Questioner
My question is, also Vivasher is my favorite ship, so I'm just wondering if he misses her... I'm wondering if Vasher misses Vivenna.
Brandon Sanderson
...Yes.
Found 146 entries in 0.260 seconds.
My question is, also Vivasher is my favorite ship, so I'm just wondering if he misses her... I'm wondering if Vasher misses Vivenna.
...Yes.
Is the Warbreaker sequel gonna have Susebron and Siri?
It's Vivenna and Vasher. And new characters. You'll get an update in it, if I ever do it, what's going on, but it won't be focused on them.
How many times has Vasher been to Roshar as of Oathbringer?
Uh... RAFO, but at least twice?
Did Vasher visit Roshar before the Recreance? Because he had-- *Brandon mumbles question* Because he had to see Shardblades, and... presumably live ones.
Yeah... I'll RAFO that. I'll RAFO that. It is an assumption that he had... He doesn't necessarily have to have seen alive ones. He could have heard records of them.
Okay. Because I've tried to make out a timeline, to be like, "Okay, if this is here..."
Kara has a timeline-- Not Kara-- Karen has a timeline in hand. But I would have to look at it to give you exact dates, but yeah.
Okay. So you didn't have to see...
He did not have to see.
Chapter Fifteen - Part Two
Vivenna Sees Vasher
I'm sorry that we don't get to see Vasher as much as you all want. I considered adding more chapters in. I considered it several times during several rewrites. In the end, I just decided that his viewpoints had to remain as they were in the early part of the book. If you see too much of what he's doing, it will give away things I don't want to give away.
I don't like having viewpoints that fail to reveal things about the characters and their emotions and plans. It feels like I'm lying to the reader when I hide things the viewpoint character knows. I avoid it when I can (though I can't always—reference Kelsier in Mistborn).
Either way, I just decided to keep Vasher as he was, with only occasional appearances.
Why was it that Vasher was able to throw Nightblood while fully drawn but Szeth couldn't even drop him
So it may have been part to why Nightblood has less an effect on Vasher in general than the other people, but there's also a little of a bit a measure of experience... but there's some other stuff going on with Vasher.
Do Zahel and Hoid know each other?
They've met.
Otherwise, RAFO.
Do we get to see more Vasher in Stormlight.
Um, yes. So, you're gonna see a little bit in the next book. There will be a point where you'll see some more, but it's a ways off.
Chapter Seventeen
Siri and Lightsong Interact
This chapter has our first real melding of several viewpoints. In a way, it's a focus chapter for that reason. All four viewpoint characters, who have been off doing other things, congregate here, meeting and mixing. Lightsong and Siri, whose plotlines influence one another a fair amount, sit and talk for the first time. Vivenna and Vasher, who are far more intertwined through the story, meet eyes for the first time.
Vasher shouldn't have brought Nightblood. But he's always a little afraid to leave the sword alone for too long. That can have . . . consequences.
Anyway, it was good to be able to show an interaction between two of the viewpoint characters in the form of Siri and Lightsong. This lets us see how Siri acts through the eyes of another, and I think this scene here is one of the first where we really get to see into Lightsong's soul.
I have a question about Nightblood. I think I heard that-- Something you said in a Q&A that it is related to a Shardblade, or was a Shardblade?
Yeah… So Nightblood. Vasher visited Roshar, saw Shardblades, came back and tried to make one. With what he knew of his magic. That's the short version of it. Kind of simplifies things, but yes.
Something that i've been wondering, you said before that Nightblood was modeled after Shardblades intentionally so my question is, did Vasher create his Phantoms with Shardplate in mind?
He was aware of Shardplate, but I wouldn't call them a conscious influence.
Any sort of influence from the Soulcasting-to-Stone burial customs?
(If Vasher were a little more sneaky I'd think he had created the custom in case he needed a ready supply of Phantom material)
Let's say that yes, Soulcasting was very interesting to Vasher.
Is there a canonical reason why Vasher and Vivenna changed their names to Zahel and Azure on Roshar?
Yes, it kind of comes into the fact that Vasher has gone through a bunch of name changes and there are a couple of answers to this. One is, in the Cosmere, like in a lot of like fantasy worlds, names and identity are just a pretty big deal, part of how the magic works is how you view yourself, and I like, in that instance, indicating that time has passed and the character has adopted a new name and things like this, it's just that's a thing.
You've also probably noticed that behind the scenes in the Cosmere there are lots of different groups vying for control and power and things like this, and so going under a pseudonym's actually a pretty good idea. I guess an alias, they're not writing books, it's not pseudonyms, you know what I mean, going under an alias's generally a pretty good idea for just if you don't want attention from the wrong people.
That said, I do have to balance this because, for instance, in Azure's case, you know, I picked something that Vivenna had, you know, blue had been associated with her in the previous book, so it's not a completely, that's partially for the reader's benefit, so it's easier for you to track who is who, just a little bit, and just a little bit easier to figure out who is who.
But if run into someone like Felt, right? Felt doesn't care. He's not hiding from anybody. Felt is, you know, he's more like "I moved from Nebraska to Texas," right? "And now I'm living in Texas." That's more how he views it a little bit. He's not a secret agent (ooh, big spoilers). Felt just, you know, he moved, so he goes by the same name. And that's, you'll see some of that as well. If someone's going by an alias, I'm doing it to indicate one of those two things, usually.
Can you tell me anything about Zahel / Warbreaker / Vasher? I was very disappointed I didn't see him in Oathbringer. I was waiting for him.
He's in there. Briefly.
I'm waiting for him-- Him and Vivenna and Szeth. I want the three of them and Nightblood together. I want that scene, I'm waiting for it.
You will see some good things from him.
Was Azure hunting the Herald or is she hunting Zahel?
She's out hunting Zahel.
Had you planned to write... the whole Cosmere when you initially started?
So, I wrote Elantris, had a bunch of the ideas. I started planning right then, and it has evolved a lot since. A lot of Elantris kind of got retrofitted into the things I came up with over the next four or five years... By the time I did Mistborn, I had most of this in mind, but it changes so much, even while I'm writing it.
So, like, when you had Warbreaker, it was--
Warbreaker, I wrote as a prequel to Stormlight. I had already written Stormlight One by that point, but I didn't like it, so I wrote about Kaladin's swordmaster, who was in the first book in that version.
Were Vasher and Nightblood separated before going to Roshar, or after?
After.
So that bit at the end [of Words of Radiance] with Szeth. Getting that black sword...
That's setting up for book 3, which is going to be crazy.
There's another book with a black sword...
It's the same sword, yes. In fact I wrote the original version of the Way of Kings involving the character who has that sword. He's in the first draft from 2002, then I wrote Warbreaker about him, then I wrote this.
Also, if you look, I've inputted in the last drafts a little hint here of Vasher being a Returned. He says he could have the Fifth Heightening if he wanted it, which is true. He has his Returned Breath suppressed, but if he let it out, he could instantly have the Fifth Heightening. However, he'd be instantly recognizable as Returned the moment he did that. Plus, he couldn't use that Returned Breath for Awakening things.
For the worldhopping that happens with Vasher and Vivenna. Does that happen... Are they the humans that came over--
No, they're not.
They're just completely independent people who hopped--
They're moving more with the hidden cosmere economy that has grown up moving between planets. Between Nalthis and Roshar, you can actually catch a caravan. There's actual movement and travel between them. That's been in place on Roshar for quite a while at this point.
Chapter Fifty-One
Vasher Considers Killing Lightsong
I remember reading a book a few years back where the heroes are separated from one another. One group of them is doing something clandestine, while another group is traveling in the area posing as ordinary peasants. Neither knows what the other is up to.
Well, some soldiers capture the ones posing as peasants, then go and talk to the main group of heroes. The main group says, "Well, I guess we'll have to kill those poor peasants who inadvertently passed by and discovered we have an army here." It's supposed to be dramatic irony, I believe. The protagonists nearly end up killing one another through a cruel twist of fate. (The group posing as peasants avoid death, however, for reasons I can't quite remember.)
Anyway, I put the book down shortly after. I didn't remember the scene I'd read until writing this particular one. Why wouldn't Vasher just kill Lightsong, thereby ending the war?
Because that's not a good solution. It's a shortsighted one. If you do terrible things in the name of trying to do what is right, I think you'll just end up creating bigger problems. Vasher couldn't have killed Lightsong, not and remain the man he wants to be. He knows this, I think. Even a man with the reputation of Lightsong is not someone you can kill just because he's inconvenient to you. Not if you want your conscience to go untarnished.
And if innocent peasants happen to spy your good-guy army, there are much better actions to take than deciding to execute them in the name of the greater good. You do that, and you stop being heroes. (That's not necessarily a book killer. It's only one if you expect me to keep on reading and still consider your characters heroic.)
Are you saying that Elantris has other worldhoppers in? I just finished the prose version of White Sand as well (i've never been a fan of graphic novels but didnt want to miss anything from the Cosmere) and didnt even notice Hoid in it, let alone other worldhoppers there.
So you created Vasher and then made them a worldhopper, and the magic system and Nalthis stemmed from there? I actually have another question related to that. Have you ever thought about something you wanted to add to the Cosmere - say, an idea or an ability or something - and then built from there, or do you always write a cool story because its a cool story and the Cosmere stuff comes after?
For example, did you write Mistborn E1 to introduce the idea of Shards or did you write the plot and then realize you can wiggle the shards in there?
Hoid's part in White Sand was very minimal. I believe he's only referenced, and doesn't even appear on screen. Though Elantris has the famous mural depicting worldhopping.
You have it right. I was designing Vasher, decided he was a worldhopper, and then filed away "I'll tell his backstory some day" in the back of my brain. The magic for Nalthis grew more out of the idea for a sympathetic magic than it did for him, but the book was always intended to be his backstory world, so knowledge that Shardblades (or a version of them) being involved was part of my core creation of that setting.
Every story happens differently. Shadows for Silence happened from a writing prompt, for example. But at the same time, I'd been imagining for years a world to delve more into Cognitive Shadows. These things just kind of fit together as you work on them in your brain. But I've started with story first, and I've started with world first. Mostly, though, it's a mixture of both.
By Era One of Mistborn I was already very certain what I was doing with Shards, and so they were there from the get go. I'd say in the cosmere canon right now, White Sand is the most oddball, since it was the only world I designed and wrote a book in (the 1997 version, which is different from the 2000 version) before I had settled on the mechanics of the cosmere. I then placed it in the cosmere when writing the new version.
All of the published novels were written with the cosmere mechanics fully locked in, however, and the interactions of the Shards set forth.
Where is that [Hoid's part in White Sand]? I totally missed it? Is it possible to read the 97 version too, and LORD MASTRELL as well?
I don't send out the 97 version. It's just too bad. (Sorry.) Maybe some day, but not right now. It's the first book I ever wrote.
So are any characters, like Vasher, going to be in any of your other books?
Well, Vasher is in Words of Radiance.
Yeah, I knew he was in Words of Radiance. Is he going to show up more in that? Have more importance?
He is not going to have a huge role, he'll have a little one. Normally I try to confine people who are interfering in other series to their own series, if that makes sense?
The name 'Zahel' and 'nahel bonds' are both very similar so is it just coincidental or is it part of . . . ?
It is part of the linguistics. They are based off of similar suffixes. They're actually the same suffix I believe.
We know Vasher has visited Roshar, and we know that the Vorin people Soulcast important people's bodies into stone after they die, like what happened to Gavilar. Was Vasher aware of this when he visited, and is that the inspiration for the D'Denir statues?
You know, he would be aware of that. I wasn't consciously making that connection, though, in the books, I'll be honest with you. This is just going back to origins of what you can do with the magics in the Cosmere. I think he would definitely be aware that they did that. You can have that be retro-canon if you want, but it was not what I was thinking. But it seems like it's the sort of thing that would be very reasonable.
*written* Has Vasher (or any of the alias he goes by) ever fathered a biological child? (before or after he returned)
*written* RAFO
*spoken* That's also a RAFO, sorry.
The contact Vasher mentions in this scene is Bluefingers. The little scribe is working very hard to push the court toward war, and he thinks that if Vasher sneaks into the hidden tunnels, he might do something dangerous like kill a few guards. More than that, Bluefingers is hoping that by giving away that tidbit of information, he might be able to get Vasher to trust him, and therefore get the chance to manipulate him toward fomenting the war.
At this point, Vasher has contacted Bluefingers pretending that he's interested in the politics of the court and the war. Bluefingers inaccurately assumes—from intelligence he's gathered, from what Denth has said, and from some faint awareness of who Vasher might be—that Vasher wants to drive Hallandren back to war with Idris. At the very least, Bluefingers assumes that Vasher will want to kill and destroy, since death and destruction have often been his wake.
And so, Bluefingers sells to Vasher a little tidbit that he assumes is innocent (the presence of the tunnels). This gives Vasher an unexpected edge. He now knows that it's possible to get to the Lifeless garrison, and into the court itself, through ways nobody knows about. That makes him suspect that something greater might be going on, perhaps a coup of some sort.
I apologize for only showing little pieces of this in the book. But, to be honest, I don't think it's that interesting—mostly because everybody is so wrong about what they're assuming. And the assumptions are rational enough that I think it would be confusing in the book. Vasher is wrong about the coup, and Bluefingers is wrong about Vasher's motives. Denth only cares about getting a chance to punish Vasher for the death of his sister.
Chapter Fifteen
I've been waiting for you guys to read this one, as it has some of my favorite moments in the first part. From the conversation with Rlain, and me finally being able to talk about some of the mechanics that let the Listeners survive on the Shattered Plains, to--of course--being able to write a fight using Awakening for the first time in a while. I also enjoy writing about Kaladin through the eye of someone like Zahel, as it gives me some interesting opportunities.
Obviously, I'm pushing (again) the boundaries of what a reader can be expected to remember/know about the cosmere to enjoy these books.
It's my opinion that thinking "Zahel can do weird, mysterious stuff I don't understand" is all right for those readers who don't have a larger cosmere experience. In fact, I'm confident that even if Warbreaker hadn't been released, I'd be writing scenes like this in the same way. It's a common trope in fantasy for the powerful figure, like Gandalf, to do things that seem outside the rules everyone else has to follow. One thing I like about having the cosmere to play with as a creator is that it lets me do scenes like this, which both are mysterious but also fully explained by the greater magic system, if you want to dig into it.
I will say that Zahel is making an informed guess about Szeth in this chapter. He doesn't know 100%.
This is your last relatively cosmere-aware chapter for the previews, I'm afraid. There are a few more similar to this much later in the book.
Will we see more of Vasher and Vivenna in a certain upcoming book?
Yes, you will see at least one of them in a book coming out this November. You'll at least have a reference to the other. You may see one of them in two chapters as Tor is releasing them.
How did Vasher give his Breath to Denth and not die? He's Returned, so if he gives away his Breath, he dies, right?
Vasher is capable of some things that most other Returned don't live long enough to figure out. We'll go into details in future books, assuming I get to them.
The namesake of the Nahel bond. Was that a person, or is just a name?
It's a word in original Alethi as I was working on it. And actually, the original didn't use "bond." Bond was implied by it. The word meant, "connection to the divine." It's gotten larger since then...
So when Vasher takes a similar name [Zahel], he's trying to imply that meaning?
Yes.
So, I heard you talk about cameos, are there any other cameos besides Hoid and Nightblood in the books?
So, Galladon from Elantris, Baon from White Sand, and Captain Demoux all show up in Way of Kings. They're the Purelake scene. Let's see... the character of Felt is a worldhopper, you see him in a couple of books. Watch out for him. Khriss is in a couple of the books, she's the one who writes the Ars Arcanums. Nazh is in a couple of the books, Khriss's assistant. Vasher is in the book. They're all over the place.
Vasher/Zahel is a Returned, which means he needs Breath to live. But Breath doesn’t exist on Roshar. Does he use St--
He uses Stormlight. One of the reasons-- In fact one of the primary reasons he’s on Roshar is because Stormlight is so much easier to come by than Breath. And in fact researching about things like this is one of the reasons he discovered Roshar in the first place.
So it’s the same reason why Night-- the sword…
Nightblood.
Yes.
The exact mechanics of how Nightblood ended up there will be explored in a future book.
Can Nightblood be considered a Splinter and does it function like a spren realmatically, are there distinct differences is what I'm asking.
Nightblood is kind of his own strange thing. He's an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another. He's closest to a spren, but kind of like a...robot spren, for lack of better words to use.
When you say that Nightblood is "an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another," do you mean life in general, or are you referring to a specific effect in a specific magic system?
There are those involved who knew that Shardblades existed before they tried the Nightblood experiment.
So does this mean Vasher had knowledge of Shardblades before creating Nightblood?
It means what I wrote, and nothing more at this point. :)
Dude. That's the most tantalizing RAFO I've seen in awhile. Have other Shards made Shardblades besides Honor?
:) RAFO
Is that why Vasher uses the word 'Investiture' instead of some personal term for it?
I could be wrong, but I think Vasher was the first one in any book I allowed to use cosmere-aware terms for speaking of things like the magics. (Investiture is one of these.)
How about, how many worlds has Vasher visited?
How many worlds has Vasher visited? He has visited fewer than half-a-dozen, so fewer than six.
Because Zahel was especially Invested when he died, he became that other soul. Does that mean that Elend wasn't actually...?
Zahel is a special case. What happened with him is, on his planet, he was specifically chosen by the Shard to be Returned. That happens, you don't have to be specifically Invested for that. The god gives them that. Now, to become a Cognitive Shadow, which is what certain people in the cosmere are, you need a powerful amount, an enormous amount.
So not the bead?
Not just being a Mistborn, not just... he wasn't even close to being where he needed to be, if you want to end up as a Cognitive Shadow. You need to do some special hoops. We're talking, drawing forth the power of a Shard, or being endowed with the power of a Shard, or a certain number of Breaths would do it. There is a threshold that you could get, you're gonna end up as a Cognitive Shadow.
Can Vasher use Stormlight to Awaken things?
No, all it does is keep him alive. But he has tried and has not figured out how to Awaken things.
Vasher is wrong about Arsteel, by the way. Arsteel didn't need to be killed; Vasher misinterpreted the man's motives in joining with Denth. It's unfortunate that the two came to blows, but Arsteel never intended to kill Vasher in the duel, just subdue him and talk some sense into him. ("Sense" as Arsteel saw it. He wasn't actually right in what he was doing—he didn't understand Vasher's reasoning either. All I'm saying is that Arsteel's motives were, in fact, pure.)
With most magic systems, you've said that you need some sort of gap in your soul for the Investiture to get in. On Nalthis, there's obviously a bit of it that they can give away. Is this how Vasher is able to get Stormlight?
Oh, is this-- Yeah.
Will we ever find out the when, how, and why Vasher and Nightblood moved to Roshar?
Yes, but I don't know when it will happen. I will get around to it.
Hoid and Vasher/Zahel, they haven't been seen on screen together. Have they been together? Have they met?
Yes.
Are they aware they are both worldhoppers?
I wouldn't necessarily go that far.
Vasher Explains Some Things, but Leaves Some Things Hidden
I'm worried about leaving Vivenna's two questions unanswered. One is pretty obvious—how Vasher can hide how he looks—but the other is unintuitive. I wish I could explain better in the book, as I said above, but I decided in the end to just leave it hanging. It's a bit of a violation of Sanderson's First Law, but not a big one. The reason I feel I can get away with it is because Vasher didn't use his nature as a Returned to solve any problems. It is more a flavoring for his character than it is important to him getting out of danger or fixing things. He could have done everything he needed to in this book without being Returned. So I feel it's okay not to explain why he can be Returned and not die when he gives away his Breaths.
Can Vivenna change her appearance more? She can indeed. She could actually stoke that fragment of a divine Breath inside of her and start glowing like a Returned. She can't change her physical features to look like someone else, but she can change her age, her height (within reason), and her body shape (to an extent). It takes practice.
And yes, the scraggly miscreant is how Vasher sees himself. Not noble and Returned, which is part of how he suppresses his divine Breath.
Events in the second book may change that.
How the crap did Zahel end up on Roshar?
Partially walked there, partially took a vehicle.
Is Vivenna's sword in Oathbringer the same one that Vasher gives her in Warbreaker?
RAFO! But I'll give you a card.
Zahel/Vasher is in Roshar for Nightblood? Will we know in Stormlight Archive why these two were separated? Or in the sequel of Warbreaker?
The Warbreaker sequel will give clues about this, but the actual event happened between that and [The Way of Kings]. So I'm not sure where I'll slip it in.
Naming Vasher
Vasher's name has interesting origins. I first began toying with the ideas that became Warbreaker back in 2005. I was hanging out with my then girlfriend (not Emily, but Heather, the girl I dated before I met Emily). We were up at Heather's family's cabin in Island Park, Idaho, and I had just met her father for the first time. His name was Vance.
The name intrigued me. Yes, I'd heard it before, but for some reason at that moment it struck me. Later that day, sitting on the dock of the lake, I pulled out my notebook and began to play around with ideas for a story. I tweaked the name to Vancer, but that just didn't sound right, though I used it for a while. The next incarnation was Vasher. [Editor's note: Brandon had earlier used the name Vasher in 2003 for a different character in the draft of another novel, but he had completely forgotten that by the time he wrote this annotation.]
I began doing some preliminary prose writing, plugging in a magic system I'd been working on. (I'll talk more later about how I came up with Awakening.) It became a story about a guy who was thrown into prison, then used his Awakening magic to get out of it. (Along with the help of his longtime sidekick, whose name escapes me right now.)
It wasn't very long. I'll have to dig it out sometime—it's only handwritten and wasn't something I ever intended to publish. Just a quick character sketch. It did have the first line, however, of what eventually became this book: "Why does it always have to end up with me getting thrown into prison?"
Vasher Kills
As I said, he has a temper. He tends to lose it when he fights. He's not a berserker or anything like that; he simply lets his passion get in the way when he's in battle. It makes him worse at fighting, particularly when dueling. It also makes him a lot more dangerous sometimes.
Vivenna looking back at him, his hand on Nightblood's hilt, slowly pulling it forth as the bodies lie around on the ground is one of my favorite scenes in the book.
This is how Vasher lost his Breath before, by the way. If you recall, he began the book with barely enough to Awaken in weak ways. He remembers having much more Breath. Beyond feeding on one Breath a week, slowly eating away his supply, he drew Nightblood a few months back. That drained away his Breath and left him with only a few remaining. As for who he killed that time . . . I'm going to hold off on saying, just in case I decide to incorporate it into a future book.
Can you give any history on Denth? I don't know what he did as one of the Five Scholars. What was his roll during the Manywar?
Boy, you know, I'd rather leave the history of the Five and the Manywar for the sequel. Denth was there, and at first he tried to stop it, work as a peacemaker, and eventually took Vasher's side. Until the death of his sister.
She wanted me to ask, has Zahel ever had any other well known identity *inaudible* on Roshar?
RAFO...
*inaudible* if he's one of the Heralds then her guess is Ishar.
RAFO.
With Vasher on Roshar, is he collecting more Breaths, or just burning through slowly what he has collected?
He can use Stormlight instead. That's why he came to Roshar.
Did he come voluntarily?
He came voluntarily because he was tired of sucking souls. Roshar is where he decided to "retire."
How many Breaths <does he have now>?
He has the same number that he left with. Which, there are clues to what level of Heightening he at least has, in the books.