Ed is not human.

The book specifically says that he is a Vaxillian.

Yes, I did notice that.

I had no idea what it was.

I did not either.

And I think this is a kind of collected up from words of Brandon kind of things.

Vaxillian means he's from the planet Vax and that he's not human.

Okay.

That's all we know.

And apparently Brandon's been asked a bunch of questions about this and has very specifically refused to answer.

Welcome back to Following Nolodon, a Stormlight podcast.

We are now on episode 282.

Isles of Emberdark, continuing on into the Emberdark.

We're going to cover chapters 25, 26, 27, and 28.

I'm here with Paul and Trevor, as always.

Paul, I think it was you I was giving some crap the other day for decorating for Christmas too early.

That's what I spent my entire day today was decorating for Christmas.

So how's Christmas over in your household?

Wonderful.

So if you want to know the whole debacle, we put up...

Icicle lights on our house.

Very exciting.

The superior type of exterior lighting, in my opinion.

We did that, enjoyed it for about two days, and then it stopped working.

And I was like, well, that stinks.

Then we were gone for Thanksgiving, and then thankfully, my mother -in -law had the genius idea.

I didn't even know this was the thing.

But your Christmas lights have a fuse in them, and sometimes that fuse will go kaput.

And you can replace that.

I didn't know that was in there.

This was news to me.

And replace that and have lovely lights on outside.

I can see them through my window.

It's wonderful.

Also, pardon for our listeners.

Here in Texas, we went from about 75 degrees to about 35 degrees overnight.

And everyone here is all stopped up because of it.

Not fun.

Yeah, it was a nice toasty 14 degrees here at my house today.

Trevor's up even higher elevation, so it's probably even colder by your house, Trevor.

10 this morning when I woke up.

And then I drove home from work through a blizzard to get to the podcast.

Elliot, I need your help.

Yes.

I need your help in publicly shaming Paul for shaming me for drinking and purchasing eggnog.

Paul's an eggnog hater, and I need to publicly disgrace him for it on the podcast.

Can you back me up here?

I can absolutely back you up here.

That is rather disgraceful.

Eggnog is the joy of the Christmas season.

Thank you.

Only to be drunk during Christmas.

Thank you.

I will definitely go that direction.

Thank you.

I don't drink eggnog any other month of the year.

But when December comes around, oh, man.

Cup of eggnog?

A common Elliot W.

Yeah.

Well.

For all the people out there who don't love eggnog in their festive season, I'm sure they'll be quick to back me up that it is a bit odd of a drink.

It's one of those things that I, about a year or two ago, I assumed, oh, it's one of those things as a kid I just discounted and never gave a fair try.

So I've tried eggnog and it never seems worth drinking.

That's for sure.

You do have to do one thing when you're drinking eggnog is not think of eggs.

If you do think of eggs while you're drinking eggnog, your brain will start to think that you're just drinking straight eggs.

But if you don't do that, then it's great.

You don't even have to brainwash yourself into liking eggnog like Elliot says.

It's just genuinely good.

It is good.

I probably eggnog scrambled personally.

I needed to save that for the podcast so that it was recorded somewhere to get Elliot on my side.

Okay.

I'm ready for the summary if we're ready for it.

Yes, please do.

Okay.

We meet two new crew members on the dynamic.

We mutiny and we save the day.

That's my...

Wow.

Okay.

Brief.

You've really brought the time down this week.

Correct.

My speed run cannot be beaten.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Does there need to be more said in a summary, though?

There's plenty of little things to pull.

You're leaving out one very giant, many -limbed thing.

We fly around a building that moves and doesn't like us or something.

Yes.

Yes, that.

But yes, we have four chapters today, and they are all...

in the point of view of Starling and her crew.

Most of my notes came in Chapter 25, the first one, but then there's some fairly exciting events in the other chapters, too.

Where do you guys want to start with Chapter 25?

With our two new crew members.

I don't care which one.

Ed or Leonor.

Which one, Paul?

Let's go Ed.

Okay.

Ed.

Ed.

Sorry, I muted myself.

Ed is our resident arcanist.

Arcanist?

on the dynamic he is our hired history dude and when they're flying to go confront this entity they literally turn to ed and say ed what do you got for me and he breaks out his little lore book he says well and then he gives them a little lore spiel about entities big nerd cool guy and yeah i'm he's probably my favorite of the crew that i've met so far ed's ed's pretty cool ed is the lore guy and i love it because i'm the lore guy i i am the guy that people like start a conversation about the cosmere with and then probably regret that they did so because i start lore dumping on them sorry everyone who's ever talked to me about the cosmere they starling in this chapter walks past him before we're even introduced to him so from the we're from the point of view of starling and she walks past him To go talk to Leonor.

We're introduced to Leonor first.

But we walk past Ed first.

And Ed's reading a book.

Of course he is.

He's reading his little nerd book.

And Brandon's like literally writing in.

We'll get back to him later.

He's a nerd.

That's all you need to know.

And then we do get back to him later.

And he's great.

And then we have Leonor.

Who is a ex -Malwish Space Force star pilot.

She is a Malwish Skadrian deserter.

She is a crack shot pilot or whatever the equivalent of crack shot would be for a pilot.

An ace, I suppose.

And she's willing to...

I actually don't know the status of her contract with Zysus and why she's on this ship.

I don't think we know that yet.

But she's hired on this ship as the pilot.

She's great, as we find out in chapters 27 and 28.

And then...

Yeah, she's really handy to have, except for the fact that she can't go to Scadrial, because she's wanted as a deserter.

So, pretty much, it adds to our Millennium Falcon thing of, you know, I'm wanted in seven systems, or whatever the line is from A New Hope.

And she's...

I mean, she seems like a nice lady, and I'm curious to know why she's a Malwish deserter, but yeah.

She's not allowed to go to Skadriel and anybody who's allied with Skadriel, which seems to be a decent amount of systems at this point.

So our crew is definitely firmly planted on the Rosharan side of the spectrum here because we have a Sleepless who is apparently allowed to be killed on sight on Skadriel.

I thought that was crazy.

And then a Skadrian who's not allowed to back on Skadrial.

So if we're ever to ally with anyone on the dynamic, I feel like it would have to be a Rosharan side of the spectrum.

But that is what it is.

Interesting take there.

Paul, what were your thoughts of Leonor and Ed?

Yeah, I was going to say, Trevor, I hadn't thought of this as like the Millennium Falcon, but you're kind of right about that.

Everyone is a wanted criminal.

To varying degrees, yeah.

Respected some places, not respected other places.

But also, it's not for any wrong reasons that we know of.

We don't know exactly why...

Sorry, wrong reasons as in some of them may deserve the status they have.

I don't know.

Even like Starling, right?

We don't know yet.

everything there, but Starling is at least not on good terms with maybe some other dragons and people of Yolen.

So, you know, it's a bit of a red tag group we've got here.

I really liked these characters.

I thought Ed was really cool.

Every time I hear Arcanist, I don't know.

It makes me...

chuckle a little bit to myself because what is really an arcanist right isn't it just something that they just stick into any fantasy and sci -fi thing of like this guy kind of is smart and wise in the ways of things here in our fantasy story like that's usually what i think of i'm like is the master of the arcane it's just a bit ambiguous So I was hung up on that.

But yep, Arcanus is cool.

Malwish here as well.

Leonore, pretty cool.

I think the name Leonore is pretty.

At face value, cool name.

But yeah.

We have the spelling of Zetzi in our outline.

And I appreciate that because if you were to test me on that, I would have failed.

Yeah.

I was typing that into the outline and realized I probably should have tested you guys because that's a funky one.

I'm going to stand on this hill.

I think it's actually the narrator's fault why we would have got that wrong, Paul, because she specifically says ZC.

There's a there's a sound at the end of the word and the way it's spelled.

It's a Z.

So that would be ZZ, which is not how she says it.

She says ZC.

Well, that's actually.

Not what I would have gotten wrong, Trevor.

I think that there's two Zs involved here.

I just, I mean, I don't know how you're supposed to know the vowels here, but I did not think the first Zet was Z -E -E -T.

And what would have really gotten you guys, I think, is probably something I don't think we've seen before, which is capital letters in the middle of a name.

That's true.

Have we seen that before?

reasons we've seen apostrophes sure i don't it's probably happened we've seen a lot like literally hundreds maybe even a thousand names by now but anyway we've seen plenty of titles i'm not sure if we've seen a double capital in a name i'll have to think about that but anyway before we talk about zt i wanted to a couple things quick back on leonore and ed real fast before we move on from them paul you were Closing in on the arcanist tile, which I think was kind of interesting.

I'm with you.

It's a cool term, but it's gotten to the point where it's a little generic now in the sci -fi and fantasy realm.

I'm with you.

It feels like every world, every realm, every universe has an arcanist.

And that might be on purpose because Ed is from Silverlight.

Silverlight is where folks like the 17th Shard.

are which is i almost kind of think of as like an earth parallel sort of thing it's it's silver light is where we've got maybe the most earth -like ish people out there and you know him using a term that we are very familiar with when he could have easily come up with something new like he often does i think might be on purpose okay There's one other hint about Ed in this chapter.

I don't know if you guys noticed.

Hold on.

I do want to say something about Ed.

I had to keep this straight in my head because I was definitely very confused the first time I listened.

The second time I listened, Leonor is the Scadrian, but Ed is the Pathian, not from Scadrial.

So he is a Pathian.

From Silverlight.

And I was like.

What?

That's not a thing.

Yes.

And.

He says something about that.

That I want to talk about.

But I think it's not in these chapters.

Spoilers.

Next week.

I know we're spoiling this.

Next week we'll talk more about the fact that he's a Pathian.

But yes keep that in mind.

Ed is a Pathian.

He is from Silverlight.

But I'm going to drop a little bit of information on you that is not a spoiler of this book.

It's something I've learned when I was researching this.

Ed is not human.

The book specifically says that he is a Vaxillian.

Yes, I did notice that.

I had no idea what it was.

I did not either.

And I think this is a...

kind of collected up from words of Brandon kind of things.

Vaxillian means he's from the planet Vax and that he's not human.

Okay.

That's all we know.

And apparently Brandon's been asked a bunch of questions about this and has very specifically refused to answer.

Oh, okay.

And so the planet Vax may feature in the future is kind of what I'm getting out of that.

But I didn't catch that at all my first time around through, but.

Preparing notes for this time.

I keyed in on that and tried to do a little bit of research, and there's not much to find other than, yeah, from Silverlight, Pathian, not human, Arcanist.

Cool.

ZZ.

Let's move on to ZZ.

ZZ is also from a rather different place, the Grand Apparatus.

What do you guys think about the Grand Apparatus?

I'll throw this to Paul first, but I will tease it with this.

This was not the first time I'd heard the term Grand Apparatus.

Well, that's a bit of an unfair teaser to throw my way, because I just want to hear about that.

To my knowledge, this is the first time I've seen a Grand Apparatus.

So either I forgot something, maybe in one of those important stories like Alameda Sir Jack or something, or...

or what but yeah the visuals of this were amazing this was something that I I've one thing that I've loved so much about this book is I feel like I've had such clear mental imagery and really fantastic cool imagery of like this jet black not ocean and these things and all this stuff.

And it was really cool.

And I love the description of how this thing moves.

And it's like, it's like you sort of see it moving, but you see where it was more than where it's moving to.

I don't know.

It's just very ethereal.

Very cool.

So honestly, most of my thoughts were about the visual of it.

I'm expecting that this is going to be something bigger.

We're going to have bigger, more discoveries with this.

But absolutely crazy.

I was glad to have our little arcadist friend here now to talk about it.

Okay.

The one time that I have heard the Grand Apparatus before was in a Brandon Sanderson Q &A.

And somebody asked him, I'm going to kind of make this up on the spot, but somebody asked him a question about some location in the Cosmere.

And he gave them a Raffo.

And then they rebuttaled with, oh, come on, you can give me something.

And I think they were asking about Silverlight or Yolen or something like that.

Some place that we knew existed at the time, but didn't know anything about.

So they were asking him, let's say it was Silverlight.

And he gave them a Raffo, obviously.

And then, as like an off -the -cuff thing, Brandon throws out the teaser.

Yeah, if you think Silverlight is interesting, wait till you hear about the Grand Apparatus.

And that was a couple years ago.

And ever since then, there have been threads and huge theory storms online.

And me personally, I've just considered what could it be?

I was completely way off, by the way, on what could it be.

So we knew it was a term simply because of how Brandon taunted us once with it.

And so that was the only time I'd ever heard the term.

grand apparatus elliot have we heard it canonically before this oh i didn't actually do research on that i in my brain no i for some reason i'm thinking that we may have heard this in reference to invention okay but i don't remember exactly where so i'd have to do some digging to find that out but for some reason i was thinking we'd already been told that the well maybe i'm making a jump here because i think we've been told that invention kind of runs around and makes cool stuff.

The grand apparatus seems like a cool stuff.

So I'm jumping to the conclusion that this is a product of inventions work in the Cosmere.

No, no, no.

Starling specifically says it's been around since before the shattering.

She does say that.

Or at least she says, or at least people think so.

Yeah.

Maybe I need to do more thinking on my theory here.

Regardless, it is specified here that it is run by the sleepless.

Yes, now.

Okay, so we get a little bit more on this.

Before last episode, we got a quick teaser of ZZ saying, oh, do you have any idea what they've done to my homeland?

And Starling says, no, I don't.

But now we get a little bit more on ZZ's homeland and we get the input that the sleepless have forcibly taken it over.

the grand apparatus and then use it to test on mortals.

Yep.

They use it as a testing facility on mortals.

That is what it says in the book.

I'm like, Whoa.

Wow.

I mean, what do you, what do you have to do to have a kill, a standing kill order just off your race on two planets, Haldane and Skadriel.

I feel like having a test facility on any mortal you can find.

having a hostile takeover someone else's home world has got to be up there right like that's the the sleepless do not have a good name for themselves they they really don't and we've we definitely need to learn a lot more about this place it's definitely hinted at i think hoid's brought up in the conversation in association hoid has been to the grand apparatus at least once but it doesn't seem immediately like a terrible horrible place zc's talking about it as i i thought of the the room of requirement from harry potter you like submit a request and the grand apparatus sends you the room that you need you know oh i need to go to the bathroom please send me a bathroom and then you wait a few minutes and then you step through the door into a modular building that's the bathroom and then when you're done you type it around i need a living room now so please send me a living room it's the perfect like communist socialist utopia right where nobody owns that nobody owns anything you just request it of the grand apparatus and it supplies it to you for as long as you need and then you return yeah it talks about like all your belongings are in these chests these like boxes that transfer with you so when you swap over there's there's like a robotic arm you know grabbing all your your your stuff box and bringing it to the next room with you crazy and i think back in the day back in zizi's day it would have been a great place But I am under the implication that it is no longer a great place under the rule of the sleepless.

It might not be.

And then we learn a fascinating bit about ZZ that I missed completely on my first read.

I was rereading this like last week, and I flipped a page and I went, how in the world did I not notice this?

It's mentioned like three times in this chapter.

ZZ is the...

He's like the first mate kind of thing.

He's not the pilot.

Operations manager.

There you go.

Mr.

Operations guy over there.

He's sitting over there running all the systems on the ship.

So Leonor is piloting.

ZZ is in the seat next to her running all the systems.

Shields to the fore.

What's our Star Trek equivalent of this?

I don't know who the Star Trek equivalent would be.

I'm not a Trekkie, sorry.

Yeah, we need some Trekkie to tell us who this is equivalent.

Anyway, he's over there running all the systems on the ship.

He's not touching the control panel.

Did you guys notice this?

I did.

His hands are hovering over the control panel, and Starling describes it as lines of electricity, like Emperor Palpatine style, running from his fingers down to the control panel and doing all the whizzy, quick operations.

How did I miss this on my first read?

Were you guys as mind -blown when you saw that as me?

I was, but not for the same reason.

It specifically says it's a northern Skadrian control panel.

Yeah.

Which made me think this is probably designed to be steel -pushed to be activated.

And ZZ is using whatever he has to operate it rather than steel -pushing.

Okay.

But are you not, like, floored by, is this an entirely new magic system that we haven't seen before?

It certainly could be.

It's gotta be.

We haven't seen anything like this before, right?

ZZ Altogether has made me think that it's only new things being introduced here.

I feel like...

I agree.

I think this is something completely new.

Funny enough, it wasn't from this, but...

It wasn't spurred on by something that I read in this book, but I had the thought of if I got to ask Brandon a question, I feel like it'd be fun to ask, would a Jedi be very quick to get invested if they were dropped into the Cosmere?

Or would they be able to use the Force or something like that?

And yeah, I think we're seeing the...

I don't think he's like a Sith Lord status here, but like setting some kind of electrical current and stuff for himself is pretty crazy.

Cool.

So yeah, I thought that was neat.

So anyway, something funky is going on with ZZ.

I'm curious for more there.

The thing that's most relevant to Dusk in all these chapters.

is Starling goes on like a page rant about navigation in the Ember Dark.

And she talks about how with all the technology they have, it's still really easy to get lost in the Ember Dark.

You have to follow these pre -drawn lines, like trade routes, between systems or planets or whatever the term you want to call it is.

And if you go off, even by an hour, a couple hours, You can get turned around real fast and not know where you're going.

The way that she describes navigating in the Ember Dark is you can use the Nell and the current, which I'll come back to those two terms in a second.

But you have to know where you are in order to use that second data point as useful.

Because she uses the example of if you have a compass.

but you're lost in the wilderness, it'll tell you which way north is, and you can keep going in the same direction, but it won't tell you where you are, so because you know where the Nell is doesn't really help you unless you already know where you are, and then you can get to where you need to go with the triangulation.

I thought that was fascinating.

Back to the Nell and the current.

Thank you, Brandon.

You teased this last book.

Paul, do you remember this?

Teased this?

Oh, last...

it went in truth now the now and the current were mentioned do you remember in what context no whenever he said last book i was thinking of this book is divided up into books i was thinking at the start of this book and no to both i don't i don't remember for sure so i actually did a little uh homework here and i have some quotes for you if you'd like me to read it for you yeah but I'll do it off memory to show off as best I can.

So the Nell and the current, I remember specifically because they were in wind and truth, early release chapters.

And I talked about it for the first time on the podcast without you two with Tim and David probably over a year ago now at this point.

And it was mentioned in context of shades more.

It was a Shalon chapter.

And I won't be able to spout you the exact quote, so I can't go for the home run here.

But that's as much as I got.

And it has to do with the currents through the beads of the ocean.

And the Nell had to do something with the death of a god.

And we were hypothesizing, okay, which god?

Is it Honor?

Is it on Cell?

Where does the Nell point?

And we all had different theories.

I'm kind of curious to go back to which one of us was right.

But go ahead, Elliot.

But before I fill in the cracks, and the cracks are very few, I'm very impressed.

Did you get your answer to the death of a god?

Yes, absolutely.

And it was?

Threnody.

It's the ambition.

Okay.

All right.

Excellent.

Yes, I am very impressed.

This is chapter 7 of Wind and Truth?

Very early.

Nope, 11.

Chapter 11 of Wind and Truth.

You just about got it all.

So Shallan and Drahe are talking, and Adolin's here too, are talking about, I don't even know what all they're talking about, but anyway, they start talking about, oh yeah, we have these fabrials that we found in the tower, and they work in Shadesmar.

It says this, this device points to something far in the distance, something the sibling called the Grand Nell, source of the current, the death of a god.

Not at all ominous, Shallan said, sitting up.

It gives us a bearing, Drayhe explained.

This always points to the Nell.

I know the angle from lasting integrity we were to take, and I don't think we've strayed too far.

And they ramble a little bit on exactly what you were talking about.

As long as you know where you were or where you've been, then knowing where north is or where the Nell is is going to give you some information.

There is another mention in Wind and Tooth.

Trevor, do you remember this one?

No, I'd have to come up empty on that one.

I'd be maybe it's in the spiritual realm.

There's a current.

It's not spiritual realm.

As far as I know, I'm going to read it here in a second.

You can tell me.

I would be floored if you remembered this.

It is from one of the interludes.

I really should come up with this now so that I can impress you.

You said it's an interlude?

I told you it's an interlude.

So you want to guess which one?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

It's the eerie one where they're going through the perpendicularity.

That'd be my guess.

That is what I thought it was going to be.

So when I was doing my research on this and I saw the interlude, I was like, oh, it's going to be those dudes in the eerie.

It's not.

It's an even more intriguing one.

Almost Florida.

Almost.

Close.

Do you want to take a stab at a random interlude when in truth before you tell us?

Just throwing one out there.

It's going to be the one where Cultivation talks to Odium.

That's an interlude, right?

Or was that a main chapter?

That's an interlude.

No idea how it could be in that.

I'm just going to throw it out there.

It is not that.

It is interlude 5 in Wooden Truth.

And I will just read.

Baxal trod the streets of Azamir unseen.

Every inch of him, save his eyes, was wrapped in tight crimson cloths.

The tied off tails of which sometimes escaped his cloak and waved in the wind of an unknown capital C current.

Hand on his guitar, slid it to a sheath at his side.

He watched for anyone in the crowd who noticed him.

Nothing so far.

Good.

If I had remembered Baxel wasn't even a character, I actually might have come up with this because that was one of the craziest scenes we got in Wind and Truth.

Yeah.

I completely forgot about it.

Yeah.

That's what I was thinking as well.

He was such an enigma and so many different things going on.

I should have known better.

So I'm, yeah, very intrigued.

Even more intrigued about that interlude now.

that we know a little bit about what the current is.

For a definition, for anyone who hasn't read it recently, the current seemingly flows towards the Nell, and the Nell is, it gives you like a direction, the current, and the Nell is the remnants of what happened on Threnody, or what happened to Ambition via Odium and Mercy.

So Threnody blew up.

apparently exploded into a bunch of like cosmic sized entities which we'll talk about here in a little bit but yeah the the death of ambitions shard went just about as bad as possible even worse than we originally thought because back in shadow times of the force of hell i think they might actually be on the the nicer side of the physical versus the cognitive realm on they Have this whole thing of.

You know.

Threnody's out to kill you.

There's shades everywhere.

I think they might last longer on Threnody.

Than in the Shadesmar version of Threnody.

Based on these chapters.

There's a bunch of.

What they call entities.

And there's a dragon.

A sleepless.

An arcanist.

And an expert pilot.

And a couple other.

people on our crew and all of them are super excited super scared of this entity from freddy yep to give you a little bit of context on what we're talking about here so this entity has chased uh this distress beacon out into the middle of nowhere it's uh the investiture has attracted it and then we'll get into the specific plot points and then the action sequence, if you will, of, of Starling confronting it in a second, but yeah, massive investiture hunting predator on the cognitive realm.

And you got to stay close to the highways because people's thoughts warded off and it doesn't like to be constrained by human thought or cognitive thought, I should say, not necessarily human.

So yeah, interesting.

And when we get to that, I will pull up the art from the book on this because we've got a nice little drawing in the book to show you what this thing looks like.

But yeah, kind of scary, but then also kind of not at the same time.

Our characters seem scared of it, but I feel like we've got a fairly high -powered crew here.

I don't think I was super worried through much of this sequence.

Elliot, you told me to ask you this on the podcast, so here I go.

Is the term entity capitalized?

The way that it was read, it was absolutely capitalized in my head.

It is absolutely not capitalized in the book.

Interesting.

The investiture, the word, is capitalized as always.

But yeah, entity is not.

I'm going to go double check myself here, but I'm very sure it is not capitalized.

I think a shortened version of just the term we've seen used by a couple of different characters in the past of just...

invested entity that that's a that's a term and i think somebody somewhere gets like technical with breaking down different levels of of different invested entities and this is a you know type something something invest type six one what the heck does that mean ed yeah i don't know i feel like this makes sense to me trevor because i'm like whatever would be capitalized would be whatever it's an entity of potentially is what I'm thinking.

I feel like if you have capital E entity, that's a hard thing to define.

I feel like if you have a capital E entity, you'd be more so defining an individual item.

Like, I don't know, if you were to define that an entity is like, I don't know, let's say Shallan is an entity.

but she is made up of her various personalities or whatever, or something like that.

I feel like entity would have to get way broader.

So this, I didn't even think, even when you were mentioning it in the outline, I didn't necessarily think it'd be capitalized because I feel like you're adding, I feel like you'd add a lot of rules right quick, unless it's just entity of something else that's capitalized.

I think the term was used by Vasher or Zile back in Rhythm of War when he calls himself, he calls Kaladin a type one invested entity and he calls himself and Silphrena a type two invested entity.

And I just kind of assumed that was Vasher being quirky and using his own terms for things, but I guess not.

I guess that's a more widely accepted term of invested entity.

Which makes you wonder if Xyla's crossed paths with maybe some of these Arcanists.

Or an invested entity.

Or also that.

Because the Nell exists back in Stormlight, so presumably these things exist back in Stormlight.

While we're talking about this thing, do you guys want to just take a look at it?

Oh, yeah.

So yeah, Trevor, pull up my screen there.

Here's the art that is in the book.

Now this is a few moments after we've kind of discussed up until this point.

This is after Starling has dove out of their craft as it's flying.

I want you guys' takes on that here in a minute.

Lands on the stranded ship where the Iriali family is.

And in an attempt to ward off this giant...

entity she reveals her true form as a dragon not that she becomes a dragon because she can't she's got the manacles on but she can like project an image that's the equivalent of that and that is this scene she crosses her arms gives the bridge for salute and her dragon comes out it doesn't say bridge for salute but it does say she crosses her arms like a bridge for salute cool yeah this is for whatever reason i assumed this would be from like a straight on point of view from the description I got of it in the book.

The art sounds just as epic as it is in the book.

They do a great job describing this.

So I was quite excited to see it on the podcast.

Yeah, this is cool.

I feel like, I feel like this is a very difficult to depict being the description of the book is wild.

Yeah.

Of skyscraper length arms that are hundreds of yards long, not feet, The arms are hundreds of yards.

And it has hundreds of arms.

That's what the book says.

I feel like you can't even portray that in a picture.

That's crazy.

Yeah, I appreciate this.

To add to my list of random things to reference, what I was imagining with this beast, at first, it doesn't really fit.

There's a very popular anime called Attack on Titan with these giant titanic humanoid things, obviously.

And I somewhat had that image of some of these gigantic titans.

But yeah, the mini arms thing threw me for a loop.

I think the art in this book has been so good.

And this, I'm like, that is fairly close to how I pictured it.

in my mind's eye even without me doing this and i'm glad and i think that's testament to how well this book i think describes the things we're encountering i think i have a good image for that and all our little five foot by one foot um snake from last episode and things like that um with the scale you were giving um elliot i'm actually more surprised by the size of the dragon portrayal for like is it i agree yeah or isn't this a humongous dragon yes i would agree with that like half a skyscraper tall if we're you know yeah with from from feet to wing tip at least those are some really big wings if you look down there at the base of the dragon though you can see starling and starling is normal -ish sized so if you've got you know five or six foot starling down there i think our dragon is only 50 feet maybe that's half a skyscraper but yeah i think our i think our description from the book gives us would have this entity being even larger you just can't draw that on a page well and i agree it describes it as the other It extends all the way to wherever the dynamic is trying to swoop into them.

This thing expands super far as well as climbs super far.

Yep, pretty wild.

But yeah, some fun art.

Cool.

Alright, so our crew is facing down the entity.

We got the moment that I described a second ago where Starling dives out of the ship down onto the stranded ship and then the rest of the crew go to pull off the diversion plan so they come up with a diversion plan what are they carrying in their cargo that they're using as a diversion you guys catch this i was hoping it would be described more but all it said was light an untapped or unkeyed light unkeyed light so i don't know What flavor of light we're talking about.

Which is rather upsetting.

Well.

It is.

It is upsetting.

I do wish we had more.

I am reading a lot into that one single word.

Light.

Because.

I think if.

I think in other instances.

Other parts of the story.

We've seen.

Other sources of unkeyed investiture.

I think this is specifically.

Like from Roshar.

That's where light comes from.

Yeah, I'd be hesitant to say that because investiture kind of manifests itself as light on the cognitive realm, no matter where you are.

Like, Kelsey runs around in Mistborn Secret History and everybody's a glowing little candle.

Yes, but when we see people use unkeyed door...

Right.

Which happens a few times.

It's very specifically a liquid.

Right.

It's jars of liquid.

Yeah.

This, I think, is not that.

Which raises a million questions for me.

Back to the whole, are these guys more maybe aligned towards the Roshar inside?

Are they making a cargo run from Roshar?

Is that where they maybe came from?

Where they got this stuff?

I think that's quite likely.

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't say definitive, but yes, it's likely that it is from Roshar.

I agree.

Oh, yeah.

I'm reading all of this into one single word.

We have nothing else to go off of.

But if that is true, man, do I have a lot of other questions.

The big question before was, can you get light off of Roshar?

These guys have done so.

The counterpoint, their contraband is legal to Skadrians.

And I feel like unkeyed light Skadrons might have issue with.

They do specifically mention that they have legal cargo.

There's a counterpoint.

I could still see it being a legal substance.

Being traded through regular channels, I think the trade of metal is going to be legal.

Maybe highly controlled, but if you're paying all the right taxes and...

Things like that then could be legal.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm intrigued by this one single word capitalized, light.

I feel like you might be overthinking it and light is just letting you know, yeah, this is an investiture, you know.

It could absolutely be the case.

But they do go and dump their investiture.

It does draw the attention of the entity.

Entity goes the other way.

They snag up the stranded Uriali family and they all live happily ever after.

Yeah, they do save the day.

Random thought.

They say they store their light in aluminum casing so that the entity can't see it.

Question.

Wouldn't that cause huge problems for Naz?

Being that close to like a bunch of aluminum.

well it just means that he can't he probably can't touch the canisters like he can't pass through it like he can everything else right or even it's going to do damage to him if he touches him right or is it silver it's silver actually that's really dangerous to him isn't it i always confuse the two on what they do i confuse the two also because don't they use silver in their bows in silence for shadows or whatever the force of hell yeah i think so Aluminum is more like deflecting and negating and silence is more like, sorry, silver.

It's more like destructive, right?

I'm shaky on my lore, but I feel like the answer is yes.

I think so too.

And speaking of invested entities, Nas is an invested entity of some other level of this other thing.

So I would bet that the aluminum blocks him, that he can't float through it.

and maybe TBD on whether it harms him, maybe just silver harms him.

Yeah, I'll have to brush up.

He's obviously okay here at least, so we know that much.

He can be in the room with the stuff.

What are we left with?

Oh, one note on this invested entity before we go.

When Starling is facing it down in that moment we just saw in the artwork where she reveals a dragon, she spends a couple paragraphs describing the emotions.

that she feels yes how the the being just starts to suck her down this despair and she has to very specifically fight against the despair that starts to creep into her mind and she notes that this is not just a wild a wild animal kind of thing she notes specifically that this is evil yeah it's it's trying to instill fear as like a end goal Yes.

Yes.

So I wonder if that's a knockoff of ambition and ambition was like super evil or maybe the vessel was super evil, or if this is just a side effect of wandering around as a massive thing of negative investiture for thousands of years.

That's actually a great question.

I'm not sure I thought about is, does that imply that negative investiture is evil?

By definition.

Or is this like you said.

A hangover from a specific shard.

That has imbued it with that.

Right.

Evilness.

Interesting.

I don't know.

Or if we're getting all relative.

Does Starling.

Make the quick assumption.

That it's evil.

Because she's an investiture entity.

And it's an anti -investiture entity.

I can't say that word.

So does she by default.

project evil onto it and then it just reflects it back at her of she's expecting to be super intimidated by this thing so now she is i feel like that it's an entire philosophy discussion right there yes of the uh that's a great question starling you insist this thing is evil what is what is our measure of good and evil in the in the cosmere that's right that's a that's a very very big question what Yeah, maybe we should have an episode on is investiture good or is negative investiture evil?

Man, that'd be interesting.

Okay.

Quick shout out to Starling.

It took her three chapters to Maroon or what's the Mutiny?

To Mutiny, Captain Crow.

It took Dress 57.

So I just wanted to...

Throw that out there.

As far as word count goes, efficiency, Starling, you got it on lock.

Well, she's had a huge advantage, right?

Because she's a dragon.

So I think we can cut Tress a little bit of slack here.

And if we're getting technical, I think Starling's been on this ship for six months, I think is the time frame given.

So we just skipped all that.

But as far as word count goes, she's got it on lock.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

And man, this Captain Crow, she's just getting picked on all over the place.

Rightfully so.

Captain Crow hater, me.

Captain Crow, I'm not a Captain Crow defender.

Don't get me that.

Don't get me wrong there, but I will say that her luck is not great with crews.

Maybe she should be a nicer person.

Maybe if you keep coming out on the wrong side of the equation, maybe the problem is you.

Well, let's continue this discussion into Chapter 28.

So after Chapter 28, things have all resolved.

We're away from the entity.

We're heading back to safety.

And Starling goes and talks to Captain Crow, and Crow's just not even mad.

She's just like, oh.

Yep, guess you guys aren't going to follow me anymore.

I'll be in my quarters.

Drop me off somewhere.

What?

This must happen to her a lot.

Well, I would say yeah, but that she specifically says she's only been part of one before.

I'm saying that somewhat facetiously.

I was mainly just surprised that she doesn't go berserk.

No, I think she learned her lesson from trying to go berserk is that the that's not going to help her.

So she's she doesn't throw her temper tantrum and leaves it to Zysus for next episode.

Ah, yes, I assume.

So, yeah, by the end of chapter 28, we kind of leave our crew.

They've saved the poor, helpless, stranded family, and they're heading back to mention their Eerie Ollie.

They are eerie.

How many how many?

eerie homelands have we have confirmed at this point but before this book all three of them three i think three specifically they've been on our schedule and wherever else whatever the trust one is yeah that's right i just kind of assume they've been everywhere that they've lived on just about every planet at some point it's their fault that everybody's blonde in the cosmere All blonde everywhere traces back to them.

Maybe.

Maybe, maybe.

But they are on their way back to Silverlight is the plan.

I just had this massive bunny trail in my head.

I feel like there's a big Warbreaker discussion to be had there on hair color and eerie and light hair color and stuff like that.

Do you guys remember Warbreaker?

The royal line is defined by their white golden hair or whatever.

Vague memories of Warbreaker.

Not a big Warbreaker guy.

Anyway.

I think that brings us to kind of the end of these chapters.

Did you guys have anything else that we neglected to talk about?

Let me consult my handwritten notes here of the episode.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

One quick thing I wanted to mention.

I cannot get the idea or the mental image of a blank computer 3D modeling program for the cognitive realm here, where all there is is there's an X -axis, a Y -axis, and a Z -axis, and it's just empty.

And anything you put in, anything in the cognitive realm just has an X -axis, which is where the unsee begins.

Am I getting that axis correct?

X, Y, X.

I always mix them up.

And then the Y axis would be the Nell, the grand Nell.

That's your reference point.

So the X and Y coordinate, you can go find.

And then the Z axis is your third dimension.

So it's so empty that you have to draw your little reference lines through the cognitive realm, and those are your reference points.

Starling mentions that you can't go off the trade routes.

So if you think about that as a grid, they're just drawing lines between points on a grid and you have to follow those lines so you don't get lost.

That's how I've been thinking about the cognitive realm this whole time.

Which, if you think about the nature of the cognitive realm, maybe that checks out because all of us as beings, we exist in the third dimension.

We can't even really comprehend much.

outside of that.

So in the cognitive realm, it's a blank slate three dimensions.

Yep.

You're just wandering around this really empty computer program.

There you go.

And it's just generatively...

What is the term?

Generating as you go?

There is a term for that.

Ooh, I should know that.

I had it in my head a second ago.

Now it's gone.

Procedurally generated?

That might be it.

I think that might be it.

Got it.

It's procedurally generating as you go.

Feasibly.

As you think it.

As everyone out there thinks it.

If an anti -investiture entity falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it actually make sound?

No.

You have to be there to witness the sound?

Definitely.

That's all I had.

Paul, anything else?

I think you were right.

It's procedural generation.

I was looking that up.

Nothing else, Your Honor.

Our crew is going and growing and I'm excited to see where all they go.

I am as well.

And with that, I think that'll wrap us for episode 282.

Come back and join us next week where we're going to be covering chapters 29 through 33.

But until then, thank you for joining me, Paul and Trevor.

See ya.

Yep.