It's obviously Roshar versus Skadril.

The Rosharan says that explicitly.

You guys are like a child found on a battlefield.

You got to figure out which way to run.

Extremely uncreative with the metaphor there.

That's exactly what they're doing.

What's going on here?

And so I thought, okay, which way is versus I'm going to go.

That made me think of Hachi.

Okay, Patchy is the center crux of First of the Sun.

The perpendicularity, is it a person?

That is going to be the important question here.

Which side does Patchy go on?

So then I thought to myself, okay, what do I know about Patchy?

If only I had a Cosmere 101 episode to reference from four years ago.

Oh, wait, I do.

Gentlemen, hold on.

Welcome back to Following Noodon, a Stormlight podcast.

This week is episode 278.

We are in Isles of the Emberdark, covering chapter 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 today.

I'm with my co -host Trevor and Paul today.

Trevor, you get to go first, I guess.

How are you today?

I'm doing well.

I've been demoted to co -host as opposed to host.

Yep.

and I forgot to prep something that I was going to surprise both of you with in this first episode.

So as Paul responds, I'm going to go grab that.

Oh, dear.

Teasers.

Okay.

Paul?

Paul, how are you?

Trevor, this is one of the reasons why you've been demoted.

Showing up unprepared.

Yeah, usually I'm prepared, but because I'm no longer the host, I feel like I don't need to be prepared anymore.

Okay, well, daylight and a dollar short, as Trevor is.

I am doing Vothy, I mean, very well today.

And really excited to talk more about Ember Dark, of course.

I've really enjoyed this book.

I know Trevor will be coming in with the summary here in a minute.

But just to give a quick two cents, I'm very excited.

I'm enjoying this.

One, the flashback of Dusk.

And two, this displaced Dusk and all the trouble with that.

But it's been a good book so far.

I'm really enjoying it.

Got a lot to go.

We do.

We are just getting started here.

So next is usually where I pass it to Trevor to give us a summary of events.

But if you're going to hijack me here for something else, go ahead.

No, no, it's later.

It's later.

Oh, okay.

I'm going to drop it on you mid -episode.

Okay, okay.

We're racking up attention even further.

So yeah, go ahead and summarize our chapters for us then.

Yeah, okay.

So in no specific delineation, the summary goes as follows.

Our flashback chapters are nothing terribly new.

dusk lands on patchy he sees some carnage of a scene that i believe is new uh and that's really the only big new scene in chapter four or chapter three chapter five one of the two and it's the aftermath of the trading company having landed and then put out a second scouting party and the second scouting party gets demolished by one of the deep ones or whatever they call them.

And he notices that there's a few stragglers that have fled into the woods.

He follows one of the tracks that happens to be going towards his hideout.

And fast forward a couple chapters, he meets Vathi, who is strung up in his trap or somebody else's trap.

Yeah, that's kind of how we are introduced to Vathi in the past tense.

That's not news to Paul and I because we read this a couple of years ago.

But if this is your only experience of Six of the Dusk, then that'd be your introduction to Vathi.

Present day, Vathi is the president of said trading company.

And that trading company has actually been...

kind of accelerated and ascended to government like the the representative government of dromnad or or first of the sun more specifically and so the ones above and the other ones above have come to meet with vathi and we get confirmation that the ones above are indeed skadrian i Had that revealed to me years ago in the Six of the Dusk, like, preview.

There was, like, an unpublished version of Six of the Dusk, like, sequel thing.

But they were Skadrians, and that's where I got that from.

So they are indeed Skadrians.

But the big wow factor of today's episode is the other ones above, the twos above, the Rosharans are here.

Paul, did your jaw drop like mine did?

Just a little.

And that's about all we get?

Oh.

We get the cliffhanger of Dusk thinks that Kokoban, the original trapper, came here from Shadesmar, for lack of a better term.

and came here through the perpendicularity of patchy and so he says hey we need to go back through to go find answers or something like that i don't know why we're going back through but we're going back through and that's the plan that is the plan indeed good summary thank you uh let's jump right in i guess all these chapters are all dusk but back and jumping back and forth between present and past so we can hit him kind of in any order you want but we can definitely start with four what thoughts did you have from from chapter four i guess these are all by notes huh in this one is the outline so you're reading sixth of the dusk along with us correct i am i am so is this entire scene new on his like beach landing no no no no i've been quite surprised how much i've completely forgotten was in the novella sixth of the dusk the that entire beach landing scene is all there all the destroyed encampment scene the carnage the trail leading away the evidence of the monster attack all that's there what i thought was not going to be there is we've gotten an emphasis in some of these chapters on the difference between old and new technology there's There's a theme coming out.

It's very obvious.

I'm sure you guys have noticed it of kind of old versus new in this story.

And I thought that a bunch of that had been added in to kind of bring out that theme.

It's not.

There's a bunch of that already in the Sixth of the Dusk.

There's one big thing so far that has been completely added, and that is Kakoban and his medallion.

There's no mention of Kakoban in the Sixth of the Dusk that I've noticed yet.

a fair amount of emphasis coming on this medallion that he's got and that's not there that's been added but pretty much everything else is was there already i mean the medallion's only been mentioned like eight times and there's there's art for it so it can't be that important yeah it's just a misnomer for sure um i really appreciate that you are reading it alongside elliot because i also don't remember it that well And so every time we've read a flashback, it feels like brand new information to me or brand new scenes where I'm questioning, was this in the original or is this new?

The entire time, the whole thing, I'm like, no way that was in there.

Or no, that definitely was in there.

Yeah.

I asked our podcast community in our Discord before this of whether I should go and pre -read.

the old novella six of the dusk and the overwhelming advice i got was no don't do that and i think they're absolutely right 95 of the content is the same and so you you don't need to prep your six of the dust before jumping right in because you're gonna it's pretty much the same story he rewrites a few sentences he's added a few things like this cackle barn and his medallion and maybe some things coming up later but i'll point them out as we go It may even be not advised to do so because you'd then be tempted to skip the Six of the Dusk Chappers, which you're saying you shouldn't do.

I don't think you should.

Do you think, Trevor, do you think one of the things that is going to be included that was not originally in Six of the Dusk but will be this time is, what's her name, Starling or whatever?

Starling's going to like...

be in the Six of the Dust novella flashback.

Starling is not going to appear until the page that I wrote down last.

The page I wrote down is probably going to be a flashback.

That actually reminds me that we should talk about the book giveaway.

We should re -plug it.

Yes.

If you don't know what Paul and Trevor are talking about, You must have missed our first episode on Isles of the Ember Dark.

So please go back and watch that.

In that episode, at the very end, we did announce that we are doing a book giveaway.

We're going to be giving away a physical copy of Isles of the Ember Dark.

And guys, this book is absolutely beautiful.

You definitely want to get your hands on this.

We've cooked up a special game to figure out who to give this book away to.

I've asked Paul and Trevor.

On what page of this book will Starling speak to Dusk for the first time?

They've put in their guesses, and I want all of you guys out there to guess how wrong they're going to be or how right they're going to be, depending on how you want to think about it.

So there is a...

Google form posted right now where you can go put your entries in.

And if you're the closest, you will win the book.

So go check that out.

I'm going to close that very early in December.

We're going to leave that open for roughly one month.

So it'll be around the first week of December.

Once we get a little closer, I'll talk about when the exact date is going to be of when we're going to shut that down.

So early December, get those guesses in.

And one last thing on that for that game as we're going.

Trevor and Paul, you have submitted to me your answers.

You do not know what each other's answers are.

I've not posted your answers anywhere.

If we get to your page that you have guessed, please speak up about that.

We will talk about that.

We're both audiobook listeners.

We won't know.

That's true.

Okay, I'll tell you.

You're going to have to tell us.

I'll figure it out.

Audiobookers.

Audiobookers.

Okay.

I will tell you when your chapter and page are coming up.

I know the approximate percentage of 461 it is.

But yeah, no, I won't know the exact number.

I just went ahead and looked ahead in the book to find it and turns out I was right, which was really comforting.

Whoa.

Whoa.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

But yeah, that's a good point.

Elliot might actually have to be the one to point it out.

unless I sort of know when we're getting close and I'll keep an eye out, but to be determined, but yeah, very cool book giveaway.

I don't know if we specified it, but it's the, the cool dragon steel.

Yes.

Version, which is really cool.

I have it sitting on my shelf and it takes all my willpower not to actually flip through it.

So yeah, super cool.

You have a weak will.

It doesn't take much willpower for me.

It's still in the shrink wrap for me.

Wow.

Okay.

Something else I wanted to say about the giveaway.

If you already have the book, feel free to still participate and you can waive the reward if you win to someone else.

Don't let the fact that you already have a Dragonstone copy stop you from participating in our little challenge.

It'll be fun.

I promise.

Totally.

Or just take it and give it to a friend or something like that.

That's fine too.

Yeah.

At a minimum, you get bragging rights.

There you go.

Okay, we completely derailed the episode.

Where were we?

We did.

So let's jump back in.

Actually, I did have one thought, which I think will kind of wrap up the thoughts I've got for chapters four and six, which were both Dusk flashback chapters.

There's a big emphasis in these chapters on Dusk's AVR, whose name is Sack.

Sack is Sock.

I was absolutely expecting it to be S -O -K, Sock.

I thought it should be S -A -W -K.

Sock.

Like a little sock.

Like a hock?

Like socking someone, yeah.

Anyway.

It's a soft A.

Sock is a raven.

If you guys hadn't picked that up yet, it's kind of hinted at in some of these chapters, but Sock the Raven, her power is that she shows Dusk his potential deaths.

in front of him and so this is how he survives on patchy is he's got sac showing him oh yeah don't step over there because that tree's gonna kill you or those ants are gonna kill you all these things fun fact in chapter six it's mentioned that sac is not actually an avr i think vathy vathy recognizes this she goes man that bird is not an avr how do you how does this bird have powers and That gets kind of interesting, and she's trying to guess what the heck is going on there.

But regarding the power, it made me think a movie version or a TV version of this could be rather grim if depicted verbatim to the book with just constantly, all the time, gruesome deaths of dusk happening all around.

There's a lot of corpses laying everywhere.

His corpse, specifically.

I didn't actually pick up that Sok was a raven, but that seems very fitting considering the power that Sok bestows of seeing oh, watch out, you're dead, but if you go this way, you're gonna die.

Don't go that way.

Or be aware of your surroundings or something.

um so that that seems very fitting to have a raven be that i didn't pick that up though what what hints is it that they give their sock is a raven does it just talk about dark feathering and yeah it's it's described she's described as all black with a long hook like beak and she she's also described as like taller and more upright than some of the other birds i think later on maybe a couple of chapters maybe i've spoiled this it comes out and says that she's a raven.

But I think that's pretty hinted at pretty heavily in these early chapters.

Okay.

Chapter five.

I wanted to ask you guys about this one.

So this is a present day scene and Dusk goes into the subway at the city.

They're technologically advanced enough that they have an underground subway and he stops a random killing.

From the crazy guy who's going to push him onto the track.

Yeah, so first of all, I'm going to back up slightly.

I want to say I think this was really cool jumping to the modern day.

You're at a subway, not at a subway like restaurant, like in the subway system, clarification.

Important.

Doesn't he mention that it's been like years or at least a long time since he's seen his corpse lying around like via Sox powers?

And so all of a sudden he's in the subway and he sees himself dead on the tracks.

Like, okay, hold on.

Am I going crazy or is this legit?

He realizes that it is legit.

And so he needs to be alert and figure out what's going on.

And he's excited about it.

He's like, oh, let's go.

Finally, I haven't felt that way in years.

So he's super excited that his life is at risk.

Again, and then all this.

I listened to this a couple times, and yeah, I guess it was...

Was it specifically...

It wasn't clear to me, I feel like, if it was someone specifically trying to kill him, or there was an attempted murder or mass murder that he got involved in and then dies type of thing.

It was targeted, wasn't it?

Sorry, say that again?

I was saying, reading this, it wasn't clear to me if this random killing was supposed to be targeted towards him, like he was going to specifically be killed, that the one target, or if he was finding himself involved in a potential killing of people, like other people, and finds himself dead too, like in that situation.

Okay, so I read this two different ways, the two different times I read it.

The first time I read it, I read it as crazy guy walking down the subway.

He's just going to push someone random in front of the tracks.

The second time I read it, I read it as guys walking through the crowd specifically going to push Dusk on the tracks.

His cover is blown, so then he pretends he's going to push anyone on the tracks and starts to push this other lady on the track.

And then Dusk saves the other lady.

Because that's what ends up happening.

Dusk sees him coming.

He's like, oh, my body disappeared.

I'm no longer in danger.

And then the crazy guy just goes for some other lady, like random lady.

So it seems to be a random mental illness thing going on with this guy.

And he's just going to push someone onto the tracks.

But in the aftermath of it, he's like, oh, he's got a falling star tattoo.

That's crazy.

Considering the context of the conversation I just had with Mrs.

Frond.

Moving on.

I was like, hold up.

The conversation that you just had with Mother Frond is you got to have the perspective of someone who looks in from yesterday or something like that.

And then the star tattoo is some sort of link to that.

And then he's like, oh, that's just coincidence.

I definitely want to talk more as we go through.

One of the things that I'm holding on to.

So obviously we have Akuban and Akuban's medallion.

We'll keep in right there on our bedside table, ready for like a big reveal or something like it.

Like it's going to be pressing.

Or something's going to come up about it, I'm convinced.

Another thing is these stars.

Falling stars, shooting stars.

There's definitely a bigger connection here.

I'll talk about it more in Chapter 9 once we get further, but there's talk about a shooting star that I wanted to focus on a bit.

This falling star tattoo this guy has...

Sorry, Elliot, was there something to add to that?

I was basically done.

I was saying this falling star tattoo this guy has raises a lot of concern for me, of course.

I was just going to point out specifically, Trevor kind of alluded to it, but Mother Frond is telling the story of Kakaban the Explorer.

And in the story of Kakaban the Explorer, Kakaban follows the falling star.

that's how he finds the land that they have that's how he gets past the the monsters he follows the falling star and then here on the train platform the random man pops up and has a falling star tattoo when i when i read this the first time i actually thought of uh the matrix and neo the hacker bro this is like very beginning of the movie i think and he gets a random message on his computer.

Yeah, follow the white rabbit.

Follow the white rabbit.

And then the random chick shows up at his door and like, ooh, follow me.

Why should I follow you?

And then, oh wait, she has a white rabbit tattoo.

Follow her.

And so, yeah.

Coincidence?

I have a more modern reference since I'm not 55 like Elliot.

Okay, okay.

I thought of The Amazing Spider -Man where the guy who kills, spoilers, the guy who kills Uncle Ben.

Thank you.

Uncle Ben has a star tattoo on his left hand.

Now, I keyed into the tattoo, of course, as you're supposed to.

And so then I thought, okay, Dusk recognizes said tattoo.

So I was then expecting for it to be like a trapper thing.

Like this crazy old guy was an old trapper.

and the trappers have the falling star tattoo from kakaban but that's not the case nobody else like we haven't run into anybody else with this tattoo and dusk doesn't have one as far as as far as i know i correct me if i'm wrong but yeah i i was expecting to see somebody else have it And now I'm thinking now it's an off world thing and that the falling star predated first of the sun.

And it's like a silver light thing or a Yolen thing.

That's my guess now.

Okay.

It could totally be to, to be right now.

I don't have any firm guess.

It just feels like I could, I could see this, this chapter specifically.

I can picture very well, like as a movie in my head, like I have a great visualization of this.

probably because I know what a subway looks like, where a lot of our settings, I'm like, you know, very fantastical.

But I could totally see the movie scenes where something like this happens, and then as the assailant is going away, you get a glimpse of some marking on them, some distinct marking, doesn't matter, and you have no idea what it means, but you're like, ooh, they're a part of...

some organization or some criminal ring or something.

I don't think we know exactly what this falling star is yet, but it's definitely that scene.

That's the glimpse of they've got this tattoo.

They're into some bad stuff.

I'd just like to point out it has nothing to do with Isles of Emberdark.

Elliot now has to do the fine balance of how long he lets his podcast co -hosts stew on one idea and when he has to push the conversation on.

I have been debating that for years.

And how long do you let the soundbite go and when you cut us off?

Now we're getting some good stuff here.

I'm enjoying it.

We probably should move on, though, because Chapter 7 has a lot to talk about.

So any other comments prior to Chapter 7?

Just...

Moving forward towards Chapter 7, so the conclusion of this event we were just talking about is where Dusk gets arrested, and they're like, oh, trappers.

It's not the first time we've been through something weird with you guys.

I thought that was funny.

It was not like a new thing for them.

They're like these mangy old trappers still around, always getting into trouble.

Well, I enjoy Dusk's character a lot because there's so many little allusions to, man, everyone just talks so much.

Like, why are you still talking?

It was not a question.

So Dusk did not answer, you know, those kinds of things.

And when he gets arrested and eventually talks to Vathi, Vathi's like, why didn't you just tell them you were trying to save someone?

And he was like, they didn't ask.

They just arrested me.

So I went with it.

I agree.

I think it's really funny.

I was going to say, so I think trappers are so cool.

I have such mixed feelings about.

dusk specifically like like that the that frustrates me like yeah just say something like come on say something like you'll be fine just explain the situation or something and it's a little frustrating as the spectator as the reader to go through that but dusk is just such a chill guy he's so nonchalant he's just uh too cool for all that so anyways without further ado i'm happy moving forward towards chapter seven But I thought that was a funny part.

Okay, I want to talk about Chapter 7.

Okay, so the Skadrians show up on their spaceship and they are presumably presumably malwish of the future because they have the one specific line of it's time to lower the mask.

And that's like their version of we're going to be friends now or we're trying to be friends that they're trying to push.

And I was like, OK.

Miss Born Era 2 spoilers for anyone who doesn't have it.

That would seemingly be rooted in Malwish tradition of the Malwish masks.

And if you remove your mask, then you're kind of like revealing your true dwarvish name to the person that you're speaking to.

And these Skadrians are presumably Malwish spacefarers.

And so does that mean that our basin heroes are behind?

Or does that mean Skadrial has unified by this point?

I have a couple questions on that, but yeah.

Let's throw a couple observations into your hat, though.

I'm with you.

I'm with you on the logic path so far.

A couple of things that are weird, though.

They do show their faces.

Yes.

Which feels kind of not Malwish to me.

The Malwish seem to be very specific about not removing the mask, right?

It seems like a more progressive Malwish.

Okay, sure.

The Malwish of 150 years ago were the prudish ones that never showed their faces.

Now we're, you know.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm with you there.

And then the other observational throughout now it's in your notes.

It's they're specifically described as having metal on their faces, like on their cheeks.

Yeah.

What's up with that?

I, I noticed that too.

And another, I'll come back to the metal on the faces.

Another thing that keyed me into Malwish is they're using the connection thing, the connection medallion, the language thing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they are, manipulating their connection to the planet so that their identity is from, uh, first of the sun, because dusk says, Hey, they're speaking our language without a hint of accent.

And that screams those medallions that manipulate your identity to make you from that planet.

So another mouth, no other point in favor of the Malish back to the, uh, metal on the faces thing.

Um, that's really weird.

That makes me think they are that they, the two societies of the Basin and the Malwish have actually progressed away from each other, not together.

Because where we left it off in The Lost Metal, for those of you who don't remember, there was a big question mark of, did the Malwish steal the Bands of Mourning?

What are the relations between the Northern Continent and the Southern Continent going to be moving forward?

That was a big question going into Mistborn Era 3.

And so now they've got metal on their cheeks as like maybe like a religious thing, like an ornamental thing.

And so that makes me think that they're not super tied culturally to the basin because the basin have allomancers and the southern continent does not.

And because the basin has allomancers, I think you'd move away from putting metal on your face.

If you're fighting Allomancers all the time.

That's true.

That's absolutely true.

You definitely don't want to have metal on your face if you are going up against Allomancers.

Right.

But are you, a very large but on this, but are you dismissing the possibility of this being hemallergic?

Yes, I have.

I have dismissed it.

I don't know if I should have yet.

That was my first thought was Trevor.

that we know there's lots of rules about against using or alimantic powers on body metals.

Metals that are embedded or a part of somebody.

There's a lot of rules against that within the magic system.

So that wasn't necessarily a cause for concern for me.

But yeah, it seems weird.

It does seem like we've got these weird updated...

Version 2.

Malwish people.

So.

Is this the first.

Did we see Malwish.

Without the mask.

In era 2.

So.

Right at the end of the lost metal.

The.

Give you a brief summary.

Right at the end of the lost metal.

The Malwish general.

It steals the bands of mourning.

Kind of.

Allegedly.

And they're just at that point, they're six years into their relationship with the Malish and they're just beginning to, I think his name is Alec.

See Alec without his mask.

He like, he's just beginning to come around to the idea of being friendly enough to take his mask off around you, that type of thing.

So that, that would, that would paint the picture of if you spend enough time around the Malish, they will.

treat you as one of their own and remove their mask, which is what looks like it's happening here.

Okay, that definitely makes sense.

I didn't remember if we had seen anything, any without masks.

So my question was, have they always had metal on their face?

And we just never knew because they never took their masks off.

I see.

Didn't we get another Malish character?

Man, my...

I miss born knowledge is rusty.

Wasn't there a dude who like joined up with the team for a little bit and he was my wish and was like helping.

Yeah.

Marcy's boyfriend.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That guy, I feel like he took his mask off a few times during that segment.

Probably.

Yeah.

But I don't believe he had metal on his face.

I don't think so either.

That is not.

Yeah, I agree.

Not ringing a bell for me.

Okay.

So we've got scadrians, possibly my wish.

They've got a pretty cool spaceship.

They can use some powers to take off of the specifically steel built.

You have to make your platform out of steel.

Don't worry about it.

Just make it out of steel.

Very, very obvious to anyone who's read Mistborn of any era.

And then, so we have a little negotiation.

They go back and forth and ultimately they're like, okay, this is the final time.

This is the last chance.

You guys have got to make a deal or you'll regret it.

And Vathi is, President.

She's working with her.

They're a little nicer than that.

The Rosharan is not.

They are kind of nice about it.

They're diplomatic about it, but I think they are laying down a threat at this point.

It's veiled, but it is a threat.

You have two months.

Two months to make a deal with us, or you will not like the outcome.

they're they're trying their best they're trying their darn hardest to maintain this treaty that they've got they are they're they're really trying and something i noticed the roshan does not care about this treaty one bit yeah he walks in and pulls a gun on us and and that takes us to the other alien that we have in the in the scene so vathy vathy comes back And they're like, oh man, what are we going to do?

Two months, we got to come up with a plan.

And she goes, all right, well, before we come up with a plan, how about you show our other guest in?

And they open the door and into the room walks a full suit of shard plate.

Clearly a Rosharan of some kind.

He has a negotiation with them, which Trevor, you were just talking about, not quite so political or bureaucratic.

Much more direct.

He points a gun and says, yo, join my team or you'll regret it.

Paul, I put you I put it in the outline, but did you catch what order of radiant he is?

Without looking at the outline, I did not because you aren't one of them.

OK, so there it screams Skybreaker and I'll tell you why.

So he waltzes in and he's like.

I can't believe you guys are taking those Skadrian seriously.

You're going to be slaves to them.

You need to accept this deal.

We'll give you one out of every 100 birds.

And then the other senator guy who's standing next to Vathi says, one out of every 100, that's robbery.

And then he puts his hand on his hip where his gun is.

And then the Rosharan pulls his shard gun out.

Attaches a battery pack to it.

Turns to Vathi and says, hey, do I have the legal jurisdiction to kill this guy?

And Vathi says, absolutely not.

Get out of my room.

So I see.

Presumably, this is a retribution.

Wind and tree spoilers.

Retribution Skybreaker.

This guy is here to offer retributions deal.

And that's it.

And his temper is goes from zero to 100.

He wants to shoot this other senator guy right off the bat.

He asked for the legal rights to do it.

Vati says no.

And he leaves.

So I have about seven, maybe 17 questions here.

So I'm going to I'm going to fire him at you guys and help me process this.

Do you think this is a human?

or a singer it's a great question actually and i would not have even assumed other than singer because that would be pretty big deal i think if we saw a singer skybreaker but there's a weird line in there where it says his voice had an unnatural air that was what i wrote down which i immediately tagged that in my nose like oh okay so is this not a human and they're just like oh okay he sounds kind of strange I really think that the fact we don't have enough physical description to say this was a human or a singer makes me think this is a singer.

I don't know why it's going quite out -of -the -box meta thinking here, but I feel like if it wasn't, there would be some other descriptor that would make it.

Clare to us.

Maybe he's a light eyes or dark eyes.

I don't know.

Something like that.

I think it is.

Singer.

So that leads me then into my next question.

What investiture is this person using?

It's it's described as the sharp plate suit is glowing with a smoky gray light.

Smoky gray light, which.

Kind of that maybe grayish color might align with the Skybreaker -ness of things.

But let's talk time frame for a second.

As far as we know, this book is pretty far advanced, if not the furthest advanced in all the Cosmere that we have so far.

Which, as Trevor was talking about a second ago, means Honor and Odium have become Retribution.

So...

I was kind of under the assumption after that point in wind and truth that stormlight was not a thing anymore.

And that's, that's the assumption I made for retribution.

That is retribution skybreaker because you're right.

Stormlight is not a thing anymore, but presumably war light is.

And if you are on retribution side, he's going to give you investiture to go sail off and make colonies or whatever you're going to do.

So somehow this is a.

Warlight -powered Skybreaker.

That gets custom lighting as a Skybreaker.

RGB.

Correct.

He's got his keyboard plugged in.

And I...

Correct me if I'm wrong.

That's not a thing with Stormlight.

Right?

Stormlight's like blue.

I think so.

It doesn't matter what radiant you are.

you've got blue stormlight, right?

Yeah, that's why I wondered if there was a new type of light with the change to retribution.

Like, now that we're further along?

I assume it's custom to Skybreaker, and you're supposed to figure out it's a Skybreaker based on the light.

But that makes me then question...

Now I'm rethinking my radiance that, like, was...

Was Shallan glowing red?

I don't think she was.

No, no, no.

They all glowed with normal stormlight color.

There was no specific color things going on, I don't think.

So this makes you think that this is just a different type of light.

You're right.

And up until this point, I would agree with you that the color of the light is extremely important.

That's the entire point of Rhythm of War, is we made some purple glowy light.

that's really important or let me throw another possibility out at you so he pulls out a trevor you called it a battery pack yes i was i was thinking full -on like halo reach kind of stuff where you pull out that cock that into your gun super cool super cool shard guns i'm all i'm here for it let's let's do it a little wacky and sci -fi but let's do it what if what if he doesn't have light as a power what if they've what if they've keyed into and i kind of use that word intentionally i think what if they've keyed into things like uh door yeah and how you know some of our other heroes we've seen throughout the cosmere they carry around literal liquid jars of liquid door right miss born air 2 again yeah they yeah they feed their allomancy at the end of the last the lost metal with unkeyed investiture aka door or sellish investiture and the the entire benefit of sellish elantris investiture is it's unkeyed anybody can just go grab it if you if you know what you're doing you can just go grab it so yeah the the the universal or the Cosmere standard for investiture at this point could be door.

That was a thought that occurred to me is that we've got a slightly different power here.

So final question I'll hit you with now.

Whose side is this guy on?

And I mean that almost just of a very generically phrased question of, is this a good guy or is this a bad guy?

I have a huge tangent to go on.

Paul, do you have anything to put in before I go on a massive tangent on sides here?

No.

I think you can go right ahead.

I don't think I have anything else game -changing to add other than I feel like this is something else they've keyed into.

It's not just like we now have custom color stormlight, depending on what color you want or what radiant order you are.

Okay.

As I was listening to this today, I thought to myself, okay, it's obviously Roshar versus Skadril.

The Rosharan says that explicitly.

You guys are like a child found on a battlefield.

You got to figure out which way to run.

Extremely uncreative with the metaphor there.

That's exactly what they're doing.

What's going on here?

And so I thought, okay, which way is versus the sun going to go?

That made me think of Patchy.

Okay, Patchy is the center crux of First of the Sun.

The perpendicularity, is it a person?

That is going to be the important question here.

Which side does Patchy go on?

So then I thought to myself, okay, what do I know about Patchy?

If only I had a Cosmere 101 episode to reference from four years ago.

Oh, wait, I do.

Gentlemen.

Hold on.

Ooh, this is a big surprise, isn't it?

This is.

I just want to shout out that I did reach you a section from that content at the beginning of this, and clearly you must have been paying attention, because let's see what you got.

Letter is written by Pachi.

Autonomy.

And mentions First of the Sun.

As things stand, Autonomy dismisses Hoyt's concern, relieving Ray's...

believing rays to be captive, and even offers some admiration for the trapped shard.

The author refers to itself in a plural sense and suggests that Hoid may have found more favor if he had been approached some other spoiler word.

The letter is closed with a challenge by which Hoid may earn the shard's respect.

I think you skipped a word.

I did.

I skipped more than a couple words, actually.

It's like Evie's name for Dalinar.

Trevor said it, but you and I couldn't hear it.

Yeah, exactly.

That's so funny.

relying upon presumption of past relationship you have spoken to one who cannot respond we instead will take your communication to us though we know not how you located us upon this world we are indeed intrigued for we thought it was well hidden insignificant among our many realms as the waves of sea must continue to surge so must our will continue resolute alone did you expect anything else from us We did not suffer the interference of another.

Reyes is contained, and we care not for his prison.

Indeed, we admire his initiative.

Perhaps if you had approached the correct one of us with your plea, it would have found favorable audience.

But we stand in the sea, pleased with our domain.

Leave us alone.

We also instruct that you should not return to Abrodi.

We have claimed that world, and a new blank of our being is beginning to manifest there.

She is young yet, and as a precaution, she has been instilled with an intense and overpowering dislike of you.

This is all we will say at this time.

If you wish more, seek these waters in person and overcome the tests we have created.

Only in this will you earn our respect.

I will spare you our very misinformed analysis of that letter.

Okay.

I don't know if this has been retconned.

at this point it's completely feasible that it has but at the time the 17th shard the copper mind assumed that pachi was a avatar that was the that was the spoilered word that i held back from you guys at the time now that you've read lost metal you can you understand what an avatar is patchy is an avatar of autonomy and autonomy is trying to do the same thing that autonomy was doing in the lost metal trying to find its best disciple on the planet and so these these trappers are competing against each other to be autonomy's guy so okay go ahead paul and then i'll go a little further okay Several thoughts.

First of all, well done, Trevor.

I'm impressed you brought that back.

And that hit pretty hard.

That was a really good surprise.

Funny enough that you're talking about autonomy.

There's something else I keyed into a lot in that, which I'm sure you also might have mentioned as well.

Sorry.

So autonomy is here on patchy.

Are you saying that, are you thinking that autonomy has a specific hand in this like council we're talking about as well?

That's going on.

Yeah.

So thinking of which side is first with son going to be on made me think of, okay, who's patchy.

Wait a minute.

I think we know that.

So that brought me back to that episode.

if patchy really is still tied to autonomy and that hasn't been retconned which is completely possible by the way like it's completely possible that 12 years ago brandon sanderson wrote autonomy into first of the sun and then retconned it like that is very possible i don't think that is that's going to be the case though so my question that i'm boiling down to is the scadrians and the resharans are here on first the sun which side is autonomy going to push our our humans on first the sun towards and my gut instinct would be towards roshar towards retribution because in that letter it said that autonomy held odium rays in medium esteem like recognized that odium was a threat but admired odium's drive if you will and if you put it in the context of Mistborn Era 2, Autonomy just lost a skirmish to the Skadrians, right?

Which would then push him towards retribution.

That's where my brain's at.

Okay.

I really like where you're going with this.

I think you're onto something big.

The other thing that I noticed is it says, Sifandrius.

Then it was either owner or founder or something in the first gym owner of the first gym.

Yeah.

There was a hyperlink there for first gym.

So maybe we already know what that is, but I don't think so.

And my thought is, is this first gym, the shooting star.

Okay.

Okay.

Fast forwarding a little bit here.

That would then mean that Hoid is Kakoban.

Like, that would be confirmation, right?

Because...

I don't know if I'd go for confirmation, but yes.

If the shooting star is the first gem, which is a stretch, because it talks in Chapter 9 that Kakoban earned a shooting star, which...

I don't know if it was A, like, one of the shooting stars, or, like, the shooting star.

Don't remember for sure.

But he earned a shooting star, and that's how he got Apache.

He jumped Apache using this shooting star or something like that.

It was jumping planets with it, which was kind of crazy, which was going to lead me to another ridiculous out there theory, which maybe Sigsel is.

Akoban, because he's our one person who we know who seems to base jump planet to planet.

So it could be that.

But anyways, the first gem got me thinking that it could be tied to these stars.

But I could be wrong.

Could be totally wrong about that.

And we've now come to the part of the podcast where Elliot says nothing.

I was going to say Elliot.

How much did that clip surprise you?

Quite a bit, actually.

I did not remember that.

I did not remember that.

And it is now making me want to theorize about a lot of things of which I cannot.

And we will have to revisit this in the future.

Enjoy that feeling.

Or not.

We'll see.

Trevor's getting his poetic justice right now for years of...

offhanded mentions or things like that and him not being able to respond.

He's now intentionally doing his best to gut punch Elliot with crazy facts.

Okay.

To wrap up this episode kind of on my theory on Kakaban, I had this huge theory on who Kakaban was.

He was sailing to First of the Sun through Shadesmar as we get that revealed at the end of Chapter 9.

He was pursuing cultivation to first the sun and went through her perpendicularity to go pursue her.

And that's how he arrived on patchy.

And I was like, all right, who's pursuing cultivation from Roshar to go get her back, blah, blah, blah.

That's where my brain hole was.

And then I went and looked at our previous episode.

I was like, well, if the copper mind is to be trusted, then the copper mind of several years ago, let, let me, let me put that huge caveat in here that it's completely possible that autonomy is no longer lore tied to patchy but assuming that's correct i don't think cultivation is on the planet anymore unfortunately i uh my entire theory from last episode of mrs mother frond being uh What's -her -face Corvelium is a little bit shot.

I'm sorry.

I'll still put my stake in it, just in case it's true.

But I'm leaning a little bit less heavily on it.

Okay.

I was going to say, if this is the case, and autonomy is present here, not cultivation, personally, I'm a little bit relieved.

Because as of right now, knowing how far we are from Stormlight Era 2, or back half, I'm not ready to have a major commitment of this is where this shard is going.

This is where cultivation is hanging out.

I'm rooting against your theory, but this time not because of personal reasons, Trevor.

Sure, sure, sure.

Professional reasons?

Yes, yeah.

It's for professional reasons, exactly.

I don't know who Kakaban is.

I do think he's someone we've met.

I was going to do a full send theory when Pachi was still Cultivation that Kakaban was Notom, the honor spren sea captain who we leave on Shadesmar at the end of Wind and Truth.

And he sees cultivation flee and is like, hey, we need cultivation.

And then he goes and pursues her.

That was my big theory, that it was Notam.

I thought you were going to bring Damu into this again, of course.

It's not impossible to be Damu.

You're right.

In fact, I'd say it's more possible that it's Damu than it is to be Notam.

I think it's either going to be somebody we haven't seen in a while, such as somehow it's Raiden or something.

Okay.

Or I think it's going to be someone minor that may become more major.

Notam is actually a fun guess.

I like that actually a lot.

I think I said on the previous episode I thought it might be Frost and that we'd find out from a Starling chapter once we get those back that he's like, oh yeah, back in my...

My youth, you know, I went and found this star over here.

You know, I don't know, something kind of ridiculous like that.

So, yeah, who knows?

If the first gem thing is true, then this is definitely Hoid.

That was a lot of name drops in a short amount of time, gentlemen.

With shotgun spraying.

I cannot believe that the names Shallan and Lightsong did not make their way into that.

But that's a lot of good theories.

A lot of good theories.

Yeah, a lot of shotgun approach.

We'll just have to keep reading along.

Also, I will say it now.

You asked last episode.

If any of this is remotely true, Isles of the Ember Dark is absolutely Red Blast.

100%.

If any of this is tied to stuff that we're talking about, you have to read this last.

I will put my stake in it now.

I will ask you that again at the end of the book.

We will have to read the whole book and then revisit that question.

It is an interesting question.

Okay.

I think we talked around just about everything from Chapter 8 and pretty much most of it from...

In Chapter 8, it's a flashback chapter.

They get to Dusk's treehouse.

It's a lot of stuff we've kind of seen before.

Chapter 9 is back in the modern day.

It's still kind of in that conversation where we just saw the Skadrians.

We just saw the Roshar person.

They've all left.

Now we're kind of trying to figure out what to do as the Ilikan people.

Is that how they say it?

Ilikan?

It is.

And...

I guess one thing worth mentioning about Chapter 9, because I think it's quite important.

Sok gives Dusk a vision of Vathi and her corpse, not Dusk's corpse.

And Vathi is wearing a uniform of the Skadrians.

I think it's even got a bunch of medals and awards and things like that on it.

So the heavy implication there would be, of course, that she's going to ultimately be a traitor or flip sides or join the Scadrians.

There's a couple of different versions of that.

Any, any comments on that for chapter nine?

You keep using the words traitor and threaten.

And I, I wanted, I want to feel like it's going to be a little bit more chummy between first, the sun and the Scadrians.

I absolutely, absolutely retribution and his skybreaker dude.

are here for their shard gun nerf gun fight i think the scadrians and first the sun are going to work it out call me naive i think they're going to work it out i think you're nice i think that is sound bite worth saving and i think that's all i'm going to say i think that does go against my autonomy versus harmony thing that i just spelled out I feel like we're going to be making a lot of connection to modern business agreements, and I think both sides are going to try their best to, any side involved, I think it's going to try their best to sneak around a contract, loophole, backstab.

I think it's going to be the opposite of Fevers.

I think it's going to be a lot of...

So, I guess to wrap it up, since we've kind of painted the picture as the first of the Sunreins, the Ilikim, in the middle of the war, what do you guys think?

Are you Team Roshar or are you Team Skadriel?

Which side should they pick?

Well, at the moment, it's Retribution versus Harmony, and that's an obvious answer.

I was going to say, my gut instinct is Scadrial, but it could be different.

I don't know.

I feel there's a lot to learn about this situation still.

Unless we get hints of Discord in this.

Paul, I don't know.

I'm assuming Elliot.

Well, I'll include both of you.

Big fan theory coming out of Mistborn Era 2.

A lot of people were really disappointed that we never talked about it.

At the very end of Mistborn Era 2, there's a Kelsier Harmony epilogue.

And Harmony has like a shadow version of himself where it's like not working out.

And Kelsier's like, oh, that's freaky.

I need to fix that.

So everybody thinks that harmony is going to turn into discord and discord is going to like self combust as a, as a vessel.

So instead of ruin and preservation being harmony, ruin and preservation combined into discord and it like explodes.

So if that's the case, if, if we are pursuing that, which is a hundred percent possible in this book, if we're fast forwarded down the timeline and discord is self combusting, then First Ascend might not have a correct answer here.

They might be between Retribution and Discord, and they might just be cooked.

I think my boy Seiza has got this under control.

I would love that to be the case.

I would love that to be the case.

It is.

No worries.

All right.

I love your confidence, Paul.

Anything else for these chapters?

I think that'll do it.

All righty.

That will bring us to a close here.

We will see you guys next week.

Next week, we are continuing on in Isles of the Ember Dark.

We're going to read chapter 10 all the way through chapter 16 and come back and join us next week for that.

Thanks for joining me, Paul and Trevor.

Toodles.

Till the tides take us till next week.