Otto Didact

1 hour ago, Argent said:

Linnea. 

For International Games Week (November 3-9) I will be putting together some one-shot, one-page RPG sessions via Discord for whoever's interested. By design, the games will be really easy to get into and rules light, with a hard limit of 2 hours of play time. It's a chance to get together with people and have some fun without all the preparation and baggage.

I have a number of games we can play, including but not limited to Honey Heist, Everyone is John, Lasers and Feelings, Oh Dang! Bigfoot Stole My Car With My Friend's Birthday Present Inside, Sexy Battle Wizards, Adventure Skeletons, and Pride and Extreme Prejudice. We can even do a short Mistborn Adventure Game one-shot if people are willing.

At the moment I'm trying to gauge interest and get a sense of peoples' schedules, after which we can set up times and decide what games to play. Once those details are hammered out, I'll post updates here in this thread, including links to the Discord server. If you're interested in playing, let me know here or on the 17S Discord, along with a general idea of what times you're available!

The Alethkar map has a city named Savalashi but the map of the Sea of Lost Lights has the Salavashi Trench. I assume this is a typo, although it could be intentional.

1 hour ago, MonsterMetroid said:

Can I use your map for a post I want to update?

Go for it!

Thanks to the graticule in the Oathbringer map of Roshar and Peter's hint that the Rosharan system uses 100 degrees of latitude and 200 degrees of longitude, I was able to update my orthographic map of the planet! (You can see the old thread here.)

This version is much more accurate, though not completely perfect—for some reason I wasn't able to exactly replicate the graticule used in the map. You'll notice that the continent is a fair bit smaller than my original assessment. I also updated it to include land cover, better symbology, and some cities that didn't appear on previous maps. I assumed in labeling the latitude and longitude lines that the Prime Meridian that the Rosharans use is the one that goes through Kadrix and that they number their lines out from zero in all four directions.

EDIT: I've been informed by Peter on Twitter that the equator is too high; it should go through Kadrix. Like I said, it's not entirely perfect yet.

24 minutes ago, Neithan said:

Brandon just published a blog post announcing his new novel, Skyward. Interestingly, he said that the book is in the continuity of something he has already written, but it is not a part of the Cosmere or the Reckoners multiverse. Any guesses? I’m blank.

It's gotta be either Firstborn or Perfect State. I'm hoping Perfect State, cause I absolutely loved that story.

Is there a WoB or WoP anywhere saying what the people on Ashyn call Roshar (the planet) or Roshar (the system)? I searched Ashyn in Arcanum but couldn't find anything.

I didn't cry, but I did have a really visceral reaction to Dalinar's "you can't have my pain." Like, I wanted to jump up and run around the house! I had suspected for like the whole back half of the book that Odium would succeed in making Dalinar his champion and releasing all that bad anticipation was a really strange and cool cathartic experience.

I'd say the numbers on the Frostlands map are almost certainly Rosharan degrees of longitude, but I haven't fiddled with the new info yet so I can't be sure. I originally tried to get them to line up with Earth degrees and couldn't quite make it happen. It does also seem that the Frostlands map is in a different projection than the continent map—when I georeferenced the Frostlands map to line up with the Rosharan one, it deformed it a fair amount.

I'd be happy to send you the shapefiles I currently have, @Harakeke, but I am planning to fix them based on the new info we have from Oathbringer and Peter, so you may want to wait until that happens. Your call.

Ooh interesting tidbit. I kind of assumed that they'd have a system based around multiples of ten. I'll have to play around with the new grid and see what I come up with. I was going on the assumption that 90 degrees was the south pole, but in Rosharan degrees it's 100, so yeah, the continent is likely a bit smaller than what I came up with before. I'm a little confused by the canon grid, though, because in an azimuthal equidistant projection the equator should be a straight line rather than a curved one.

23 minutes ago, jofwu said:

@Otto Didact, I think you have it stretching too far longitudinally. In my search for a method to fix adjust the projection I came across this post: https://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=17310. Note the username of the poster.

So unless things have changed (the 60 degree number looks accurate still, so I doubt it) the continent is 120 degrees across. Yours looks more like 150 degrees. (excluding Aimia)

 

Hmm, interesting. I mean, all I did to make the alignment was to resize the existing map so it matched up with the latitudes, presuming that the longitudes would line up as well. In order for the continent to fit within 60 deg. of latitude and 120 deg. of longitude, I would have had to squish the original map, changing the aspect ratio. Weird.

23 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Someone on Discord also had a good point: polar caps?

I think someone mentions somewhere in the books that if you go south far enough, the sea freezes, so I'm sure there are polar ice caps. I didn't feel like speculating as to their shape for this map, though.

EDIT: Also, someone pointed out to me that I misspelled Thaylenah on the original map, so here's an updated one (web resolution again—if anyone wants one in print resolution, feel free to ask).

13 hours ago, jofwu said:

@Otto Didact, do you have or can you make an equirectangular projection of the map?

I'd like to make an equirectangular world map in the style of classroom maps of Earth if I have some time. I also have vague plans to make an interactive globe using Javascript + D3 at some point. I've attached a very early, badly symbolized version of an equirectangular projection. It's not very good stylistically, but it is projected correctly.

13 hours ago, jofwu said:

WoP is that the Roshar maps are azumithal equidistant, I believe. (did you ask him that?)

Yeah, that was part of what I asked when I was getting the positioning and scale correct. You can see below the positioning that I showed Peter on Twitter when I got his approval. Also, I have shapefiles that I'm happy to share with anyone who wants to play around with them.

No worries. There's always new tidbits that I find out, only to realize that most people already knew it way before. I love seeing just how far south it really is!

As far as I'm aware, it's pretty common information that the Rosharan continent is almost entirely in the Southern hemisphere of the planet.

Hey, does anyone know how to contact Isaac Stewart? His website doesn't have an email address or a contact form.

From what I understand, you can use brand names, but not the text of a song.

I'm not convinced that there is a Hoid appearance in the version we have.

Am I the only one that's excited about getting a canon picture of Hoid?

This. This is why having a graphic novel is going to be so awesome.

Also, I think Ais mentions him in passing. It's like a super tiny reference.

I liked Aether of Night, but I felt like it lost cohesion at the end and tried to cram a bunch of stuff in that wasn't foreshadowed (yes, I know he's stated it's not his best work and it needs a rewrite), so I'm a bit confused about how some stuff works. Wondering if anybody understood this better than I did.

• First of all, when the Kavir dude tries to bond with Raeth's Amberite bud, it fails, whereas the Verdant bud that the Shentis gave them worked. Presumably this is because the Verdant bud came directly from the source of Verdant. Okay, fine, but don't the High Aedin make more Amberite Bonds by doing exactly what they tried to do with Raeth's bud?
• Okay, so Slaughter and Despair created the Aethers out of Chaos and Order, but the Former is imprisoned in the four Aether sources (principally Verdant)?
• Decay imprisoned the Twins in the pure essences of Chaos and Order, which themselves became sort of "God Aethers" (Night and Illuminous)? Am I reading that right?
• Why on earth did Raeth getting splashed by the pool cause him to not only Bond Night, but also cause Makkal to escape from his prison into Raeth's head? None of the Dari that had Bonded Night got Makkal in their heads.
• Why did Decay want the Twins imprisoned at all? It seems like the Twins were great agents of Decay.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I'm still trying to parse what I read at the end and I just don't get it.

Hey everyone! I was inspired by all the great cosmere fanart that was featured in the news, so I did a couple pieces earlier this evening. I'll be posting other cosmere fanart to this thread as it comes up. Hope you enjoy!

PS - If anybody knows how to embed pictures directly in the thread (and whether it's good etiquette to do so or not), I'd love to find out.

The Stormlight Archive

Portrait of Dalinar Kholin, Bondsmith

Mistborn

Sassy Vin thinks green plants are dumb - This one is a pencil sketch that I plan to ink and color some other time.

It goes without saying that all of the art on here is © 2016 Otto Didact. If you want to use it for phone backgrounds, wallpapers, or the like, I would of course be honored and you're free to do so. If you want to share with people, make sure there's some sort of attribution attached that links it back to me. If you try sell it or pass it off as your own, just know that it's because of people like you that Adonalsium shattered in the first place.

At least a better Hoid reference, yah. I can't source it, though.

Maybe Scythe is cosmere-aware and forcibly ejects people from Taldain that grow too dangerous?

I loved White Sand. The plot threads kept me engaged to the end and beyond, which is always a good sign. In typical Brandon fashion, there was always a bigger secret that I didn't guess, even after I correctly guessed some of the twists. I suspected that the Lord General was Sharezan's lackey, and it seemed too easy an answer that Nilto was Sherezan. BUT the realization that Nilto was Khriss' betrothed hit me at exactly the same time as it hit Khriss, which was an awesome literary experience. I don't know that I like it as much as Mistborn Era 2, but I definitely liked it better than Warbreaker and Elantris.

As for why he's making it a graphic novel—he was approached by Dynamite Comics, who asked him if there was anything that he had lying around that they could adapt. It so happened that White Sand was sitting around and really only needed a good polish to be publishable. He's expressed that the graphic novel adaptation has done exactly the kind of polishing that the story needed to be really excellent. Personally, I think this was a great move. It'll adapt well and I love the fact that he's doing original cosmere work in graphic novel format, instead of just adapting already existing novels. I know a bunch of people are annoyed that it's not coming out in prose, but I personally think it's awesome. It shows that the cosmere isn't limited.

Plus, there's going to be more connective cosmere tissue between the graphic novel White Sand and the rest of the cosmere, including more Hoid, which will be great. Khriss shows up in multiple places in the cosmere later, so I'm excited to see how that pans out.

I bet she's exiled from the 17th Shard, since she and Nazh seem to be a rogue element, off doing their own thing. Contrast them with Thinker, Grump, and Blunt, who seem to be acting under directives.

What I think Kandra means is that on Roshar, concepts that are strong enough can survive as cognitive aspects (spren) such as the Stormfather, but that doesn't really happen on Scadrial.