Ari

They're probably translating the first half and releasing it ASAP, then finishing the translation before releasing the second half. That's how I'd do it.

Actually, they might respond better to the reddit non-spoiler Cosmere 101.

As much of a cosmere fan as I am, I have to agree that Firefight is pretty awesome.

Ironically, that makes perfect sense, lol.

Is Brandon still planning to do annotations for his works? I know he didn't have a chance to write any for WoK while writing due to time constraints, and he had intended to go back and do them at a later time, but given we've also had WoR released since and I haven't heard word about any annotations for that either, I was wondering if this is still on the table for Stormlight Archive and/or future books.

Oh, true, I was getting very confused there. Although arguably a Sliver is even more powerful than a Splinter. The other Splinters we know of, Spren and Seons, were never human in the first place, and gained their personality through investiture, so they're not a good example to follow. But we can at least look to the Returned to see how being a Splinter would affect a human.

Szeth is supposed to wear white as a warning that he's an assassin, to make him visible. To quote Assassin's Creed, white to be bold, if you will. It's not related to colourlessness at all.

Reading back over some Mistborn stuff, I wonder if there's some overlap between the Rhythms the Listeners can attune to, and the pulses emitted by both Allomancy and Shards like Ruin excercising their powers.

Nightblood being part of events doesn't make it a candidate for holding a shard. I agree Brandon has plans for Nightblood and it has interesting things to do as an Awakened Shardblade, and has a role to play in events. But the coolest parts of Nightblood are its personality and how it wants to destroy evil but has no idea what that means. It would destroy everything that's interesting about Nightblood to make it into a shard, (because we would have much less direct interaction with it, and its personality would be likely be gone next time we jumped forward on the timeline) and I think Brandon is a good enough writer to know that, and has different plans for it. I didn't miss that first point, I just really don't agree with it. We have WoB and examples in the text that show us you can't prevent a shard's intent by having someone hold that shard who disagrees with the intent, because in the long run they just end up with the shard's personality anyway. The options to contain odium are to more effectively trap his power, to splinter his power, or to merge it with another shard's intent. If SA has a positive ending that involves them defeating Odium, nobody new is going to take up that shard all on its own. As for Nightblood's Command... well, it depends how you view the personalities of advanced Awakened Objects. I would imagine his Command would influence him until his personality was changed sufficiently by Odium, if he held that shard, as the Command is part of his mind and personality.

The problem with that is that Splinters held by humans have had very human motivations. The Returned were very human, (displaying status anxiety, fear for their lives, boredom, and even from time to time, bravery) The Lord Ruler had very human failings and successes, (in fact he seemed more affected by his compounding and Ruin's influence) and Vin didn't seem dramatically affected by her time as a Splinter, with the only notable side-effect being that it attuned her to the mists. So far it looks like you need to have the full shard experience, and for a long time, to be noticably affected by a shard's intent from holding too much power. Now, what hasn't seemed human-like? The species created by usages of that power, like the Kandra and Koloss. Which suggests the easiest way to change people using investiture is to use it to warp their bodies (like Kandra and Koloss) or their spirit. (like TLR and Spook being manipulated by Ruin)

Keep in mind we don't know the details of mixing magic systems very well yet. It could be entirely possible that Demoux is ageless now.

On Jasnah and men... there's all sorts of things that could be going on there. She could be differently oriented, (ie. asexual or lesbian) she could have decided she doesn't like being in relationships for perfectly legitimate reasons, (for instance, some people just aren't good at relationships and enjoy being single more) or she could have suffered some abuse that has left her unable to trust enough for that sort of relationship. (People leap to this explanation out of a reason- it is depressingly common for women to have had some very unpleasant experiences in their romantic and sexual histories.) That said, I'd like to add a few things. If Jasnah isn't interested in men in part because of some incident of abuse, this does not necessarily make her a weak character. In fact, many of the strongest women would react that way to such an experience, because sometimes being in a position of more power in the first place gives you that much further to fall. And if the madness of the events going on hasn't given her the appropriate time to heal yet, being assertive and shutting down that side of her life is probably a very rational thing for Jasnah to do, and something that reflects her strength. Having being abused doesn't make someone weak. In fact, surviving abuse and going through the healing process afterwards is a mark of incredible personal strength. Don't rule this possibility out just because you don't want Jasnah to have been through something that, at the time, might have made her feel less-than-powerful. It wouldn't undermine who she is as a character. I honestly have no strong suspicions yet, although abuse is the one I've heard that seems to fit best so far, it's certainly not a slam dunk with the small bits we know about Jasnah's personal life. (Then again, given how quiet abuse is usually kept, it's one of those things that there's only a subtle difference between "not abused" and "keeping it under wraps")

It's also entirely possible that one of the reasons there are so few Bondsmiths is that they have to choose their Spren, rather than the other way around. In which case Dalinar would be doing the normal thing for his order, and not having the beginnings of a bond with a Spren, he felt weird about the dead Shardblades, but didn't have that proto-bond to make him feel the full distaste.

Well, anybody who can't commit to the First Ideal definitely can't become a Radiant, and there will be some who will disagree with parts of it at least in the series. I also imagine that the ten orders probably between them have specific enough requirements that many of the people who could swear the First ideal couldn't become Knights. Some of these might be the auxilary surgebinders mentioned in the in-universe Words of Radiance, but I imagine there's others who could agree with the First Ideal but for reasons relating to their personality or personal history, can't fit in with any of the orders or their requirements for auxiliaries.

Unless things have changed very dramatically from Brandon's previous attempt to write the Liar of Partinel, Hoid is simply a magical person who has picked up a lot of extra powers in his adventures and later his travels. It's possible that's had some effects on him that make him something not-precisely-the-same-as-an-average human, but remember he seems to understand human interactions and motivations well enough still, at least during the events of the Stormlight Archive. Who knows what happens to him by the final chapters of the big meta-story.

Well, let's think this through. What possibilities are there? Mistborn: - Demoux: Confirmed, 17th Shard - Spook: Unlikely. Must have been pretty busy raising all those kids! - Marsh: See above, seems unlikely that he could pass in other cultures. - Breeze: Seems to have been busy starting a noble house. Not sure I can think of any other likely candidates we knew off the top of my head. We'll skip Alloy for now, as we should probably wait to see who survives events. Elantris: - Galladon: Confirmed, 17th Shard - Raoden: Probably a bit busy being king. - Honestly, probably any other elantrian could be a worldhopper if they want, they'd just need to sort out how to get their powers to function away from Elantris, especially as AonDor allows for pretty decent means of disguise. Warbreaker: - Vasher: Confirmed, posing as an ardent. - Vivenna: Seems entirely plausible, depending on events in Nightblood, of course. - Susebron: Unlikely, too busy being King. - Siri: Unlikely, displayed no interest in Awakening. (Plus already confirmed Worldhoppers from the Yolen (Dragonsteel series) and Taldain (White Sand), currently gives us five shardworlds that are possibly involved in worldhopping events as of the Stormlight Archive) And the short story worlds universally don't seem to have strong enough magic to allow for worldhopping at this time. I'm sure I haven't gone over the minor characters well enough either. We'd probably need a much better account of who the relevant awakeners and elantrians are. Demoux is an interesting case as his particular power wouldn't seem to lend him any ability to worldhop on his own, which might suggest either hemalurgy or some other means of altering his sDNA or enabling travel between worlds, which could mean you don't even need any particular powers, in which case the calculation then becomes one of motivation and availability.

Scadrial's number isn't 16 for any reason specific to Scadrial. 16 is a number with significance to anything involved in Adonalsium, and preservation was trying to use it as a hint. I wouldn't necessarily expect to see 16 around quite so often in the Stormlight Archive for that reason. 10 has a pretty natural significance for Surgebinding: There were ten heralds, with ten honourblades. The ten orders of Knights Radiant emerged as Spren sought to imitate those surges in bonding with humans. So naturally Roshar gives a lot more significance to the number 10, both in Vorinism in specific, and in magic associated with Honour. I believe Brandon may have hinted that 10 is a number of significance for other reasons when we were still analyzing Hero of Ages, but that may simply relate to the number of Shardworlds. That's not to say that Voidbinding or any investiture associated with Cultivation (assuming the Knights aren't actually partially associated with her/him) won't have different significant numbers, or none at all.

That doesn't strike me as anything near at all what Brandon plans for Nightblood. It (he?) is far more effective as a commentary on the nature of evil and some lighthearted humour about the memes in fantasy surrounding sentient weapons. I'm sure Nightblood would recognise Odium as evil and want to kill him. But Nightblood thinks everything is evil. It's scary enough having it in hands, I wouldn't want to imagine Nightblood with more power than that of a sentient shardblade. If Nightblood is actually capable of holding a shard, (seems difficult given you'd need at least one hand or gripping apendage to do so, although I imagine it fits the other criteria) I don't see how he'd be any better than Rayse. Odium has deliberately splintered the power of his enemies rather than hold it because he doesn't want to change his intent. Ultimately he can only be trapped, (and we saw that that's often not very practical in the long run with Ruin, and he's already trapped to some degree that forces him to stay in the Roshar system, but he still manages quite a bit of pain for the Stormlight Archive's protagonists) killed and his power splintered, or killed and his power merged with another Intent. As to the original topic... remember, this is the shard that literally struck a bargain with Honour that lets him torture the heralds. While he might not be out to destroy the world as literally as ruin is, I'm pretty sure that having a world under Odium's reign is a particularly unpleasant experience for everyone there. People are correct to say that in context, hatred can be channeled positively to bring about change. It can become motivating and inspire passion to make things right or just. But Odium doesn't have that context. In many ways, Odium existing as a Shard is probably somewhat similar to Nightblood's existence being targetted at "destroying evil". Odium has lost all judgement on what specifically to hate, and likely simply hates everyone, and wants to inspire their hatred back.

Kaladin likes Shallan to some degree, as he's definitely jealous of Adolin after their time together in the chasms. They have some rapport going from their past suffering as well, which obviously surprised Kaladin a lot. I think being friends with Shallan could be very good for him, help him get over some of his issues. Shallan, I think, probably just notices some chemistry with him, but I think she's far too smitten with Adolin to even think about it. To be honest, I like her and Adolin together a lot more at this stage, and besides, Shallan and Kaladin's relationship is effectively sitting on a timebomb given Kaladin killed her brother to get Amaram his Blade and Plate.

Also Veil is essentially just a slight modification of Shallan's features that mostly looks older and darkeyed- something very easy for a Lightweaver to fake but not something that could be used as a disguise by anyone else. Once you know Shallan is a Lightweaver, it becomes a lot more obvious who Veil is, especially if someone has met one of her identities and seen the other. If you only know she's a Knight Radiant, then Veil is an excellent disguise, as Mraize implies above.

The stuff in that quote from Brandon is very interesting, Kinxer, hadn't caught that interview before. It makes it sound like, for instance, you could add minor things to the "anchor" Aon(s) Aon in each more complex Aon, such as smaller terrain features, to enhance the functionality, but that the four large natural features (including the chasm) are the bare minimum. Also makes you wonder if you could do some interesting things to circumvent the distance issue, like say, set up a centre of power similar to Elantris in other places in the cosmere, with different terrain, and describe that closer centre using a modified Aon. (It could be it absolutely HAS to be Arelon given the connection between Arelene Spiritual DNA and the powers of Elantris. ) see also these quotes from the same interview, which are relevant: That second quote makes it quite clear that a lot of the similarities between Allomancy and AonDor are also just ways in which types of investiture are just investiture. It takes a little bit of wiggling to get them to function in similar ways to each other, but you have above an idea for a hemalurgical slaughter that would function a lot like accumulating Breath to become an Awakener does on Nalthis. (Presumably, you could also do a non-lethal spike for that kind of system, too)

Your problem isn't with Cosmere, it's with "species", or rather the fact that the questioner didn't qualify it with "intelligent," or perhaps you want to know if there are ones other than those depicted in the Stormlight Archive. If the Rhythms are going to exist independently of the Parshendi and be something other species can listen to, it by definition has to be something that's happening in the Cosmere.

That would be my guess too, but we know so little about Adonalsium and how things work pre-shattering that we can't really draw any conclusions, it's all speculation. I would say that "balancing out" would actually be precisely how Adonalsium would be able to do anything with the way the force seemed to work- two contradictory shards might constrain you, but sixteen complementary intents means you'd normally have dozens of intents that you're either somewhat on-side with, or at least not opposed to. I'm with Jon regarding this theory though: 17th Shard is just a cute name for the little spy organisation Demoux and friends have going on. We don't even know if it's possible to have splinters that don't match a Shard's intent, which would be a question to bring to a signing before going too far into this sort of theory, IMO.

And thesaurus on Odium gets you... "dishonour, hatred." Basically it's a synonym of both hatred and shame. (As above, shame being those things that inspire hatred from others. This word specifically deals with external hatred towards the subject, but you could of course flip it around) Both Hoid and Frost, who are very cosmere-aware, and who personally knew Rayse, agree in the letter that he is acting out of Adonalsium's divine hatred. (ie. according to Odium's intent) We also have WoB that Odium is splintering other shards because he wants to be the only shardholder. Odium's hate won't be pure evil. But it will be "not evil" in the same way that Ruin was "not evil". There will be complicated motivations based on an inflexible personality that borders on a magical force of nature. We can only hope that either Odium is splintered, or that it becomes held by another shardbearer, to balance it out. At least in Rayse's case, we don't have the extra complication of having sympathy for him- both Hoid and Frost agree he matched Odium's intent very closely. We shouldn't assume that Odium is out to destroy everything. As the Parshendi show, he has use for servants, at least in the short term. edit: In fact, I wouldn't doubt that until recently, he counted at least one highprince as a useful tool... But I doubt any reasonable person is going to like his motivations, and he would have no concern at our moral objections- that's the "hated by others" part of his intent- he will not only not mind others' disapproval, he is probably compelled to actively seek it. Honour's intent pretty clearly clashes with Odium's, although not as neatly as Preservation and Ruin did- we've seen that honour is all about tying people together through positive emotions, forming bonds and agreements. Hatred would have a strong tendancy to want to pull people apart in order to make them hate each other. The Thrill is very likely Odium's influence being felt through his spren-like servants on Roshar. But Odium would want to do some things that likely wouldn't strictly be against Honour's intent, and vice-versa. I imagine if someone could hold both shards, their actions wouldn't be as constrained as Harmony's are.

So I just read this thread in a single day like a monster. You herd you guise liek memes, but I think we're soon gonna find the rest of the internet has experienced a dire meme shortage while we hog all of them. Although I feel a bit old now with all of you youngins talking about school and such, while I'm sitting here freaking out about being thirty. Still, the thread was pretty funny. By which my understatement means bloody hilarious. There may have been LOLs. As such, I shall pay them forward: Look forward to reading more of all of your reaction memes, it's always great experiencing something you love fresh again vicariously through other people.