Shallan's Journey: Chapter 3, In Which Pattern Declares English Full Of Lies

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. 

Badger and I were contemplating what color axehounds should be and then they said there should be sparkle axehounds and that reminded me of My Little Pony and then Badger drew this and it is EXCELLENT. 

my little axehound, my little axehound ~

Last Chance to Pledge for Full Negative Book

Friends. Readers. Fellow nerds with impeccable taste. We are officially in the home stretch. The final 24 hours. The last lap. The dramatic climax of the movie where everything explodes in slow motion and the music swells and someone says something heroic right before punching a fascist in the face. (Okay, that last bit’s just wishful thinking, but after the week we’ve all had, I think we…

Last Chance to Pledge for Full Negative Book

J is for Jella tree.

"The basin was fairly well sheltered, the slopes covered in Jella trees.  Their strong branches grew spindly leaves – long spikes of pink, yellow and orange, so the trees looked like explosions of color. Shallan had read in one of her father's books that the trees drew in crem, the used it to make their wood hard, like rock." … "Jella trees here rose high, their hardened trunks colored the light brown of crem. The needles sprouted like a thousand tongues of fire from each limb, though the nearest ones pulled in as she approached." From Ch 45 of Words of Radiance

Happy Pi Day! Have some chocolate π   

I'm slightly late, but here you go!  Have a little story :-)

Adolin's first reaction was to stare blankly at her. After what felt like ages, he shook himself and asked slowly, “I...don't think I heard you right...could you say that again?”

Shallan rolled her eyes, “I want to find a way to actually watch and document the highstorms.”

He took a deep breath. “Ok. That's what I thought you said... Why?! Wasn't being stuck out in one in the chasms enough?”

She laughed, “Nope – it just made me realize how much we don't know.”

"Of course it did." Adolin groaned. “If I don't help you with this, you're just going to find a way on your own, aren't you?” He sighed. “Fine. At least this way I'll know what's going on. Knowing you, you already have at least half of a plan. Let's hear it.”

In the chasms in Way of Kings, Dunny creates an insult poem by making the rhythm fit the song Mari’s Two Lovers. Rock then goads Dunny into singing it before joining in.  Ashiok and I have been working on lyrics for the song.  This is what we have so far, but this is a Rosharan drinking song and we are pretty sure it has many, many more verses, so we are releasing it into the wilds of the cosmere fandom to see if anyone else happens to have any verses to add. Current lyrics under the cut.

Dunny’s poem:

Hey you big buffoon, 

you smell like a wet hog,

so go out by the moon, 

And jump yourself in the bog.

Mari’s Two Lover’s (lyrics by Kalyna and Ashiok)

Gather round and hear

this tale I have to tell

of our young Mari dear

and the men she loved so well

Mari was a lass

Though Not the brightest sphere

She often cut her class

to a wander far and near

There she met a lad

who took her out for wine

But she arrived with Khad

and left with his brother Stine

Khad and Stein were twins

who looked  so much the same

it was beyond her ken

that the two had different names

The twins had a tell:

two eyes of different hues

they were distinguished well

cause their eyes were switched, it’s true

Their town had a dance

And Mari begged to go

While there she whirled and pranced

Always watching for her beau

As she spun around

She fell/came into Khad’s arms

She was extremely proud

Khad had fallen for her charms

Then she came to Stine

And danced with him a turn

She stared into his eyes

Oh but still she didn’t learn

Khad had brown and blue

While Stine had blue and brown

But our dear Mari knew

Her beau was the best in town

Over in a lait

An axehound pup bit Stein

To keep up the charade

Stein cut khad with some fork tines

Now this song must end

I sadly have to go

But Mari and her men

Oh their tale goes on you know

Rithmatics: Part 3, the potential for 8 point defenses

In the previous installments we have covered acute triangles with 3 distinct angles, equilateral triangles, and all right triangle.  In this post we look at acute isosceles triangles.  

The Potential for 8 Point Defenses and the Hypothetical Owl Defense

Let's look at what happens when we have an acute isosceles triangle.  The altitude from the different angle will bisect the opposite side, which means the midpoint of the base will count as two points.  However,  the 7 remaining points are all distinct this gives us 8 separate points.  

It is interesting to note that, as with the 4 point construction, we have one side of the circle that is tangent to the triangle.  The 4-point Sumsion Defense has a tangent Line of Forbiddance at one of the bind points.  As this is the only defense we know with such a tangent line, it seems reasonable that its existence could be related to the fact that the 4 point circle is the only one we have examples of that has one tangent side with its corresponding triangle. (All three sides of the triangle for the 6 point construction are tangent, but including all of them would trap you - it isn't clear whether it would be a problem to include just one or whether this actually matters at all.  This is something else I hope to ask about at the signing.) Following this logic, I used the Sumsion Defense as starting point for constructing a potential 8 point defense.  It ended up looking rather like an owl :-)

The Sorting

I read a lot and have a lot of books that I enjoy, but a friend recently introduced me to the Stormlight Archive and it has inspired a level of obsessiveness that I haven't had since I met the Harry Potter series back in middle school. My new obsession led me to the Cosmere Challenge tumbler and then the current prompt led to this.  Hopefully someone else will also find this entertaining :-)

Rough premise:  Something has caused Shallan, Kaladin, Adolin and Renarin to be thrown into the Hogwarts world with their character development through the end of Words of Radiance but Hogwarts aged.  I'm imagining that it is Harry's 4th or 5th year and that Renarin is Harry's age and the others are older. I have multiple plot bunnies in my head that require variations on the premise.  Regardless, here is what I imagine happening when they are sorted:

The sorting hat barely touches Adolin's head before calling out “Gryffindor!” Adolin doesn't know quite how to handle the new situation he has found himself in and falls back on what he does understand as a defense. Unfortunately, this means he comes across as a superficial person who is extremely cocky and a huge flirt and the general impression that everyone gets is that they have been saddled with a new McLaggan. It takes several months and lots of set backs while Adolin learns how to interact with a world where the fact that he is a lighteyes Highprince is irrelevant, but he eventually finds his way and is accepted into the Gryffindor fold.

The sorting hat is less sure what to do with Renarin. It recognizes his quiet intelligence and wit and considers Ravenclaw, but Renarin wants Gryffindor. He has been told from the time he was very young that he is not cut out to be a warrior to the point that he has internalized the idea that he can't be. Despite this, he has always wanted to be able to follow in his father's and brother's footsteps. He is not at all confident that he truly belongs in Gryffindor, but he does know that that is where he really wants to be. The sorting hat considers and tells him that it would probably be truer to himself for Renarin to go to Ravenclaw, but that Gryffindor will also help him grow and respects his choice. Once he is in Gryffindor, Neville recognizes him as a kindred spirit and takes him under his wing. He is shocked the first time he has one of his minor epileptic fits and the other boys just shrug it off – after all, it is nothing compared to Harry's Voldemort induced visions. It boggles his mind that, for once, he is more popular than his brother and that it is more common here for him to need to defend Adolin's character than the other way around.

Kaladin doesn't believe it at first when they tell him a storming hat is going to sort him into a “house,” whatever that nonsense is. It sounds like a lighteyes thing – house Kholin, house Davar – and he wants nothing to do with it. Further explanations lead to the conclusion that it is more like being sorted into different barracks, which is at least something he can understand. Then they bring the hat out and it is an ancient thing that talks using a rip in its fabric as a mouth. Kaladin seriously considers throwing his hands up and walking out, but Adolin and Renarin are here, which means he needs to be here as well, so he grits his teeth and plays along. They put the hat on his head and he can suddenly hear it talking in his mind. Apparently these people have trapped a spren in a hat. The hat laughs at this thought and responds that it is not a bad analogy, but assures him that it is fine and there is no real hatspren that needs rescuing. At this point, to the surprise of the hat, Syl joins in the conversation. After much confusion, the sorting hat decides it is going to have to treat Kaladin and Syl as a single entity. It almost sends them to Gryffindor, but then realizes Kaladin's strong sense of honor is deeply rooted in his belief in the powers of hard work and doing what is right even when it isn't easy and sends them to Hufflepuff. Syl is pleased by this, but Kaladin is so overwhelmed by the whole business at this point that his only immediate reaction is to grumble that it is going to be hard to keep an eye on the storming Gryffindor Highprinces when he is in a different house.

Shallan gives the hat it's biggest challenge – at least until it discovers Pattern. Her dedication to her family and the hardwork and determination she showed while convicing Jasnah to taker her as a ward make her a solid candidate for Hufflepuff. Her clever use of lightweaving and willingness to do anything to achieve her goals, despite the questionable legality/morality of it, makes her the epitome of a Slytherin. She has the Gryffindor tendency to dive into things without fully thinking them through and a Ravenclaw's passion for learning. In the end it is Pattern's philosophy that “Truth is individual” and that “Your truth is what you see” that tips the scales and makes the hat decide to send them to Slytherin. Once in Slytherin, Shallan concludes that what she learned while figuring out how to navigate the Ghostbloods will serve her well in her new situation. It is going to be a challenge, but, with Pattern's help, she is absolutely up for it. [Note: There is so much potential here I can't even...  We will see if I can get any of it to solidify. If anyone else wants to play with it (or any of the rest of it) I'm totally cool with that.] 

In an alternate premise where Renarin is the only one who has jumped universes:

The sorting hat recognizes Renarin's courage and inner strength and wants to put him in Gryffindor. However, for the first time Renarin is in a place where no one knows him, where there are no preset expectations for him. In this new world, no one thinks it odd for a man to want to read and write. No one knows that he is the son of a Highprince. No one thinks he is a failure for not being comfortable around swords in general and shardeblades in particular. Gryffindor feels too much like the expectations he has escaped. He thinks Ravenclaw sounds acceptable. He would prefer not to be thrown into any preconceived classification, but if he has to have one, scholar sounds like a breath of fresh air. He thinks this might be an expectation he could actually live up to. The sorting hat grumbles about it and tells him that Gryffindor would be good for him, but accepts Renarin's choice in the end.

Because Syl would be fascinated by lava lamps and try to emulate them.  Clearly.