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Welcome! Glad to have you here. 

Welcome!

There are a few threads over in the Creator's Corner subforum where people have compiled clothing descriptions for artwork or sewing cosplay outfits. I am not sure which are still active, but here are a few to try.

Welcome! I think I may have met you at Boskone! (I was the one handing out 17th Shard business cards)

Welcome! I also love Mistborn (which was my first). What parts of the forum most need improvement for screen readers? I'm sorry to say I hadn't thought at all about trying to navigate the forums that way.

Welcome! I checked out your goodreads (my account is linked in my signature) and your 5-star ratings that I haven't read yet were mostly LE Modesitt books. Do you have a favorite of his?

On 7/27/2017 at 7:06 AM, Leiasqz said:

Most of my favourite childhood book settings included living among vikings, living in the stone age, being stranded on deserted islands or running away to the forest.

Did you ever find a book with 3 or more of those elements?

Absolutely! By your choice of expletive, I assume you love Stormlight. Which other Sanderson books are your favorites? For me, Mistborn and Rithmatist are top recommendations.

Welcome! Glad to have you here. Re: your topic title, Sharder and Sanderfan are both good choices. :-)

Welcome! There is a locations thread that people can post their locations in. The map linked from there shows quite a few Aussies :-) Can't say I'd ever heard of Geelong before. Does that name mean something?

Welcome! Glad to have you here.

I like the Alcatraz books quite a bit, but my brother read them when he was your age and LOVED them. He found they were calibrated exactly for his sense of humor. They are very different than Brandon's other works, but definitely worth a shot.

Of the non-Cosmere works, I really enjoyed both Rithmatist and Legion, but I also really loved the short story Defending Elysium that he has on his website.

Welcome, I hope you enjoy Aether (just read it myself).

That is a nice collection on your bookcase. What are the series on the bottom two shelves? I don't recognize those.

Welcome! Have you read any of Brandon's non-Cosmere works? I particularly recommend Rithmatist and Legion.

Welcome! We're glad you're here. I agree with Striker that Mistborn is your best bet. When I first read that one (my first of Brandon's books) I spent weeks daydreaming about the magic. And the character story at the heart of it remains one of my all-time favorites.

Welcome! We're glad you're here

As Chaos mentioned in that thread, the Aether of Night manuscript request thread has seen a lot of traffic, especially since Tor and Brandon both posted about it. At this moment there are about 1100 requests there, and I have watched that number go up and down by hundreds at a time as the staff heroically process those one after another. So first, a big thanks to all the admins who are dedicating even more time than usual to helping out the rest of us. Maybe in a week or two we can get an informal count from someone about how many requests there were.

Second, thousands of those requests are coming from new members of the site, who made accounts just for this. While some of those may not stick around, I am excited to see that others are joining in on our many discussions! In the four days since the announcement about Aether of Night's availability, more than 40 new members have posted in the Introduce Yourself section, at least four times as many as the week prior. While I don't frequent that subforum, I appreciate the members who volunteer themselves as our informal welcoming committee. They might by happy to get some additional help in showcasing our amazing community for the newest members. Hopefully we can convince them to stick around!

Good quote from WoK. I didn't remember that one.

10 minutes ago, Calderis said:

If they do act as an anchor, I only think it's for the physical bodies they inhabit. The repeated use and access to direct investiture from Honor should have sufficiently expanded their souls to the point that, at least in the Cognitive Realm, they shouldn't need any kind of Anchor to hang around. 

Yes, that's what I mean. My speculation is that the Honorblade is what physically appears on Roshar, manifesting near an appropriate host. When they grab the sword, the Herald's personality is "downloaded" into them. There's no real support for this idea over others that have been proposed, but it makes sense to me.

@Extesian Great work putting this together!

Gathering and organizing all the supporting info is a big project. I also appreciate your approach of creating an alternative theory to spur discussion, even if you aren't convinced of it yourself. It does hang together quite well, even if there are parts I don't agree with.

I am totally on board with Braize being both the Tranquiline Halls and Damnation. I had entertained that idea before, but didn't find it convincing until you laid everything out here. (Among other things, the Literatopia interview you cite is a big supporting clue.) You also make a good case for Honor and Cultivation starting on Braize rather than Roshar; I'm not convinced yet that it was both, though. Maybe they settled next door to each other, then Tanavast moved in with her after his home was invaded? I'm not sure. (Wild speculation: If he did move planets after C was already established on Roshar, could that be part of why his perpendicularity is mobile?)

The two pieces of your history that don't sit well with me are Cultivation's cognitive wall and the role of the Oathpact. The wall idea, as you've presented it, makes at least as much sense as anything I've come up with, and it does an excellent job of incorporating the few data points we have. But it doesn't feel quite right to me, and as you've said, we really don't know enough yet to make sense of what's happening.

For the Oathpact, I'll reproduce and comment on several of your WoB:

Quote

A: Yes, the Heralds have spoken with the Almighty. They also feel that what has been done to them is partially his fault.(source)

This WoB in particular is one that I hadn't seen before. That the Heralds "partially" blame Tanavast for their situation implies to me that "what has been done to them" (the torture, etc.) is not what any of them expected to happen. Combine that idea with these statements:

Quote

Q: How many parties were there to the original Oathpact?

A: The Heralds and Honor. They thought that by walking away from their oaths, that it would break the Oathpact. They're going to find out that it's not quite as broken as they had previously thought (meaning the Heralds).

(source)

Quote

QUESTION: Is the fact that Odium can't leave Roshar a direct result of the Oathpact, or something else?

BRANDON SANDERSON: Not a direct result of the Oathpact, but the Oathpact was part of it. 

(source)

To me, the conclusion has to be that the Oathpact was never about trapping Rayse or blocking him from getting to Roshar.

I propose that the Oathpact was initiated on Braize when Odium first invaded. It gave the heralds weapons and powers (via Honorblades) and immortality (via the respawning cognitive shadow mechanism), so that they could help in that fight. (Tangentially, I will note that I suspect the Honorblades are also responsible for their immortality, serving as the anchor for their cognitive shadows.) Unfortunately, when Odium chased everyone out and they fled to Roshar, the Herald's respawn point didn't get moved. Honor did Something Else to keep Odium contained on Braize, but some unintentional interaction between that and the Oathpact resulted in the situation we have now, where the Heralds aren't able to travel to Roshar without triggering a desolation.

I'll need to think some more about how all the clues fit together, and especially about how the earlier desolations were different from what's happening now. Your WoB compilation will be super helpful! Hopefully I'll be able to come up with some sort of prediction before Oathbringer hits.

(I do have to say, though, that this RAFO about all the Herald questions being reserved for the back five books is a bit disheartening. I'm sure there are tons of things we'll learn sooner, but this whole Oathpact/Desolation connection may not be one of them.)

On 7/20/2017 at 7:20 AM, Extesian said:

 A: I have to RAFO questions along the lines of what you're asking. These are things that are relevant to books 6-10, which probably won't even be written for a decade. (source)

Great compilation of all the evidence! This is very well reasoned. 

The one piece I'd like to add (though it probably doesn't help much) is the flute Hoid gives to Kaladin. He calls it a "Trailman's flute," and that capitalization has convinced me it is associated with the Iriali Long Trail. I suspect, then, that the flute and storytelling method originate with the as-yet-unknown third shardworld, and when we get more hints about Hoid's past travels we may have a better guess of which it might be.

While I don't think Sel is likely, remember that we have only seen two of the three modern empires, so the Iriali could well have been a feature of the third empire or, depending on the timeframe, of civilization that predated Odium's visit. I doubt we have the clues yet to make a good guess.

6 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Possibly. If it does, you will hardly notice. [...] gravity isn't your priority.

I guess I'm mostly interested from a Realmatic standpoint, rather than a "someone could exploit this" standpoint:

Does the gravity in the CR come from the shared perception of the local populace (and therefore vary with location)? Or does it derive from a cosmere-wide perception and average out to be the same everywhere? Or (less likely) does each person carry their own gravitational expectations with them, such that a native Elantrian visiting Roshar's CR for the first time would still experience Sel's gravity?

The answer would hint at how some of these perception feedback-loops work.

As seen in Secret History, the cognitive realm has "gravity" that doesn't vary (much, at least) between areas associated with planets and areas corresponding to open space. 

1. Does the gravitational pull experienced in the cognitive realm vary between planets? (i.e. near Scadrial @ 1 g, vs near Roshar @ 0.7 g)
2. If, upon developing spacecraft, the people of the cosmere begin to collectively associate outer space with weightlessnesss (as is the pervasive understanding on Earth) will the gravitational profile of the cognitive realm change to reflect that?
3. If you operate an airplane or a spacecraft in the cognitive realm, will you find additional (otherwise inaccessible) regions/objects at higher altitude?

Do you think the pre-release content (typically the first 6-8 chapters) should be experienced in advance of the rest of the work?

Like many of you, I am getting incredibly excited for the November release of Oathbringer. I am trying to decide how best to approach that experience, specifically with regard to the preview chapters Tor releases in the weeks leading up to The Day. I'm interested in hearing your experiences with past cosmere releases, and in particular if any of the current beta readers have an opinion on this for Oathbringer specifically.

For past releases I have devoured all available details and jumped into forum discussions about them. And I loved that part! One of my main regrets when reading books, especially cosmere books, is that I read through too quickly--I keep turning those pages for "one more chapter" to find out what happens, rather than taking breaks and letting the suspense and tension do their work. Having enforced pauses for those early portions is a fun experience that begets theorizing and anticipation. It's great!

But there's also a downside. My first experience with Words of Radiance, which I loved on re-reads, was that some of the biggest twists and reveals and payoffs were too predictable, probably a direct effect of all the discussions and theorizing I'd participated in here on 17S. (For me, the main one was Kal's third ideal and getting Syl back. It seemed painfully obvious where things were going, so I felt frustration instead of tension the whole time Syl was "dead.") On subsequent read-throughs, when novelty didn't matter, I was able to enjoy the character arcs more and I revised my opinion.

So I'm debating whether to follow the pre-release hype this time around, or take a leave-of-absence from 17S / Tor.com / Reddit. So far I have made the decision to avoid the two interlude readings Brandon has done ... but my self control broke down a week or two after each one was transcribed, and I read them anyway.

Looking for an upper bound, we need to think about the wind speed. There were wind blast experiments in the '50s and '60s, intended to help design ejection systems for supersonic aircraft. The takeaway is that wind speeds up to at least mach 1.7 are only mildly injurious...provided that the person is well restrained and wearing protective clothing.

Problem 1: If your skin is exposed to the wind then even subsonic winds cause severe burns. Subjects whose suits failed got second and third degree burns over their entire bodies from supersonic wind.

Problem 2: If you are inadequately restrained, high winds create turbulent flow around the body and induce violent flailing that is very lethal. Lots of broken necks from bad helmets/headrests. (The experiments used dummies or chimps, not people.)

Stormlight healing can mitigate those problems somewhat, but you won't have much limb control when you are at your maximum tolerable speed. I would be surprised if someone flying like Kaladin does (no special clothes or restraints) could get much beyond 300km/hr without injury.

Re: the matchup. The high winds would affect both a windrunner and a steelrunner similarly, but a steelrunner has to provide their own acceleration by moving arms or legs while the windrunner can just sit there. Perhaps more importantly, the windrunner can fall forward in any position, such as head-first, which will present less resistance to the air than a steelrunner can manage. Advantage here (i.e. in an open environment looking for simple top speed in more-or-less straight-line travel) goes to the windrunner.

As mentioned above, though, if they have to maneuver at all, the steelrunner will handle obstacles and corners much better.

I'm still thinking about this idea, but I like it a lot. One thing that I like about your theory is the interpretation of what "unmade" could mean; but that's also a piece I'm really unsure of. There are a lot of different ways you could understand that word. Here are the main ones I've considered, and I don't think we have information to suggest which (if any) are right.

• Unmade = not made (i.e. occurring naturally / without design)
• Unmade = taken apart
• Unmade = defeated / corrupted (their purpose stolen)

Regarding the nature of the Unmade, I want to add the recent WoB from the June 9 FAQ Friday post, answering about a vessel voluntarily dropping a shard:

Quote

Power dropped like this, if left alone, could end up splintering and turning into something like spren/seons.  It could become something more like the Stormfather--a large, self-aware entity.  It could become something like the Dor or many of the Unmade--something proto-aware, but not truly an individual.

This makes me wonder if the Unmade are distinct from "Odium spren," or if Odium just exerts more direct control over his splinters.

The quote provided above by @FiveLate is also interesting.:

Quote

The Parshendi naturally are protected from this, but when they expose themselves to the storms, and the spren come in, many of these spren have that kind of "hole" in them, and that’s what allows Odium to take control...

...if he influences people in that way, it's through the Unmade.

The easiest interpretation there is that the spren-with-holes are operating the same way as the Unmade (or are the unmade), but that's not necessarily the case. Human-unmade interactions are hardly analogous to the listener-spren bond.
 

This is a question well worth pondering, both in general and in the specific case of the cosmere. Various works in fantasy and sci fi have tried over and over to address the general idea, and there are a lot of different ways such a relationship (mortal with immortal) could go. They run the gamut of awful to awesome, with and without regret/avoidance. I lean toward the hopeful side of things, but it's hard to say.

However, the cosmere is different. The first thing to point out (as @Sheridan_rd did) is that in the cosmere, immortality is really not that hard to come by. If Anna WorldHopper met Bob NormalDude, she has a lot more choices to consider beyond "walk away" or "watch him age and die." She can teach him how to worldhop and help him acquire some flavor of immortality that more-or-less matches her own. I have a hard time believing that a resourceful guy like Hoid avoids relationships for an easily-overcome reason like "oh no, they might die." If he wanted to, he could figure out a good way to share knowledge and/or power with someone he liked and trusted. In Hoid's case, his arrogance and other personality traits, along with his ambiguous-but-all-consuming goals, are much stronger barriers to forming a meaningful partnership.

I should also point out that Hoid (and presumably other worldhoppers) aren't necessarily as old as they may seem. Brandon has said that Hoid has not subjectively lived all of the time that has passed since the Shattering--by some as-yet-unexplained mechanism he is able to skip forward in time to the next moment of interest.

So that leads us to two more questions: What does a relationship look like between an ancient/experienced immortal and his/her newly-immortalized significant other? And (more interesting to me) how does a relationship work across centuries and millenia? @Alfa alluded to this above with the Nazh/Khriss partnership. We really don't have real-world experience with or examples of relationships (romantic or otherwise) lasting longer than a century. It is interesting to speculate how commitment and personality would play out on such a time scale. When life is extended dramatically or indefinitely, do relationships also extend or do they become more ephemeral by contrast? I imagine the answer is "both, depending on the individual," but at a societal level, or as a cultural trend, I have no idea.

Huh. That's more than I thought we knew about Frost. Source and related quote for others who are interested.