On Shardblades And Horcruxes

Oathbringer Speculation: Soulcasters

We know that people who consistently use soulcasters over a long period of time are...changed. My theory is that they are being slowly turned into spren and sucked into Shadesmar and further that this is the source of Syl’s comment about how the power coalesces slowly  and parts become sentient and a spren is born.

First off, let’s visit our friend Kaza in Interlude 4. We learn that she is slowly turning to smoke, but it seems to hold together well enough that she can wear a glove over her smoke fingers and still use her hand. She is forgetting the “ordinary passions of human life” and increasingly not needing to eat or drink. The she says that “I have begun to see the dark sky and the second sun, the creatures that lurk, hidden, around the cities of men.” It is clear that she is starting to see into Shadesmar and it isn’t too much of a stretch that in Shadesmar there might start also being evidence of her. The Aimian cook notes that she is “barely human anymore.” At the end of the interlude she chooses to “go with the smoke,” but the other times that she almost goes it sounds like she almost goes all the way into shadesmar and doesn’t come back, not that she almost turns into smoke in the physical realm and drifts off. Later in Celebrant (chapter 102) Kaladin finds himself in a tent with a “single bewildered spren made of smoke,” confirming that smoke spren are a thing.

In chapter 81 Kaladin meets a grain soulcaster and notes that “The woman had an inhuman look to her; she seemed to be growing vines under her skin, and they peeked out around her eyes, growing from the corners and spreading down her face like runners of ivy.” Then in Celebrant we meet spren that “were made entirely of vines, though they had crystal hands and wore human clothing.”

In chapter 105, we meet a soulcaster that makes stone and learn that his “skin beneath [his cloak] was colored like granite, cracked and chipped, and seemed to glow from within.”   In Celebrant there “were other spren with skin like cracked stone, molten light shining from within.”

We don’t have a description of the Azish soulcaster that makes bronze, but it seems like a good bet that their description would match that of the Reachers, who “looked like humans with strange bronze skin—metallic, as if they were living statues.”

In Chapter 35 of Words of Radiance we meet a soulcaster that doesn’t quite fit any of the descriptions of spren that we meet in Celebrant, though she could potentially be in an earlier stage of the granite type: “Prolonged use of the Soulcaster had transformed the eyes so that they sparkled like gemstones themselves. The woman’s skin had hardened to something like stone, smooth, with fine cracks. It was as if the person were a living statue.”

We also hear about Honor and then the Stormfather making Honorspren, so soulcasters wouldn’t be the only way that sentient spren are formed, but I’m fairly convinced that it is at least one way that spren are born. 

For reference and as a side note, in Celebrant they meet Cryptics, Honorspren, Reachers (bronze), Cultivationspren (vines), Inkspren, the ones whose skin turns to ash, the glowing granite ones, the ones made of smoke and possibly also ones made of fog/mist, though I’m not completely convinced those aren’t the same as smoke. If the fog/mist ones are different from the smoke ones, then this gives us 9 different types of sentient spren to correspond to the 9 non-bondsmith orders of the Knights Radiant. 

Dear Cfsbf, 

It has come to my attention that the current logo used on the Coppermind (our wiki for all things Sanderson) was intended as a stopgap measure when it was added five years ago. We are planning to finally fix this and to do a redesign of the main page of the wiki. If you would be interested in helping/being part of this conversation (you don’t have to know about wikis), please reply to this post or shoot us an ask over at harmonys-coppermind :-) Any interest?

Hey y’all, it’s Kaly reads a poem time again.  This one is called Entropy’s Embrace.  It isn’t quite a cosmere specific poem, but it is a great poem, was written by our friend worldsingers and it does have some lovely cosmere evoking imagery.  You can find the text and a review of the poem here.

Gunnerkrigg Stormlight Mashup

Because I saw the first panel of today's Gunnerkrigg Court update and my reaction was "Dude!  When did Paz become a Windrunner?" I don't think Paz is actually a windrunner though.  She would hang out with Shallan and they would go meet all of the creatures.  Paz would absolutely be up for tracking down a chasmfiend for a chat. (Oh man, Shallan in Gillitie Wood.  She would be so excited.) 

More below the cut, but it kinda got long.

Eglamore, on the other hand, would totally be a Windrunner. Parley might be as well, but she also might be a Willshaper.  I'm not sure. 

Kat would hang out with Navani and they would be awesome engineers turning magic things into technology together.

Annie is half Horneater and inherited the ability to see and interact with all of the spren.  She discovers she is a Lightweaver (I guess, unless she finds a way to get transportation and illumination, but that doesn't appear to be a thing) and quickly learns to navigate Shadesmar.  (Blinker stones are totally infused spheres).

Zimmy is a Lightweaver who didn't have a mentor to teach her to navigate Shadesmar and sometimes she gets sucked in unintentionally and sometimes she accidentally pulls other people in with her and sometimes she managages to only get partway pulled in and accidentally projects an image of Shadesmar into the physical realm.  The whole situation is a mess. She finds it relaxing to stand out in the riddens after each highstorm. It helps to ground her.

Ysegrin would be one of the Parshendi leaders.

Coyote is Wit. Or...no... maybe Jones is Wit and Coyote is the Stormfather.  Yes, I think that works better.

I can't decide where Reynard would fit in and it's bugging me.

EDIT: I figured Reynard out.  He is totally a Kandra.  

I’m in the choir at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. We performed the Vivaldi Gloria with our orchestra. Merry Christmas! (I think I have it set to start about 6 minutes into the video where the concert actually begins)

Monica Dewey, soprano Matthew Reese, countertenor Rolando Salazar, conductor

For the Blad design, wouldn't another good idea be to put stabilizing lines of forbidding between the tips of the ellipses, so they are outside the defense? They would stabilize and anchor it, not restrict movement, and also protect from incoming attacks.

That would be great, but unfortunately it won't quite work.  If you connect the tips of the ellipses, this is what will happen:

You could decrease the size of the portion that is cut off by playing with the dimensions of the ellipses, but you are never going to get the tip of the ellipse to stay inside that sharp angle at the top.  The only Line of Forbiddance that touches the bind point at the tip and doesn't intersect the rest of the ellipse is the tangent line, which would be perpendicular to the major axis and thus never reach the second ellipse.  You could contain the entire diagram in a square, but then you also can't attack.

If we could get bind points in places other than the tips, then a variation on your idea might work well.  I have ideas for how we might be able to construct elliptic defenses with more bind points, but writing that up will require more coherence than I have this time of night ;-)

mmm..  I distinctly don't need more projects right now, but I can tell you what would help get stuff that I have already drawn (and likely that other people have drawn) or am planning to draw anyway onto the wiki. 

 Make a "Welcome Fanartists!" page (or something like that)  that is easy to find from the main page. This page should first and foremost have simple detailed instructions for how to add art to the wiki.  These instructions should assume that the person has no idea how to edit the wiki at all.  If there is someone who is willing to add art that they are pointed to, you might include instructions for how to tell that person that your art is available to be added.  If there are any ground rules for what kind of art should/shouldn't be added, include it here.  

After that section, it might be useful to have a list of "things it would be nice to have art of" that fan artists can go look at when they feel like arting but aren't sure what they want their subject to be.  If you wanted to, you could have these grouped into a couple of different priority levels (perhaps: It's a disgrace that there is no art on this page, it would be helpful to have art on this page, this page has some art but could use more, this page could use art if it happens to be something you are excited about drawing).  If there is a way to have them in a table so they can be sorted by priority level, planet/book, or type of thing (maybe: people/plants/animals/things/other) that could be useful. That way if someone is thinking "mmm I want to draw a Mistborn character" or "I want to play with the plant life on Roshar" they can look to see what we could use.

Once you get that page functional, throw it to tumblr with a short list of pages that could use more art.

Cosmere artists! I seek your opinion!!

If there were some notice/notification on wiki pages which pointed out or asked for art to be given for a particular topic or section. EG the Shardplate page has no art, and would probably very much benefit from some, to help describe it. 

Would people be ok with requests like that, and would artists actually contribute more than they already do?

I just want to increase the contributions and make it a more informative source and make editing and helping out more attractive and easier? I don’t know what I’m doing tho really. Please help XD

From Words of Radiance, Ch. 41.

Hi, I'm auditioning for the role of Spook, Survivor of the Flames, and I'll be singing "Village Lanterne" by Blackmore's Night.