Questioner
What does Investiture look like in the Cognitive Realm?
Brandon Sanderson
It can depend upon the Investiture and the part of the Cognitive Realm.
What does Investiture look like in the Cognitive Realm?
It can depend upon the Investiture and the part of the Cognitive Realm.
Do dragons always go through their early life in human form? Or would being a Sho Del also be possible for a young dragon?
The way I have it right now (which, we’ll give this as a Word of Brandon that could change, because I haven’t written Dragonsteel yet), it’s a human form. I imagined dragons like amphibians, that they have part of their lifecycle… the Yolish dragons, they mate in human form, they bear children in human form, raise children mostly in human form, but their dragon form is equally part of their identity.
Taln has confused me in Stormlight. Why was he able to withstand so long?
There are multiple reasons, but the prime one that you should be assuming is: he was just really, really, really determined. How about this: there’ll be a few hints in Stormlight Five that might give you some help on this.
In the prologues of the first five Stormlight Archive books, we see the same evening from the perspectives of various key players in the event that transpires. Will the second half of the Stormlight Archive share this trend? Or perhaps will we end up seeing five different perspectives on a different event in those prologues?
Yes, you will see a different event, five different perspectives on it. You have guessed correctly.
In Bands of Mourning, after Edwarn has admitted that he is trying to distract Wax from pursuing the Set, he mentions offhandedly that Wax should still look into the man that the Nightstreet gang killed on the train to New Seran, and that Wax would be “impressed.” Who is this man? And why did Edwarn say this?
RAFO.
Szeth’s spren has thus far been very distant Is this typical of highspren?
Yes.
Is it maintaining a particular distance because of Nightblood, and would normally have permitted Szeth to summon it as a blade by now?
No, it’s not really Nightblood. There are other reasons, but… how about this, Book Five and Find Out. You’ll get another reason in Book Five.
Are you going to make any more books with Tress?
My intent is for Tress of the Emerald Sea to remain as a standalone book. And I have no intentions to go back to Tress or her story. I’m sorry. I just do think that it is good to have standalone stories now and then. That doesn’t mean that some people might not appear (most likely being Ulam or Xisis, the people who were already cosmere-aware). But do not plan on a Tress sequel. I know a lot of people are sad about that, but, you know, I am of the opinion that not everything needs a sequel.
Lumar does have some relevance. Access to aether, kind of just raw and unconnected from the main aethers like that, is of value in the cosmere. So Lumar does have interest in the wider cosmere, for that reason. There’s definitely stuff you can do with a bunch of raw aether.
If a person used Hemalurgy with an Invested spike on another planet, could Harmony feel/control them?
This is theoretically possible, but it depends on if there’s a Shard in attendance on that planet and what kind of interference there would be. So, yeah, possible.
Should the fact that the Aons in the Hoid/Riina painting are missing the chasm line be taken as canonical? If so, is this because of whatever method they are using to perform AonDor outside Sel? Or because of post-Elantris changes to Sel?
We let Howard pick what he wanted to illustrate, and then send illustrations in. And originally, he just did a whole bunch of weird, arcane symbols. And I’m like, “No, you need to actually use Aons in this art.” But we let him just kind of pick the Aons. You should not consider that art to necessarily be… Imagine that art to be somebody on Silverlight painting a picture of a story they heard. That art can be in-universe. (In fact, I believe that I would consider it in-universe.) But somebody painted it, and they just used whatever pictures of Aons they had sitting around, like Howard did. In other words, don’t be looking at those Aons as actual representations of how you would program in AonDor, how about that. And don’t read too much into that.
By the time of Tress, stories from things happening around the cosmere, and stories that Hoid tells, have become of interest to some people, and because of that it’s plausible that there could even end up being some sort of book written where it’s like, “Hey, he told me this story. I’m writing it down for the rest of you guys to read.” I’m not saying that’s what Tress actually is; obviously, we have the audience for Tress. I’m just saying, you can imagine world of people doing Hoid fanart.
Does Hoid have fans?
Yes, by that point in history Hoid does. He has far more detractors, but…
Is there an in-universe Hoid fan club?
Depends on what you call people who are fully aware of who he is and what he is. I would say yes. I mean, the royals in our world have fans. There’s fans of the royals, there’s fans of equivalent, just people who are known throughout. And he is a figure in a lot of peoples’ mythology and religion. Would you call the Horneaters Hoid fans? Because they have legends stretching back thousands of years to him as a trickster god, to the point that Rock is fully able to recognize him (not when he’s in his Wit persona, at least not at first).
Okay, here’s my theory: I don’t think electrum stores the nebulous “determination.” I think that is a mislabeling. Rather, I think it stores the other thing that means “the will to do something”: Intent. Confirm, deny, or RAFO?
We’ll RAFO that. I really want to get into that in future books, rather than digging into it right now.
Did Wayne get his chouta from Design?
No, chouta has spread more organically than that.
Hoid’s fixing of Charlie’s cryptic event, “curse” to “versed,” makes Aons seem more syllabic rather than logographic. Is that just a casualty of Hoid’s fairytale narrative? Will we see a more in-depth look at the concept of Aonic curses and curse-breaking?
Good question. It is really hard, number one, to convey that in the original text, that pun would have been a different pun. It would have worked differently. And, in fact, you can have a logographic pun. And I imagine that it probably was. I imagine that what’s going on with Wit is, like, adding a stroke, which then changes the entire meaning of what’s going on. Though, do remember that the way Aons work, they kind of work like a programming language, so you could kind of add in actual, like, “this next text is a verse.” Imagine putting it in quotation marks, and things like that. We are extrapolating on that with meaning, rather than sounds. I think it works, but probably different than the actual text of Tress manifest to us, but that’s the best way the translator (myself being the person that translated it into English) was able to indicate it.
For those who don’t know, I use Tolkien’s explanation for all of these things. I think it was brilliant. He said, “All the texts were written in a foreign language that you couldn’t read. And they have been translated into English, and some accommodations have been made in order to make things like puns still puns, even though they wouldn’t have rhymed in the original.
Did Renarin figure out on his own that Adolin had killed Sadeas?
Yeah, but partial RAFO.
When we hit 15/16 in October with Yumi and Virtuosity, I started a bet with my brother that we’d know all sixteen Shards before the end of the year, banking on The Sunlit Man giving us the last one. But that didn’t happen. Any chance I can convince you to tell us sixteen and help me win?
No, I’m gonna keep that for now. I’m gonna keep that last one for just a little bit longer, so RAFO.
You implied that there’s a dragon in the cosmere that we haven’t spotted yet. Is it Slowswift? Seems appropriate for the Tolkien homage to secretly be a dragon.
RAFO. That’s a very good guess.
Will we see Xisis again?
Almost assuredly, you will see Xisis again. All of those really ancient Yolish dragons are around, you’re gonna be seeing them here and there. The story of the cosmere’s not really about them, but they stay involved. Xisis will be seen again.
Tell us a little bit about Valor. What’s her Vessel like? Any fun anecdotes? Hoid once bought Tanavast a drink; are there fun stories with Valor’s Vessel? Just anything?
Let’s put this one off for just a little longer. Let’s RAFO Valor. How about this, I’ll give you one thing: Valor is name-dropped in Stormlight Five.
We’ve seen Shallan’s drawings appear to make people into “better versions of themselves.” But we also see her draw Yalb surviving the shipwreck, and later find out he did. Is she actually seeing the future in which she just happens to inspire people to be better? If so, this would make Wit’s warning to her in Oathbringer more concerning.
As will all sort of future sight/foretelling in the cosmere, it is not necessarily telling the future so much as seeing possibilities. And Shallan has… we’ll get into this in Book Five. Shallan’s a little extra good at this, for Spiritual mumbo jumbo. (It’s not necessarily just Spiritual mumbo jumbo, 17th Shard.) In this case, we have a very distinct reason why this is happening with Shallan that you might be able to put together. It’s pretty obvious. But you should be able to see these things with Shallan very early in the books. As early as Words of Radiance, I was sticking in little nods to this. She is able to grab glimpses of the Spiritual Realm in ways that even other Lightweavers can’t do. Lightweaving always has a bit of this, right? And this comes back to what’s going on with the Realmatic Theory and Plato’s Theory of the Forms as kind of a foundational text that helped me develop this in my mind. You’re seeing more perfect versions of who you could be. When she’s doing a sketch, she’s sometimes sketching not who you are, but who you could be.
Stormlight Six?
Stormlight Six is probably ten years away. Read the State of the Sanderson, prime yourself for that. That is my expectation, but we’ll see. Who knows? This is an art as much as it is a science, and sometimes things need to be written.
What would happen if you threw Nightblood into the Dor? Could it consume Investiture fast enough to enable you to travel through the Dor?
Oh, I see what you’re trying to do, make a pocket where you can go through. Here’s the thing: Nightblood would get full pretty quick in the Dor, like you saw with Nightblood hitting a perpendicularity in Rhythm of War. So I’m not 100% convinced this could get you through the Dor. But it’s a workable theory that you could try, and you might be able to tweak it to the point that you could make it work. You’re gonna have to deal with the fact that Nightblood fills up, when there’s that much Investiture, pretty quickly.
You mentioned that there was a scene or climax that you’ve been wanting to write since an RPG campaign in 1999, which you’ve planned for Stormlight Five.
Yes.
I think you said it was one of the best endings you’ve ever written. Now that you’re almost finished with Stormlight Five, how are you feeling about that scene in the book?
I feel really good about it. It’s there, it’s written. Is it the best ending I’ve ever written? That’s really you guys’ choice, not mine. One of the things is: there will definitely be some surprising things. There will also be (for this crowd specifically) some expected things. I feel like my job is to give proper foreshadowing so that some things can be seen. And I will tell you, I’ve seen people make the right theories about a lot of the things in this book. There’s a few things that I’m gonna kind of blindside you with, but they are the sorts of things where you sometimes have twists in stories that aren’t really the sort you can fully anticipate. But I think I’ve done a spectacular job with what I’m doing for his ending. But, again, that’s for you to decide, not for me. So, we’ll see. I do think I have one of my best action scenes, as I’ve said before, that I’m very fond of. But you’ll also have to give me space from the book. It’s hard for me to look at, when I’m in the middle of a book, and have that space that you need in order to really evaluate a work. So maybe this is a question for me in five years.
Save the ketek!
The ketek is diegetically saved. It’s perfectly fine in-world. I’m not gonna put what feels like a bad title on a book just to get the ketek to work. I spent years, and none of them feel right to me. None of the titles feel right. I just gotta go with what feels like the right title for me [for Wind and Truth].
Arcanum Unbounded leatherbound, we don’t have specific plans for when that one fits in the schedule, yet. I think we’re probably going to do one. The big question is: when do we do Steelheart or Skyward leatherbounds? Do we do them? Where does Arcanum Unbounded fit in there? The only ones that are really sure are Bands, and then we’re gonna do Lost Metal after that, even though it’s not ten year anniversary We just want people to be able to complete their sets. And then, of course, the Stormlight books, we will continue to do at about the rate… Those take a lot more work. Those’ll be three to four years apart, like we’ve been doing.
Lux ever gonna get a hardcover edition?
Currently there are no plans. One reason is that there are continuity errors in Lux that we don’t have the resources to fix currently while we’re focused on Stormlight 5.
Are there any plans for further entries?
Nothing to announce, and may never be.
How's computer stuff going to work in the 80s version of Mistborn? Very rudimentarily. It'll work like you expect it to from our world in that era.
Without Aux, can [Zellion] keep doing it? Can he still sync with future worlds?
RAFO.
Has Zellion been to Nalthis? Or did he learn about the Breaths from somewhere else?
RAFO.
If Zellion/Sigzil gets rid of the Torment, could Hoid get rid of...?
Theoretically, it's possible that Hoid could get rid of the distortions to his soul. He held the Dawnshard a lot longer, and his distortions are more... how shall we say... pervasive.
If [Canticle] is spending years, if not centuries or millennia, just sucking in all that Investiture, is that gonna be the most heavily Invested thing in the cosmere?
RAFO.
It is theoretically possible to be part of two Orders at once and to have bonded two spren at once.
What I'm unsure about is the timing of when [Sigzil] gets the Dawnshard versus when he became a different Radiant.
You'll find this out eventually. RAFO.
When did Hoid give [Sigzil] the Dawnshard?
This is a RAFO.
Do the deceased that die on Canticle, do they return into this Reliquary? Was the brother really there? Or do they just die? Do they still become Shades?
They don't get to go to the Reliquary. They actually die, and their Investiture that would become a shade is instead turned into one of the sunhearts.
How old is Sigzil [in The Sunlit Man]?
RAFO.
When does [The Sunlit Man] happen?
Pretty late in the Cosmere, but not the latest you've seen.
There's this scene where there was a nightmare, and Painter didn't have a paintbrush, and he just reached out to the side and a paintbrush appeared, and there was a flash of light. I need details, 'cause that seems so much like a Shardblade!
This is also working under the exact same mechanics, so yes, Investiture that he is Connected to is indeed being manifest as something physical.
What Awakened the father machine? Was it the same system that we've seen with Breaths? Or was it something else? If it is Breaths, how did some one who can use that magic system, how did they get here?
These all work on the same fundamental mechanics. You should not be looking for someone from outside to have done this.
There's a drama, and it has a hion sword in it. Is it just for the drama? Or can hion sword be real, please?
Uh... we'll make you one.
We learn [Yumi]'s repeated this day for 1700 years, and her memory is patched over by the father machine. If memory and Investiture are so closely tied together, is the father machine also taking her Investiture? How does that work, because she's such a highly Invested individual, it seems like if it could take any Investiture from her, it would take all of it, like the nightmares did.
When I play with this, with tweaking memory and things like that, my go-to in the cosmere, in the three cases where you've seen it happen, is that those excising memories have to be really, really careful, or the body will reject what you're doing. So, all three times you've seen it happen, it's been one little sliver of memory is getting changed. The father machine might even just be overwriting it each day, basically blanking that Investiture, but not stealing any of it. Vasher does pull a little bit out when he takes the memory, and the same thing happens with Wit when it happened to him. But I think the father machine's doing it in a slightly different way, and it has to be really careful, or it'll be too obvious, and the whole illusion, the facade, will collapse.
Are you still planning to write a book with a magic system based on disease and sickness?
If I'd really been on the ball, it would have been one of the Secret Projects I wrote during Covid. But I haven't found the right story for that magic system yet. So it's still in the back of my brain, and someday perhaps I will write it, but we'll see. Yes, I still am planning it, but we'll see.
I know what was in the first four storage caverns; but what was in the fifth storage cavern? I always wonder.
RAFO.
Do any of the civilizations in the cosmere celebrate a holiday like Halloween?
Yes.
What's Hoid's favorite regional curse word from the planets he's visited?
He's gonna like something pretty weird. He's gonna like the outlandish ones. I'll have to think about it for a while. It's probably not one that I've used yet, would be my guess. Something that might sound a little ridiculous to our ears. I think he would really like the Wheel of Time one, "mother's milk in a cup," just because it's one of those things that sounds vulgar, but isn't.
I've always wondered how the Threnodites are so well known. Beyond shades, we don't see powers there. How are they so well-traveled?
There's a couple of things going on here. One is: there are ways on and off Threnody, and any of the planets that you can get on and off without needing FTL do spread through the cosmere pretty well.
The other thing is: the event that created Threnody as it's known in the cosmere (which is the death of Ambition) has wide-reaching ramifications. It's a very famous place in the same way that most people know the Bikini Islands when they might not otherwise know it, if that makes any sense. It's the source of something that has had great implications for the entirety of the cosmere.
Why did Brandon name a world Threnody?
I wanted a planet where I was making use of religious terminology (sometimes pseudo-religious terminology; things that are religion-adjacent also), and things that had to do with poetry and music. Lots of names like Elegy as a name. And Threnody, I believe Isaac suggested it. He'll have to correct me if I'm wrong; he might have named some other things in that system, but I think he recommended Threnody. And it felt appropriate, being a song for the dead, a dirge. Just kind of clicked.
What would Halloween look like on Threnody? Or would such a holiday hit far too close to home for them?
They are not celebrating Halloween on Threnody. They would not understand at all. They live lives of constant terror, so why you would want to do that to yourself...
Would a compass needle point towards a perpendicularity?
No, a compass needle wouldn't, good question. You might be able to make some other device that could do that, but a compass needle would not naturally point toward one.
On a scale of one to ten, how much terror would a Scadrian feel upon seeing one of Roshar's moons?
It's gonna depend on the individual. I think some will get a sense of immediate dread by having that thing looming over them. That would probably be the consistent feeling. But there's probably people who are just like, "Oh, look at the thing in the sky. That's cool." So, depends on the individual.
Would you consider working with a professional linguist to translate a Cosmere novel into that planet's native equivalent?
Seems like a lot of work for a very few number of people. I can imagine getting, like, a short story. Like one of Hoid's stories, maybe, translated into local. But creating the full conlang is not a thing that most of us do unless there's, like, a strict need for a film. (Dothraki didn't exist as a full conlang until the television show and they started needing to be able to speak it in full sentences.) I imagine that most of my conlangs won't get fully developed until that.
Maybe... I know people love their Klingon Christmas Carol. It is a thing. It's a possibility; it's a thing I could consider. But I think a short story is way more likely.
If koloss are made using five people, spikes, and recycled blue skin as opposed to the traditional breeding method, how can someone be part koloss?
In Era Two, koloss breed true, and are the kind of bluish-purplish-skinned people. (They'll call them koloss-blooded at that point.) And they can interbreed with humans. A full-grown koloss undergrows a ritual that adds the spikes and turns them into Era One style koloss. Allomancer Jak's story kind of gets into this a little bit.