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As always, excellent job. Your attention to detail is amazing. I particularly love your inclusion of fauna like the crab thing Wit talks to and the skyeels following Mr T's boat. Can't pick a favorite, but Urithiru looks great, and the stormfather definitely made me smile.

He huffed and he puffed and he blew the bad description in!

A vagrant going door to door for food is turned away and eventually killed by the unwelcoming residents. Hint 1: In the course of events, two brothers separately discover the importance of homeowner's insurance. Hint 2: While it is common in many fictive cultures to swear by variants of "God's beard," the brothers in this story stand out in that they often swear by their own facial hair.

Ah. Must be City of Stairs. Haven't read it yet, but it's getting closer to the top of my list.

Words of Radiance:

I want to say Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but the roles are reversed (exiled god and granddaughter of a king)

Thanks for the input. I'm encouraged that you are interested. I didn't want to overdo on the specifics if you weren't. I have some work deadlines that will keep me if the site for a few days, but when I get back I'll write up a more involved summary and address your ideas. Some of them do sound promising.

I agree that would be an interesting direction to take things, but having that ability in-world would fundamentally change the plot and themes of the story, and immensely complicate the other aspects of the magic that I am exploring. (Magic stealing isn't something I can toss into the middle and not use again, especially in a book about wresting control of a government where legitimacy of the imperial family originally derives from magical ability.) The closest I could get would be to have the villain try it based on an old legend that ended up being about something else entirely. Actually, that version has some real potential if I used it to increase the tension and to foreshadow some later events, but I'm going to have to think carefully about whether I want to introduce the idea of magic stealing only to debunk it later. I especially worry that readers would think the debunking is misdirection and expect that ability to show up after all.

You are right, golems are usually included in stories as cautionary "creation-gone-wrong" automata, and their thoughts are either ignored or nonexistent. Here are the stories I can think of that have featured golems outside of the "be careful what orders you give this" role: Bartimaeus Trilogy: The Golem's Eye (already mentioned) - antagonist; material and animating energy discussed; thoughts etc. nonexistent Discworld: Feet of Clay, Making Money, Going Postal (already mentioned) - motives, individuality, and opinions given substantial treatment. The Golem and the Jinni - a truly excellent book all about the inner life of a golem--highly recommended Gunnerkrigg Court: Ch 33 Give and Take (link) - definitely individual, definitely with agendas. Fablehaven - Been a while, but I think the golem shows up in most of the books in the series. Starting out as an automaton, various events lead him to gain more volition and sentience. I'm sure there are more, but in looking for additional inspiration I found that the category page for Fictional Golems on Wikipedia is surprisingly short, even though it includes some edge cases (like Olaf from Frozen). Top google hits gave me these three lists. (There is some overlap.) I am surprised that the Smiths who make the weapons can't use them, but on reflection it makes for a much more interesting dynamic. Rather than two different types of combat mage you necessarily get a combat type and a support staff type. The more I think about it the more I'm intrigued by the implications, so I think you have a winner concept here. It will really set itself apart from the other systems if you develop that aspect of it. As far as power balance for Flagrants, I think the key is setting their "recharge" period long enough that any impressive and flashy magic they do prevents them from doing more for a very significant period. Whether that means 5 minutes or 5 days is up to you, and probably depends on how much power they put into it, but the cost of "If I do this I will be vulnerable and all my enemies will know it" is a good one. This automatically creates an environment where group tactics and support trump individual power and skill, and where enhanced weaponry can be crucial to keeping your Flagrants alive. Are Smiths only good for weapons? Can they make magical construction equipment? Enhanced kitchen appliances? Super-efficient air conditioners? Extra-awesome speedboats? It seems to me that non-martial applications of magical instrumentation would be an important aspect of the society as well. As discussed by others, this isn't too likely to come about from the setup you describe. However, if you are interested in including that visual, it should be fairly straightforward to come up with a semi-plausible reason for it to exist. For example, maybe there is a bacterial symbiote of the plants that is vulnerable to radiation from one of the stars. It could grow in a colored film on one side of the leaves, and the leaves have evolved to turn with the suns in order to shade their friendly colonies. Alternatively (and this one is trickier since plants are sessile) there are lots of examples of light/dark coloring in animals to camouflage against different backgrounds (e.g. fish with light underbellies, so they are harder to see from below). Apply some sort of camouflage-against-locusts idea, and you could maybe come up with a rationale to have isolated forests that behave that way. Also, if you've been to a flower garden you may recall that our boring earth-plants grow colorful parts that are not dedicated to photosynthesis. I'm sure you could come up with an excuse to have certain flowering plants look chromatically bifurcated for the benefit of different pollinators or something.

Thanks to you both for your suggestions. I'm in the rewrite phase, and unfortunately most of the ideas won't fit with the world/plot as it stands now (e.g. no harvesting of magic possible), but reasoning through why they won't work has helped me identify the constraints on the story, and the things that could legitimately change. In particular, I realized that though I've been treating Minor Villain as a dupe rather than a player, that isn't strictly necessary. They could easily be in on the larger plot, provided Major Villain has a backup betrayal option (which, given how things go in the second half, actually works really well.) Short version: Major Villain needs to sneakily murder the 4-5 people ahead of her son in the line of succession (first casualty was the protagonist's brother), draw the army away from the capital, and stage a political incident that makes the current emperor look weak. She has already fomented a rebellion in a southern province that is taking the army's attention, and the kidnapping is (in the current version) intended to make it look like the western provinces are joining in on that fight. Minor Villain has quite a bit of leeway, depending on how the political connections make the most sense. I'm revising that portion, so it is open to adjustment in a number of directions. The main constraint on the kidnapping plan is that it can't require much subterfuge on the front end, since the story includes a classic lady-in-waiting-switcheroo-and-mistaken-identity element that won't work if the kidnappers spend any real time with the princess's party before springing the trap.

Excellent! We've had a few threads about spheres here. This one has a lot of discussion about their properties. The link will take you to a post halfway through that has our current best guesses for the gem sizes. Scroll down a bit and you'll get a photo of stemware with encased gems that is probably very close to what spheres would look like. There are also quite a few book quotes in that thread. To summarize that thread: each denomination (chip, mark, broam) has a specific carat of gem, all of which are cut. Broams are definitely faceted, chips seem not to be, and marks probably are but we're not sure. For size, a sphere is probably about 15 mm in diameter, with a broam containing a gem between 6 and 10 mm in diameter. Marks and chips have the same size sphere but contain proportionally smaller gems. If they turn out well, do you have plans to offer them for sale? I'm sure some of us would be interested. If you were to sell them, would the pricing be similar to your cremation marbles? Less? By the way, that is a fascinating idea that I had never heard of before. I only briefly browsed your site, so you may have explained it there, but did you come up with the idea? Is it common? Do you get a lot of requests? Anyway, welcome to the forum, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

@ Sir Jerric: One possibility is to task her with bodyguard duties for (e.g.) Joe Genius on his save the world from techno-threat mission, and have them dislike each other. Either the two normal people are trying to help the relationship be less antagonistic, by pointing out ways that she is acerbic or identifying ways to give JG more space. Alternatively (or twist in the middle), she fails at the bodyguarding and JG dies through a botched kidnapping or a genuine assassination. Then the norms could help her deal with the failure/grief/guilt. (And/or, this now leaves her in the position of trying to do JG's job, without his intellectual background and ability, so the norms help her to tackle an area in which she has little ability and has to learn all-new skills.) As for my story problem, I've been struggling with villain motivations. Major Villain is plotting a coup, so they have Minor Villain (who lives in an outlying region) kidnap the emperor's daughter (our protagonist) as a feint to draw off the imperial forces from the capital. My problem: why does Minor Villain go through with it, when they know that the army will probably come to punish them? What can they get out of the short-term hostage situation? What might Major Villain be offering them? What is their exit strategy? For context, royals have magical ability, but our protagonist is not known for her strength in that area. Minor Villain is a landholding noble, in charge of a poorly productive agricultural landship. Due to travel difficulties, minor villain can expect a 4-month window before they have to deal with a large enemy force.

Okay, here are the actual quotes:

I agree with Cortez, but I think we probably need the actual quote to see what Mraize said. My understanding of the conversation is that Shallan Davar is already widely known as the Radiant who saved the armies. Mraize, being knowledgeable about Radiant abilities/characteristics, deduces from the clues available that Lightweaver is the correct order and therefore she has access to Soulcasting. What I recall him saying is something like "I wouldn't have figured out you and Veil were the same person if your abilities hadn't been displayed in saving the army." Specifically, I think he is referring to the drawing skills that mapped out their path and located the oathgate. That seems to have been the connection that let him connect the dots. When Veil initially reveals that she can draw from memory, she specifically thinks about the necessity of hiding Shallan's ability to draw. If I remember correctly, I think there is also a line during the plateau mapping where Shallan thinks, "I shouldn't be displaying this--oh, well, if I don't we all die. I'll deal with repurcussions later."

As someone whose research is a year behind because of mouse breeding problems, I'll just say that sometimes you wish you could take more extreme measures than just waiting.As far as the story goes... Sounds interesting! First brainstorm for a name for the flashy magic users is Flagrants, in part because it sounds a bit like "conflagration" which I expect would be a fairly common result of their activity. Regarding the system: Can anyone use a weapon once it has been forged, or just other MageSmiths? How much could you modify a weapon, either as a mund or as a rival smith? Does, for example, trading out the trigger mechanism in a gun destroy the speak? Weaken it? Alter its effect?Transfer the magic to a new gun built around the removed pieces? What determines who had access to magic, and whether they are a Smith or a Flagrant? Can one learn to be either and it's just personal choice, or is it more deterministic than that?

Last night I dreamed about you guys! No, seriously. Weiry and Twylight came in to tell us the very moving story of how Kurkistan and Brandon, who hated each other personally, were teamed up in a losing battle against their common enemies. As Brandon is about to die he tells Kurk that he is an UltraKandra. *gasp* Basically, after he died he would take over Kurk's body, but all of the powers Brandon possessed would transfer too. (Kurk would then be dead, and UltraBrandon in his new body would look like whatever he wanted to.) It was heavily implied that this had already happened to TheOnlyJoe. Then Twy name dropped at least a dozen other Sharders who she said we're all either Ultras themselves, or were (incomprehensibly) opposing the Ultra takeover. Maybe I'm spending too much time on here.

Not book, movie, TV, or comics? I am having a hard time thinking of a Broadway musical that fits your description. Must be oral history then? Claymation documentary?

Fantastic four, maybe? That sounds like it could be Dr. Doom at a stretch.

Oh! Oh! I know this one! Way of Kings! (Or maybe WoR, since the gravity stuff mostly happens there.)

I'm excited for Mistborn: The Final Meme (and sequels), but I don't know what Twi's reading time is like currently. If she would prefer to do a less-weighty project in the interim, I'd also enjoy the Cosmeme works Memes for Silence, The Emperor's Meme, or Memes of the Dusk.

That is a good thought, but since all three moons transit serially in the course of the night, they must be much closer at the time of transit than the LaGrange points. I like the idea, though! Way to consider other angles.

I'm pretty sure it's not a change.Brandon has not said so in as many words, but I gathered from several comments he made in the recent AMA that he still plans to continue the in-world text as title pattern, at least through book 5. The implication is that the shardblade originally took its name from a book or from the same historical source as a book.

Yes, that's my impression.

Ah, that's right. Thank you for the quotes. It sounds like the inflation scoops are simply inverted funnels that capture air during the descent into the atmosphere. As best I can tell, these scoops channel the air into "lift spheres," which are basically sturdy balloons. Initially, these balloons are used for their large area, acting as parachutes to slow the ship's descent. Later, these spheres are used to make up the modular body of the aircraft: they appear to be actively positioned to change the aircraft's shape and aerodynamics. Since the air inside was heated by the compression of atmospheric entry, the hot air in the inflated balloons will also provide lift. Now that you mention it, I'm surprised there hasn't been a thread on this story yet. Thanks for starting one!

It's been a while since I read that. Can you remind me of the context where they show up? Is it human tech or something the boilers make?