So, I'll go ahead and tell you this, because it's going to become very apparent very fast.

He is a full -on Threnody shade.

Okay, got it.

Or Canticle shade, if you want to get technical.

Sure.

Yep.

It is everything as terrifying as I think we are meant to think.

And yet, these characters are unsettled by him, but not bailing out of the ship and running for their lives unsettled.

And he's perfectly coherent and talking.

Like our shades on Serenity and Canticle, while they seem to maybe have the potential for this, certainly weren't anywhere close to having a conversation about cravats and hairdos.

Welcome back to Following Noodon, a Stormlight podcast.

Today is, let me check the notes, episode 281, Isles of Emberdark, continuing on into the darkness, into the black pages that we discovered last week.

We are in chapters 22, 23, 24.

We have met back up with our character Starling.

I'm excited for a bunch of stuff to talk about with you guys today.

Trevor and Paul, how are you guys?

Paul, I'll start with you.

Fantastic.

Fun fact.

Just a couple days ago, a friend of mine stopped by our house, and he's a fan of the Cosmere and of our podcast, and he's read Isles of the Ember Dark, and he was like, hey, can I look at your physical book?

And he had no clue.

Oh, that's cool.

that the pages flipped to jet black and he was blown away.

He thought it was the coolest thing ever.

It is the coolest thing ever for the record.

He's not alone in that.

But yeah, I thought that was really cool.

He audio booked it and didn't have the physical book, but got to see that and flip through.

I'm sure he looked at a lot of things that I'm not yet allowed to look at, but either way, he was pretty blown away.

by the black pages.

Shout out to Sam.

I'm sure he'll hear this in a couple weeks.

Other than that, I'm doing good.

Excellent.

You and Sam are both doing excellent.

Trevor, how are you?

I'm doing well.

I'm feeling a little intimidated by the summary that I have to do in about 30 seconds.

I'm looking forward to this.

Just really prolong your how are you doing bit so that you don't have to do this.

You gotta attack your fears, Paul.

If you just keep going, then it'll never arrive.

You don't conquer Patchy by running away from the Death Ants.

Actually, I think you do, but you have to capture the Death Ants.

I'm pretty sure that's an important part of surviving Patchy.

Well, with that said, time to...

Face your patchy, I guess.

Trevor?

Yeah.

Chapter 22 of this book is a doozy.

Holy cow.

Okay.

So into book two, titled Starling, and we kick off with Starling, although we do return to Dusk by the end of the episode here.

So chapter 22 and chapter 23, I will combine in my summary because they're basically the same chapter.

We are on board.

the dynamic the ship the dynamic in the ember dark it is contracted from zysus from tress of the emerald sea lots of spoilers about the drop like everything should we count the name drops i'll count the name drops while you get great count count the spoilers that we have to disclose as well by the end of this chapter summary i think it's at least like four books Okay, so we're on the dynamic.

That's new.

Contracted through Zysus.

Contrast to the Emerald Sea reference.

However, we are under the orders of Hoid.

Specifically, Starling is under the orders of Hoid.

And she's under the captainage of Captain Crow on the Starling, on the dynamic.

And it also employs a sleepless.

who none of the crew like, and they're all afraid of this sleepless doctor.

Reasonably so, by the way.

Completely reasonably.

And, I mean, that's the scariest thing that they think is on the ship.

But the scariest thing that's actually on the ship is a shade named Naz, who we definitely have met before.

Paul, quick, what do you remember about Naz off the top of your head?

Okay, well, that's a really tough question, Trevor, because I really don't remember much about Nas, like at all.

I have a presentation for you later.

And I feel bad.

I feel bad about it, but I'll have you know, I easily noticed and remembered the name.

Okay.

But I did not remember, like, really specifics past that.

So I was trying to think back in the memory banks.

I didn't do any research on it, so I'm sure it will benefit greatly from your presentation.

I have a presentation.

The sleepless, his name is Chrysalis.

We have Nas.

We have Captain Crow.

We have Starling.

We also have Attitill, who is our engineer.

She is from a planet called Daughtry, I think.

And apparently there used to be a perpendicularity on the planet.

So they used to be able to get on and off really, really easily.

But then the perpendicularity left.

No explanation on that.

So getting back to Daughtry is really hard, and Starling buys Attitill a ticket, and that's a really emotional scene for Attitill.

And then there's one other character, I don't remember his name.

Are you really not going to explain what Attitill is?

Oh, well, yeah.

Okay.

Attitles and ether bound.

Yeah.

Okay.

Minor, minor detail.

There we go.

There we go.

Really big deal.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

I mean, she's got a dead ether and she coaxes the ethers on the ship to keep going because they fall asleep.

Yes.

Yeah.

We'll go back to more details on the dynamic here in a second.

But in chapter 24, we then jump to dusk.

Notably.

There is no time skip between chapters.

So presumably these chapters are happening simultaneously.

I'm going to make that assumption because there's no five years ago, 55 years ago, whatever.

These chapters are happening simultaneously, right as dusk is setting off into the unsee or the ember dark or whatever we're deciding to call it for this book, because we've used all three terms of.

Shadesmar, Emberdark, and the Unsee.

And he finds a snake.

He's like, ooh, look, it's a five -foot -long snake.

I'll try to bring it close by turning off a...

Man, I never remember this bird's name.

Rocca?

Yeah, Rocca.

Turning off Rocca's power, and then it just keeps getting closer and closer and bigger and bigger.

It turns out that thing's like a whale.

A whale snake.

And that's where we have dust.

Okay, can I briefly talk about this whale snake?

Okay, I could be totally wrong.

I could be totally wrong and remembering this wrong.

But I swear I remember them talking about this snake.

He was like, oh, it's like five feet long from his initial guess.

He said it's about five feet long.

And doesn't he say the head is like a foot wide?

Yes.

and i was just imagining i'm like obviously this is a fantasy snake and then in the cognitive realm right from as we learn a very warped perspective it's not actually this size but i was trying to imagine if you had a five foot snake that had a foot wide head in real life like it'd be the ugliest funniest looking thing That you would ever have seen.

Like it would probably look comical or terrifying.

I don't know.

It would look so stubby.

You've never seen anything like that.

A foot wide head with a five foot snake.

Like you've got some big snakes out there that are like 35 feet long and have big heads.

Sure.

But not like a little five foot guy.

What about like an eel?

Eels have like those really big white heads.

They have more tall heads because they've got more.

Right.

jaws but they're not particularly wide they're more like oval shaped kind of like and eels are pretty long and skinny themselves too like you're right the proportions here are a little odd it instantly bothered me i'll be honest like instantly i heard five feet long and a foot wide and i'm like no shot like If anyone here knows much about snakes, the closest thing I could think of is a blood python, which is just kind of a notoriously short and fat snake.

But it's not anywhere near this.

You may be getting four or five inches across, maybe.

Anyways, I digress.

I love all of your guys' thoughts.

You're going to get all of this answered for you at some point here.

Don't worry.

We do learn that it is, in fact, not five feet long.

But this initial description, I was like, maybe that was my clue, was how preposterous how poorly built this snake was.

Let's use some proportional math real quick.

So he guesses a five to one ratio, five foot long, one foot wide.

But then he discovers that it could swallow the boat.

So that would stretch it to like 20 feet wide.

and 100 feet long is that better for you paul is that like a that that makes more that makes a lot more sense to me i understand that looks quite thick and stocky still but but like if it's that big where like i'm looking at it and its head is way way larger than like me and this boat i'm no longer caring how long it is like this is no longer a normal snake right like this is what we're talking about i'm uh You guys are full -on Elliot overanalyzing this.

This is very important, Elliot.

I am here for it.

This is very important.

Let's go.

Like I said, I had no problems afterward, Trevor, with the dimensions, but it was simply that first mention.

He's like, yeah, it looks to be about five feet long.

It's a snake that's five feet long, and its head is a foot wide.

And I'm like, no, it's not.

You're so off of this dust.

I couldn't believe him.

So -called expert trapper from Patchy.

we should have included this in our art that we commissioned last year oh there we go i've got two questions for you trevor coming out of your summary first is you mentioned your assumptions about the time frame that we're in that you're you're assuming these events in the dusk storyline and the starling storyline are happening at the same time without revealing anything How does that make you feel about your prediction of my question about when dusk might speak to Starling?

Oh, to make you feel better or worse.

Good.

At the end of chapter 23, we just dipped off into the ember dark after a distress signal, which I guess we can talk about the end of the episode or whatever, but after a distress signal, which I assume is not dusk, but.

But I had this really strange thought today or maybe yesterday as I was listening to the chapters.

I do think Kakaban is important.

I do think Kakaban we have met before.

And Elliot, you said in our previous episode last week that Dusk is putting a lot of stake in Kakaban and that Kakaban has done this before, therefore it is doable.

Yes.

What if it's like the interstellar thing?

Where the wormhole is placed because we were there to place the wormhole.

Therefore, we went through the wormhole to place the wormhole.

What if Dusk is Kakabon?

Oh, man.

Okay, here we go.

Here we go.

What if Dusk is Kakabon and there's some weird time dilation thing happening here?

I had the thought.

I don't think we're doing time dilation stuff in this book.

but I had the thought of what if this is possible because dusk thinks it's possible.

My, when I was reading this the first time I had similar thoughts to that actually, but then I went a different direction because I was also not too long ago reading a wheel of time book and yes, reincarnation is like a big thing in wheel of time.

And that was kind of the direction I was going with it.

Oh, dusk is the.

the reemergence of Cacobon kind of thing.

But I like your theories on the time violation.

I have another question for you.

Okay.

You forgot a character in chapter 22.

What's his name?

The bird guy.

The bird guy.

So we do have one other member of our crew.

His name is ZZ and he's a lawn arc, whatever that is.

And he has feathers instead of hair.

It goes out of its way to say that it's not a bird person.

It's a person that has developed feathers.

It's a feather human.

It's a feather human.

Anyway, that does set the scene for us.

So with that, we can start talking about the actual events that happen in these chapters.

So chapter 22, with all those new characters, lots of new characters, lots of references.

We are going to get into some spoilers for a variety of things, largely Tress.

We've definitely got some Tress references.

Tress.

Mistborn is not going to be avoided either.

And that's probably about it.

Well, yeah, a little bit of Stormlight, but that should be obvious.

Some minor Stormlight.

But with that, where do you guys want to start with the events of Chapter 22?

There are so many.

tempting rabbit trails to go down in this episode, and I'm going to be very hard -pressed to know which one to chase and which one not to.

So, Paul, you start.

I was going to say, I think I have a good direction for us to go down.

So, Starling mentions she remembers the words of Master Hoid, which I thought was fun.

Mentor or whatever.

Hasn't Hoid given her a specific direction?

on something to do and that's why they're here.

Or do we know the full picture of why did, why is Starling here right now?

What is she looking for?

What is she doing?

Right.

Was that clear to us in this?

I don't believe that's spelled out in this chapter at all.

I, I think we get the impression that you're talking about of Starling seems to have worked with Hoyd and Maybe has some kind of direction coming from him, but I don't think it's specific.

So the impression I got was her shackles, her curse or whatever you want to call it, is inflicted on her via her own people, the dragons.

The dragons have given these bracers to her to block her in human form.

And then Hoid and Zysus come in later.

that's my understanding so so we're under master hoid but we're also on this ship contracted from zysus do you remember who zysus is paul yes zysus is the our dragon friend interest very nice dragon imagine dragons remember that episode imagining dragons yeah i'm imagining a dragon who yeah i remember of course um Sorry.

Oh, no.

So, okay.

Yes, you're right.

We're on this, like...

Essentially, Starling is...

I get the picture that she's been excommunicated from her crew, her home, her family, her planet in some way.

We don't know why.

I expect that's what we will learn is some notable event happened that...

She's banned from being a dragon and somewhat excommunicated.

I'm expecting that to be unpacked further and further.

This obviously was introducing us back to Starling and the current state and this new crew.

And I do want to say, I really appreciate the distinctness within this crew.

We have a very eclectic, different assortment of individuals in this crew.

We've got a sleepless, a shade, an aether bond person.

An aether bound?

Yes, an aether bound.

We've got Starling, who's a dragon.

We've got Captain Grow.

We've got a pretty good mix of individuals here.

All we're missing is a Chondra.

You're right, actually.

Maybe there is one.

Are you sure we don't have one?

Mr.

Mr.

Grown Feathers.

I'm like, that sounds like a Kondra thing.

Could be.

He just ate a few too many birds and now he's got feathers coming out.

Exactly.

They talk about how complicated it is to make all that hair and stuff like that.

Who knows?

That's true.

That's a good detail to remember, Paul.

So, we have this and I appreciate it because I feel like I was more compared to if we're talking about Tress, they feel way more distinct and easy to follow for me than the Doug crew in Tress.

You know, we've got a very easy to remember crew here and also a very not only do is it easy to follow in my mind.

I think it is exciting.

I'm like, how the heck is a shade and a sleepless going to interact like?

Or really just putting all these different things in a room.

I'm curious to see how it goes.

That's essentially what we've set here.

Starling is not a dragon right now.

And in trouble of some sort.

Probably with her people.

And she's on this interesting crew here.

There's going to be a lot more to learn.

But it's quite the entry point.

We're getting quiet.

We're really getting dropped into the thick of things, it feels like.

I want to talk about the ship itself from the perspective of Starling.

Starling is the lieutenant under Captain Crow.

So second in command, presumably.

And as described by Starling, the dynamic is like a hodgepodge, the Millennium Falcon of the Ember Dark.

It has...

A, quote, a Rosharan anti -gravity technology, aether fuel, and a Scadrian composite metal hull.

And I was thinking to myself, okay, cool.

We're all working together at somewhere in the cognitive realm.

We're working together to make starships.

And then the very next sentence, Starling says, except each of those systems could make ships by themselves.

This one's just a composite of all of them.

And I'm like, well, okay, nevermind then.

Yeah.

This, this is someone found the junkyard and was halfway decent at welding.

So they welded up a junkyard ship.

Yes.

And just based on this, I have a lot, lots of stormlight spoilers can come in quick.

I have completely changed my.

My frame of reference on Stormlight Era 2.

Completely.

I think.

I'm going to guess.

That this is pre.

Stormlight Era 2 still.

And that Stormlight Era 2.

Happens after this book.

Interesting.

I feel like the general.

Comments I've seen.

And I've not done a ton of research on this.

Would actually disagree with you.

But keep going.

And I'd be happy to.

be pointed out the evidence that i'm incorrect assuming i've read it yet i assume that retribution is still around from the skybreaker guy we got earlier in the episode earlier in the book that's a big assumption but i'm assuming the retribution is still around because scadriel and roshar are at each other's throats i feel like that's a that would be a big reason why is if retribution is still around therefore that leads me to think that we're pre -Stormlight Era 2 because I can't help but think that we've handled Retribution by the end of Book 10.

I feel like that would be a good assumption to make.

But now, if we really are before Stormlight Era 2, I have to completely rethink my technology era of Stormlight Era 2 because we were just confirmed by a dragon.

that Roshar has their own starships, that they're starship capable in this book.

Yep.

So either we're after Stormlight Era 2 and Roshar and Skadril are still at each other's throats, or we're before and Stormlight Era 2 goes completely sci -fi and starships and ether fuel and, you know, all that.

Did you track with all that?

I'm definitely tracking with you.

I like the logic path for sure.

This is going to leave us with some interesting questions here in this book, I think, about the state of Roshar.

I think you're asking the right questions.

We're going to have to get into it more when we finish the book.

I think that'll be a topic I think we cover maybe in our book wrap -up episode because I think we're going to be able to ask some of those questions in different ways there.

But yeah, it's...

It's interesting.

I think I will say that most people I've talked to think that this book is way in the future, like quite a ways later.

And we think Stormlight Era 2 is only 10 years or something like that, right?

Here's the problem.

Way in the future for who?

Way in the future for who?

Because we've just time dilated Roshar.

That's the problem.

The whole time frame of Stormlight being 30 years in the future.

30 years in the future for who?

For Roshar or for Skadrill?

I think that time dilation though possibly may not support the thought path you're going down of Roshar is the one moving slowly and everyone else is moving more quickly.

So if the rest of the Cosmere has 60 years and Roshar only has 10.

I'd be a little surprised if they come out of that 10 with spaceships.

I would theorize that Retribution would send his Skybreakers off to another planet that's not time dilated to go do some research.

That's possible.

And by the time we unbubble Roshar, then Retribution has all the technology and our Knights Radiant do not.

Yep.

Yeah, could happen.

I think that is very fair.

And I absolutely see what you're saying, Trevor.

I'm still withholding my thoughts for now.

One, just because I feel like we're bound to get a lot more juicy clues and context, maybe.

We're still very, very early in this, especially like book two.

We don't hardly know anything yet.

Sure.

about what's going on.

We could see maybe the...

I'm very curious.

I really want to know what conversations potentially between Starling and Hoid could have been.

I don't know if we'll see that.

But if so, I think that could maybe give us some context as to where we are in this.

But yeah, I want to join the conversation, but I'm kind of just withholding it.

I don't know yet.

I see what you mean.

What you're saying makes sense, Trevor.

But also, I don't know.

It's hard for me to sit here and say that Stormlight 6, after a couple of years on Roshar, there's going to be starships and stuff.

I feel like we're not going to have that drastic of a jump.

And it's very possible that in Chapter 25, next episode, we...

everything is completely flipped on its head so i completely understand not going off the rails but that's that's my job all right we should probably keep going because we've got like 12 other things we got to cover yeah in chapter 22 alone um okay let's stay with the crew uh captain crow okay so what do we know about captain crow paul oh gosh that's like the one that's like the one character i think i know the least about Yeah, I don't know.

I feel like I could talk about any of the others.

Captain Crow, I didn't really...

Captain Crow is an Aetherbound, I believe.

That's Attatil, right?

Correct.

Attatil's also an Aetherbound, but Captain Crow is being eaten by an Aether the entire Book of Tress.

Remember?

Ah, yes.

She's being eaten by an Aether.

She needs to drink water.

constantly oh okay to live it's all coming back and at the end of the book press trades captain crow so that captain crow won't be eaten by her ether remember this yeah yes captain gets crow gets sent like into servitude of zysus right yes because he needs a floor scrubber yes and captain crow will presumably scrub zysus's floors for all eternity And in exchange, he pauses her ether that's eating her because he needs a servant to sweep his floors.

So fast forward to whatever this is.

Captain Crow is the captain of the dynamic and presumably still being eaten by her ether.

We're about to meet her, I suppose, in the next chapter.

I assume that she still has an ether issue.

So she's staying hydrated.

Correct.

So I assume there's going to be some her drinking water or something.

And then she's in service to Zysus.

What do we know about Zysus?

He's a dragon.

He enslaves indentured servitude to a bunch of people and you go trade your people for a boon from Zysus, and that's the thing in Tress.

You think that's how they got connected, Starling and Captain Crow, because Starling might know Zysus?

This is a complete guess, but I assume that the dragon's manacle bracer, Starling, send her off -world, and she meets Hoid.

Hoid hooks her up with Zysus.

And that's how that starts.

That's my guess as to what's happening here.

Starling gets exiled, meets Hoid, then meets Isis, then meets Captain Crow.

I see what you're saying.

I feel like I'd have one other slight guess.

One difference from what you're saying.

I bet she gets manacled, but Hoid is there and tells her, we're sending you off.

Go to Isis.

There you'll get sent off further.

That'd be my guess, my one adjustment to that.

So what's your vibe then of the situation here?

Is Captain Crow a good guy, or are we good guys under the command of a bad guy?

Captain Crow's absolutely not a good guy.

However, I don't think Starling is in service to Zysus like Captain Crow is.

I think Starling is just the lieutenant on the ship serving Hoid, and the ship is under Zysus' control.

Okay.

I think I can agree with that.

The jury is still out on a lot of our characters.

Like Chrysalis, for example, our sleepless or horde friend.

I feel like that's the whole point they make.

They're like, everyone is afraid of Chrysalis because it's obviously a bit unsettling whenever you're talking to somebody and their face crawls out a bunch of bugs.

It's a bit...

You don't trust them as much, maybe.

Bias or whatever.

They're a little shifty?

Yes, a little shifty, precisely.

Come on, that was a good one.

No.

I want to point out on the sleepless that I, that I noticed when I was reading these chapters, it seems like sleepless are much more well -known in this time period for all the wrong reasons.

Right?

Yeah.

They, they don't like the sleepless.

They fear the sleepless, but they all just seem to immediately know.

Oh yeah.

Sleepless.

Stay away from them.

Well, okay.

Yeah.

Let me, let me phrase it like Sterling does.

Zeet C I think is the name.

he's spying on Chrysalis and Starling comes up to him.

It's like, you know, you really shouldn't spy on Chrysalis.

And he goes, well, she spies on me.

So I get to spy on her.

And he says, well, you know what they did to my world, right?

And Starling says, no, but I can guess based on what they've done to everybody else.

Yep.

And I'm like, what?

What?

Yep.

The sleepless are apparently on a rampage.

Mr.

Culling Man is back.

That stood out to me because when we've seen sleepless before, they seem like very behind the scenes.

Most people don't know that they're even there.

And then all of a sudden we get to wherever in the timeline we are here and it's like, oh my goodness, sleepless.

Yeah, they are the Death Star of the Cosmere going around destroying planets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree with that entirely.

It felt like it was trying to...

I felt this kind of pull that you're supposed to jump on this bias that Chrysalis is an evil sleepless and sneaky and not to be trusted.

But that Chrysalis is actually just kind of like chill.

Like misunderstood.

I don't know if that's the case.

We've seen another nice sleepless before.

Thinking back to Yumi, right?

Not Yumi herself, but in that book.

What is her name?

I don't remember.

She says it like once.

It specifically says she is kind of disconnected from the other sleepless, though, right?

In Yumi?

That does ring a bell, yeah.

Y 'all remember that?

I feel like that was the case.

She's not like the other sleepless.

Anyways.

She's disguised as the emo girl that draws.

Bunny rabbits with teeth and stuff like that.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I don't remember the name.

But so anyways, we have Chrysalis here.

I'm very curious to see where this goes because.

I've gotten the impression from this initial these initial chapters, at least that Chrysalis is not like a bad guy.

jury's still out on that I'm not going to stake a flag or anything but that's kind of the impression that I've been given which is kind of funny because they make such a point of sleepless are the worst they destroy everything they've destroyed planets they've like corrupted whatever so I don't know how I rectify those two points of view but yeah I'm curious so you're right they're very well known but something else I want to key in on is They talk about how still nobody knows how many sleepless there are.

Like there's still an air of mystery around them.

Yeah.

I'm so curious to know.

Some people think it's all like there's just a couple or a couple hundred or something.

Some people think there's more or less.

It's still a bit mysterious about like how many there actually are and how big they are.

But yeah, they're just like essentially everywhere.

raffle i'm i'm convinced that this i should have thought about this but mr crumbling man completely went off stage for wind and truth so maybe this is why i didn't big wind and truth spoilers by the way about incoming um when cultivation flees roshar i feel like that should have had some pretty negative repercussions for the sleepless If the sleepless really were in in service to cultivation and then their shard just abandons them.

Like, is this like the sleepless unchained across Roshar?

Is that what's happening here?

Maybe.

Maybe.

All right, so we've got Chrysalis, the sleepless to nobody trusts, but Starling's trying to make everybody be friends, at least.

Seeming so in the first few chapters.

We have Captain Crow, who we definitely don't trust.

Who else do we have on board?

Attitill.

Attitill has an Aetherbound, is an Aetherbound from Daughtry, but her Aether is dead, as Darlene never asked why.

And she's like this...

I don't want to say loopy.

Give me a better one.

Absent -minded?

Thank you.

Absent -minded, young.

The narrator lady does a very young, feminine voice for Adetil.

I don't know how old Adetil is, but adolescent is the best I can describe for Adetil.

And she's very young and forgetful and sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, everywhere.

And yeah, her ether is dead.

That's about all we know.

She's homesick, and she just got a return ticket to Dodger.

I thought it was funny how they described, oh, yeah, we're just kind of a ragtag, sometimes legal cargo ship, sometimes not legal cargo ship.

So we can't afford the nice ethers.

We can afford the secondhand ethers, and they're kind of sleepy.

So we need Attitilda to encourage the ethers sometimes to do their thing.

This is definitely the Millennium Falcon of the Ember Dark.

Sometimes legal, sometimes not.

Right.

Mostly good, but, you know, if the Skadrians stop us, we might run.

It's got a computer system that's maybe kind of crazy, and you have to sweet -talk it into doing the things you want it to do.

Yeah.

It's basically the Cosmere version of the Millennium Falcon.

Who else is here?

Our bird guy, Zitzi.

He's...

from a planet that's been completely destroyed by the sleepless and the sleepless chrysalis is like don't worry i won't enslave him in chapter 23 to starling as if that's supposed to be reassuring encouraging yes like i could but i won't you know i could i could make him go insane but i won't we usually do that but don't worry i won't right yeah i'm in a good mood so it's fine and yeah so that's our Most of our ragtag crew, except for the white shade in the room, Nas.

Nas, who just comes like floating through the wall.

Yes.

With a hairdo that Starling makes fun of and a fancy cravat.

The chapter actually starts with Nas.

And so I thought as I was listening to this, like, oh boy, I'm going to have to do some research.

Paul, what do you know about Nas?

Besides he's like on Scadrial sometimes.

Did you even know that?

Not really.

So I was trying to, I heard the name Nas.

And like I said, I started thinking back, okay, where do I know?

Nas from.

And I was like, was this in one of our, like, Arcanum Unbounded stories?

Was this, like, yeah, was this Skadrial?

Like, I was trying to pinpoint where.

You're two for two for correct so far.

And I wasn't ever, like, 100 % sure.

I thought that this might be the assistant to Chris.

Three for three, correct.

Oh, I am.

You're doing great.

Okay, so I remember more than I thought.

That was my, like, guess but but hearing it here i didn't think that was right i thought this was just a character i completely forgot about um and didn't didn't know who it was so i moved on i was like i'll figure it out in our episode that's why we have these right really it's you know first time readers perspective podcasts right and i am very much the first time reader and even though we've read all the cosmere this is an awful lot to keep track of so i'm grateful we have sunday but Did I, did I crush it?

Is he, he's the assistant to Chris.

You crushed it, but let me put it this way.

Let's go.

It'd be really hard to miss him because he's everywhere.

He is in every single story.

And I just realized this about 45 minutes ago, prepping for the podcast.

So I opened the copper mine and I used their handy dandy time machine feature and told it to tell me everything that it knew about Nas before Ember dark was published.

Because I didn't obviously want Emberdark spoilers.

Here's what it comes up with.

He is sitting with Chris in Mistborn Seeker history, and he talks to...

I almost said Kaladin.

He talks to Kelsier when Kelsier dies.

Mistborn spoilers, sorry.

Chris and Noz are sitting by a campfire waiting for Preservation to die, and they're going to take some notes.

Do you remember this?

And Kelsier...

jumps in and says whoa who are you guys and chris and naz look over him and say whoa what are you doing here you died and they're like taking observations about the lord ruler so they give him some pointers about going to see uh the iri i think they're called uh the sellish people who are here to steal steal preservation that's the whole misborn secret history random plot that we go on beyond that he is in misborn era two In the broadsheets.

If you pay attention to the broadsheets.

There's some.

Sensational writings about Allomancer Jack.

And they're written by.

Nikki Savage is the author.

Nikki Savage apparently has a source.

And Nas is the source.

I just learned this 45 minutes ago.

Quote.

Wow.

Nas and Nikki Savage meet when the former tries to steal a map of New Sarin that Nikki has inherited.

The map contains a hidden pocket with information from Nikki's father, which is why she pursues Nas and the two end up fighting over it.

Parentheses, though Nas seems to be under the impression that this is just a regular, if very good map.

Though angry with him for his theft and mystified by his odd weapons, Nikki seems to find Nas very attractive.

She calls the timbre of his voice very enjoyable and apparently is mesmerized by his exact appearance.

Seems kind of random.

Okay, backing up.

Missed that in Miss Bornera 2.

Me too.

Okay, I bet you missed this too.

On Roshar, Nas or Chris seem to have some interest in Shallan and her journey.

He marked where she had made landfall on the map in the Frostlands and dove to retrieve some of her old drawings from the bottom of the sea.

While in the camps, he snatched Shallan's symmetrical map of the plains and he refused to provide Chris with the detailed one showing every plateau as he'd have to create it himself.

So, where do we get this information from?

The art in the book.

Any map that you see in the book is Nas recreating it for Chris as she's taking notes on Roshar.

And these are all like little excerpts on maps, like little side footer notes on in your book.

So if you ever go through your book and look at like notes of the Shattered Plains and stuff, those are all written by Nas.

This is a pretty big drop.

Yeah.

I had no idea about.

I feel like I'm back in Cosmere 101.

Me too.

I learned a lot opening this article.

And just as a little kicker at the end here, has nothing to do with the Cosmere, but Nas was created by Isaac Stewart.

As such, Isaac Stewart owns the rights to the character.

He came about accidentally during the writing of The Rhythmatist.

When discussing the book, Isaac kept mispronouncing Nazilar as Nazraloth.

Brandon joked that those were two separate characters, with the latter being an alter ego of Isaac himself, which became an inside joke in the writing group.

So, Isaac Stewart actually has the legal rights to Naz, and Brandon has to ask him permission each time he puts him in a book, which I thought was a funny inclusion.

That is, wow.

There you go.

Great.

So are we finding out?

I feel like it's very possible that Chrysalis is somewhere in all of our books too, right?

Our sleepless people.

I mean, that's definitely confirmed.

It's just which part of Chrysalis was.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

So we've concluded that Nas is just about as Cosmere traveled as Hoyt is pretty much.

Yeah.

I mean, if not more, he and Chris go around making their notes in Arcanum Unbounded.

So yeah.

But, but, apparently now he's dead.

Wearing a cravat.

And a fancy hairdo.

Which made me think that he was on schedule when he died.

Because, thanks to wax, we know that cravats are in style by the end of Mistborn Era 2.

So, after all those adventures, Nas is apparently dead, but still sticking around as a shade.

But one gets over those trivialities.

Ah, yes.

And it took me a little while to get over the fact that the other times that we've seen Shades, which were the other Arcanum About It story, Silence something.

Shadows of Silence in the Forest of Hell.

And in Sunlit Man.

Shades are freaking terrifying.

Okay, question.

Starling offhandedly calls him a shade.

Uh -huh.

And then mentions that the rest of the crew find him unsettling and we shouldn't have a shade on board that's equivalent to suicide or whatever she says.

Uh -huh.

So I'm a little confused.

Is he actually a shade, like a Threnody -style shade?

Or is cognitive shadow and shade just a synonymous term at this point?

So, I'll go ahead and tell you this because it's going to become very apparent very fast.

He is a full -on Threnody Shade.

Okay.

Got it.

Or Canticle Shade if you want to get technical.

Sure.

Yep.

It is everything as terrifying as I think we are meant to think.

And yet, these characters are unsettled by him, but not bailing out of the ship and running for their lives unsettled.

And he's perfectly coherent and talking.

Like, our shades on Threnody and Canticle, while they seem to maybe have the potential for this, certainly weren't anywhere close to having a conversation about cravats and hairdos.

I agree.

I agree.

Who else do we have on board?

Was that it?

I think we got everybody.

There's a couple things we don't have on board.

We don't have an awakened metal mind.

Ah!

And that's like an industry standard for a starship.

And I was like, oh my goodness, my brain.

I don't want to think about an awakened metal mind and what that can do.

But I'm going to do it anyway.

So an awakened metal mind, presumably, is an awakened copper mind, which would be like the computer for the ship.

And you could awaken a copper mind and then...

Like AI.

Yeah, like having a starship computer.

talking to your starship computer and having it you know compute your stuff yeah that's exactly what i'm thinking of too but i feel like i don't awaken metal i feel like there's a lot more in that can of worms which i'm not sure i want to entertain where my brain went to is actually a reference that i don't think either one of you guys are going to get because i don't think you've read this book but i bet some of our listeners out there have you guys i'm sure know Christopher Paolini, who wrote the Aragon series.

Yes.

I know you guys are familiar with that one.

I saw him at Dragonsteel.

Oh, cool.

You saw him at Dragonsteel, too.

Did I?

Was he there?

Or was he there the previous year?

I think he was there not that year.

Might have been the year we were there.

He and Brandon definitely hang out.

Not that long ago, he wrote a sci -fi book called...

I don't have it in front of me.

It's kind of long.

to sleep in a sea of stars i believe it's the name of it i've heard of this yes it's a sci -fi book it's actually a decent read i i enjoyed it in that book they have what they call ship minds and it's like a person that is so integrated with the computer that they're not really a person anymore so they're they're full -on half half human half machine and it actually made me think of this made me think of that when they were talking about oh we were missing our awakened metal mind in in Christopher Paulini's story, you can't fly ships unless you have a ship mind.

So, yeah.

What's an awakened metal mind capable of?

I don't know.

Or do you?

Or do I?

I don't think you do.

I don't think I do either.

Speaking of technology, every one of our characters carries on them a lodestar?

A lodestar.

It's your phone.

It's your smartphone.

Yeah.

You scan your instructions and it interprets it for you.

These are going to come up again, although they're not going to go into too much detail.

But these are kind of cool, I think.

This is a cool idea from Brandon.

If you've got a computer or a system on your ship, but you want your ship to be flyable by a dozen different...

species and origins and ethnicities you maybe have to design it to be capable of 12 different things or everyone just carries around their own universal adapter and plugs my personal lodestar in and now i can just fly the ship with my own controls that i like and the ship can read those i thought it was pretty cool i think starling has two for human form and dragon form oh good question She definitely doesn't right now because she's locked in human form.

No dragon for her.

That's what I was going to say.

Not for a while, at least.

Trevor, do you think we will see Starling restored to her dragon form at the end of this book?

Is that where we're headed?

We better.

If we get a dragon POV and we don't actually get a dragon, I'm going to be very upset.

That's fair.

Does a flashback count?

Do you think we're going to get Starling?

flashback to how...

It's okay.

Dusk flashbacks have been the story of Six of the Dusk that we knew.

But if we're looking at this story that we're looking at now, Isles of the Emberdark, would we not get flashbacks for our other main character, Starling, here?

Do you think we're going to start to do that?

We got that in the pro...

right?

But I wouldn't be surprised if we even like flip the page or something.

And it's like, Oh, 50 years ago, Starling or however long it was.

I don't know how old she is.

Dragons are complicated.

That's a really interesting idea.

I hadn't entertained the idea of more flashback chapters, but you might be onto something.

If, if it is, I don't think it is.

I don't think we're getting any more flashback and we're just going to have to piece together what happened to Starling.

in the present day.

But if we do, I'd be quite excited about that.

I think, I think we are going to get some, it may not be frequent as frequent as dusk was, but I think we will get maybe a couple or at least like several mentions or thinking back to it, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get like an actual flashback chapter for Starlings.

In fact, I want to like I'm on the side of I think that would be cool and insightful.

So I'm kind of hoping for it.

I'm also wanting some more page time because now we have Starling in the Ember Dark and we have Dusk in the Ember Dark.

So the good question, when are they going to meet?

In my head, I'm now like they could meet at any point.

That does not mean they're going to meet, period.

It could still not happen in this book.

But it's like in the same room, if you will, if you want to refer to the Ember Dark as a room.

Yeah.

It seems like Dusk is in a tough spot.

So naturally, if another bigger, more prepared, well -stocked ship comes by, maybe you'd be like, have you all got any more bugs?

juice and water over there.

He doesn't want the help of the ones above.

You're right.

He would not.

However, even the most rugged individualist Dusk, if he is faced with death, he'd probably...

Who knows?

Maybe Dusk will save them.

No telling what's going on here.

Without spoilers, do you want them to meet soon?

Are you pushing for that?

Or do you need them to wait a little bit?

Well, without spoilers, I'm hoping for some flashback chapters.

And maybe some other things.

We can do some side plots first.

Okay, I see.

Ellie, what page are we on?

I was just flipping to look this up for you because I figured you were going to ask me.

We are on page 160 of the book at the end of chapter 24.

Yeah, all right.

We need to get moving for me.

We have not gotten to either one of your page guesses yet, but I might have to start warning maybe one or two of you guys somewhat soon of your page coming up.

We'll see.

I did not know we were at 160 yet.

In my head, we were at page like 85.

No.

No, no, no.

So, yeah, we're cruising through this.

We are about a third of the way through the book.

Okay.

Yeah, so then we've got Mr.

Dusk all alone.

Yep.

With our disproportionate snake.

Yes, with our very disproportionate snake.

No need to remind me of that.

We'll be just fine.

I got bad news for you, Paul.

I picture a big caterpillar.

It's just a big chunky worm.

I don't know.

I wanted to point out two more things before we wrap up this episode and we keep on reading.

The first was...

I really liked the introduction of Starling's character here in this chapter.

We met her in the prologue, but we didn't see too much of her besides bubbly teenager kind of thing.

Here in chapter 22, we actually get to know her a little bit.

And one of the very first things we learn about her, I'll just read this section.

Her master said she worked too hard to find sunlight in dark places.

But what else was she to do?

Darkness was commonplace.

And she preferred a challenge.

When I read that, and that's on the very first page of chapter 22.

It's like the 10th sentence you've read about Starling that's not the prologue.

I read that sentence and I immediately went, yes, I'm going to like this character.

I really enjoy Starling's insistent focus on the good.

And as that quote says, maybe she's a little too optimistic.

I don't know.

We'll find out.

But the fact that she takes.

focusing on the light and not the darkness as a personal challenge i love that i resonate with that a lot i think the audiobook um narrator matches that point of view because it is the most happy -go -lucky optimistic voice i've probably ever heard reading a book to me she's a little too bouncy and ditzy for me i was gonna say frankly it's not been my favorite Michael Kramer and Kate Redding.

It makes it feel like I'm listening to a children's book.

This is exactly who you want reading the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar to your kiddos.

I'm not like, wow, it's ruining anything or anything like that, but it is very happy -go -lucky at the moment.

i will say i don't blame the dragons for putting the bracers back on her if she's just like whoa whoa slow down as a dragon the entire time that could be bad there was there was one other thing i noticed and i only just noticed it this read i did not notice this at all the first read that i went through when i flipped the page and started chapter 22 it for some reason caught my eye that The writing style changes.

And I don't know if this is a artifact of our flashback chapters in book one were all written by Brandon a long time ago.

And he's basically used the same things word for word, and now this is kind of more modern Brandon writing.

But the writing style that I'm talking about is the sentence structure gets noticeably more complex, like a lot.

I don't know if this would come through in an audio book or not.

Interesting.

But in all of book one, even the modern day chapters, not just the flashback ones, the sentences are very, I'll just say like straightforward sentence structures.

You don't have very many giant compound sentences.

And then all of a sudden in chapter 22, when the pages go jet black, you do get.

a bunch of giant run -on sentences, and he starts to use em dashes everywhere.

Do you guys know what an em dash is?

ChatGBT?

Is that you?

I'm not actually accusing him of that, by the way.

Does ChatGBT use em dash?

Is that just a wide dash?

That is a staple of ChatGBT is the em dash.

Yeah, that is actually how you spot ChatGBT is a ton of those wide dashes, yeah.

That is fascinating.

I would never accuse Brandon of such a thing.

It's a joke.

I'm sure it is.

But the em dashes start to appear all over the place.

Like sometimes a dozen on a single page where he's using these pause em dashes basically in the place of commas everywhere.

And that is not at all in book one.

I assume that's just the different POV between...

I mean, because I assume it's not in Chapter 24, right?

That's a great question.

I assume it's just a different POV that Brandon's trying to put himself in in the shoes of Starling and going from this thought to this thought to this thought without a period, you know?

And Dusk is a lot more methodical and slower.

Just flipping a brief glance over chapter 24, there are a fair amount of M dashes, not as much as in 22, but the sentence structures do look simpler.

You're right, because Dusk is very, yeah, like you said, methodical, simple, one thought after the next kind of thing, and the sentences do reflect that, whereas Starlings are way more rambly.

Yeah, I bet that's intentional, and I bet there's both, that it's...

a progression of Brandon's writing and he's pushing into it to try to discover Starlink as a POV.

Yep.

But it really stood out to me on the second read.

I didn't notice that at all the first one, but second time it jumped out at me.

That's all I had.

Elliot, what are his two navigation ideas that he could do?

You have that in the outline.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So let's talk about the, the dust chapter a little bit.

We kind of already did the snake.

It gets bigger.

He freaks out.

Oh my.

he's i should we should point out he's very encouraged by the fact that there are animals out here right that that is a very good sign for him of one that might help him navigate if he can figure it out and two it might help him eat if he can if he can catch one of these things so good sign that he's seeing snakes even though they're larger than his boat he He muses a lot in this chapter about how, man, there's no navigation methods.

How do we do this?

And I actually thought of two navigation methods that I think he could use.

The first one I thought of on the first read was he's in the ocean.

There's no currents.

There's no waves.

It's a perfectly smooth, flat, not water surface that he's on, right?

That's part of his problem.

He says he has nothing to work off of.

But I was thinking about it as what they could do if they wanted to navigate this place and not get lost was just travel in perfectly straight lines.

Do your exploring, but just make sure that you never, ever turn.

Just start at your starting island and go straight out for about half as much time as you have food.

take your engine off of one end of your boat and go bolt it on the other end and travel straight back in the other direction, consuming the rest of your food on the way.

And then just keep doing that in every direction until you eventually find something.

Well, he, okay.

Your, your bolts, the engine is throwing me a little bit, but he specifically says he can't do that when he just sails just over the quote unquote horizon line, which I'm still confused on how that happens.

If he doesn't have a horizon line, He sails just out of view of the island.

And then he's like, well, I guess I'm in it now and I can't turn around because I'm sure if I tried to turn around 180 and sail back, I couldn't.

And I think that's because he's thinking about it as if you try to turn the entire ship, you're never going to guess perfectly about the exactly 180 degrees.

And if you're off on the ocean or in space by half a degree, you're going to miss your destination by miles.

You have to be spot on.

But I think you could build a boat that has a space on either end of your boat and don't turn your boat at all.

That's very important.

And just travel exactly straight out and exactly straight back.

This might be semantics as well, but I'm also not convinced that Dusk couldn't flip a complete 180 successfully because he has clouds.

He does have the streaks in the sky.

Yeah, that's true.

He could temporarily figure out a 180, I think.

Yeah, maybe.

Not that...

You're muted, Paul.

You're right.

Whoops.

I was going to say, I don't trust this method because I'm thinking maybe a little too logically.

I'm like, okay, even if, like, what?

If you have the...

capability of your like motor would that like impact things or like the weight distribution in your boat like would have to be perfectly weighted and the basics probably are okay and maybe in shades more if you imagine your boat is equally weight distributed or something i don't know uh but yeah but i i definitely am like yeah you you you need your boat to have like a flat front and back and to put the engine on the other end flat to just push you in the exact same direction.

So I'm like, yeah, I think that dust could do a great job turning it around in a 180, but he's not going to, you're not going to like get it right.

Cause like, yeah, half degree.

It is going to have to be perfect.

Yeah.

Half a degree or less.

And you are not making it back.

Like you're not finding where you actually started.

So you made a joke about the cognitive realm there, Paul, but something I did actually notice.

Is the snake doesn't appear until he has committed mentally to this.

And till he has, at least in his mind's eye, lost sight of the island.

As soon as both of those things happen, that's when the snake appears, which I thought was fascinating.

If we're in the cognitive realm and then do fully commit to the mission, is that when?

our magic mental snakes appear.

Our chubby snake?

Yeah, I keyed into the fact that we are in the cognitive realm, and it wasn't until he committed to the trip that the snake appeared.

Let me, since you keyed into that, let me read you something else.

Okay.

I think I'm in the right place here.

Yeah, this is where he's like kind of analyzing the snake as it's a distance away.

It was long and narrow like a snake, but it seemed larger and longer than any snake he'd seen.

Dimensions were difficult to judge, but he guessed its head was a good foot wide, maybe a body maybe five feet long.

One that was more plated than scaled.

It swam with a sinuous motion, swimming in wide curves, its body lined with faint lights.

Odd, he thought.

That was how he'd always imagined shadows.

the beast that prowled the seas near the Pantheon Islands.

He'd seen artist drawings of all his life depicting them as serpentine -like creatures, extensions of the Dakuara, the great god of snakes, who had infinite coils extending into every ocean.

However, he'd now actually seen shadows or deep walkers, as a scientist called them.

He'd seen them up close, killed by modern weapons.

Their carcasses pulled up on the beach.

They had legs and were more crustacean than serpentine.

And then he starts to ramble on other stuff.

But did you catch the emphasis there kind of in the middle?

yes that he's seeing exactly what he expects to see in the unseen interesting interesting so maybe we will meet a snake as long as the planet or whatever it is unless snake because that's what he's expecting this fascinating interesting okay maybe maybe okay Back to the navigation stuff real quick.

If my back and forth straight lines method doesn't work, I thought of a better one.

And this one plays off of the infinite horizon that we talked about last week with my little diagrams and math equations we pulled out.

He does lose sight of the island, which doesn't bother me too much because like we talked about before, there's probably particles in the air.

It's probably a, it's not blocked by the horizon.

It's just slightly tiny bit foggy out there.

There's particles in the air.

He can't see it.

But there's a very simple way for them to fix that.

A lighthouse.

All they have to do is build a lighthouse on that island and put the brightest light they possibly can on top of it.

And because there is no horizon, you should be able to see that light from a very, very long way away.

It would be like the stars that we see in our night sky.

You walk out at night and you can see a star that is millions and millions and millions of miles away.

yes i know stars are ridiculously bright and they're not gonna be able to put that in a lighthouse but they're still gonna be able to light a big enough fire that you should be able to see for a hundred miles i think yeah i think i think a lighthouse would solve a lot of their problems the the horizon line going back to this cognitive realm thing i think he He loses sight of the island when his brain tells him he should lose sight of the island.

Yeah, that is interesting.

I didn't think about that, actually.

I think his brain is creating a horizon line for him.

Because he's such a skilled navigator, he knows the size of the planet that he's on, in theory.

And so his brain knows when he should lose sight of this island.

So I actually think that's what's going on here.

Is that the cognitive realm was just responding to his brain of, I've sailed for six hours or whatever.

I shouldn't be able to see the island behind me.

Oh, yep, it's not going to be there.

Which maybe jives with the kind of story we got before of, oh, we sent out crews, but they got lost because their radios didn't work.

Well, what if they were kind of expecting that?

They were thinking, oh, I'm in a crazy weird place.

Oh, no, we're going to get lost and the radios are going to stop working.

Oh, look, the radio's stopped working.

Or he sails just out of view of the island and thinks to himself, yeah, there's no way I'm going to refine that island.

Well, yeah, now you're correct because now the island's gone.

Right.

So yeah, maybe my lighthouse idea would not work because of that.

Cognitive realms, fun stuff, Brandon.

All right.

One final thought for you guys.

I realized on my reread here as I was reading chapter 24.

that dusk's bird sack the raven is really just the cosmere r2d2 and why the reason i arrived at this is because dusk is talking to sack and all sack ever does is chirp back at him but it's a very like sarcastic response dusk always feels like he's getting mocked by sack which is i sock Sock.

I feel like that is the role that is played in Star Wars by R2 -D2.

Characters make a comment to R2 -D2.

R2 -D2 chirps back a bunch of sounds.

No one knows what R2 -D2 is saying, but I guarantee you every time R2 -D2 opens his mouth, he's making fun of somebody.

That is Sock here, I think, in the Cosmere.

Yeah, I think you've nailed it.

I think you're absolutely right.

So now we just need to get Cosmere R2 -D2 onto Cosmere Millennium Falcon.

And we got to find Cosmere C -3PO.

C -3PO, yeah.

Then we'll have it all.

Created by the Dark Lord.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Okay.

All right.

Well, anything else, guys?

Nothing else.

From me, maybe we need to add a Jedi to our ship here as well.

Now I'm just trying to think who would be the Cosmere equivalent of C -3PO.

Who did Taravanshian make before becoming Retribution?

Aren't some of our Sions overly literal?

Yeah, that's true.

That's a good shout.

That's all I got.

All right.

Likewise.

Maybe we'll turn the page and see a Starling flashback chapter.

Pattern.

Pattern's obviously the...

You're right.

Why did that take us so long?

It's obviously Pattern.

That's true.

I'm ashamed.

I'm ashamed.

We should have known that.

I'm sorry everyone in the comments who was typing Pattern.

You can leave it, but I did get there eventually.

We would have gotten a flood of corrections there on that one.

And you all would have been absolutely right, but Trevor, you saved us.

I saved it.

Total embarrassment.

With that, let's wrap it up here for episode 281.

Next week for episode 282, we're going to be reading chapters 25 through 28 of Isles of the Ember Dark.

Thanks for joining me.

Paul and Trevor.

See ya.

No startling flashback chapters.