#cosmere future

[onlycosmere]

The Kickstarter goes live tomorrow!

When Brandon Sanderson began working with Brotherwise Games on the first adventure for The Stormlight Roleplaying Game, he considered how it could help him fix holes in the narrative of his bestselling fantasy series. He settled on a mystery from the first Stormlight Archive book, The Way of Kings, that will have big implications for the fifth book in the series, Wind and Truth, which will be released in December.

The Stormlight Archive is set on the planet Roshar, where 10 heroes known as Heralds spent millenia protecting humanity with the help of highly magical swords dubbed Honorblades. All of them abandoned their duties except Taln, the Herald of the Common Man. Despite Taln’s best efforts, the forces of the vengeful god Odium have returned. Taln was left maddened by his ordeal and soon after he first appears in the books, his Honorblade goes missing. Its whereabouts remain unknown.

“The adventure is answering that question,” Sanderson told Polygon. “What happened? Where did it go? What’s going on? And you get to be part of the story. We were looking for an adventure you could do that would intersect with the canon of the books in an interesting way, and allow you to fill in a hole yourself.”

The Kickstarter for the d20-based game goes live on Aug. 6 along with a beta preview of the rules and a first level adventure meant to walk players and game masters through the setting and core mechanics. The hardcover Stonewalkers Adventure, where players encounter Taln and learn what happened to his honorblade, will be released in 2025 along with the Stormlight Roleplaying Game Handbook and World Guide.

...

Players will hunt for Taln’s honorblade across Roshar, from the Shattered Plains where much of The Way of Kings is set, to the magical forest of the goddess Cultivation, where bold souls can receive both a boon and a curse. There are a mix of dungeon crawls, puzzles, chase scenes and prison breaks. As they choose how to approach the problems they face, player characters will be able to attract the attention of spren, spirit-like beings who can bond with like-minded people to bestow them with incredible abilities. Completing the mission can allow them to join the newly re-founded ancient order known as the Knights Radiant.

...

The PCs can meet major antagonists from the books, including the twisted Herald of Justice Nale and the traitorous General Meridas Amaram, and learn how the talking sword Nightblood first featured in Sanderson’s 2009 book Warbreaker wound up on Roshar. As they move through key moments from the series, like the emergence of a raging storm that brings Odium’s most powerful lieutenants back to the world, Sanderson welcomes players to reshape his narrative.

...

“There’s a lot of cultural details being filled in, but at the same time, we dig a little bit further into what each order of Radiants’ oaths, spren, and motivations are,” Sanderson said. “There’s some new stuff there that I think fans will really enjoy.”

[thestormlightnetwork]

i'll be honest i still don't understand what jasnah's prologue was about

Brandon Sanderson starting KoW with another POV of Gavilar's assassination:

[cosmereplay]

Brandon's answer:

As others have said, Rock will get his own novella--but that's not why I sent him off. Even if there had been no time for a novella, or no plot-relevant things for him to do, he would have left.

I need Bridge Four to be alive. Their time together, as a cohesive unit, was a powerful moment in time--and you can always reread the first few books to experience it again. However, in life, nothing remains the same, and time draws people apart. Rock has a family, a people, and responsibilities. He has to be about those, now that he's free from Alethi slavery.

Bridge Four, as it stood in books one and two, had to eventually evolve, and some members had to go their own way. That's life. For all Kaladin wanted to grasp for it, hold it together by force, he couldn't--just as we can't keep rigidly hold of the friends and family we love. Time inevitably divides us.

Each book of the Stormlight Archive must be something new. New tone, new feeling, evolved from the previous volume. They are too big, too weighty, to be allowed to repeat the same plot cycles, same emotional beats, or to allow the characters to stagnate into repetitive playacting of the people they were in the first few volumes. As readers travel through the series, I intend for them to realize this, though it may take a while for it to really click.

Anyway, I'm glad to see your post, /u/WaitUntilTheHighway! If you miss Rock, I did something right in this specific case. Please don't see my response here as a recrimination, merely an explanation of my philosophy for the series. I hope that the insight helps a little.

Cherish what you have--even if that includes memories of a once warm relationship, now become embers cooled by time or distance. Try not to be sorrowful for the parting, but grateful for the experience while it lasted. Journey before Destination can apply even after that destination has been reached, so long as it doesn't cause us to fixate so much on the past that we overlook the new journeys ever opening before us. Thanks for reading.

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[shouldprobablybereading]

Oathbringer is such a fun book because is there anyone that actually likes it?

His kids doesn’t like it because he describes killing their mom in it. The alethi nobility doesn’t like it because he says murder is unethical. The church doesn’t like it because the entire thing is heresy. And on top of that it was hand written by a man!

[hydrogenandhelium]

Shallan isn’t going to third wheel, she’s going to wingman

Shallan third-wheeling the Truthwatcher boyfriends let's GOOOOO

[uragoombaactual]

Someone turn me into a Cognitive Shadow and transform me into a spren somehow so I can form a Nahel Bond with my girlfriend so I'm always with her.

[zibus]

Thrre's a very interesting trend I've noticed, though this is entirely annecdotal, where I think people prefer whichever big series they started with. Mistborn Era 1 is still my facorite, for instance. I think whatever made you fall in love with Brandon's worlds will always have that sheen of first love to it.

So as we enter "phase 2" of the Cosmere where worlds and storylines are starting to collide and come into conflict, that initial bias leads us to take sides. Makes us sympathetic to the Scadrian or Rosharan perspective.

Which I think is super neat because, from what I can tell, that's kinda what Brandon's going for. In the final clash, I doubt either side will have a monopoly on heroism or villiany. It will be complicated and messy with good arguments in support of either power. So yah, fandom potentially imitating art, which is kinda cool.

Sometimes I wonder if I just cannot get along with die hard Stormlight fans.

They see with tunnel vision. They do not understand that Roshar is just one world and her denizens are dangerous as fuck.

[onlycosmere]

Stormlight 5

Brandon Sanderson: Stormlight Five is the end of the first arc of the Stormlight Archive, right?

I've been saying that since the beginning, since Book One, but then I went and I ended Mistborn, and people are expecting it to end like that. That's not what I mean by the end of the first arc. This is more like an anime arc than it is like the end of Mistborn One.

And I need to start preparing that for people, because one of the things I'm getting from beta readers is: number one, it's going really well, people are really liking the book. Number two, they're like, "Oh, I thought this would be an ending like end of Mistborn Three."

No, it's more like the end, as I said, of an anime arc.

The end of the Stormlight is Book Ten. You are going to get some decent resolutions on things I've been promising for a while, but you're not gonna get resolutions on everything, because it's not the end, yet.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Hello! I've been trying to get into Brandon Sandersons books but I haven't known where to start. Is there any specific book or series that you'd recommend? :)

I've actually got a suggested reading order that I put together!

Mistborn Era 1 (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages)

Elantris

White Sand if you can find it. It's a comic book and not a novel or short story.

Warbreaker

Stormlight Archive Era 1 (The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer novella, Oathbringer, Dawnshard novella, The Rhythm of War, Wind and Truth)

Mistborn: Secret History (you can read this any time after Elantris if you want, but its basic premise spoils parts of the Stormlight books)

Emperor's Soul short story

Mistborn Era 2 (The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, The Bands of Mourning, The Lost Metal). At the very least, do not read W&W book 4 until you read everything above this on the list. It's a very Cosmere-heavy book.

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell short story

Sixth of Dusk short story

Tress of the Emerald Sea

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

The Sunlit Man

Sunlit Man's kind of an odd duck because it takes place long after Wind and Truth (and pretty much everything else on this list) but was published before it, almost as a sort of teaser. If you want more "Oh, so that's what that meant!" moments, move Sunlit up and read it just before Wind and Truth. If you want more "Hey, it's that guy!" moments, save Sunlit for last.

[winter-parrot]

I forgot to screm for the rest of this book but I finally finished wind and truth and. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I have so fucking much to process but overall I am very satisfied (and very terrified) with that ending

[kiridune]

Also, isn't there something about how before the Recreance breaking bonds didn't kill the spren?

Maybe Honor's response to the Recreance sparked that change.

"Dalinar will reforge Honor" "Kaladin will take up the shard" nah bro, if anyone is going to piece together Honor's shard and take it on then I think it'll be Mr. Taravangian himself

[rue-dixon]

As someone who doesn't really read romance novels, the closest I've ever gotten to a dark romance plot is the beginning plot of Spook and Beldre's relationship.

[gnecroticart]

My Cosmere mini bang piece for @hazekiller16 's fic "Next Time, My Songling"! It's a very well-written fic and I had a great time illustrating a scene from it, I highly recommend checking it out! Here's baby Eshonai making flower crowns with her dad 😊

Image description: a young eshonai and her father sitting outside. Eshonai is wearing a flower crown and is looking up at her father with a broad smile, and her face is clearly illuminated. Her father's face is turned away from the viewer and is partially in shadow, and he is holding out a piece of green fabric to his daughter, and his other hand is partially behind her shoulder. He has gemstones in his beard. The lighting indicates that this scene takes place in late afternoon, and most of the light is centered on Eshonai.

[kaladinstormblessed09]

The sunlit man spoilers below

I’m so emotional about this 😭

[dragonkitten555]

Stromlight

"You must speak the Truth. Find it if you have to"

After years in Scadrial, Cylee moved on to find her destiny

[onlycosmere]

Questioner: When are we getting more Renarin? Brandon Sanderson: You will get the most Renarin you've ever gotten so far in Stormlight Five.

Now, let me warn you, he's not a main main character yet. He won't get as much as you want until, like, book six through ten.

But for now, you're gonna get more than you've ever gotten.