag.

Almost, but not quite. Remember Kwaan's inscription in the Conventical of Seran? The prophecies as Kwann learned them originally (as a youth, probably) were different from the ones that the others were accessing in their copperminds. I don't remember how old Kwaan is supposed to be, but I'd say at least in his 40s - or the Terris-equivalent of what we would expect of someone in his or her 40s these days - if not older. (And I imagine Alendi was in his late 20s or early 30s, with Rashek being just a few years younger.) So Ruin was definitely manipulating things after TLR's ascension, but he also started a little earlier. (My guess is that he started actually doing things some time around when Alendi was born [and had been planning things long before that point]. First he twisted Preservation's Mists into the Deepness, found out which people were Seekers after they Snapped, had a Seeker-spike made for Alendi, put Alendi on the path that would lead him to the Well, and then started manipulating the Terris prophecies to say that the power of the Well should be given away rather than used. Unfortunately, Ruin didn't have Preservation's foresight, and he didn't realize that someone with an eidetic memory would learn the prophecies before he had a chance to change them.)

Before I read your post, I was thinking the same thing. And I was also thinking how handy Shadesmar would be for something like that. In the Chronicles of Amber, Amberites can use the Pattern to walk from one dimension to another, but once they arrive in their destination, they can't use it to fast-travel. So, they could easily Shadowwalk from Middle Earth to Scadrial - probably hitting some other worlds in the process - but if the Prince(ss) ended up in Urteau instead of Luthadel, s/he would have to use mundane means to get to Luthadel. In fact, if the Royal ended up hitting some desolate spot on Roshar instead of Scadrial, s/he'd have to use mundane means to get to Scadrial (or try a Patternwalk and risk losing the Shadow). All in all, Shadesmar seems to be an incredibly handy method of intra-Shadow travel.

Welcome aboard, James from London! We have a few other Brits here, too, and I imagine that you ought to be able to identify them without too much difficulty.

"Yo, shardey." "Shardey, what?" "Shardey, please."

Rock on, dude. /fistbump I wish I could write that quickly.