Stark

You are absolutely right. It is the same reason why Lift can't derive benefit from eating plants she makes grow - Energy must be conserved. The amount of energy required to transmute base materials to god materials is so massive, as to be virtually impossible. And if you had enough raw power available to fuel such a transmutation, you are likely far and away beyond actually needing the raw material. My belief, however flawed it may be, hinges on the idea that Aluminum was invested pre-shattering, but lost it during the shattering as the 16 pulled power into themselves. The act of 1ad of Investiture (Using Adonalsiums as the base unit of investiture) being split into 16 semi-unique distinct parts forced the 'new' Investitures to create their own godmetals, following the template left by the previous holder of the power, seeing as they could not all conceivably use the same metal, but leaving an aftereffect on that metal. SO yeah, I have a lot of thoughts, zero proof, and tons of conjecture, that if we are lucky we will learn enough about to disprove or prove sometime in the next 15 years... We need more info. Until then, please keep poking holes in my ideas, it forces me to abandon the untenable ones, or better defend the others. I don't have the proof yet, but I'm still convinced that Aluminum is linked to Adonalsium somehow.

Very good point to counter my thoughts. Hopefully tomorrow, when our number of available examples increases by 50% we will be able to further narrow down the list of suspects. I am still heavily wary of looking in the expected directions, but a lot of people are bringing up really good points. I can't wait to see how it all shakes loose!

Except that the sixteen divided up Adonalsium's Investiture among themselves. They split him apart like a giant pizza and devoured the investiture, leaving only the Aluminum pizza box behind, empty of all the goodness, but inert. I just re-read that analogy. Its terrible, but I'm blaming it on cold medication, and everyone in my office who got me sick in the first place. But I'm leaving it. Anyway, the Investiture is split among the sixteen, which is why you can't find it, to my mind. But the vessel remains, as Aluminum. And if I want to be whiny, I could point out that Zahel is not Rosharan. But chances are that he knows what Aluminum is. So you have a point there. But I am pretty sure you cannot Soulcast Aluminum into something else.

I have felt for a while now that Aluminum was Adonalsium's God metal. My reason for this is that Adonalsium was involved in everything, so the remains of his Investiture should be threaded throughout the Cosmere. Aluminum is everywhere, even on planets created post shattering. And it always has a dampening, or nullifying effect on the investiture of the local shard. Almost as if it is the complementary wavelength that brings all other investitures back to normal. If it was just a Scadrian phenomenon, I would discard this, but we see it as the unforgeable metal, and involved in the blunting of Shardblades. It is everywhere. In Feruchemy, it allows you to store Identity and it's alloy lets you store Connection, two things you would expect to be involved in the body of the God who was everywhere, shared identity and connection to everything. As for the Aluminum being on the Scadrian metal table, well, we've had a fake-out there before. At the very beginning, when they thought there were only 10 metals, they paired Gold and Atium together. Seeing someone else's future, and seeing your own past. When that got expanded to include Electrum and Malatium, we had two pairs that complemented each other. Gold and Electrum that let you see you own past/future, and Atium/Malatium that let you see someone else's future/past.The fakeout was that Atium was a God metal and in a table of its own. And no other quadrant is that perfectly complementary in era 1. However, in Era 2, we have Aluminum and duralumin that alternatively drain or explode your reserves paired with Chromium and Nicrosil which drain or burst someone else's reserves. Exactly the same complementary pairings we saw with era 1's gold and Atium. The simple beauty of it is, already have been duped by this fakeout in Era 1, we would never suspect it again in Era 2. Fool us once shame on Brandon, fool us twice, we should have seen it coming. And once the scholars of Scadrial had 16 metals that apparently fit, why keep looking? Experimenting with bad metals is dangerous for Allomancers. I would not look at this, except, Aluminum affects investiture on other planets too, by "blocking" it. It even affects Scadrian investiture weirdly, by blocking soothing and not reacting to pushes or pulls. So I really feel that Aluminum is Adonalsium's God metal, put into play in the second Cosmere novel and hidden behind an identical fakeout with a local God metal, just waiting for Sanderson to pull the rug out from under us. Or maybe I'm a crazy Cosmere conspiracy theorist... Edit: Information from much later, post Oathbringer:

So, fun question then. If Lift is using food as a gate to investiture, like Scadrial's metals, what would happen if she went to Scadrial and used a connection medallion? Would she, while tapping connection from an unkeyed metalmind, be able to use food to fuel Allomancy?

I am sticking with my conviction that this was written by the Sons of Honor. They have been dedicated to bringing back the Heralds and the Radiants, which would involve Oath binding, and that would be considered heretical post-Recreance. So Restares, who we have heard of but not met, is a good candidate, or whomever is the founder/leader of the Sons.

I'm going to go left field on this. Amaram, Restares, or another member of the Sons of Honour - the founder perhaps. We have already seen that the Sons have their own written language using the phonetics of the glyphs. They are trying to bring back the Radiants and the Voidbringers, which could be considered quite heretical. But they feel the need to do it anyway. So definitely a male writer, otherwise the comment about female readers would be unnecessary. The only other option I can really see would be Szeth writing it, as part of his rebuilding himself. He was likely mostly dead for long enough to see into Shadesmar, and he definitely thought he was dead. Then saved by Nale, arguably someone who can see farther than he can. So those are my bets. It is either the tome/mission statement written by the founder of the Sons of Honour that will give the logic for why people join up and think ending the world will save it, or it is a contemporary journal written by Szeth, post Oath-stone.

I haven't finished reading chapter four yet, and already I'm gibbering over this: "There are no foolish oaths. All are the mark of men and true spren over beasts and subspren. The mark of intelligence, free will, and choice." Confirmation that different kinds of spren may have different levels of sapience in the Cognitive realm as opposed to just the Physical! I am also getting the distinct feeling that the Rosharan tome titled Oathbringer was written by Jasnah, or one of the other contemporary Kholins...

Anything else would be a little disappointing from someone who took Flash as their user name, and came up for a in Cosmere mechanic to create the Flash...

I'm going full typo hunt at the moment: This read really odd: "Dalinar knelt, pulling the jacket back from Sadeas’s face. “That blood is dried. He’s been lying here for some time.” “We’ve been looking for him,” said the officer in green. “Looking for him? You lost your highprince?” “The tunnels are confusing!” the man said. “They don’t go natural directions. We got turned about and…”" It feels like something is missing in the middle. I had to read it a few times, because at first glance it seemed like the Green Sadeas officer was yelling at himself for losing Sadeas... There was another instance in chapter 2 where officer was spelled off cer... "Either way, Dalinar’s lack of offi ers explained the room’s other occupants: Highprince Sebarial and his mistress, Palona. Likable or not, Sebarial was one of the two living" Never mind all the interesting info! A golden light, brilliant yet terrible. Standing before it, a dark figure in black Shardplate. The figure had nine shadows, each spreading out in a different direction, and its eyes glowed a brilliant red. This is the first time I can think of where we see Odium referenced with a light colour...

It is mentioned in both Szeth and Eshonai's interludes - they threw it away when they left the city while Szeth was killing. He had to wander the roads outside the city to find it, then stand on the side of the road with it until someone passed and offer it to them. They didn't keep it or stick around to see if he succeeded, and he had to find a new master because they abandoned him.

Probably yes. Had not planned on that, and I'm not sure how to move it. But Cosmere Theories seems a better home for this thread in retrospect. Edit: Thanks to the mods for the fast move, and thanks @Calderis for suggesting it in the first place

Completely agreed. I hope eventually we'll get a proper timeline - maybe in the next short story compendium (Arcanum Rebound?). It just seemed plausible to me that with the timelines, blurry though they may be, that the Reod and Recreance may have occurred close to the same time. I agree that my stray thought that an event in the Physical realm on Roshar involving entities of the Cognitive Realm echoing accross the Cognitive to affect the physical on another planet is a stretch. It even seems ridiculous when I phrase it like that. But looking at @Oversleep's timeline, we have the Recreance somewhere between 500-1500 years before Way of Kings, we have Elantris in the same time period, and we have Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell in the same period, and all of them have world changing events in the past preceding the 'current' events. The Recreance, the Reod, the appearance of the shades. On Nalthis, we have Returns begining an unspecified amount of time before 300 years before Warbreaker (Manywar was 300 years before Warbreaker, right?) On Scadrail, we have the Lord Ruler shifting the planet's orbit 1000 years before Era 1. So there are a lot of big events in the past of each world where something changed that led to a dramatic change on the planet. And each of them had their in world reason for happening, at least according to the scholars of that world (Recreance and Lord Ruler's Ascension are best example). The least dramatic of these was the Recreance. While I agree, it is highly unlikely that they all happened at the same time, or even in the same decade, I am curious if these events happened in the same century, especially when you start playing with the math for orbital periods on the non-Earth analog planets. But if they happened within the same 100 year span, it would strain credulity that they were all coincidentally happening around the same time. Nothing is coincidence in the Cosmere. So if they happened close to each other, and it is not coincidental,could something have happened in the Cosmere as a while that would have set off ripples through either the Cognitive or Spiritual realms to have an effect on the Physical? But as Calderis pointed out, all hypothetical conjecture without a hard time line.

Hi everyone, I've been looking for some timeline details. I've found some broad strokes timeline info on the Coppermind here: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Cosmere#Chronological_Order I've also read through the Cosmere timeline topic thread on the forums: But I'm looking for a nitty-gritty little detail, and I'm not seeing anything really conclusive, so I'm hoping to tap into the collective memory of the 17th Sharders, and hopefully see if any one can confirm or shoot down my thought. My question is: Did the Reod and the Recreance happen more or less around the same time? We know Elantris takes place before Way of Kings, by a couple of hundred years. We know the Reod happened 10 years before Elantris, and was likely unrelated to the shattering of Skaai or Aona, as their splinters, the Seons and the Skaze, were already present. We also know that the Day of Recreance happened before the events of the Way of kings, by at least a few hundred years, giving society enough time to bounce back from that event and the sudden influx of shards into the hands of the general population. So here is where I'm weak, as I don't have the exact timelines on hand for the Recreance, or the timeline difference between Elantris and The Stormlight Archive, but what if they happened around the same time? Is that conceivable? Has anyone else had thoughts along a similar vein? And to take it a step further - what if one caused the other? What if the death of so many Spren in the physical realm echoed across the Cognitive realm and left its mark on other worlds? A kind of "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened." only felt by the entire planet of Sel (which has geographically diverse investiture), and maybe others. Or is it possible that a different event somewhere else echoed accross one the realms and caused effects across the Physical realm - rending the earth in Sel and causing the Radiants to relinquish their Oaths on Roshar? Am I grasping at straws? I know I haven't formulated my thoughts very well.

Is anyone lucky enough to have a recording or a transcript of this Q&A?

So we have a variant of Godwin's law for Adolin? As any conversation on the 17th Shard goes on, the probability of Adolin being mentioned approaches 1/1? I can't even counter that.

Yeah, "awesomeness" kinda kills it for me. Lift grew on me a bit during Edgedancer, and I do appreciate that she is both one of the youngest perspectives Brandon has written, and is still developing. But, for now, she just doesn't do it for me. I am happy to watch and see how she develops, hopefully into a character I can enjoy reading by the time she is a main.

This was a big shock to me in WOR. When I finally got a hold of my copy, I had debated skipping the sample chapters to get to new material. Thankfully I decided to read from the beginning, and found that entire chapter that had not been released. So while they have said they are releasing the first 32 chapters in order, and that volume of chapters released makes it difficult to exclude anything from the first 80% of the samples (as it would be reacted to in those samples) we still run the risk of having small to medium detail changes. I'm all for a week by week discussion - I know what I'll be doing on my Tuesday lunch breaks as they come out - but I also think we should take it with a grain of salt. We have seen the Tor site get Cosmere details wrong before.

Hah, finally managed to ninja @Calderis, even if it was on a different thread!

Well, this has been confirmed on Tor.com. Previews start on August 22nd! http://www.tor.com/2017/08/15/brandon-sanderson-oathbringer-serialization-announcement/

I would guess that the recharge rate on the sand (or lichen in the sand) would be really slow though, with the light so diffused over the distance between solar systems - it may be so slow as to make using white sand charged by starlight impractical. I also notice that in all the quoted WOBs about awakening with Stormlight, Brandon never says that it is impossible to awaken with Stormlight, just that Vasher has not figured out how to do it. Does anyone have a WOB where he outright says whether or not it is possible to Awaken with Stormlight? Vasher can't - but that does not state that no one can. And seeing as Breath sticks better than Stormlight - if you use Surge-bind with Breath, does that create permanent lashings? Can you take the breath back to end the lashings like with Awakened constructs? If Awakening with Stormlight is possible, and Stormlight leaks out of everything, does it create temporary contructs? Would attaching Gems to the constructs make them last longer (like batteries, and shardplate)? Edit: Charging white sand: Can't do it via Highstorm, I don't think, unless it is sealed in a clear, water-tight container, as water seems to neutralize the charge and darken the sand - so leaving in it an invested hurricane to charge seems inefficient...

Yeah, I'm going to go with believing this is Brandon Trolling us until it is confirmed, or the chapters are released. 25% seems unheard of to me. I can't buy into that.

Are Returned able to do any of the following with their "super" breath: 1) Replace another Returned's expended Breath, bringing them back to life. 2) Unblock another Returned's pre-Return memories. 3) Turn a normal, or a drab into a Returned without them having to die first.

I personally am not a fan of going back and doing something over to that extent, to the point where it makes me really uncomfortable with the... I dunno, sanctity of what comes after? If we can go back and have do-overs, it makes me worry about future works, or other elements were authors have said they weren't entirely happy with how situation x, y, or z was handled, and making changes down the line. This is a perfect example of why this is not a good thing to do. The raging fan controversies that stemmed for all the post release changes are terrible. Deleted scenes and director's cuts are one things, but going back a modifying scenes bugs me. That said, I get why Brandon did it here. It makes far more sense than the original ending. It massively lessens the feeling I got at the end of WoR that death was becoming meaningless. So as much as I dislike the method used to fix the story, I can accept that in this case it needed doing, and won't complain, as long as this sort of fix doesn't become common in the future. And then I do all sorts of ludicrous mental gymnastics to help convince myself it is okay, partially by looking at it as a big typo fix (because those happen between editions and are okay) and a belief that the difference between my HC copy and my kindle copy is an alternate timeline. The HC copy (version 1 - is a doomed timeline, Odium wins because Kal made the wrong choice, and the entire Cosmere is doomed, etc, etc, over dramatic etc.) ended not long after and will no longer be written, and the Kindle timeline survives. So I can accept it was done and move on, but I cannot honestly claim to be 100% happy with with it, even if I agree it was necessary to handle the characters properly.

Can Spren hurt each other in the physical realm? We have heard discussion of spren "hunts" in the Cognitive Realm. (I believe Ivory mentioned that in the Jasnah novella sample chapter. Or it may have been Pattern.) We have also seen Syl defending Kal from what seemed to be Deathspren during his fever after the Highstorm exposure. Then there is Ivory's very real fear of the arrival of the Painspren, or Grinders. This seems to imply that, in the Cognitive Realm at least, Spren can at the very least interfere with each other, if not outright harm and destroy each other. So does that translate to the Physical Realm? Can Spren in the Physical Realm interfere with each other? Can they attack, or injure each other? Can a Spren in the Physical Realm kill another Spren in the Physical realm. And if so, what happens if one, or both of these spren are currently bonded to a Knight Radiant? The answer to this could have some very interesting implications for why Pattern was so furtive after the Arena fight, when he maybe saw Syl - was it fear of discovery, or fear of destruction? Especially seeing as Cryptics and Honorspren have indicated a disdain for each other.