General
The Gathering Storm is going to enter our Wheel of Time world soon. We're all pretty excited, but we're not going to allow some posters to spoil the excitement of other posters. Many posters avoid these message boards at the time of a book's release because they are scared that they will be exposed to spoilers. You can rest assured that for the next few months you can visit the board and you won't be exposed to spoilers.

I'll start with the penalty for ignoring the spoiler policy, just to show that the admins here are serious about it...

1st transgression - instant deletion of your post and a warning
2nd transgression - siteban and deletion of your username

The book is also coming out in pieces to stimulate our taste buds. So here is how each piece of the book will be addressed...

Chapter 1 : Tears of Steel

This is already out, and can be retrieved for free from http://www.tor.com/gatheringstorm/register. You need to register, and after that you can download the text. All discussions of this chapter have been placed in the post your thoughts on TGS - chapter 1 at the top of the main page. There are also individual posts on the board which are clearly marked regarding this chapter which I've allowed to stay on the main page because they contain either hundreds of replies, or long theories. ALL posts on this chapter must be in the announced post at the top of the page.

Prologue of TGS

The prologue will be released on September 17 2009 and will be available from most popular internet forums, though we'll provide a link in this post on the day. It will be available for $2.99. I'm going to make two Prologue posts at the top of the page, called -
- TGS Prologue - your thoughts (part 1) *spoilers*
- TGS Prologue - your thoughts (part 2) *spoilers*
This will allow two areas for discussion and will avoid congestion of a single post. If either post reaches a hundred replies, I'll start part 3,4 etc, but once again, these will be the only areas for discussion of the Prologue, without exception.

You can download the prologue at www.mobipocket.com. Thanks to Cannoli for picking this up first!

Chapter 2 : The Nature of Pain

You can download the audio file of chapter 2 from the linked post. It was released on September 24, 2009. Please use the assigned post to make comments, until 27 October, when you can place your comments on the main board.

You can pick up the chapter on audio at www.tor.com... thanks to Larry for this.

The Gathering Storm

The main book comes out on October 27 2009, and will be available at online and real book stores. From October 22 2009, you may post about any aspect of the book, including the Prologue and Chapter 1 on the main page. The following rules thus apply...

1. You must use the topic marker "TGS" when posting about the book. You may ONLY use this marker, and no other one. The TGS marker means spoilers are implicit in the post, and you don't need to write *spoilers* or other disclaimers in your title. Markers such as 'Review','Characters','Sanderson' are not allowed, and are reserved for the rest of the series, but NOT TGS.

2. Your title must be benign to the pre-TGS reader. You may not have a title such as 'Semirhage's suicide' or 'Cadsuane's death'. I'm going to be very strict about this and edit suspect titles harshly.

3. You may not comment on TGS in any other posts which are not marked TGS. Therefore if a poster is discussing WH and an unresolved plot element, you may NOT go in there and write 'don't worry, this gets resolved in TGS'.

Examples of Acceptable Posts...
- TGS - Regarding Egwene's behaviour
- TGS - Rand's channeling
- TGS - My thoughts on TGS as a whole

Examples of Unacceptable Posts...
- TGS - Regarding Egwene and Elaida's duel
- TGS - Rand's inability to touch saidin anymore
- Review - My thoughts on TGS as a whole

Remember, you don't have to actually type 'TGS' before the title of your post. It is the TGS topic marker just above the subject and body of your post which you must SELECT. If you have any problems, rather NB me with a query before you post something dodgy which requires harsh action.

Sidious