Aether

Am I the only one who wants to see a full scale war? Come on! Allomantic warfare!

Wyndle states that Lift is not even rare, but unique in that she can actually touch him (and use him to climb), since he's mostly of the cognitive and spiritual realm. If he leaves behind anything physical at all, then I highly believe it is negligible. And remember, others (Rock excluded) could see Syl too from time to time. I don't think that means that she leaves physical droppings.

Pardon me then, and I can agree with that sentiment. I've myself had a rather long day and don't really feel like going through the posts, so I'll take your word for it. I don't put too much stock into down-votes. Sure, can be difficult to not find it offensive sometimes (if you truly feel like it was unwarranted), but for every undeserved down-vote we get, we'll probably get around tenfold the amount of undeserved up-votes. (not that that's a bad thing)

I know. Wax even have a monologue on how most people miss out on the opportunity. But alas, 'twas but a vain attempt at being funny. You succeeded where I failed, my friend!

Oh, ok. My main point was the one about the hunt for Greatshells; the one about the infantile intelligence kind of snuck in. Agreed.

Brilliant! But it sort of makes it dangerous to give toddlers shots of whiskey with metal flakes in them. Imagine a drunk baby flinging metal objects around the room!

The Parshendi seem to be capable of field an army to meet the Alethi (though not always engage them) every time, so I find it rather ridiculous to suggest that they need the Alethi to kill pupating Chasmfiends - which presumably would only take around a dozen soldiers to kill in the first place, without a rivalling army. I don't think we should fall into the trap of equating knowledge with intelligence. No, 4-year old children might not be able to apply quadratic equations or muse upon the abstractness of quantum theory (though there are reported cases of near toddlers with exceptional mathematical understanding), but they generally wouldn't even have been taught how to add 2 and 2 at this stage in life. Young children have an amazing capability to learn, but there are a lot of basic things you need to know and understand (including having an advanced language) before you can even start looking into stuff like this.

... I... am not sure how to respond to that. Though probably not worthy of a down-vote.

Judging by the story from The Elendel article, it sounds like it just might be the other way around.

Wait, where did you get down-voted? And yes, most up-votes goes to either really well formulated arguments, new and interesting ideas... or just plain and fun humour.

They did already hint at clashes with the Southerners in The Elendel broad-sheet. So I presume it will be around Wax & Wayne's time that they make contact. That is not to say that this will happen during these books, but around that era at least.

Sell. He can be destructive, but I hope he doesn't go that violent. Brandon will somehow retroactively make The Reckoners-series part of the cosmere.

Try to focus on the fact that the longer we have to wait, the more time Brandon has to work on it and (presumably) the better the end-result will be. Doesn't help for the crying, but it does keep the Honour-chasm away.

I agree that there are underlying, universal (cosmerian? cosmersal? cosmerological) rules that the Shards are subject to, but I think what WeiryWriter (Ookla the Indubitable) meant was that it doesn't have to make sense to us at this point in time, without further knowledge of those exact rules. And yes, up-vote from me as well for such a deliciously inventive wording!

That isn't to say that the Shardholders do not have such urges aimed at themselves, but that such things would not come from or be overridden by the Shard's intent.

I do not think Harmony is on its (his?) way to shattering. Yes, there was a small, but important, power difference between Ruin and Preservation before Harmony's ascension, but it looks like he is able to divert that excess power to achieve balance: It is also true that Harmony does encourage his followers to do more good than bad - which I think was the "hint" from tAoL you were referring to - but I do not think this affects how his dual nature is balanced. According to Vorin theology (different series, but still the same Cosmere and subjected to the same rules), good and evil in the universe balance each-other out, so it is up to mankind (I chose to think other sentient beings are included in this as well) to tip the scale in favor of good through their own actions. I feel like Harmony could easily work much in the same way. EDIT: note the plural? I missed this. Good catch, though I do not think this helps a lot without further information. Up-vote even so! Also, was it ever confirmed that Hoid is from Yolen? (EDIT 2: Coppermind says "it is commonly believed", so I assume not)

It is well to note that that Preservation was a only a mere shadow of himself without real conciousness at the time of the second filling of the Well of Ascension. He might still act to fulfil his ultimate goal, but I don't think it would be completely unreasonable to assume he might not have made the ideal choices at this point.

I think it would be a bit of a stretch to assume that all he did was inhale some Stormlight. Also, this wouldn't fit in with what most people assume is the origin of his powers - his presumed Honourblade (not that that disproves your theory by itself).

Brandon does love his red-herrings.

Gloom has a point, and I would also add that the Alethi (Gavilar in particular) was already interested in hunting the Chasmfiends, so killing Gavilar to get them to the Shattered Plains only so that they could kill Greatshells would have an utterly stupid move. We still do not know exactly what it was Gavilar did or wanted to do that they feared, but it definitely was not forming a foundation for the preservation of Greatshells. And I am not saying that the Parshendi do not act dishonourably at all, but that they act with considerably more honour than most Alethi - at the very least in war. Read Kaladin's analysis of the Battle of the Tower for his thoughts upon the subject.

I do not see any indication that part of their plan was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Their plan was an 11th hour desperate attempt to stop Gavilar from doing whatever it was that they feared would bring back their gods. It was their honourable nature that made them kill him honourable (id est making the assassin wear white and taking responsibility for it afterwards).

Wait, where did this information about the necessity of the correct songs come from? What he said.

Theory: Szeth is using a Dishonourblade. Concerning the 10 book thing, it's well to know that Brandon is a heavy outliner(-ish), which is to say that he usually have more or less the whole story for several books to come planned when he starts a new series. In this particular case, he realised while outlining that he had enough material for roughly 10 books and decided to aim for that because it is such an important number in-universe. Also, Brandon has pointing out that the Stormlight Archive is supposed to be two series of five books with two separate (but related) main story arcs.

... Guys... Is it not time to let this thread die yet? I was kind of happy when updates stopped overflowing my notification-box... (Not that I want to discourage discussion...)