Brandon Sanderson

White Sands is done for a while, he sends copies of the original to people who ask for it, but otherwise its a comic that comes...sometimes this year?

Finished Calamity! It was pretty fun. Anyone here read Worm? Because the parallels with Scion are real. Left some unanswered questions, but they're expanding the universe, so no worries.

I also finished it today. That comparison was very strong in my mind. Since I spent an hour or so working on my Weaver Dice campaign today. And I've been reading a Let's Read of Worm lately as well.

edited 16th Mar '16 1:08:19 AM by 32ndfreeze

Looking at the Words of Radiance Epigram letter to Hoid, it occurs to me it might not be up to date, since the writer doesn't know about the deaths of Preservation and Ruin.

Do you mean because the writer mentions Odium not "taking the life of another of the sixteen"? Odium didn't kill Preservation or Ruin, they killed each other. They came together to create humanity, with Preservation sacrificing part of himself to do so. Ruin killed him (though it took a long time for him to fully die), and later a newly-ascendant Vin used Preservation's power to kill Ruin.

None of that had anything to do with Odium, as far as we can tell. I mean, unless he was the one who originally suggested they create humanity.

Remind me, why did every other Shard create their humans just fine while Ruin and Preservation had to go through the whole annoying deal?

Nature of their powers, I believe. Preservation's nature is to keep things the same; Ruin's is to tear things down. Neither of them is up to actually creating things on their own, so they had to jury-rig something together using a blend of both their powers, and the act of creating intelligent life in particular took a toll on Preservation (because he had to put more of his power into humans to make them sentient; whether it could have gone the other way with Ruin investing more power and Preservation ending up the stronger of the two is never, to my knowledge, specified. Not sure I'd want to meet Ruin!humanity in any case).

Actually, the line I meant was "millennia have passed without the death of one of the sixteen.", which means the writer thinks no one of the 16 have died, whether or not Odium was involved.

Depends on whether they're talking about the people holding the Shards, or the Shards themselves. What Odium does to Shards is break them, so that not only does the person holding the Shard die, but the Shard itself is destroyed, with only fragments remaining. Leras and Ati, the people who held the Shards of Preservation and Ruin, both died, but the Shards themselves survived.

This is the line (from Coppermind):

Seems pretty clear that Ati and Leras don't count.

I can't remember if this was Word of God or not, but I got the very strong impression that the Shards Odium has Shattered could be reconstituted with great difficulty. Maybe it's just my own theory, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm sticking with it; we know that Shattered Shards can still power magic systems, after all. See Elantris; the problem there was a quirk of geography, not anything related to the fact that Devotion was Shattered (though I think if Aona had still been alive, she probably would have been able to fix the problem more easily).

I suspect Ruin-humanity would be nearly indistinguishable from Preservation-humanity, on account of how Preservation-humanity is nearly indistinguishable from Devotion/Dominion-humanity, Endowment-humanity, Honor/Cultivation-humanity, and presumably Autonomy-humanity when White Sands comes out. You get some odd quirks like color-changing hair or considering horns a part of this complete breakfast, but everyone's recognizably people without a lot of Planet of Hats stuff. (Well, at least not at the planetary level. There's still stuff like Alethi being the warrior guys, but all of Roshar isn't like that.)

Maybe Ruin-humanity would be more prone, as a group, to mercurial behavior and transient social structures, but I really doubt that being less influenced by the guy who swoons over the Lord Ruler for preserving himself so well is going to make them evil.

Maybe they'd be more prone to self-destructive assholery rather than self-preservatory assholery?

If I recall correctly, the chasm in Elantris, which fucked up the entire magic system, was caused directly by Odium being Odium at Devotion.

it´s a Word of Brandon that shards can be unshatterd. Couldn´t find the originial question but it´s mentioned here (point 2)

Nope, I thought so too but I checked. It was the result of a normal earthquake that happened to alter the geometry of the land.

Are you sure? Because having their entire utopia demolished and their demigods turned into subhuman wretches by random tectonic activity seems really goddamn stupid. It's been a while since I read Elantris, but I really did think there was something more to the earthquake.

If there was more to it, it probably wouldn't be mentioned in Elantris anyway. That was his first published novel and the whole "Cosmere" thing wasn't really brought up.

Well i believe the seons were around before the earthquake and they are splinters of devotion so it either was unrelated to their splintering or the consequences had a rather large delay. And if your entire magic depends on the structure of the land such things are bound to happen sooner or later

edited 29th Mar '16 6:44:46 AM by Samaldin

There are two options: Either it was random tectonic activity after Aona was killed (which she would have been able to prevent or fix if she had still been alive), or it was a side effect of killing her in the first place, maybe intentional, maybe not.

Splinters can exist while Shards are still alive. Returned are Splinters actively created by Endowment, spren are Splinters (albeit usually very very weak ones) created by various combinations of Honor and Cultivation, and the Unmade are Splinters of Odium. The seons were around before Devotion was killed. I guess you could call them her angels.

Well, Aon Dor is based all on shapes. So yes, random tectonic activity fucking with the Shape makes perfect sense, especially since Devotion wasn't there for maintenance.

Longer preview of White Sands

Could've had a more creative name than "Sand Masters".

I do kinda like "master" as the verb for using their, uh, arenakinesis is I guess the word.

I am positive that is not, and will never be, a word.

Hey, you got a better word for moving sand with your mind I'll steal it in a heartbeat.