ROSHtafARian

Anyone else think there's a possibility Dalinar's amnesia curse is related at all to Shallan's perfect memory and the way it connects with her art? Reading TWoK, that always stuck out to me and certainly didn't seem to have anything to do with Soulcasting....I know a lot of us have been assuming it has to do with whatever other Surge besides Soulcasting her Order has....but what if its not? What if Shallan has some connection with the Old Magic or the Nightwatcher.....or alternatively, what if the Nightwatcher isn't of Cultivation or some other Shard, but what if she's connected to Surgebinding, or is even one of the Heralds? Just throwing that out there. I know the phrase Old Magic seems to indicate she's something older than the Knights Radiant at the very least, but its Brandon we're talking about and he's tricky. There could be another interpretation of that we're just not seeing yet.

Will the ELANTRIS sequels involve the new region/magic system from THE EMPEROR'S SOUL at all? On a similar note, any plans for future works in established settings like MISTBORN and WARBREAKER introducing new magic systems? (I'm not counting new metals or new properties of metals, as those are still Allomancy and Feruchemy).

My apologies if some eagle-eyed board member spotted this long ago and this is common knowledge, but I was rereading TWoK the other day and my high school Latin classes reared their head. Now granted, there's no Latin in the cosmere so this has no instory bearing, but I was thinking....mar is the Latin for sea or ocean, and shades in Roman mythology were the spirits or souls of the dead....and since we've seen from TWoK maps that Shadesmar is basically an inverse reflection of the physical world, with seas instead of land...Shadesmar essentially means Sea of Souls itself. (In addition to that being the name of one of the individual 'seas' on the maps). Just seemed like a cool little Easter egg, and possible insight into how Brandon views it (or did at least, at the time he named it).

Well first, as to the 10-16 theorem, that's just a theory, so we can't use it to definitively prove Odium and Honor aren't complementary. And as for Brandon's quote, I think I know what you're talking about Windrunner, and if I'm recalling the quote correctly, all Brandon said was that even when Shards come in pairs, they're not always complete opposites like Ruin and Preservation were. I don't think he's ever specifically stated that Ruin and Preservation were completely unique as far as Shard pairs went. Mostly, for me, it comes down to his word choice for Odium. We know he puts a lot of thought into what he names the Shards, and from the whole Devotion thing we know that even once he has the basic idea of an Intent, he still goes through all possible synonyms looking for the BEST fit. So why Odium, if the intent is really Hatred or Destruction or Desolation? Out of all the Shards so far, Odium's the only name that made people go huh? and have to stop to look it up in some cases. Brandon doesn't use obscure words for the sake of being obscure...if he picked Odium as a Shard name, there had to be some reason that particular word fit the Shard's intent better than Hatred or Shame, things that definitely fall under its purview as well. According to the Merriam-Webster definition, Odium is: In addition, in every dictionary or thesaurus I've come across, honor is always listed as an antonym of odium. It doesn't get more opposite than antonyms! The fact is, Odium is a specific word choice that doesn't actually mean that the Shard hates anything and everything, though that fits as well. Odium means a state of being hated for being dishonorable. Being loathed for acting shamefully. A figure of infamy. Why does the Oathpact exist? Why does Honor say there's even an option of Odium choosing a champion for himself? Why not just destroy indiscriminately? BECAUSE THAT IS NOT ODIUM'S INTENT. He is not Hatred, unbound with no limitations, who exists purely for the sake of destroying everything. Indeed, utter destruction is more Ruin's purview than Odium's. Why are the apocalypses Odium brings to Roshar called Desolations, specifically? Look at what that word means. Odium doesn't want to destroy. Odium wants to make everything JUST LIKE HIM. Odious. Infamous. Shameful. Hated and looked upon with loathing and contempt for being disgraced. He acts not to kill, but to taint and tarnish. To make one fall from grace. Look at his visit to Sel. He Splintered Aona and Skai beyond all capacity to oppose him....but he didn't just destroy them in the sense that Ati and Leras were destroyed by the end of Mistborn. Aona still had a presence in her Shardpool...because he'd rather see her desolate, lonely and powerless rather than utterly annihilated. Look at the aftermath....at how her precious Elantrians were viewed after his visit...loathed with pity and disgust when once they were silver gods. And that's why the Oathpact. That's why he brings the Desolations against Roshar time after time, allowing the Heralds chance to resist when he seems to be an overwhelming force with a clear superior strength. Honor was dead. He could have destroyed Roshar at any time, I believe. He didn't, because his Intent didn't allow it. He had to play by the rules he and Honor set up, because annihilation was never his goal....getting Honor's Heralds to shame themselves, to abandon their Oath, to betray Honor....and to make the Knights Radiant and all of humanity follow in their footsteps...THAT was his intent all along. And that's why I believe he's Honor's polar opposite. Yes, it may turn out they aren't polar opposites or he has a true counterpart elsewhere in the cosmere, but as of now, the only opposition to the Odium and Honor are opposites theory is that it would disprove other theories, like the 10-16 theorem or the balance magics. His name alone, in combination with his actions so far, give plenty of support for the idea that they are counterparts however.

I knew I'd seen the Preservation Intent/Allomancy around somewhere, but couldn't find it. Anyway, in keeping with this, I personally feel pretty confident that Odium is intended to be Honor's polar counterpart, like the Ruin/Preservation pair. One definition of Odium is dishonor, after all, and I think Voidbinding is Odium's magic system, a mirror of Surgebinding rather than a corruption of it. If you only access Surgebinding by acting honorably, it makes sense that you'd access Voidbinding by acting dishonorably. With the references to the Ten Fools, etc, Occam's Razor would seem to indicate that it'll match Surgebinding more often than it differs. Which brings us to an interesting idea that I haven't yet seen anyone else talking about....Brandon generally likes his threats to have a human component rather than being purely alien, so while the Parshendi may have a role to play as Voidbringers, I suspect the Ten Fools are as human as the Ten Heralds are. And while we've speculated a lot on which characters might end up becoming Knights Radiant along with Kaladin and Dalinar.....I wonder which, if any, might end up becoming Voidbinders to counter them?

Apologies if this seems obvious to anyone else, but I didn't see a topic on it, so follow my musings, if you will. There was a lot of confusion about how Allomancy related to Preservation until it was confirmed that the shape and form of the magic didn't have to obviously be of Preservation....but rather the Intent behind its use must follow the Shard it's derived from. Snapping is what turns someone from a person who merely has the spiritual DNA needed to use Allomancy into an actual Allomancer. And Snapping of course, only happens with the intent of preserving one's life from harm. Hemalurgy, by contrast, doesn't require any particular spiritweb on the part of the person utilizing it. It merely requires a person to act with the Intent to Ruin, in pursuit of entropy...taking from one and used by another, to a law of diminishing returns. Whereas Feruchemy acted in the spirit of Harmony, even before Harmony was an actual thing. It was always about the balance between Preservation and Ruin, and required BOTH Intents to access. Initial Entropy, taking or storing of an attribute, Ruining one's current health or awareness or age, for the purpose of Preservation at a later date. Now look at Awakeners on Nalthis. One of the key, but oft-overlooked aspects of Awakening is that Breath CAN NOT BE TAKEN BY FORCE. Use of magic on Nalthis begins with intent....an Awakener must be Endowed with Breath. Either their initial, single Breath, granted everyone by Endowment, or by a Breath voluntarily gifted on them by another person. Before the fuel, focus and form of the magic come into play, it has to originate with Intent. This then explains the Shaod. Look at Raoden, pre-Elantris. A loyal son and prince, Devoted to his family and nation, to learning and education....the Shaod acts as Snapping does. It takes those whose Intent aligns most with Devotion, and transforms them into beings capable of best utilizing the magic of Devotion....for the benefit and good of those people and causes they are devoted to. Whereas Skai's magic is accessed through Dominion...over oneself, or forceful subjugation of others. Which finally brings us to Surgebinders on Roshar. Before all else happens, Surgebinders it seems must act with Honor. Even without the Oaths of the Knights Radiant, Shallan, Kaladin and even Szeth in his own way are all acting according to their personal codes of Honor, in pursuit of higher ideals, and this is what renders them capable of Surgebinding in the first place. Which I also believe to be an argument in favor of Surgebinding being purely of Honor, with Cultivation unrelated and having her own magic system. And Voidbinding purely of Odium. If there are balance magics between Honor, Cultivation and Odium, we haven't seen them yet, I don't think.

That's the thing though...Brandon's very specific about his word choices, and I can't imagine him choosing Devotion for a Shard if what he really meant was Love. Just like you argue that Dominion doesn't inherently have to be bad, Devotion doesn't inherently have to be good. History's full of people who were devoted to horrific believes or causes. If Odium DOES have a polar opposite like the Ruin-Preservation pair, I don't think its Devotion, because well, you asked what you'd get if you paired Devotion with Ruin? You'd probably get something like Odium....a devotion/commitment to destruction, a love of chaos.

Hmm, I don't think Devotion and Dominion are quite comparable to Ruin and Preservation. They're opposing Intents, yes, but...Ruin and Preservation are polar opposites. Devotion and Dominion are more complementary opposites. Like say you mapped out these various intents and you have a neutral starting Point A. Ruin and Preservation are diametrically opposed...you'd have to go in completely opposite directions to get to them, extreme ends of the same spectrum. Whereas Devotion and Dominion are both branching off points from the same root intent - let's call it say, Sovereignty, or Leadership - rule, or commanding loyalty/obedience through different channels, love and fear, respectively. Which is to say, now that I think about it, if Devotion and Dominion weren't splintered and one Shardholder were to combine them into a single supershard a la Harmony....it'd probably actually be easier than what Sazed deals with. Rather than being pulled apart by opposite gravitational tides, they'd make for more of a singular intent through dual avenues.

That's the thing though, Odium doesn't want to be all powerful, he wants to be all destructive. His goals seem more nihilistic than power-hungry, so he's fine with the power he has now, as long as it continues to get the job done - and as nobody's put a stop to him yet, he seems to be doing just fine. Plus, two of the three shards he's confirmed to have killed are Honor and Devotion. A guy whose name literally means Hate isn't going to want those Intents anywhere near his cognitive or spiritual essence, no matter how much of a power up they could bring.

To be fair, Rothfuss isn't the first to use that as the basis for a magic system - its actually fairly common. Most notably its how the magic in Ursula K. Leguin's 'A Wizard of Earthsea' works. Its all about the execution, ultimately.

Going off of how the pages Brandon read were described, I pictured it more as essentially 'forging' a false history or nature for whatever you engraved...that basically ends up supplanting the real history/nature of the stone, and changing or rewriting its history or nature in the process. Which, if true, could have TONS of awesome applications, and wouldn't need to be limited to just stone. But as Peter said, way too early to tell if that's true or not.

Thanks for the info guys! Very interesting! Now I'm wondering something else though....we know at least one shard (Odium) has traveled to other Shardworlds in the past...but have others maybe as well? There's been a lot of speculation on what kind of magic systems could result from different Shards interacting with each other on different worlds...so if there are only ten core Shardworlds (most likely the worlds where Shards have taken up root or are present during the timeline of cosmere books) maybe the way Brandon's getting around that and having more worlds to play in is having worlds like the one this novella is set on, where perhaps visitations by different shards in various combinations in the past have resulted in lasting magic systems and civilizations?

Wait, what's this about a forgery based magic system? Is this something new Brandon talked about somewhere?

Hmm, re: Shards changing hands VERY rarely....suddenly I'm wondering if Sazed is the first time since Adonalsium shattered that a Shard has actually had a new holder? I actually always took it for granted that he was, but the phrasing makes me wonder if its not actually a brand new occurrence in the history of the cosmere for Sazed to have risen to Shardhood, but if there's precedence on a world we haven't seen yet maybe.

The Alcatraz books aren't part of the cosmere, so Identity and Possibility from those books aren't Shards....and I don't see there eventually being Shards named or related closely to Identity or Possibility, because that would be a retread of familiar ground for Brandon, which doesn't seem like him. Additionally, I don't think we'll see a Shard called Chaos, because Ruin is basically entropy, which is close enough that there might be too much overlap having a Chaos shard. As for The Silence Divine Shard, based on what we've heard about that world and its magic, I could see Balance working. Or maybe something like Sacrifice? I'm particularly interested in finding out what Bavadin's shard is. The letter in WoK singles him out as being almost as bad as Rayse/Odium....which would seem to indicate that the writer sees him as worse than Ruin and Skai/Dominion. So what would be worse than Ruin and Dominion but not as bad as Odium? Hmm. My personal theory is that the sixteen shards fall into groupings not unlike the Allomantic table. For instance, we have the Temporal Metals, the Physical Enhancement Metals, etc....so I always wondered if maybe the Shards are split along similar lines. If the shards are sixteen splintered aspects of Adonalsium, or possibly creation, that covers a pretty wide scope that includes both physical and spiritual domains, etc. What I mean is, take Ruin and Preservation....they both have spiritual and cognitive applications, but they're fundamentally more forces of the physical universe, ie entropy. Whereas Honor has almost entirely spiritual applications...sure, there's talk of him 'binding things', ie molecular bonds, but those are more of a stretch, and with Devotion even more so. So what I wonder is if there's maybe like four primarily Physical shards, like Ruin and Preservation and two others, and four primarily Spiritual shards like Honor and Devotion, and maybe eight that are in the middle and share aspects of both, like Cultivation, Endowment, etc?

Zas, are you sure about this part? I can't find the quote, but I'm almost POSITIVE that Brandon said not too long ago (like at least since Way of Kings came out) that Taldain, the setting of WHITE SAND was Bavadin's world.

Well I believe there was something mentioned about him moving through time as well as space, but not actually time travelling, so I think there has been speculation that he experiences some kind of time dilation that makes time pass differently for the rest of the cosmere than it does for him.

I believe its: 10 Stormlight Archive 3 Elantris 2 Warbreaker 9 Core Mistborn 1 (+) Noncore Mistorn ala Alloy of Law and possible sequels 1 The Silence Divine 3 White Sand (I believe Brandon mentioned once that White Sand was first in a trilogy) 2 Liar of Partinel and sequel 5 Dragonsteel So that's thirty six there for sure.

To be fair, Elantris and Warbreaker are standalones. We may know that he intends to return to those worlds at some point, but the story he set out to tell with each of those novels. Even if he never writes their intended sequels, they still stand on their own as complete stories, which basically says yes, he is good at writing stand alone novels.

Well, this kind of plays into the philosophical argument of 'reality is perception'. Everything about the world around us is filtered through our own experiences, ideologies, etc, and this would come into play MOST with the kind of spren that are capable of Nahel bonds, rather than physical spren like flamespren. Flamespren, rainspren, rockspren...those can be measured in quantifiable ways, but honorspren you simply can't measure quantifiably...its always going to be based on your interpretation of honor. And that's why I think its both possible that honorspren is a generic term for all spren capable of the bond, and that Nohaden changed them to fit with the KR ideals....because it was based on how he perceived them, and honor in general. Essentially, his standards became the new bar by which honor is measured....resulting in honorspren becoming 'fixed' according to the ideals he laid down for the Knights Radiant. As for honorspren being a generic term, Syl describes herself as 'binding things', but I wouldn't describe that as a fundamental description of honor...at least no more than Truth or other possible angles or facets. Binding things could be construed as a kind of loyalty, which is definitely honorable, but I see the ten facets of the Knights Radiant like Loyalty, Truth, Chivalry, etc ( just guessing as to what other Ideals might be) as all together making the full spectrum of Honor. It seems like there's an in world taxonomy system for spren, or the potential for one, with all the focus on them being measured and studied, etc, and most classification systems have multiple levels. Going by evolutionary classification tables (just as an example, not looking to start a theology debate, lol), we are said to be primates which make us cousins to apes, and in turn we are all mammals, which along with avians, etc are all vertebrates, and so on. It seems pretty plausible to me that truthspren, chivalryspren, loyaltyspren, protectionspren...could all be cousins (taxonomically speaking) and different types of honorspren, which in turn are a type of cognitivespren, not to be confused with physicalspren like rockspren or flamespren, etc.

Anyone know what the word counts of Brandon's books are? I know he said Alloy of Law was like 90K but anyone know the others? I'm just idly curious - with the exception of Way of Kings, most of his books like Elantris seem on the short end of epic fantasy, but still pack a ton of plot and worldbuilding in, and was curious how they compared wordcount wise to other authors' epic fantasies.

I admit I still don't totally understand how the compounding age trick works, but presuming that's what's kept Demoux alive for centuries, is it possible that he DIDN'T leave his wife? Like, that he could have lived a long and happy life with her for decades, and only after she died did he start worldhopping, and stored enough age at that point that he looks forty or so during WoK?

Plus there's always the possibility that when Preservation created sentient life on Scadrial, he did so with Allomancy in mind......its possible that humans on Scadrial aren't as susceptible to metal poisoning in general, compared to real life humans or even humans on other worlds. As for the comment about aluminum working by dampening access to Preservation and rendering other metals inert....that's very interesting. Is there any possibility that studying this phenomenon and a greater scientific understanding of it in the later two Mistborn trilogies might lead to some kind of Shielding affect like in Wheel of Time....somehow being used to cut others than just the Aluminum Gnat off from Preservation's power, even though its currently a strictly internalized power?

But still, Hoid was never even named as Hoid in the Mistborn books, and the twitter comment was a direct response to people who were previously unaware that Mistborn and Way of Kings were connected. Brandon might play coy at times, but there's no way he would have responded that way if he meant just Demoux and Hoid by 'multiple' because there's absolutely, one hundred percent no way seeing Hoid in WoK would equal seeing someone from Mistborn for a reader who had no way of knowing an unnamed beggar in WoA had any significance whatsoever.

Yeah, even though Hoid appears in all the books, I wouldn't consider Hoid to be 'from Mistborn' anymore than he's from Elantris or Warbreaker. More importantly, Brandon knows that readers who don't even know Mistborn and Way of Kings are connected aren't going to have picked up on Hoid in Mistborn in the first place, so I really don't think he'd be including Hoid in that count. ETA: As for Demoux, I believe it makes perfect sense for him to be on Roshar and one of the Seventeenth Shard - his presence is more easily explained than Galladon. Think about it. Upon Sazed's ascension to Shardhood, he probably became aware of other planets with life on them. If not, I'm sure he at least would be aware of any worldhoppers who came to Scadrial, and although Hoid was probably already gone by then, if worldhoppers from the Seventeenth Shard or Elantris showed up, he's probably going to find out about it. And he's going to be curious. Sazed being Sazed, his first reaction to finding out about other worlds, other Shards, a deeper mystery into the nature of the universe to unravel....he's going to want to explore this mystery. HOWEVER. Brandon's said multiple places that Sazed COULD travel to other worlds himself, but there are a number of reasons he may not want to, or this may not be a good idea. Probably due to the other Shards is my guess, but regardless. If you're the ever logical Sazed and you determine that there are other accessible worlds out there that you can't or shouldn't go to yourself, what do you do? You send a proxy. And if you look around your world for a proxy, you're eventually going to evaluate Demoux. He's trustworthy. His nature (at least back in the Mistborn days) makes journeys to strange new worlds the kind of thing he'd jump at. And he's easily spiked with an atium spike which serves the multiple purposes of: a) Giving Sazed a direct line of communication to him, perhaps even when he's on other worlds, and allowing Sazed to easily 'see' everything he discovers on other worlds allows Demoux, a Seer, to compound atium for the immortality/age trick, so Sazed doesn't have to go hunting for a new proxy every fifty years or so c) keeps some atium physical and away from Sazed, thus helping to keep his Ruin and Preservation sides in balance, given that Preservation's sacrifice to create life still has the balance skewed towards Ruin. So yeah. My official theory is that Demoux is Sazed's emissary to the Seventeenth Shard and other worlds. The only question in my mind is if its knowingly or not. Is it a specific agreement between him and Sazed, or did Sazed manipulate him into being spiked and discovering the Seventeenth Shard, so as to keep his distance - kinda a plausible deniability measure in case Demoux wound up in enemy Shardic hands, and they were pissed that the new super shard on the block was meddling in their affairs. I don't think Odium would take kindly to it, for instance, and I doubt defending Scadrial from the wrath of Odium is in Sazed's grand design.