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I've realized recently that 17S has ruined my experience of the rest of the internet. I keep trying to upvote things I like, or link people to cosmere theory posts. Those things either don't work or aren't appreciated on other sites. Thanks for making 17S such a well-organized, actively moderated, and enjoyably executed site. You have gathered a great community here. (So, if you feel like fixing the rest of the internet while you're at it, I won't object )

First, I have the say I had the same thought as the OP when reading that scene. I considered the options in order of descending coolness and increasing plausibility: missile, grenade, firearm, crossbow, ... But that is exactly how Shallan killed Tyn. At least, I read that scene as Pattern appearing halfway through Tyn's chest. (Which, incidentally, contributes to my confusion about the Adolin/Sadeas scuffle at the end of the book. Brandon's explanation is that neither of them summoned their blades because shardblades aren't useful in a close-quarters fight. Well, if your hand is pointed the right direction, the appearing blade can kill your opponent immediately.) Yes, but for the most part we've only seen dead blades. There is reason to suspect the live blades have additional abilities. At the same time, though, I think hoser is correct: And, Tempus, I'd never considered a weaponized turtle before. That would be an interesting fight.

Excellent, and I highly approve of the Ballad of Roshone's Revenge theme. I'm not quite sure what the Warg was doing in this scene, but at least it has reptilian features now Nice use of Rosharan profanity, too.

Hmm. I know those were my suggestions, but after incorporating both I'm now worried that we may have swung things too far in the lifeless squad's favor. As you mention, Dalinar takes out a bunch all by himself with mad skills and a fire poker. Seems like a well coordinated team of 5 undead soldiers with edged weapons could take on a lot more than 3 bag-of-smoke monsters. What makes more sense? Take away some of these new advantages or change the team size?

Now that the Hugo Award nominees have been announced, 17S needs a place to discuss them! (Since Brandon is a nominated author, I've placed this thread here. If it fits better in the non-Brandon section of the site, I invite the mods to move it there.) The link above is to the official nominee list, which I've copied below. I am personally unfamiliar with the majority of these works. In addition, this year's voting includes a retro-Hugo award series for 1939, also copied below. I'm about equally familiar with those works as I am with the current nominees. I suspect this thread will suffice for both discussions. 2014 Award Nominees: 1939 Award Nominees: I have participated in the Hugos once before, and enjoyed reading as many works as I could make it through before the voting deadline. I plan to do so again, and look forward to some of the best that SFF has to offer. I am interested in your impressions of the nominees (so far the only category for which I have developed a strong opinion is Best Graphic Story, where I think Munroe's "Time" definitely deserves the top slot.) I am also curious how you feel it is best to evaluate the non-text categories, such as Best Editor, Best Fan Artist, etc. As a reader, how do I 1) find out what a given person contributed to during the year, and 2) use my time well to survey and compare those contributions?

The more I think about it the less sure I am, but I think the advantage is still ME. The 5-on-3 team up does make it a bit better, though to give the lifeless a good chance I think they all need edged weapons. Both will continue to attack until completely disabled, but I agree that ME have an agility advantage. In addition, unless there is a human commander present to direct the lifeless, I don't see them working together very intelligently, while the ME seemed to operate at least loosely as a pack. (Also, the links should fix if you change "post" to "url")

Moogle, I don't understand your reasoning here. Can you elaborate on how you got to your question? I am probably missing something because your proposal of fabrials as Hemalurgy doesn't make any sense to me. First: I can see a tenuous connection between the magic systems, but not nearly enough of one to propose they are the same. (In fact, they seem entirely distinct to me, with only Realmatic themes tying them together.) Second: What makes you think that a Shard's investiture on one shardworld would materially affect the (very prominent) practice of magic on another shardworld, itself heavily invested by different Shards? It makes much more sense to me that a prevalent magic system would be powered by that planet's shards rather than be a manifestation of a non-locally invested Shard's system. Third: Assuming for argument that a non-local Shard's system could be involved, as you suggest, why would it matter whether that Shard had invested in a planet at all? If I, as a Rosharan, can access Ruin's power from Roshar, it shouldn't make a difference whether Ruin is tied up in Scadrial or floating around doing his own thing in a random nebula somewhere. If you are just looking for an explanation for the alterations to the Soulcasting ardents, I think you can much more easily look to Shadesmar and the surges.

If you go back to the opening post, Rshara has updated it with both a summary of all 34 pages of the thread (courtesy of Veil) and the "actual answer" discovered by Veil and Jensen. Essentially, there is a mathematical thing called a Julia set, of which Argent gives a good explanation. One of these generates a graph that looks identical to the map of Roshar. (It's a bit more complicated than that, since the graph is actually 4-dimensional, and the discussion on the previous page was about how to describe which portion of the graph resembles Roshar).

This is something Brandon wrote in the front of a personalized book. It was originally posted on the forums here.

@ Odical, That Nagel::Nahel discussion is interesting in its own right. I suggest you start a dedicated thread to the nature and creative influences of the Nahel bond. As far as it relates to the map, I'm not sure about the fractal connections (in particular I don't understand the definition of fractal as relates to psychology), but there may be something there. @potato, thanks for posting that picture. I've been skimming most of the recent posts, and dismissed the "dragon curve" references as the supposed resemblance of the landmass to a dragon (which some insist on but I don't see). Your pic prompted me to look up various tilings of the dragon curve, and I'm definitely seeing a resemblance.

Spinner at 777 is very appropriate, Chaos. Well done. (Maybe stating the obvious, but we have multiple nationalities/cultures here so some may not recognize the association. At least in the USA, gambling often involves "lucky sevens" and slot machines in particular often place the jackpot on triple 7. Since spinners manipulate luck, they would presumably do well in Vegas.)

I think the "Thaylen" number labels may be off. In the chapter where Shallan's father disinherits Helaran, he moves everyone up to Nan Balat, Tet Wikim, and Asha Jushu. Previously it had been Nan Helaran, Tet Balat, Asha Wikim, and Van Jushu. Currently the key has them arranged so that Nan in "Thaylen" matches Nan in Alethi as 2, followed by Asha as 3 and Tet as 4. It seems that the correct order should be Nan (1), Tet (2), Asha (3), Van (4). (Or if the two Nan numerals do correlate, then increase each by 1) Also, I'm not sure where the label "Thaylen" came from. These are Veden titles that designate inheritance order. Did I miss somewhere else that these words are used?

New addition: "What in Damnation's eleventh name?" (Sebarial) Ten is holy, of course, but I hadn't remembered this hint about eleven being unholy. (I suspect this is purely a cultural extrapolation from the base-10 starting point. However, it is possible that Odium/Braize do in fact have an association with 11. We have WoB that the number of Unmade is fixed but not ten. I had kind of guessed that there were fewer than ten, but it could just as easily be more.) Re: "bastard", I am not including it for now. This is primarily because it is used more as an insult than a curse, similar to "crem-covered" or "stormleavings". Those would probably be worth gathering, but I'm worried about organizing them meaningfully without blowing up the list. If you think I should include them, though, make your case and I'll consider it. Yes, Aoibheann was just listing multiple instances and specifying which name form was used.

Some good points. Here are the relevant passages: As you bring up, there are some things that don't add up about the Skybreakers as presented here. Previous threads have discussed the various secret societies, and the Skybreakers in particular, including Helaran's involvement. The upshot is that it is still ambiguous. To summarize the different opinions on those threads: (Some of you were major contributors in those threads, so I apologize if my concise summary misstates your theories.) Nale might allow surgebinders if, belonging to his own order, they are trained specifically to not do whatever causes Desolations. The Skybreakers that Mraize refers to and that Helaran sought out may not be the same Skybreakers that have been executing surgebinders under Nale's direction. Mr T's guess that Helaran trained Shallan could imply either surgebinding or just a knowledge of the Nahel bond process (since Teft helped "train" Kaladin, you clearly don't need to be a KR to help someone down that path). Helaran's knowledge of surgebinding (or ability), could have come independently or from a separate (non-Skybreaker) source. Some of those possibilities seem more likely to me than others, but I won't argue specifically for any scenario here. (Maybe later.) What is clear is that Helaran was actively involved with a group antagonistic to Amaram's Sons of Honor, and that group provided him with Plate and Blade. Whatever Helaran was up to, I think that Shallan knew about it, and since it was connected in her mind with her mother's death, she blocked it out. Hopefully she will start letting herself remember some of these important things before she gets too deep into trouble. (Okay, maybe it's too late for that, but still. Enough with the repression and denial.) EDIT: To be clear, I'm not trying to discourage discussion of the Skybreakers etc. in this thread. I just want to inform our conversation with what people have already said so we don't spend too much time repeating the same thoughts. EDIT2: I just read the flashback where Shallan meets Wit, which takes place a year and a half after the one quoted in the OP. It is clear that at the time of her conversation with Wit she does not know where Helaran is or what he's up to. So if she did know about his activities (which I still think there is a good case for), then that was a temporary situation.

We have WoB that even darkeyes feel the Thrill, so it is definitely not restricted to shardbearers. Also, when Taravangian arrives in Jah Keved he says that the fighting has been so terrible because the Thrill is there now, rather than hanging out just in Alethkar. So it seems to be pretty universal.

Added the invocations of Battah and Chana, but not the direct references (e.g. the monologue). Also added "What in the Halls?" by Van Jushu.

Shallan's viewpoints, especially her flashbacks, show her mind blanking whenever she starts thinking about something she's hiding from herself. This most frequently involves events surrounding her mother's death, specifically her initial bonding with Pattern, his manifestation as a blade, etc. She confronts this specific memory at the end of WoR, but as many have pointed out there are still mysteries in her past that we don't know about. In the flashback chapter 27 "Fabrications to Distract," I found these two quotes: The second instance is a clear case of her coping mechanism, but what about the first? Did she stop thinking about Helaran for similar reasons? Does she actually know what he's up to? Taravangian speculates that perhaps Shallan had been trained to surgebind by her brother. I initially discounted that as ridiculous--clearly Shallan was discovering her powers on her own. However, if Helaran was off surgebinding with the Skybreakers and Shallan knew about it, she would likely block it out of her mind because of the connection to Pattern. I think it likely that she knew, and possible that Helaran did in fact help "introduce" Shallan to Pattern in the first place.

Props to the OP! I have been trying to figure out what the Szeth-Odium connection is. Those "everstorm approaching" premonitions as Szeth is about to arrive had me confused for a long time. I'd finally come up with a (bad) theory (about how the Honorblade made him aware of Braize and Taln's screams) and was about to post it when I found this thread. The Yelig-Nar idea fills in the holes for me and makes much more sense than what I came up with. Also, that WoB you quote also had me confused before, but reading it with the Unmade in mind makes it quite clear. Consider me convinced!

Love the song, Patrick. I added Yalb's blustering, as well as "glories within," which was used by Szeth in WoK. Starvin' was already noted, but thanks for pointing it out. Keep them coming!

I read it the same way Kurk did: listeners can see more of Shadesmar than humans can, so they see more of the spren's cognitive nature and they see them coming from farther away. When Shallan views Shadesmar after the shipwreck she is astonished at how big and ominous the exhaustionspren appear on that side. And Pattern appears in his symbolhead version there, in contrast to his representation in the physical realm. That's not to say that angerspren and stormspren couldn't share characteristics, perhaps explaining why Eshonai associated them in her mind. (I don't think the windspren:honorspren analogy holds, though.)

These stuck out to me as great finds: It's nice to know that the Oldbloods are (probably) not yet another secret society. We have enough of those running around as it is. I like the historical color. Alethi wedding coming up: cue the shipping war. If I recall correctly, past questions of whether Dawnshards are distinct from Honorblades have been RAFO'd. Is that right, or is there WoB I missed? Would this response serve as confirmation that they are the same?

Just a side note. I live in Atlanta, GA, but for some reason I dreamed last night that I'd gone to this signing. And at that signing Brandon answered all sorts of questions about Hoid; but more than that, Brandon wowed us all by revealing his pre-writing career as an Olympic javelin-throw coach. I notice that part isn't in your recording, so I'm guessing my dream may have strayed from reality a bit.

By your leave, then... 843 is Shardbearer. Edge not yet found. Calling for a downvote rectification please (or additional downvote/upvote testers, if you prefer)

I guess we could downvote you a few times if we really wanted to find the boundary...

Scanned the active posters for new numbers. Here are the range extensions I found. Some are only incremental, but a few close the gaps. Bold is a new hard boundary. Should be clear from the text, but italics highlight a lower bound while the rest are upper bounds. Unless I missed something, this should make 105 the lowest unconfirmed rank. 845 already Shardbearer 791 still Spinner 549 still Kings Wit 470 still King's tester 438 still Ghostblood 341 still Stormwarden 645 still soulcaster 298 still Silent Gatherer 196 still High Prelan 145 already Cobalt Guard 128 already Hazekiller 99 still Babsk 74 still Idrian Monk 64 already Obligator 50 already Grand