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Having read through all the posts here, I want to add my voice. First, I think our users are pretty adaptable, and while a change in any direction would be disruptive and (clearly) upsetting for a while, I don't think it will take long for the community to adjust to whatever the system becomes. People here are friendly and welcoming, and I believe that the culture here will continue to be friendly and welcoming regardless of what happens to the rep system. Therefore, ignoring for a moment my own preference on the role of upvotes, I think the primary consideration should be the amount of headache involved for the staff/admins. Rubix didn't give specifics of how the rep system demands his time, but I believe him that it does. While the rep system is a big positive aspect of the 17S experience, if managing it takes our staff away from all the other good work they do to support the site and community then it is a net loss. The mods and admins are dedicated volunteers, and we have had many threads in the past about how they make this one of the very best communities on the internet. Let's not endanger that with a high-maintenance rep system. I for one would be willing to settle for a sub-optimal rep system that I didn't agree with if having a better one required all of the staff's time and energy. As for what the rep system "should" look like, I have a few opinions to share. These are the factors I would consider in making a decision, but are relatively lacking in concrete suggestions. For what it's worth, I spend most of my time in the theory boards and in Creator's Corner. 1) Many have talked about what getting upvotes means to them, or what they think when they see the rep count for a post or user. But for me, upvotes are primarily experienced in the act of giving them, and it is a huge part of what I love about the Shard. I read far more than I post, and since I don't come to the site daily I often encounter threads after the discussion has moved on to something new. It would be redundant or distracting to post a response, but I feel involved by upvoting the posts I consider particularly worthwhile. I have never hit the upvote quota, but I do it frequently enough that when I see something I like it is habit to look for the little green arrow. There have been multiple times when I have tried to upvote emails or blog posts, and realized sadly that I can't because they only exist in this corner of the internet. Like I said initially, I'm sure I would adapt to whatever quota or valuation were put in place, but I would be sad if the rep system went away entirely. Not being able to upvote (or downvote) things would remove a large part of what makes me feel engaged and involved in the community, and I suspect this is true for other semi-lurkers who read more than they post. 2) I hope that any quota takes into consideration that some people "binge" on the site on weekends or once a month, and they might hit the quota much faster and more frequently than those who get daily doses of the community. (Though, honestly, I suspect those members won't encounter the limit nearly as much as some of the daily power users.) 3) I delurked about 6 months before the WoR release, and followed 17S intermittently before that, so I have experienced the shift in upvote culture and in membership. They are absolutely different, but (as has been mentioned) they didn't occur in isolation. Prior to the expansion in membership that came with Words of Radiance and Steelheart, 17S would more or less go dark between book releases. It was primarily theory boards, and there were maybe a dozen people that would log in and sometimes post on a given day. At the moment, there are 15 members logged in and 84 more viewing the site. Apparently 315 people have been online in the past 24 hours. That is probably a little above baseline because of the upcoming Bands of Mourning release, but it is a far cry from what we used to have. While I rarely if ever go to the social and RP subforums, the members who do go there keep the site active with their daily posts and, yes, daily upvotes. Without those members logging in and occasionally checking out the cosmere threads, I suspect the theory boards would have far lower traffic than they do. I believe that the social and RP community (who, I gather, are the ones most opposed to limiting upvotes) will adapt to quotas and policies, but if the culture there does suffer and begin to feel less active or welcoming, then I think the whole site will be affected. If the answer that keeps the whole community thriving is decoupling post and user totals, or moderate quotas, or unlimited "devalued" upvotes, I would be okay with it. 4) With that said, I do think that upvotes are more valuable (and meaningful) in relative scarcity. By which I mean that a posts' upvote total should tell you something more than how many people saw it. Perhaps I am wrong, but I see the admins' decision to change things as an attempt to prevent further explosion of upvote numbers, not primarily an effort to correct or alter the way things are done now. i.e. they are changing the trend, not the situation. Given the current state of upvote culture on 17S, I think the balance to be struck is not the one discussed so far (between theory posts and joke posts), but rather keeping the upvote value high (translation: scarce) while also having enough in the system that new members or infrequent posters can accumulate a handful and not feel left out.

Wow! That is incredible. I vote for the Reshi isles, but I also think you could do something really fun with the Davar estate. And if you are interested in non-Rosharan locations I would love to see how you approach Kredik Shaw.

Here's something that would distance your story from the self harm issues, but it may not fit with what you've already developed for your world. When you said "scars" my immediate thought was of how long it takes for a regular wound to develop scar tissue. If it is the scar, not simply the cut, that causes the magic to work then a magic user must plan a long way ahead. You can't really have people slicing themselves up for immediate effect, and if it is planned then it seems most likely that the incisions would be done with (or by) other people. I also see people in this world discovering a use for ointments etc. that prevent wound healing and promote more prominent scarring, not to mention a huge use for anesthetic agents. (By the way, what technology level is this society?) There are two more important questions--must the scars be made by the person themself? And does the shape of the scar matter or is it simply the length/size that powers the magic? If the shape matters then you have moved even further from self harm by making it a creative, possibly artistic process. If someone else can do the actual slicing then you would naturally have a huge industry in tattoo parlor style magic lounges, ranging from posh to clinical to scuzzy to downright criminal. Those sorts of locations might still exist, on a smaller level, to provide material and know-how to people if they have to do the cutting themselves. On the other hand, what is the role of intent in this system? Can accidental scars power magical effects? If so, then you not only have an interesting way to deal with accident and abuse victims, you also have some unintended consequences that befall those who engage in self harm, and an avenue to deal with it explicitly if you want to. The effect could be good, bad, or neutral depending on the needs of the story and the role of scar shape. If intent matters, then the follow-on consequences of scars inflicted during self harm will almost always be greater harm or pain. In this case you will definitely need someone with experience in these issues to consult with. Finally, a point that is not really on the same ethical front but is an important consideration for how this works (which you've probably already dealt with.) The limitation that "scars may not intersect" screams out for sabotage and accident. Don't want your enemy to have their powers? One small cut in the right place totally negates their elaborate scar network (though this neutralization may take serious planning ahead, depending on the cut versus scar question above). Accidentally kicked by a horse? You are no longer useful to the people who hired you for your enhanced skills. Bummer! Edit: Oh yeah, I almost forgot! If it is scar tissue specifically that powers the magic, you could do something interesting and possibly unexpected using internal injuries. Old man down the road has cirrhosis from a life of drinking, and his diseased liver is all scarred over, providing him with unbelievable eyesight or telepathy or something. (Though it might be limited to more acute injuries depending on how you apply the "non-intersecting" rule.)

I also want to point out that their currency names are apparently based in high imperial:

Thanks for the analysis, Moogle. That's an interesting perspective on it. I'm going to have to think about it some more.

Thanks for the clarification, though i don't think it changes the substance of what I said. I based my comment on the Coppermind entry, which references the annotations. I agree with you that the function is rewriting sDNA, but I still think we know too little about what that means, so functionally the effect can still qualify as unknown. Even if not, the idea seems supported that the wider possibilities of Lerasium are more restricted in alloyed form.

A few thoughts, mostly about the point of this exercise. At the outset, I agree that lots of metals means lots of complicated interactions and abilities, and there seems to be a huge number to deal with. But, how much does that matter? Does including godmetals really gain us thousands of metallic abilities? First, though this makes little difference to the math, So, I would suggest using a 2x multiplier instead of 3x for the different metallic arts, since I don't think that dealing with the three together makes sense, given how differently hemalurgy functions compared with the other two. The identity of a hemalurgic metal doesn't really translate into a new ability per se. Yes, it steals some other attribute, but for simple spikings the spikee then operates within the rules of whatever was stolen. For hemalurgic constructs, there is a lot we still don't know, but the arrangement of spikes seems much more important than what those spikes are made of. Theoretically you could make an inquisitor with all steel spikes, or all brass, for example. Second, it seems that the so-called godmetals are significantly more complicated than this combinatorial approach. WoB is that we are missing some important information on how they work in all the metallic arts. We do know that a knowledgeable mistborn could get an unknown effect out of lerasium, but the basic function appears to be granting of allomantic powers. Importantly, a lerasium-steel alloy will make you into a steel misting. That's not a new ability so much as a way to gain access to the ones we already know. If this pattern (godmetal gives you lots of abilities, godmetal alloy only gives you one) is true for the unknown lerasium function as well, then even a knowledgeable user would gain nothing by alloying the godmetal. It would be more useful to keep the godmetal pure. In my mind, alloying a godmetal will in most cases lead to a limiting (or, at best, specialization) of potential, not enhancement. Third, regardless of whether there are a few hundred metals or hundreds of thousands of permutations, I think that extending the numbers this way will largely result in redundancies. This is particularly clear for Feruchemy, since there is really only so much of a person to be stored or tapped--there is only so much magical space to fill. Two of the base metals can already store physical speed and mental speed, and there are a dozen threads here that discuss the overlap between the two. I suspect that the more metals you add, the more overlap you will see between abilities. "So you can store calories and mass? Well, with my Aonium-based metalminds I can store fat and buoyancy!" Allomancy has a little more room to spread out, but since magic from all the worlds works on similar principles, I suspect you will get similar effects from various alloys. And even when the abilities are different, their practical application ends up being fairly similar. If burning a Tanavastium-Steel alloy gives you access to one of the Windrunner lashings, for example, your gravity-based "steel jumping" will look a whole lot like the usual kind. I definitely recognize that there are important distinctions between related power sets, but my point is that having a huge number of metals doesn't ultimately grant you access to an unimaginable space of magical power.

Chapter 3 is up. I for one am a bit put out at the manipulation that's happening here. The order in which the information is presented to our heroes is clearly calculated. The only reason not to lead with that final reveal is if you are treating them like marks rather than collaborators. It could be that the kandra are just in the habit of manipulating people this way, but it puts me on my guard for sure. What else are they hiding?

I've relocated to Framingham, MA Thanks for doing this!

I strongly disagree about the emotional allomancy guesses. I think Wax has some real issues and is still emotionally raw enough to be affected by a genuinely difficult reminder of his pain. Calling it allomantic manipulation makes his struggle cheap and undermines the obstacles he faces.

Is it possible (not specifying mechanism) to change your spiritweb to the extent that you are no longer connected to the Shard(s) of your home planet? For example, could someone from Sel end up with a fully Nalthian identity? Or could you remove Ruin's investment in a (Final Empire era) Scadrian so that they no longer had a realmatic connection to Ruin at all?

Maybe this is obvious to many already and I just missed it until now, but this quote was an "Aha!" moment for me. There have been lots of discussions about how Hoid collects magic systems, such as how he became an allomancer when he apparently did not burn the Lerasium bead he took. Now I realize that as a pre-shattering individual he already harbors a spiritweb connection to each of the Shards, since Adonalsium was made up of all 16. So potentially the threshold required for him to access the various magic systems is much lower than it would be for someone like Demoux who can worldhop but doesn't have a connection to the power of the worlds he visits. Obviously that doesn't answer all the questions, but it makes some things clearer to me.

Hooray! I am excited for more Steris. With these preview chapters starting, it may be about time to split the spoiler boards for SoS and BoM.

How many characters from the upcoming graphic novels have already appeared in a published work? (As a way to get at as-yet-unidentified world hoppers)

My reading of the quote is that the Herdazian and Horneater lineages predate the shattering, but I can see why you might read it differently. The Aimians hasn't shown up in the discussion yet, so "both" doesn't make sense to me except in reference to the two hybrid races he just mentioned. The idea that the intermixing happened pre-shattering but not in Roshar hasn't occurred to me. I suppose it could be possible, but it seems terribly unlikely given the degree to which listeners are adapted similar to the rest of Roshar's ecology, and incorporate spren (presumably a Roshar-only phenomenon) into their biology at such a fundamental level.

Recently on reddit, Brandon added some additional info to what we already knew about human-listener interbreeding: (emphasis mine) I've seen such speculation before, but this is the first confirmation that I'm aware of. Though, as Kurkistan has pointed out, Brandon has danced around this question in the past: The new quote definitively answers the "are Parshendi of [shard]" question, along with telling us that humans have been on Roshar for a long time. That means that any Tranquiline Halls egress, if it occurred, was either wholly unrelated to the "recent unpleasantness" with Odium or was not the event that introduced humanity to Roshar. (FYI, I asked a follow-up question about human-Aimian hybrids and got a RAFO.)

I know there was also a mention of it during the SoS tour, but the one I remember is from the San Francisco Firefight signing. sourceEdit: here's one from the SoS signing in San Jose. source Also, from the Seattle Firefight signing we have this. source You could probably message Wetlander, who made that post, and get the info that was left out.

By finding something on voice, do you mean comparing narrator interpretations of characters in the audiobook? Because that is a good idea that hadn't occurred to me until now. Regarding the names, the similarity comes from (and points to) the fact that both Mrall and Mraize are native Thaylens. Mrall's ethnicity is stated in the books. Mraize's is only hinted, but Peter has confirmed it.

I've now moved to Boston, MA.

Or, you know, just for fun. This site is selling these fun shirts in various colors. Extra points if you carry a copy of the Book of Endless Pages. Edit: Finally got the image fixed.

Fixed. Until reading Moogle's post it hadn't occurred to me that there was a valid non-simile way to interpret the line, though that discussion has clearly happened before. (The first link contains supporting quotes from the Rysn interlude in WoR, where Aimians are reputed to have limb-rearranging powers). To be honest I had trouble parsing Moogle's post, so I was trying to clarify the two readings, especially since Argent seemed so sure of his interpretation. I am not completely convinced yet, but I am starting to lean away from the simile version at the moment. As for the motivation of using the line, I disagree. If Hoid is just giving an example of something not human, the mention of a Dysian Aimian (rather than, say, an axehound) makes sense for two reasons. First, I think it is intended as a worldbuilding hook, a reminder that there is something else weird out there that the reader hasn't met yet. Second, Hoid's previous line about Balderdash: "Isn't it odd that gibberish words are often the sounds of other words, cut up and dismemebered, then stitched into something like them--yet wholly unlike them at the same time?" comments on the superficial resemblance but fundamental difference of two things. If the Dysians have a vaguely humanoid structure while being obviously different from people, they fit that analogy better than a whitespine, rockbud, or parshman would. Since prior to this thread I had assumed the simile interpretation was correct, I definitely see the merits of that version. I find, though, that the alternate reading appears to be at least as well-supported (until we get more info).

Where does this come from? To my knowledge the only fabrial we know for sure is in his possession is Regrowth. I can see why you might speculate that he has collected an ancient fabrial reproducing each of the surges, but that is by no means something we know. Have I missed something?

I was about to weigh in with the same thing skaa said, but upon rereading that section I am inclined to change my mind and see it the way Argent represented. Here is the quote again: In the past I've read that to mean "reassemble body parts like a Dysian Aimian does," but in light of the "barely humanoid" quote from CthuluSpren it makes more sense to say "reassemble body parts into something as different as, say, a Dysian Aimian." From threads I've seen, a good portion of Sharders share my former interpretation, so if reading that line as a simile is a mistake then it is a pretty common one, and a whole bunch of us are "way past the realm of headcanon" together.

This is the best theory for those events I think I've seen yet. Thanks for presenting it!

Two of Paalm's minions have gotten me thinking about the misdirection at work in the story. These are fairly disparate points, some about plot details, others about Realmatics and behind-the scenes cosmere stuff. I’d be grateful for your thoughts on any of them. 1. What happened to the waiter? (Minor plot confusion) I have reread the party and chase scenes a few times, and it still isn't clear to me what happened to the waiter who jumps out the window. Here is the scenario I came up with—I would appreciate any input on how you understood the scene and if there are any details I missed. What we know: At the party, Paalm is wearing Innate (the governor), but has arranged with the Set to distract Waxillium. For their part, the Set intend to lure Wax into a trap and kill him. The server that Wax thinks is Bleeder is actually a Set minion. When confronted, he leaps out the window, but he is metalborn with a talent that lets him escape and hide. (Most probable options are coinshot, lurcher, or skimmer). When Wax gives chase, MeLaan follows Wax and Innate conveniently disappears so that Paalm can wear a different body for her bloody visit to the church. Wax follows a cab, and the driver claims his charge jumped out at a certain corner, which sends Wax straight to the ambush. Speculation: the server never actually gets in the cab. The cab driver, also a Set minion, drives away and sends Wax towards the trap. While it is also possible that the server actually reaches the ground and gets in a normal cab, it seems more likely to me that the Set would not risk having Wax accidentally catch up to the bait and skip the trap altogether. -------- 2. Who is talking to the suborned guard? (Realmatic mysteries and hemalurgic speculation, plus some possible Trell identity clues) At the governor’s first speech, Marasi notices the would-be assassin because he is shuffling in front of her, in a way that she specifically thinks would be deliberate except that the guard can't see her. Was Paalm (who appears to have been sending the “kill him, kill him!” telepathy) trying to get Marasi’s attention specifically? I suspect not, since it seems unlikely that Paalm (wearing Innate) could see her either, but it is worth considering. On the other hand, what if Marasi had gotten her bubble up earlier? More than just deflecting bullets, we know that time bubbles “interfere with almost all forms of investiture.” Would the barrier of a time bubble have blocked Paalm’s ability to speak to the spiked guard? (Beyond the simple difference in speed, that is.) Is hiding in a time bubble a valid way to avoid Shardic (or lesser) telepathy via spikes? Does that mean that Harmony can’t read Wax’s thoughts while he’s inside one of Wayne’s bubbles while wearing his earring? It seems from the guard's grimace and muttering that he is struggling against the compulsion to shoot, which I assumed to be active communication from Paalm, given his conversation with Wax: However, even at the police station, both before and after his meeting with Wax, Rian continues to mutter and act unhinged. The hemalurgic piercing (found in the skin of his chest) is evidently still sending him messages, since he calms once it is removed. I find it highly unlikely that Paalm sat outside the interrogation room the whole time sending him creepy vibes, so I posit that this was another mystery metal spike, and the entity Bleeder speaks with later in the book (presumably Trell?) is the one communicating here. This seems more likely in light of the apparently controlled actions of the howlers/chimeras in the Homeland, which I believe were being directed by that same entity. As an aside, it is interesting to note that if the assassin couldn't distinguish Paalm's voice from that of this other entity, we either have a case of Shardic impersonation, (for which there is precedent, like when Ruin pretended to be Reen or Kelsier), or we have circumstantial evidence that "Trell" may in fact be female. I would find it amusing if Harmony’s caution against assuming everyone dangerous is male in fact applies to the various theories here on 17S attributing the mystery metal to Bavadin, Rayse, or Kelsier. (I recognize, of course, that the assassin could also just be crazy and not in a position to differentiate the voices in his head.) Either way, who is Rian referring to when he says “You can’t save him.”? On the surface it is obviously the governor, but the “I haven’t even killed your father yet” misdirection makes me question the messages Paalm is obviously sending. Is this perhaps an indication that “Trell” is going to (try to) kill Harmony? And is Rian's exclamation of “Oh, Ruin” a simple curse, or is it more of a clue about the identity of “God.” If the latter, then the theories about Harmony’s excess Ruin acting autonomously gain strength. (Though for the record I still have a hard time believing that excess Ruin would generate a mystery metal rather than simply atium and its alloys.) To summarize, my questions are basically What happened to the waiter? How much fine control was Paalm exerting on the guard, and was she expecting Marasi specifically to interfere? Who was talking to Rian while he was in custody? If Trell, are there clues to his/her identity? Do speed bubbles block hemalurgic telepathy? What about aluminum hats/rooms, etc?