Dedicated to me! Does that mean Sanderson has to give the whole fandom swords? Wait, nightblood. He told us this was coming! Hey internet, I'm Steve the Cosmere not, and this is Raffo. I said before that Secret Project IV would probably be very confusing if you weren't fully Cosmere aware. And I hold to that statement. Like the main character's quandary in the beginning of the book, you need to have enough capital C connection to Sanderson's work be sufficiently invested for it to not be gibberish. And I loved it. Oh man, this book was written for exactly the me type of fan. All the tie-ins, the nods to other books or characters, the one-off comments about events in different stories were so satisfying to me. I consider myself a leading authority on Sanderson's work, not the expert, but at least an expert. I mean, I'm no Argent or any of the other members of the Arcanus team, but I think I could be a pawn to Eric's lake. Also how can I join that team? My point is catching all those teeny tiny connections was giving me life. So let's talk about them. First off, this is a story about Sigzil, this guy from Bridge 4, and he is haunted by the ghosts of his past. A past that in large part is still in our future. But there were still tons of references to Roshar, its ecology, high storms, various nations, his time spent as a slave, all the way up to his leading the windrunners in rhythm of war. And then beyond. I'm really nervous for Stormlight 5, guys. Some notable mentions include a firemoss call out, saving a gaptooth man who reminds him of an old friend, probably Hobber, glowing red eyes of a corrupted soul, like those he once trusted, once loved. Really nervous, being air sick, and culminating in him actually doing the Cosm Cotta, Calendom Topridge 4. Sigzil, at this point known as Nomad, is no longer bonded to his female honor sprang. And though he's got a sprang bond still, that boy is dead. Not only that, Nomad used to hold a dawn shard. Presumably the same one Hoyd once held, as his torment, the way that mass amount of investiture warped his spirit web, is the same as his former master, the inability to do violence, tied directly to that dawn shards intent. His radiant oaths, the second set, overrode that for a time. But now with auxiliary mostly burned away, consumed by the dawn shard in a burst of power, even though is not putting up much of a fight. Speaking of OX, he is a remnant of a high sprang, making Sigzil's second radiant order the Skybreakers. They met in Shadesmar, his body shares substance with the concepts of gravitation and interaxial force, the surges of gravitation and division, and then he eventually says it by name. And then we get this. They've been hanging out for a while now. Sigzil was 38 when he got the dawn shard. Almost 42, Cosmier standard years, and it's been decades since then. How old is he in rhythm of war? OX does say 8 and all seem was shattered about 10,000 years ago, which according to my timeline video means this could be up to a thousand years after Way of Kings, but it's probably no more than a few hundred. Nomad also says people first started experimenting with space travel within the last century. So we're not as far into the future as I originally suspected. We are still pretty far though. As there's casual mentions of nuclear reactors, plastics, exploratory starships, leather men multi tools, and jet engines everywhere. Which Sig must have learned about before bonding OX. Because of his dawn shard have venous, Nomad is being chased by the Night Brigade. A group of mercenaries, originally from Threnady, that utilize Shades to apparently devastating effect. They're the only army he's heard about that makes you keep fighting after you've died. He obviously hasn't heard about lifeless, but that makes sense as he hasn't visited Nulphus yet. Nulphus, in the first freaking chapter, Brandon casually drops a Cosmere standard measurement for investiture, BeUs, or Breath Equivalent Units. For most of the book, Nomad hovers around 5% skip capacity, which equates to a thousand BeUs or about the fourth heightening. In order to establish his connection to Canticle, he needed around 2,000 or the fifth heightening. This makes full skip capacity, the threshold when he can just VoIP himself to another planet thanks to his dawn shardiness, roughly 20,000 BeUs, about the ninth heightening. Not yet Godking level, but pretty close. For never visiting Nulphus, Nomad has certainly been around. He's been to tens of planets, and Hoyt actually says he's probably seen more of the Cosmere than he has. There's references to the invested sunlight of Tal'Dain, the floating cities of Ashen, of course, Scadriel, but there everywhere at this point. Threnady has good food, but the ghosts are a huge pain. He was on a cavern planet last, Skips to Utoll, which is in a binary system with Komashi, and where's the jungle society with complex mathematics and architecture, but no wheel? Do we see wheels on first of the sun? Whitt talks about a time spent in a land of dragons and bone white trees, and there's one mention of Zeffer Aether, presumably from Lumaar. And of course, there's Canticle, which is stupid small, only about 200 miles in diameter, meaning it's about the size of 52 Europa, the sixth largest object in the asteroid belt. To compare it to Earth, its diameter is about half the distance between LA and San Francisco. It would fit comfortably on Ireland. The residents of Canticle are all from Threnady, having left because of infighting, and led to their new planet by a fellow named Zellian, which is Yolish for one who finds. It's also the name of this guy, which Brandon teased us with at the end of the Stormlight Minis Kickstarter. Since Sigil's, slash nomad, slash Zellian is now connected to Canticle, is this canticular shard plate instead of Rocharen? Is that why it's all smoky? It's also heavily implied that anyone from Threnady would turn into a shade upon death, which is why the chorus of each roving city on Canticle is so full, at least for part harmonies here. However, in Shadows for Silence, it said only those killed by shades would become shades, and Nas, who probably left before the whole evil thing happened, says there's certain rights to it. Since turning into shades was happening before the evil showed up, it's probably not directly related, but we did get a bit more info on what's happening in the homeland. It's wild, unchained, investiture. Going to life with its own alien will, forming mountain-sized figures with impossible, unnerving features and unknowable motivations, torn off chunks of ambition that sat and got grumpy. Doesn't sound very merciful. Speaking of mercy, contemplation wants to live in a place of whimsy. Careful what you wish for? Who is the nearest charred to Canticle? That whole system seems unsustainable without some outside help. The magic system is pretty cool though, while also being terrifying. It's basically nalthy and breath combined with alamantic chromium. You can absorb investiture from others, but you don't need consent from the giving party. Since matter, energy, and investiture are all one according to Chris's second law, it makes sense that drawing out investiture could be conflated with drawing out heat. We see similar things with oaths being sworn on Roshar, causing frost to form. When trying to get it to work for him, Nomad actually tries a bunch of different systems approaches. The breath transfer command, the first ideal, no tuning forks, but he does try to do a hemalurgy with a slice of sunhark. Once he gets connected, Nomad's able to siphon off spirit web scar tissue. Would Vashar have been able to separate that, like what we see with the kidnapped little girl and warbreaker? The last nod to another system is the Night Brigade Admiral's continuity chain, which I assume is a bigger version of the necklace Marais gave to Rebonio, which Kaladin first saw in Shadesmar, that anchors a wearer through cognitive anomalies. Silver, man. We also see mechanical steel pushing, as well as forced drawing of weight from an unsealed iron mind. The scadrians have an awakened steel mind in their ship, which stores speed, is that their engine? Also, when is a jar, not a jar? When it's the door! Thanks for watching! There was a lot in this book, and I didn't get into all the nitty gritties of my notes. If you want to see my chapter by chapter breakdown of the connections in Sunlit Man, join my Patreon! There you can watch videos early, view my previous scripts and research notes, as well as peek into the future of my channel, no void binding required. Doug, Matt, Steve, Alec, DataGramlin, and Craig have seen this video coming for like a solid couple of weeks. Others on my Patreon can also get some most excellent Rafa merchandise. I'm sending out stickers, pins, and t-shirts, so if you want something before Dragon Steelcon, sign up quick! Next week will hopefully be my unboxing of Sunlit Man, but now that I'm done reading it, I can jump back to finishing rhythm of war. There's always more to read, and find out. See ya!