BlackYeti

I got mine today  (okay, it really came a few days back, but I resisted opening it until today).

I decided to go with something fun, so I asked him to write the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant translated into High Imperial.

It's a shame that he missed my name off, but I can't complain too much given how much I've fallen in love with it.  Also I think I've now finally figured what to use as a signature.

On 12/22/2016 at 1:53 PM, WeeDunadan said:

Congrats! Mine arrived on Monday this week. Really happy with it, although my deliberations over which shipping to choose meant I only got #1038... that extra 3-4 minutes makes a lot of difference!

Last years Elantris I got #98.. so can't complain really.

If you don't mind me asking, which shipping option did you go for? I feel I wasted a lot of £ with FedEx.

 

Could be worse: I mixed up the time zones, which coupled with an authentication issue and my ignorance of the 90 character restriction (my original attempt was 91 characters long), meant that I ordered mine about 2 hours and 15 minutes after it went on sale. As such I got #1328.

And to mirror your post, I got #97 for Elantris last year!

7 minutes ago, Yata said:

You may have right, but I think Sazed fixed the Snapping manipulation, so no more Seers once the old one died. About the Atium's use for Hemalurgy...it may be usefull but no very much. You have to want to store the specific attribute to performe Hemalurgy, therefore an Atium's spike isn't really very good. It was an huge help in the era1 when some of the 16 metals weren't avaliable, now you may craft spikes of every compatible metal

I think we're mostly in agreement then, but if you will allow me to clarify the point on Haemalurgy.

In order to steal anything with Haemalurgy you need 3 things: the correct intent, the correct bind point, and the correct metal. If you were to try and find a new combination therefore, you would need to test every bind point with every metal (though depending on how much you know of the system, you could narrow the metal down by the category of the attribute that you're trying to steal). We know that there's between 200 and 300 bind points in the human body, so if we assume 256 to keep to the base 2 nature of the metallic arts, that means that you'd need a maxiumum of 256*16 = 4096 guinea pigs.

Whereas if you had atium, you would effectively eliminate one of the variables. You would still need to test for the correct metal afterwards, but it reduces the maximum to 256+16 = 272 guinea pigs, a far more manageable number.  [This doesn't look anywhere near evil enough, why don't we have an evil grin option?]

4 hours ago, Yata said:

Possible but without Mistborn, the Atium isn't really so usefull to anyone.

I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you.

Firstly, do we know whether Seers are still being born or not? Secondly, just think how much easier it would be to experiment with Haemalurgy if you had a universal spike that can steal anything. Thirdly, I suspect that all of the god metals can be used in ways that we don't know about yet: just look at what the southerners are doing with ettmetal/harmonium.

Just now, Eki said:

From the context of his answer (but not your question), it sounds more like he's talking about Vasher's connection to Roshar in general, rather than the name in particular...

Which was why I made sure to point out that I was the person who asked: I saw his body language, facial expression, heard his tone of voice. There's a lot that simple text can't convey properly. It was over two years ago that I asked this now, but I still remember it very well. When I mentioned the name Kalad he was grinning.

I would agree that this isn't conclusive, but it was definitely the impression that he left me with.

Just now, bleeder said:

Hmm... would that make it an in-world connection, or just a literary connection?

That would be an in-world linguistic connection I think.

On 12/22/2016 at 2:46 AM, bleeder said:

Is there any link between the names "Kalad" and "Kaladin"?

I would say that their is a link: specifically that they are both based off of Kalak.

Quote

BLACKYETI

In Words of Radiance, we have Vasher showing up. One of his aliases on Nalthis is Kalad, which is very similar to the name of one of the Heralds on Roshar. So I was wondering how far back this connection between him and Roshar goes.

BRANDON SANDERSON

It goes pretty far back, in fact I wrote Way of Kings, the 2002 version; he was a main character and was Kaladin’s sword master. I wrote Warbreaker to jump back and write out his back story, so to me Warbreaker actually came after Way of Kings. But the connection goes back pretty far, further than you would first guess.

Since I was the one who asked this question, I'm pretty confident that Brandon was implying that Kalad does indeed come from Kalak.

@Yata and @Spoolofwhool are correct, a Knight Radiant dying does not by itself kill their spren. I remember reading a WoB to that effect, though I can't remember where and my searching did not it them up.  

The way I see it there are only four possibilities here:

1. Helaran was never a Surgebinder.
2. Helaran was a Surgebinder, but he was bonded to a dead Shardblade as well and was somehow able to ignore the screaming in his head.
3. Helaran was at one point a Surgebinder, but he betrayed his oaths leaving him with only a dead Shardblade.
4. Helaran wasn't killed by Kaladin

Edit: Of course I only see @Yata's edit with the very WoB I was thinking of after I post this. 

I think you could potentially be looking at this a bit wrong: I don't necessarily see Devotion and Dominion as being opposites. I could easily imagine someone seeking to dominate something/someone, whilst at the same time being devoted to it/them. It really comes down to how the person trying to take the powers perceives the Intents. As such, I don't think it would be particularly difficult for someone with the right mindset to combine the two (at least in comparison to the difficulty in combining any two Shards).

As for the question regarding the species for Shard Vessels: they do not need to be human (in fact not all of the current Vessels are human). However, they may well need to be sapient, which means that unless it were a worldhopper only a human could have taken the Shards on Sel.

From chapter 88:

Quote

“Because, you are ignorant.” Mraize stepped closer to her, towering over her. “You don’t know who we are. You don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish. You don’t know much of anything at all, Veil. Why did your father join us? Why did your brother seek out the Skybreakers?

Consequently there's been much speculation that Helaran was a Skybreaker. Which has in turn led to theories such as it not being Helaran that Kaladin killed.

45 minutes ago, ccstat said:

Thanks for posting the puzzle. (Took me a while because I somehow ignored hint #12)

The important thing is that I had to look up several of the games and foods in the coppermind (lagets/tektees food and kabers/fets games). And I didn't remember that tonks were those beasts of burden on Taldain--I kept thinking of Tonk Fah and hoping I was wrong. He would be the absolute worst pet ever. (Except maybe for the kandra? Leaving new bodies for you on the doorstep all the time? *shudder*)

This is hillarious!  I can't stop laughing at the thought of Tonk Fah as a pet.

At least I couldn't until the thought struck me that that's actually exactly what he was: Denth's pet. Then things got disturbing somewhat fast.

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

What part of the description indicates that one of the eleven spikes listed (there are eleven listed, not ten), is between the shoulder blades? As far as I can tell, the description lists two through the eyes, one through each shoulder (two), six between the ribs, and one in the sternum. None of them are remotely described as being in the back or between shoulder blades.

I was just going by what @sprocket said, the part that you quoted (I haven't reread the section from the book itself).  That clearly states ten, with one between the shoulders.

7 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Right. Just don't forget the linchpin spike in the back as well. The end of TFE should describe where that is precisely located when Marsh goes around ripping them out. There's also a description of Marsh later on in HOA where he has a ton of spikes, but I think they were still all added between the rib cage.

The lynchpin spike is between the shoulder blades. I think therefore that it's included in the ten spikes listed in the Hero of Ages description.

7 minutes ago, harambe said:

First of all @A Budgie <3 

secondly @BlackYeti I found my mistake . In my transcription I said that the guy who eats pancakes is next to the one with the aviar, which would make the owner of the shade (considering that he is one of the 5) the....

  Hide contents

Siah Amian in the 4th house

 

Correct.

This makes you the second person to get the answer. Well Done.

13 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

Identity I believe to be a function of the Cognitive Realm, not the Spiritual (Note that things gain a rudimentary self-awareness, e.g. the stick, and rudimentary wants/desires, e.g. the unbought knapsack in Secret History).  However, I believe that whenever a given Identity sees into or enters the Spiritual, all the connections that they have made over the course of their entire life collapse into one point.  That point being where the identity in question is.  

Yet in feruchemy, Identity is stored in aluminium, which is in the Spiritual quadrant.

This surely requires Identity to be a Spiritual property, not a Cognitive one.

3 hours ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Only 3 Dragonsteels?

I seem to recall him saying that Dragonsteel was intended to be "a big epic" on par with Stormlight.

I believe it was originally intended to be 7 books, but Brandon's since revised it down to a trilogy.

Also @Pagerunner, that was a truly excellent extrapolation save for one thing, did you forget about Nightblood?

Edit: nope it was there, I'm apparently blind

1 minute ago, Alvron said:

You might want to check again Harambe.  My results are different and been confirmed correct.

I was just about to post the same thing. I'd be interested to hear the logic behind @harambe's answer though.

In any event, congratulations on the correct answer, @Alvron

In case you’re unfamiliar with Einstein’s riddle, it’s a logic puzzle which, according to legend, was written by Albert Einstein. It is reportedly so difficult that only 2% of the population would be capable of solving it correctly (however I was able to do just that and I’m not that smart, so I’d take that with a massive grain of salt if I were you). Anyway, I recently spent a little time adapting it to fit in the Cosmere, and I thought I’d share the result. 

In a street in Silverlight, there are five consecutive houses, in which there live five different people, each of a different species. The five house owners each possess a certain Invested item, play a certain game, eat a certain food, and keep a certain pet. None of them have the same pet, play the same game, eat the same food, or own the same Invested Item.

The question is: who keeps the shade?

The Facts:

1. The dragon has unmastered sand.
2. The Dysian Aimian keeps axehounds as pets.
3. The Parshendi plays Tarachin.
4. The owner of one of the Tears of Edgli lives in the house to the immediate left of the house of the owner of the Moon Sceptre.
5. The owner of one of the Tears of Edgli plays fets.
6. The person who eats Tashikk pancakes rears Aviar.
7. The person who owns the Shardblade eats Horneater stew.
8. The person living in the centre house plays breakneck.
9. The kandra lives in the first house.
10. The person who eats Hraggish meat wraps lives next to the person who keeps a Seon as a pet.
11. The person who keeps tonks lives next to the person who eats Horneater stew.
12. The person who eats Tektees food plays shelldry.
13. The Siah Aimian eats lagets.
14. The kandra lives next to the owner of the atium.
15. The person who eats Hraggish meat wraps has a neighbour who plays kabers.

52 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

As far as I understand it, people were aware on some level consciously of the enhanced feelings that a breath offers them. It's possible that someone who was dying suddenly had the idea of giving their breath away to help their friends/families, and managed to approximately say the right thing and with the right intent.

I agree with @Yata. Note that non-Nalthians are not Drabs yet they do not have Breath, so whilst they are only ever-so-slightly less Invested than a Nalthian with a single Breath, we don't see any real difference from their perspective. I don't think that the slight difference in the type of a small portion of their Innate Investiture would be enough to give a Nalthian this sense of what to do with their Breath, yet leave a non-Nalthian without that (which it has to since they have no Breath).

On a more personal note, it's not been that long since my mother passed away, and I can say with certainty that in her final weeks, there's no chance that she would have been able to say anything clearly. I highly doubt therefore that a Nalthian would gain the clarity to clearly visualize and enunciate a Command on their deathbed.

43 minutes ago, jofwu said:

More tidbits:

In chapter 14 Marasi and MeLaan look at info about the man blew up a damnation and caused flooding, named Johnst. They read that he acted very strangely and couldn't remember the names of his family before being executed. He also claimed that he only intended to cause trouble for a neighbor--not kill people and flood an entire region. Lastly, they read that his grave was desecrated shortly after burial. They conclude that Paalm must have been impersonating Johnst. That she blew the damnation, let them bury her, and then crawled out of the grave. But MeLaan casts some doubt on the first few points. Paalm is too skilled an impersonator to mess something up as simple as family names.

What if it wasn't Paalm, but Johnst himself. He was spiked, and under the influence of Trell. Trell convinced/made him to blow the damnation. And given this experience, it's not surprising he was going mad in the end. Perhaps Paalm dug up his bones for some other purpose, afterwards. To retrieve the spike, for example.

This is perhaps more of a stretch than Marasi and MeLaan's conclusion. It's certainly more complicated. But it's suspicious to me how Sanderson has them point out multiple times in the conversation that the man acted strangely (not as if he were being impersonated by a skilled kandra).

I'm guessing the "damnation" thing was caused by an auto-correct, because I can't see him blowing up Braize without his own Death Star. I don't think even the Lord Ruler had one of those, and he was a bona fide Evil Emperor. 

More seriously though, I think you're reading too much into this. I don't see Paalm having the time to research the man's family, so it's understandable that she wouldn't know their names. Also she's more than a little bit mad, so somewhat unpredictable.

1 hour ago, robardin said:

That is a good point - Awakening was only discovered when the current people of Hallendren arrived, right? Displacing the former residents to Idris, with Pahn Kahl on the short end of both situations (from their POV)? Yet the Returned pre-date even that, as Vo the First Returned founded the dynastic line of Idris.

And, think about it, given what we know about its mechanics, how could Awakening be "discovered"? You have to have quite a few Breaths before it's even possible, and to acquire more than your own natural one, someone has to know the basic Command "my breath to yours", with the intent in mind to transfer their Breath to you. It seems highly unlikely for people to just be sitting around one day, and both to conceive of having transferable Breath and then to say that. Where did that information come from? And its timing is relatively recent.

Add to that the fact that the Five Scholars quickly progressed to fairly advanced Realmatic understanding, despite Awakening having what looks like the highest hurdle to beginning to Do Stuff With Investiture of any magic system we've seen in the Cosmere, regardless of the relatively simple mechanics.

Actually you can Awaken with only one Breath, just look at the one-Breath Command for creating Lifeless, and there are doubtless other such Commands. In fact technically just giving your Breath to someone with the "my Breath to yours" command is an Awakening. So gaining multiple Breaths is not a requirement.

Also, remember the more Breath that you have, the more instinctive it is to Awaken. True Instinctive Awakening is only offered with the Sixth Heightening, but lower Heightenings do bring you part way there. Returned are naturally at the Fifth Heighteing, so I could easily imagine that a Returned could figure it out if they put their mind to it (that's doubtless how they managed to start healing people with their Divine Breath). That being the case, the Five Scholars seem to me like the sort of people who would be able to work it out.

16 minutes ago, robardin said:

I think the "needs color" ingredient of Awakening is something of a red herring (ha ha), or rather, an incomplete herring. It's really that most, or all, of the colors in fabrics on Nalthis are made with dyes from the Tears of Edgli. When dyed objects from other sources don't work for Awakening, they just ascribe it to not being "vibrant" enough - but "vibrancy" really is about containing "Essence of Endowment".

 

Meanwhile, we've got numerous implications and cites from WoB that Rosharan Stormlight can be used as a substitute for BioChromatic Breath in terms of sustaining Vasher as a Returned. And that Vasher has tried Awakening stuff on Roshar, like maybe with a Kholin deep blue cloak, to no success, when maybe all he needed was to try it with color from something from Hallendren.

 

This can't be the case. From chapter 56:

Quote

“Become as my leg and give it strength!” he Commanded, drawing color from the blood on his chest.

...

Vasher barreled toward them, colorless translucent blood dropping from his skin as he drew his Breath back from the rope.

Blood has most certainly not been dyed, so Awakening must be able to work with any colour.

Returned are confirmed to be able to use any Investiture to sustain themselves, so it makes sense that they could use Stormlight like that.

Typically day can be considered to be the time when the area of the planet that you're on is facing the sun, hence Dayside makes perfect sense: it is always day there, so why not call it that. However it doesn't really make sense to call the the other half Nightside, it is after all, also facing a star.

In fact Brandon has described the light level on Darkside as being like twilight, and it sounds more like civil twilight than nautical or astronomical twilight, i.e. not much darker than daylight. So if we were to see it we probably wouldn't describe it as night from the light level either. 

Therefore, it's probably just called Darkside because it's darker than Dayside, and calling it Nightside wouldn't make sense.

How about: "Love People".

To my mind this might potentially be the scariest possible Command that a Type 4 Awakened sword could possibly have.

4 hours ago, Ironeyes said:

So this is a little assumption I've had in my head for a while and I'd like a second opinion (or a twentieth, no restrictions on that). I've been assuming that each of the orders, while having access to two surges, has a particular affinity toward one of them. That would be the surge that they learn most easily, or the one in which they attain greatest mastery. Upon thinking about it, I think that it's most likely that each order's "favorite" surge would be the one they share with the order counterclockwise to them on the chart. So Elsecallers own Transformation, Edgedancers are best at Friction, Windrunners at Adhesion, etcetera.

I've had a similar idea to this, however in my mind it was the surge shared with the Order clockwise, not anticlockwise, to them on the chart.

My reason for thinking this was that the Windrunners gained two abilities tied to Gravitation (Basic and Reverse Lashings), but only one to Adhesion (Full Lashing). And similarly the Edgedancers appear to have two abilities tied to Progression (Growth and Regrowth), but only one tied to Abrasion (removing friction). We've not really seen enough of the other Orders abilities to know whether this pattern holds for them yet, but it does seem pretty likely.

@Spoolofwhool, I'd say that the part about not wanting to offend customers by reading in their presence actually does imply that someone in his position typically would be able to read. Nevertheless, @JE19426 is correct, I was conflating two scenes (it's been in my head this way for so long I didn't bother to look it up). From chapter 3:

Quote

She hadn't asked, but she was certain Captain Tozbek could read. She'd seen him holding books; it had made her uncomfortable.

Not really as good as evidence as I'd remembered it being, but I'd say it supports my argument quite well.