Wanguu

What about Cultivation? I personally don't think that we will get new orders/surges. The only radiant order that we fully understand the surges of is Windrunner and maybe skybreaker.

Thanks for the answers everyone, I think that helps. Though this has made me realize, I don't think we've yet seen a planet that doesn't have a shard or an avatar of a shard (or aethers) claiming it (Except for maybe UTol?) Canticle doesn't seem to have any shard claiming it, but it does have something strange going on.

Hi, I have been introducing some friends to the cosmere and they have questions about shards that I haven't been able to answer. 1) Each shard has an intent. How does this vary from a prototypical god's domain? For example, Zeus is the god of lightning and storms, etc. It is implied (to my knowledge) that all storms are from Zeus. It doesn't seem like Honor mediates every contract however. We know that Odium can take away people's emotions, but those are only those given to him; he's not responsible for emotions (or do emotions only exist because of Odium?) 2) In many fantasy worlds, Gods receive power / are created by the belief of people. Are shards at all affected by the thoughts of people (not their vessels) 3) If you lived on a world that has not been invested by any shards, would the shards even matter to you? Do they only affect places that they invest?

Oh wow, what an amazing point. I was wondering what Brandon was going to do with adult Gavinor (poor poor Gavinor, who even knows what Odium had shown gavinor in the years he spent in the spiritual realm) and having Gavinor vs Moash as both servants of Retribution makes sense. Both of these characters have a very strong reason to get revenge against each other!

I think our Dalinar is dead and gone. But like how @Sparks put it, I think The Blackthorn, evil general he is, will be unable to resist the change that real Dalinar went through. I don't see him uniting the shards or anything, but I do see him turning tail on Retribution (if it's still Retribution then, and not more shards put together) in the final battle after learning a lot about OG dalinar and going through similar experiences.

Having just read wind and truth, the final Ketek hit me like a punch. I decided to (finally) write my own. Feel free to share any you've made as well.

Haha, this is possible if they can manage to soulcast inidividual atoms at a time! High entropy metals are so hard to pull off because you need to have a homogenous while amorphous mix of metals. If they're somehow capable of soulcasting individual atoms at a time like that, then they would likely be better off at soulcasting nanomaterial structures. It's unclear if radiants using transformation can transform anything into any other element, or just the 16 allomantic metals. If anything, Soulcasting would be most useful to convert one material to another - you could 3d print something out of plastic (which is faster and cheaper than metal 3d printing) and then convert that to metal. This, however, leads to a question that will likely never be answered. How does soulcasting transfer the microstructure? We know that soulcast wood still retains the external texture of wood, but if you look under a microscope would it be solid metal? Would there be cells? If not 1:1, would there be grains in the metal, or single crystal? Sorry for the rant - I am a materials engineer and have long wondered about how soulcasting works at the microscopic scale.

Interesting theory, but this line does strike me as a "Brandon Forgot" moment considering it hasn't been mentioned since TWoK. She/Her pronouns for Ba-Ado-Mishram, just saying

Strength before weakness (not that you're weak!). Szeth now knows that he is right, although I suspect there is much more going on. You will make it!

Hey, all good points! I forgot about the herdaz invasion - and it seems maybe Odiun did too! So perhaps Dalinar doing something Honorable will really help in his plan. We saw from the last interludes that he has plans to take everything that's supporting honor (except Aimia and Reshi, but maybe he considers them unimportant?) I think Adolin and Yanagawn will have a few POVs together in Aizimir, and while Brandon likes to hold Jasnah close, I think we will be getting some of her as well. So far we've gotten two interludes between each day, with one belonging to Odium - do you think this will continue?

Could it be Virtuosity, since they splintered themselves? Or could it be the unknown shard? And for everyone discussing El killing Lezian and Jezrian, El was using two different anti-lights, Anti-Voidlight and Anti-Stormlight.

These were great interludes! I'm again bothered by the prevalence of anti-light TWO DAYS after it was discovered! And I wonder what Cultivation was showing Odium that he ignored? Anyways, it's been amazing ride. I'm glad I was here for the preview chapters this time and got to discuss with everyone! Cheers!

(You mighty want to spoiler this - I don't think this board allows Skyward spoilers, however mild) Yes, I can absolutely see that.

How I think about it: Nightblood is simply drawing the investiture away, at a very fast rate. This draw of investiture away caused the perpendicularity to destabilize and then close. It's like destabilizing a vortex in a sink by putting a stick in it. The antilight is a different mechanism - it is actively annihilating light via destructive interference. This is far more energetic (but not as energetic as annihilation between matter and antimatter) and is more like an actual explosion. As for why things are drawn in, I suspect we will learn by the end of the book, but I hypothesize that it is like a vacuum instantly forming, drawing things in (not accounting for any sort of shockwave) I think it has to do with the pressure, as stated by Navani in RoW. A gemstone is stuffed full of light (which behaves something like a gas) and is more concentrated. In a radiant shallan who had breathed out all of her stormlight, it does nothing, because there is nothing for it to annihilate with. If you take the explosives out of a grenade and set them off with no containement, it will make a loud noise but not cause much damage. The danger of explosives comes from all of the energy being contained, causing it to release in a short time. Think a pressure cooker, which can explode violently. I think the antilight probably does disrupt it slightly, but there is so much investiture and it is (relatively) far away that it does basically nothing. Bring it close, then the damage happens. Many fields and such in physics have an inverse square decay.

Direct intervention of a shard, perhaps.

So far so good! Although, it's not like this was a hard thing to predict.

Maybe they make an expedition to the Horneater / cultivation's perpindicularity? Or perhaps they can elsecall there? I believe that they will be in the SR as well. Dalinar and Navani seeking Honor's power, and the others seeking BAM. I think it's unclear in the text for how they are to return. Proximity? Or everyone might end up there. Truthfully, there's no knowing. I'm not sure if that's possible, but this is the spiritual realm, so who knows. Good point, we did only get two interludes last time. We usually get 12, so maybe we get 18?

I am writing this after the release of chapters 31 and 32, and we currently only have two chapter releases until the book releases. I predict that the next chapters will end Day 2, and we will not hear from our spiritual realm adventurers until Day 4. Day 3 will mainly be Kaladin and Szeth, and we will also jump between Jasnah, Sigzil and Venli, and Adolin (and Yanagawn the First, formerly a thief known as Gawx, is the Prime Aqasix, king of Azir, and emperor of Makabak). I think the structure will be similar to TWoK or RoW where we have finished our first arc and now we are moving on to the several parallel arcs where we will switch between PoV characters. Back of the book blurb from the Wind and Truth coppermind page for evidence: Since the book is very parallel instead of sequential (as in we are always on the same day, going in chronological order), it could be more like oathbringer/WoR where everything is happening in series. However, since half of our cast is (likely) stuck in the spiritual realm where time is all wibbley wobbley, it would not be a stretch narratively for them to miss an entire real-world day. This would also allow the story space for our three main war fronts to take center stage next to Kaladin and Szeth in Shinovar (which we didn't get much of in Day 2). After their first days there, the three fronts may step back as there is simply a day of fighting, or something similar that doesn't need to be center stage. As for the rest of the previews, I predict that next week we will get the end of Day 2 with chapters 33 and 34 (or just 33, or 33 - 35, no predicting how that will shake out) and the last previews will be another batch of interludes. However, I don't think we will get 9 batches of interludes (between every day) so I think it is likely some of the days will be grouped together, such as 'Days 4 & 5' being next. Imagine watching Dalinar, Navani, Shallan, Renarin, Rlain, and maybe even Lift and Gavinor (who I think was hiding in the vent with her) being sucked into the spiritual realm, and getting to the next day and seeing Days 4-5, with their names missing! It would add a lot of suspense. I don't think any of Brandon's other works have had a similar narrative structure, so please feel free to cite other works for evidence for / against this. TL;DR: Day 3 will NOT include the spiritual realm characters, and will instead focus on Shinovar and the three singer invasions. The rest of the book will have a similar structure to TWoK or WoR where story lines are not present in certain parts because nothing of note is going on at the moment.

I saw somewhere in this thread (can't find it now, oops) a discussion about what would happen to Dalinar and Navani's bodies with their minds being stuck in the SR. Assuming their bodies aren't completely blown up, I think towerlight would heal them. We know that unconscious radiants can still breathe in light to heal (kaladin after being strung up), so I believe that their bodies would just heal, and they will remain in a coma until they come back. The spiritual realm seems to be weird and we know you can still have a connection to things in the physical realm while you're there (Kaladin's Tien vision), so the bondsmiths will probably still be attached to their bodies.

We're getting really close to Dec 6th (only three chapters left), which makes me wonder - Are we going to end off with the end of Day 2? It almost feels like that the next chapters will be the end of day 2 (if not this one) so we will get the rest of day 2 and then interludes, meaning when we get our mitts on the book, we would start with Day 3. Thoughts? Lost in Roshar's going to lose their minds when they talk about that line haha. I think we're still going to see that. Dalinar and Navani still have the rock (probably) so I think they'll get pulled there. But Hoid might also be with them too. Strange...

Didn't they bring Taln and Shalash back to Urithiru with them? I don't see the coalition forgetting about heralds

Wow, this is an amazing spot - I just glossed over this line when I was reading. I don't think Brandon would've overlooked this, so hopefully we'll get an explanation soon.

I was more referring to the fact that there's no allomantically available aluminum in the planets crust, and it seems that's true for Scadrial as well. A mistborn cannot swallow a ruby and burn the elemental aluminum present in the ruby (which is mostly aluminum oxide)

Yes, if Investiture has mass, then as a gemstone is drained it would lose mass. A balloon filled with air has a higher mass than an uninflated one!

I hope that it's that Shallan can slip into shadesmar, but not come back without a perpendicularity. I do think that Transportation seems to be one of the weakest surges, by a wide margin. It must have a use beyond getting stranded in Shadesmar until you can find a point where the two realms overlap.