Timewaster's Guide Archive

Life before Death, Strength before Weakness, Destination before Journey

You got the last one backwards.

You're reading too much into it.  A "lighteyes" is someone who, quite literally, has light-colored eyes.  Similarly, a "darkeyes" has dark-colored eyes.  Yes, this does seem a bit frivolous to base class divisions on, but there you have it.

Something else I find worthy of note: Taln leaned on his sword with the point into the ground, and it only cut a finger's breadth in.  A  normal shardblade would've, in theory, dropped clear to the hilt.

As I recall, he dragged it rather than leaning on it, though I haven't gone back and checked the book to be sure.  If he angled it so that the flat of the blade is downward, it would naturally not cut very far.

I think we have some precedent for logical reasoning that would make producing buildings from air time consuming.  When Jasnah changes a boulder into smoke, it's noted that the smoke explosively expands because it starts out with the same density as the stone it used to be, but smoke is never naturally that dense.  Turning this the other way, making stone from air would result in ridiculously fragile structures that would crumble from a light touch if you tried to do it all at once in an instant.  I'd guess it has to be done by making an extremely thin shell of air-turned-stone, which would almost instantly shrink its thickness to bring its density up, then waiting for air to fill the void left by the shrinking stone, adding another thin layer merging with the first, and repeating many times.  It has nothing to do with the process by which stone is normally formed and everything to do with enormous differences in density between the input and output materials.

I do agree that for them to be Roshar shards is highly likely, though.  Except that if Cultivation and Odium are Roshar Shards, why is the local religion monotheistic?

I'd say it's because Cultivation's influence is concentrated in Shinovar.  The rest of the world was forced to focus on the Almighty/Odium conflict to survive, and Cultivation took one look at that situation and went as far away from it as possible without leaving the world, ending up in the far west to induce the present-day overwhelmingly peaceful farming-focused culture of the Shin.  Shinovar ended up with Cultivation as the dominant influence and was isolated from the rest of the world.  Everywhere else had little connection with Cultivation's claimed domain and focused almost exclusively on The Almighty as a god figure and Odium and his Voidbringers as a devil/satan figure, with the eternal war between the two as the primary focus of the entire culture.

Quite some time ago, some particularly alert readers noticed that one particular character, named Hoid, appeared in both Warbreaker and one of the Mistborn books (at least, I think that's the one that was first noticed).  Brandon then confirmed when asked that this was, in fact, actually the same character, not just reuse of the name.  Hoid has since been identified in various disguises and roles in all three Mistborn books and Elantris as well as Way of Kings.  He generally appears as a relatively minor character providing some manner of guidance, advice, or other assistance to the protagonists.  Brandon revealed in a Q&A that he calls the universe these books are set in the 'Cosmere'.

If you paid close attention to the chapter epigraphs in Hero of Ages (the ones written by Sazed post-ascension), you might have noticed a single reference to some mysterious thing called Adonalsium, and possibly "shards" of this thing.  Readers have pieced together from this, a few other references, and some Q&A sessions with Brandon, that Adonalsium is essentially the setting's equivalent of God.  A long time ago, Adonalsium was shattered and broken apart, and that event gave rise to the Shards of Adonalsium.  Ruin is one of the Shards of Adonalsium.  Preservation is another.  Another one, which Brandon revealed in a Q&A is named Endowment, is responsible for the Returned and the Awakening magic system in Warbreaker.  One or two other Shards are the source of the Dor's power and Seons in Elantris.  It is generally theorized, though not yet explicitly confirmed, that there are precisely 16 Shards of Adonalsium, and there is probably some organizational scheme to them similar to the organization of metals in Allomancy.

The chapter epigraphs in one of the sections of Way of Kings compose a letter from someone about Odium and requesting aid against him.  Somewhere in that letter, it mentions that Odium visited Sel with disastrous results.  Sel is the name of the world that Elantris is in.  Also, it mentions the names of several people who control Shards.  For example, Ati is the man who held Ruin's power (this is the base for the metal name Atium, btw), and Leras had Preservation (the metal bead that made Elend a mistborn was Lerasium).  Odium is the name of a Shard, and Rayse is the name of the man who holds that Shard's power.  Rayse was apparently a very nasty person even before he gained a Shard's power, and the nature of his particular Shard (look it up in a dictionary) has amplified that.  Furthermore, the letter reveals that he killed two Shard-holders on Sel and 'splintered' their power so that no one would be able to take over like Sazed took Ruin and Preservation.  The fact that Odium was on Sel at all proves that he is capable of planet-hopping like Hoid, and some people have extrapolated that Odium might be out to kill all the Shard holders, and Sazed with his two Shards would be an especially important target.

I played Archenemy against Brandon at DragonCon a few times, so I've seen a lot of his deck.  Brandon's Archenemy deck focuses a lot on Eldrazi.  I think he's got all of the legendary Eldrazi (Emrakul, Kozilek, Ulamog, etc.), plus Eye of Ugin, 4 Eldrazi Temples, 4 Cloudposts, 4 All Is Dust (1 of which he got by trading with me at DragonCon ), and 4 Not of This World.  I don't remember much of what else he's got, but he has quite a few of the old no-drawback dual lands.

His Archenemy scheme cards include Plots That Span Centuries (get 3 schemes next turn instead of 1), one that gives him an extra turn (but no scheme on the extra turn), Look Skyward And Despair (get a free 5/5 flying dragon), Introductions Are In Order (either play a creature from hand for free or search library for a creature), one that lets him force all opponents to discard one card each of his choice, one that lets him draw 4 extra cards, one that lets him play one card from an opponent's hand free, one that's a combination of getting extra land and drawing extra cards, and one or two others I can't quite remember.

Most of the time he takes a crazy concept and tries to make it work, all without spending too much money.  Specifically for Archenemy, he's building for power and he's putting out some serious cash to get old and rare cards like the dual lands for it.  I don't think he's got any of the Power Nine in the deck yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if he adds some of them before too much longer.  He commented that Black Lotus isn't actually that useful in Archenemy format, and he seemed to be drawing quite enough cards already so Ancestral Recall would likely be superfluous, but the Moxes and especially Time Walk would be powerful additions that he might spring for.