Pattern

A short look on brandonsandson.com this morning showed 100% on the progress bar for Oathbringer. It's done! Now its time for a little joyous dance and the long waiting until November begins. What are you guys doing until the release date? Me, I am going to reread Warbreaker, Way of Kings and Words of Radiance for sure - but only after summer is over. Those "tiny" books should be done in one or two weeks -;)

The honorblade should be bonded by someone, otherwise I see the great possibility of a theft. I can't recall who witnessed Kaladin giving the blade to Dalinar but somehow word of it could and should have reached the Ghostbloods and/or Amaram. Also Ialai might be interested to replace the recently won and lost Oathbringer in her family fortune.

I don't think Hoid has psychological reasons for not being able to harm someone living physically: Having a psychological block would probably also stop him in the Cognitive Realm. You know, punching is punching, no matter in which realm. Hoid visiting the Nightwatcher? Unlikely since Hoid would not be fine with a more or less random curse. Nausea - somehow makes me think of Nightblood immediately. Could there be a parallel mechanism that induces nausea like Nightblood does with those unbonded to him and with "a pure heart"? Is Hoid in possession of an item that causes this? We know that Hoid "has a lot of stuff" so this might be a path for further inquiry...

Pattern-pic wasn't available when I created the account I think - but let me have a look to change it now ;-) Edit: Done

You know you're a Sanderfan ... when you let in a Jehovas Witness ringing at your door and use Jasnah quotes in the following discussion. And after he is called on his phone and asked by his fellows where he is staying, he wants to return another day because he liked the talk...

Well, I had some thoughts on this, only an embryonic theory (gem inside a vein of the stone, etc...), nothing ripe yet. It's done now. Over. Out.

Correct Latin: Artes Arcanae Btw.: The correct singular would be "Ars Arcana" since ars is a feminine noun and we have the adjective arcanus, -a, -um.

Considering what the Dor is, the theory in the OP and the explanation in the annotations make perfect sense (except that the Investiture probably is not stored in Raoden himself but there is a higher "pressure" of the Dor in the CR around him). The "chosen by a shard" theory just cannot work here, since Odium splintered the shards and stuffed their Investiture into the Cognitive Realm. There is no sentience left to the Investiture, it acts more like a fluid under pressure with the Aons being the outlets into the Physical Realm (with all the awsome programming possibilities).

The reproducability of Nightblood and him being more invested than 1000 breaths are quite a mystery for me. Where does the additional Investiture come from to make Nightblood saturated and why would this also happen with other hypothetic awakened swords made by Yesteel? I see no problem in Lifeless wielding swords like Nightblood, since they are so sticky for Breath, that the Breath to awaken a Lifeless cannot be retained, so also Nightblood should be unable to take that Breath away and kill the Lifeless in the process. He probably would just be a shardblade-like sword being able to cut stuff really well without the other effects that happen when he consumes Breath. Bad enough for Vasher to kill Shashara to prevent this happening, I think. So, was Nightblood really as strongly invested as he is now, when he was created? I don't think so. Nightblood was used quite soon after creation and fed on vast amounts of Breath in the process (probably far more than the 1000 breaths necessary to create him). If he consumed and digested this Breath, with the black smoke he emits as digestion waste, it would be possible for Nightblood to fill himself to the brink with Investiture that is not in the form of Breath anymore and in consequence not detectable as such. For Vasher it would still look as if Nightblood still had only the Investiture of 1000 Breaths while the more cosmere aware observer would realize that Nightblood is saturated. If this feeding on Breath is a typical (but before unexpected) feature of Class IV Entities, the same would also happen with other swords created with Awakening. Perhaps this is a side effect of making Breath stick to metal at all. Usually only organic materials can be awakened, so perhaps to awaken anorganic matter there is needed some general attraction to Investiture to make the Breaths stick at all, resulting in an Investiture-draining object. The aquired sentience of a Class IV entity might alter the Intent of the Investiture (according to the Command used for Awakening), leading to "corrupted" Investiture. Here Nightblood could be interpreted as a mini-Shard with the Intent to "Destroy Evil" and its own form of Investiture. While drawing Breaths, the Investiture of Endowment, there happens a mixing of Investiture or at least a transformation. The same would be valid for Stormlight. Nightblood feeds on Investiture, digests it and leaves some waste in form of black smoke. This of course breaks down, if Nightblood had been saturated with Investiture right after creation before first use. For this to be the case though, the additional Investiture has to come from somewhere. And the source has to be able to be tapped many times, since the danger of more swords like Nightbloods is real. Another point: When the person wielding Nightblood runs out of Breaths, Nightblood feeds on the wielder's soul. How many Breaths worth has a whole soul (a breath being only a small part of a person's soul on Nalthis, endowable)? The first digested soul plus the 1000 Breaths to create Nightblood could also be interpreted as mixed Investiture, since the unendowable part of a soul is not really the same kind of Investiture as an endowable Breath. And perhaps 1 soul + 1000 Breaths is enough to create a highly Invested sword.

Nightblood has been called a "robot" spren (see link in OP). Szeth definitely has bonded to Nightblood somehow, since Nightblood talks to Szeth, even right when Nightblood is given to Szeth in WoR. The problem with Szeth not being able to draw in Stormlight at the moment is not unsimilar to Kaladin in the beginning of WoK. Though Syl was already in the process of bonding, Kaladin took some time to strenghten the bond and a lot of practice before being able to draw in Stormlight conciously. I expect the learning process for Szeth to be much faster, since Szeth already has experience with Stormlight. He just has to strenghten his bond to Nightblood. I wouldn't be surprised if we see that happen in Oathbringer. I also expect Nightblood to grant powers at least similar to those of the Skybreakers, otherwise Nale giving Nightblood to Szeth, who is intended to become a Skybreaker, would not make any sense at all. Nightblood's command "Destroy Evil" also somehow fits the characteristic of a Highspren. They stick to the law to the word, and "Evil" is easily defined as anything defying the law, giving Nightblood an easy to follow guideline. Perhaps Nightblood has been adopted by the Highspren in Shadesmar as one of their own...

@Extesian: I agree, it is more complex than necessary. I wanted to support @greyFlint's idea of time dilation by a black hole though, since it's awsome, if very unlikely for Scadrial. And Brandon mentioned relativistic time travel to the future. Just flying away with a velocity near the speed of light, then turn around and come back does work far worse than SR suggests.

Getting near to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) via the Cognitive Realm (and getting away from it in time, too) could be one of those relativistic time travel tricks. The problem of most "simple" relativistic thought experiments is that they don't take into account the necessary accelerations and the time distortions caused by them (SRT vs. GRT). Travelling to the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole would take an infinite time from a frame of reference far away from the gravitational well. Of course our world hopper would not want to get this close, since he would be ripped apart by tidal forces long before he reached the event horizon of the black hole - and he wouldn't be able to get out again except transformed to Hawking radiation, not really a sentient being. Nonetheless, flying into a gravitational well to a certain point and out again would be a possibility to "skip" time in the outside world. Problem is, you need a spaceship, which we haven't seen in the cosmere except in Sixth of the Dusk, which is far in the future of any other cosmere story. Good that we are not restricted to physics only. Hoid is able to travel the Cognitive Realm, as are (nearly by definition) the other worldhoppers. They could travel through the CR to a planet / asteroid deep in the gravitational well of a SMBH - if and only if that asteroid has a significant representation there - remember, most of space is compressed in the CR, which makes worldhopping possible after all. So our not necessarily functional immortal worldhopper travels to his rock with a cozy cave near the SMBH, shields himself from the x-ray radiation radiated from the SMBHs' accretion disk, uses a chromium bubble, if available, waits the beforehand calculated time, perhaps taking a nap, and travels to the next planet where he is suppodedly needed through the CR again. Now the real problem with this: the cosmere is a dwarf galaxy or more likely just a star cluster. Those usually don't have SMBHs at their center, so we need a stellar black hole if we want the mechanism to stay in-cosmere. Stellar black holes are way smaller than SMBHs and create a lot more problems with tidal forces before time dilation becomes relevant. But who knows what you can achieve with access to a bit of Investiture...

Is the newsletter version of White Sand (2.7) the same as the version sent on request last year? I guess a reread would be in order otherwise to take part in discussions I expect to grow like mushrooms soon. To all who don't have White Sand (prose) yet, subscribe to the newsletter, it's awesome imho. What Brandon sees not fit to publish is still better than many books out there, for fans anyway. And it sweetens the waiting time for the Oathbringer release.

Dyes seem to be quite important in Hallandren economy, so I would suspect that mostly dyes like carotene are used for Awakening- meaning a breaking of the dye molecules to remove visible color. I think I remember someone using his own blood as color, too. The red color results from oxidated iron, so draining the color should mean the reduction of iron happens then. Butterflies as well as thin oil films should not work as a color source for Awakening. The impression of color results from interference. The bending of light at the tenth hightening looks similar to me (its described like a prism), so light of different wavelengths is bent slightly different and the impression of color results. Those colors are never shown being used for Awakening (that working would equip the God King with an infinite source of color for Awakening), probably because it isn't possible. Summarizing I think chemical pigments (be it molecular or atomic) work for Awakening while the butterfly should keep it's brilliant hue. The chemical pigments ouf the butterfly could be drained, but that would not remove the percieved color resulting from interference.

Not sure how much I can say here, without being in the White Sand prose section. Lets just say that Darkside is technologically more advanced and has guns. There are reasons why progress stopped after White Sand (I think they are hinted at in SH). White Sand features a young Khriss before she became a worldhopper, so all her possessions should be from Taldain at that point.

I think that is unlikely since all known god metals are no real metals. So silver being a real metal makes it unlikely to be a god metal. There are some WoBs about silver and some about god metals, I don't have time to look them up right now, though. Will do so later if nobody jumps in until then.

@She Who Cannot Be Named: Thanks for transscribing! I'll add it with the other transcriptions in the OP. Will there be more transcriptions? If that's all I can stop checking up this thread daily ;-)

Considering some slipped minor spoilers: I'll edit the Topic Title to indicate that some spoilers are in here. For me, spoilers are to be expected in a thread with the purpose to collect new WoBs. Putting everything in spoiler tags would become quite clumsy (as it got in the collection of WoB in the OP). Considering the release of Dragonsteel: This one is a bit ambiguous: Does "the last Mistborns" mean the last books or the last trilogies? I would guess it's era 4 since Dragonsteel was supposed to be released late.

Since transcriptions are incoming and merrily discussed, I started collecting them in the first post of the topic - playing Pattern the Collector. Does someone else than @She Who Cannot Be Named and @mr42 have recordings being transcribed? @Ozyara: Which part did he read?

Sprenblade are living spren, Bondsmiths seem to bond unique spren. If you need help with transcriptions, just link the file. I'd gladly help during the weekend. @Landis963: Preservations part in humanity on Scadrial was that what gave humans sentience, not just some Connection to him (they didn't preexist the shards on Scadrial). The amount of Investiture in an individual though compared to the shard is negligible. The total amount of Investiture in humanity was enough to let Ruin dominate Preservation over time and might also lead to a stronger influence of Ruin in Harmony on a long time scale. There are some WoBs stating that matter, energy and Investiture are equivalent, that Investiture is an addition to real world physics energy-matter equivalence, so I deem it a measurable and even computable quantity. So a question for Saturday, if someone has no questions: What would be the equivalent mass of a Shard?

Feruchemy and Allomancy have very interesting mechanics and possibilities to use them in creative ways. The amount of Investiture used however, is quite low. Brandon said iIn a recent interview that Roshar will be developing to a kind of magipunk society because of the vast amount of Investiture floating around and it's easy availability. I guess that a surgebinder trying to get allomantic Investiture to fuel the surges would be surprised of the little amount of power he'd get from flaring metals. Another problem would be to get Allomancy or Feruchemy at all. The classical Hemalurgic spike probably would mess with the Nahel bond, since a part of another soul would be attached to the surgebinder's soul. It would require a very tolerant spren to allow this. The only other possibility we have seen until now are the Southern Medallions. I am not convinced that they work on non-Scadrians, but I need to look that up again in recent WoBs.

Well, for Kelsier an easy solution would be to store his Connection to Scadrial in a metalmind. Sorry, I am not able to talk about that without spoilers...perhaps the topic should be tagged.

Where do you get the impression that cognitive shadows are bound to their system? The Returned have travelled to Roshar, Vasher/Zahel currently resides there. The rest I put in spoiler tags: Spoilers for Mistborn: SH, BoM

Ok, here some questions I wanted to ask Brandon if I got the chance. I will add more, if possible, until Saturday. 1.) Do Parshendi differentiate between the terms "gemstone" and "gemheart"? 2.) Would a Southern Medallion also work on non-Scadrians (other than Hoid)? 3.) Iron and steel are chemically very similar. Where would be the threshold where carbonized iron is considered as "dirty" iron, making a lurcher sick when burned or as a bad steel alloy, making a coinshot sick? Could it be burned by both?

That is the argument that is bugging me with that theory. The only advantage for the ferring would be the ability to store Investiture. So in relation to the general population he would be a "half"-ferring. Ok, to be clear - if you want to create unkeyed metalminds you need either a full feruchemist or mistings+excisors, whatever they are. So the nicrosil ferring would still be essential in creating the medallions in the first place, assuming that full feruchemists are really rare in era 2. An additional proposition I made in another thread was that the Investiture stored in an unkeyed nicrosilmind is not tapped when the medallion is used, but that it is attached to the spiritweb of the Scadrian, granting him the stored ability, while he has skin contact. Reason for this proposition is that the medallions don't seem to run out of Investiture.