Would you be willing to tell us what the rainbow slug's power is?
Do you have the notes handy?
I know what it is.
Okay, you can say what it is.
That's the illusion slug. So in my mind, that's why it's a rainbow, it's not real, it's an illusion.
It's creating an illusion of itself, yeah.
I'm really curious about Boatload of Mummies because Brandon did mention on his updates that you'd worked on it for NaNoWriMo for the past couple of years which is really cool. And the title is incredible. I don't know if that's gonna be the final title, but that's what it's always been referred to. How have you been doing with that?
Thanks for asking us. It's a project that I love. So I finished it. Finished a draft in September of last year. It's rough. It's a really rough draft. There's a lot of things that I'm still working through. I'm trying to narrow down the shape of the plot in a way because there's a little bit of--it wasn't inspired necessarily by these things, but it was after the fact that I realized, "Oh, it's part this, part that." It's sort of begins King Kong, if you imagined getting people on a boat. And then it continues as Death on the Nile. Then you get to a portion on an island. And then it ends The Mummy. And throw in a healthy dose of Venom. So it's like, "Okay, am I doing too much here?" And that's kind of where I'm at. You know, is this even a thing? Have I thrown too much in? Is this too much of a storyline? And i don't think it is. It really is in the end kind of a Raiders of the Lost Arc sort of story. You could pull out those some of those same elements and say, "Raiders of the Lost Arc starts out King Kong." But the basic plot line is there. There's going to be scenes in the current draft that are basically finished. I don't think they're going to change too much from the version that it is right now to the end.
Will it be called Boatload of Mummies? Probably not. I can't see that as a title of a Cosmere book, right? But we can affectionately call it Boatload of Mummies as long as we want. The working title is Book of Nails. And whether there's a series title or not, we'll have to figure that out if it's a story that people want to continue learning about.
But let me tell you Nicki Savage is so much fun to write. Don't expect exactly what you get from the broadsheets because she is writing to a particular audience, and has learned some skills from Allomancer Jack--though I do think Allomancer Jack's stories might be closer to the truth than Nicki's are.
You will see parallels between this story and some of the elements that are in the broadsheets. But she's basically: if you can imagine a Mary Poppins. who is incredibly interested in the supernatural, and is not afraid to beat up people. That's basically your character right there. And she's just, she's a load of fun. A boatload of fun.
I imagine from what you've said that you still wouldn't be ready to give us what could eventually function as a back of the book blurb?
During the first NaNoWriMo that I worked on it we had to come up with our elevator pitch on that, and I wrote the Readers Digest, TV Guide version of it, and it was "A woman with a strange, magical power journeys to an island to find a mythical book that might raise the dead." Something like that.
This particular book is interesting because... How do I pitch this when it's a spin off of a different series. It's a spin-off from Mistborn, technically. But it's not a Mistborn book. You can't pitch that to somebody who doesn't know Mistborn. And that's been some of the fun in trying to figure this out is "How do I tell a different story here, but then have to reintroduce how Allomancy works? But now in this era, we know about Allomancy, we know about Feruchemy, we know about Hemalurgy. We have crossovers from other worlds. How do you write this book without confusing somebody entirely without... "There's like 50 magic systems in here, and I don't understand." And that then goes into the pitch. How do you pitch this book? People who know the Cosmere, you just say it's set on Scadrial, but it's not really a Misborn book. It's just hard to encapsulate and someday I'll figure it out.
I was just wondering if Sando [Brandon] has ever said what was behind the very ornate door under The First Capital [in The Way of Kings Prime]?
An Unmade was behind that door, spiked with crystal spikes to the wall, holding it and preventing it from going anywhere. I believe I talked about it on a stream somewhere.
This was very, very early Hemalurgy--and some of the things I was planning there are no longer canon. You probably could still spike an Unmade to bind it to the Physical Realm, though, so that part remains viable.
As Dragonsteel expands and you have other writers like Janci and Dan telling stories in your worlds, how do you manage the difference in approaches to writing?
Yeah, so this is something we're kind of finding our way through. You'll notice that I experimented with this a bunch with side projects before I decided to do some mainline projects. And I picked two of the writers that I'm very closest with and know the best. I don't anticipate going a lot further than that, right? I do like the idea of seeing what a few other writers can add to things like the Cosmere, but I don't want to turn into Forgotten Realms, where there's always a new book coming out by a new author. I do think that some places have done a better job of this though. Like, Black Library tends to have a very good reputation with the authors that they invite in and cultivate a stable of authors rather than just, you never know who's going to be writing one. I know that I didn't necessarily like this in comics, when I read more comics, not knowing when an author on a book was gonna be fired or when you were not gonna start seeing the original creator anymore. You will never not be seeing me writing books.
How do I approach it differently? When I hand it to someone, like with Skyward, I do envision it as being Janci's now. That I am overseeing. These are now her stories. It's kind of like how I felt... Harriet told me when I took over the Wheel of Time, Harriet came to me and said, "You are the author now, Brandon. You need to follow your instances as a writer and do your best job. You do want to look at what Robert Jorden was going to do and you want to try and fulfill his vision too." But she was very clear with me, it's like, "You are the writer now." And that gave me a certain level of ownership that I feel I needed. And despite some things about what I did definitely being... You know, I'm not without criticism, and deserved criticism. I think that me taking over that series went better than the vast majority of this happening in the past. You can just look at that both in aggregate reviews, you can also look at that at sales, you can just kind of look at... Really trying not to blow my own horn, but I think Wheel of Time is the gold standard in sci-fi/fantasy for an author passing away and someone else taking over the series. And part of the reason, in fact, I would say one of the biggest reasons for that, was Harriet coming to me and saying, "You need to be the author. You need the freedom and flexibility to treat this like your own series. You're not writing this for someone as just a work-for-hire; get this, chop wood, be done. We are handing you the keys to the house." And then, of course, the fact that she was also the editor to keep me a little reigned in in the right places was a big key.
But I bring that same sort of feeling to the authors I'm working with, with: "I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna help you outline. I'm gonna help you worldbuild. I'm gonna give feedback on the drafts. I'm gonna do everything I can to make this really excellent." But when you read Dan's Cosmere book, it's Dan's Cosmere book; it's not Dan writing Brandon's Cosmere book. It's Dan writing Dan's Cosmere book with Brandon deeply involved and trying to help out. And I think this is gonna lead to just better books. I think it's gonna lead to much better books.
I remember when I went to Blizzard once. They had me in (they had Pat Rothfuss in a separate time), and one of the reasons they had me in is they're like, "We would like you to write this story for us." They wanted to investigate having me write books for them. And it was a wonderful experience, everyone there was great, but I very quickly could tell I was the wrong person for the project. Because they already knew the exact book they wanted. They had every bit of lore that they wanted in that nailed down. The level of flexibility that I could have in telling a story in the Warcraft world was just almost nil. (They were actually investigating people for Overwatch back when it was Overwatch, but they also talked about Warcraft stuff.) It was like, "You could tell this story. This is what happens in it: boom boom boom boom boom boom boom." And it's all just completely already done, they just need someone to put the words on the page. And that is not me. That's not a project I was the least bit interested in.
Seems like a lot of movie experiences are built like that.
Yes, a lot of movie experiences are built like that, too. And because of that, I politely declined that opportunity. And I have learned (particularly in these kind of collaborations) that the best things that we came up with were things where I said, "Here is my world. Here's what makes it exciting. Here's what I love about the characters. What do you want to do in this world?" And together, developing something that really matches them. Particularly when I can kind of hand off characters that I have not spent a lot of time on or have them invent all new characters.
That's what you should expect with the collaborations I'm doing. Quality control, hopefully by Brandon, hopefully really great stories, but stories I could not have written, because just handing people my outlines hasn't really worked. The best example of that being White Sand the Graphic novel. Isaac has made that book great, by kind of taking some real ownership over it. The first stuff that we did (even before he did this latest revision that you guys can now get), it felt like my outline got really stiff when someone else played with it, and some of the stuff that makes reading a Brandon Sanderson book really fun and enjoyable didn't end up in there.
There's a long rambling answer to you; I hope that's relevant and helpful. But, that's the way I am approaching this.
With the success of the Kickstarter and those editions of the books, do you think there's any chance of a nicer edition with RP coming available upon the release of future books?
Yeah, that's something that we've talked about. People seem to want an edition in between the regular release in bookstores and the leather bounds. Some people prefer the leather bounds, some people would like something a little bit more like these Dragonsteel editions we've done, so we have had talks internally. The thing is, maybe this is something we'll need to do a poll on. I don't want to overwhelm people with editions, and I don't want to inspire this feeling like you have to own every edition, right? And so, do I want to for instance do yet another release of the Mistborn. Cause we have Mistborn hardcover, paperback, leather bound, and trade paperback, and then a separate YA edition. Do we do yet another? But having a Mistborn trilogy that would look good on the shelf with your Dragonsteel editions of the Secret Projects is appealing to me at the same time, so. <We'll maybe run> a poll, but we would like to hear kind of from you guys, what do you want, how many of you want it, how many of you would feel overwhelmed by product fatigue. There's always the joke about Skyrim, how many different releases of Skyrim can we have? I know I feel that sometimes, like Street Fighter, which I used to play with a kid, and people were like, yeah there's like 80 different versions of Street Fighter 2.
Now that you're 75% through the first draft of Stormlight 5, how are you feeling as you are quickly approaching the end of the front half of the series? Are you looking forward to the mid-series break and having time to work on other projects? Thank you for your time.
I am really looking forward to the mid-series break. I don't think more so than I am at the end of any other long, difficult write. Each of the Stormlight books I am happy to be done when I am done. I think you'll find me more so next year when I've been having to do revisions a ton. But I am looking forward to that break. That said, I am very fond of Stormlight, and I don't feel that fatigue right now, as much as I might have anticipated. I think part of it is the way I am writing it. Letting me, basically I go through one group of viewpoints, and then I start back over. It's keeping it kind of refreshing to me, and I get to have that build to a climax experience multiple times. It's also helping that I'm really looking forward to seeing how people respond to some of these things that I'm doing. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the break. I'm looking forward to going back to do some Elantris work. I'm looking forward to writing the next era of Mistborn, since that ones been planned for a long time, and Wax and Wayne kind of got in the way, even though I love Wax and Wayne, of doing this one. This ones been out lying for way longer than Wax and Wayne, and so it will be nice to be able to get to that.
When Adonalsium Will Remember Our Plight Eventually came on page did anyone else immediately think of Good Omens and Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery Pulsifer?? That was my first thought and couldn't stop laughing, I hope it's an homage
It kind of is, kind of isn't. I first became aware of this quirk of puritan societies because of Pratchett, but it was Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets that did it, actually.
Truth is, these kind of names were very rare (and kind of odd) in actual puritan societies, but they're just too deliciously interesting to not riff off of. Single word puritan names, like Faith or Justice, were far more common. (Including Silence, which I used after I actually encountered it doing genealogy of puritan Americans.)
Would a mortician be able to tell that the body in front of them is a worldhopper?
Yes. But not because of the worldhopping. A mortician would generally be able to tell because... I guess it depends. There's some that you would not be able to tell if they were. If someone left Roshar and came back to Roshar and died, a mortician wouldn't necessarily tell. Now, someone who can read their spiritweb might be able to tell. But that's not going to leave an effect on you physically, unless, for instance, they're doing an autopsy of what's in your stomach. And they're like, "Oh, we found offworld food." I would say, a lot of times, there's going to be some forensic sort of things you can do to determine. Or, you might be like, "This person is a different ethnicity than we have on this planet." So, I would say, a lot of the time, but there's nothing that's gonna leave intrinsically... it's not like, "Count the rings, how many times they leave the planet."
You said before that you want to cameo in any adaptations of your books as someone who dies in each one. Assuming you do this, would it just function as an out-of-universe nod? Or would you canonically be playing a very unlucky set of identical worldhopping siblings?
It wouldn't be siblings; it'd probably be, like, somebody who keeps getting reborn. Somebody who's immortal in some way, and something terrible happens to him every time he goes. A little like the unluckiest planeswalker from Magic, if you guys are familiar with that.
I would be the same person, I think, because we'd want to keep canon, and things like that. Some dude who maybe had a certain Dawnshard that makes him indestructible, for a short period of time (not Hoid), but tries to keep going places to get out of danger and just ends up getting squashed every time.
Kind of like I'd be the cosmere's Kenny.
When Stormlight 5 is out and you've read it, remember to ask me what happened in my writing on July 18th. I wrote an important scene yesterday that I think might be worthy of a little extra special notation.
I think we're completely stalled at this point, folks--not just because of the strikes. They're a relatively small issue in regards to what we were trying to do. We got really close in some ways I'll be able to talk about eventually, but I don't see any kind of film/TV announcement coming this year.
Hollywood is scared. Even Mission Impossible is under-performing, and Rings of Power did far beneath what they wanted. I think at this point, I might have to try some smaller forays (i.e. Not Stormlight, not Mistborn, maybe not even Cosmere) into Hollywood to build a reputation before I can get the kind of adaptation I want.
We'll see. There still are a few possibilities in the works that could turn this around. If it does happen, it won't be for an announcement this year.
For someone who says that you can do anything and you can have dragons, there's a remarkable lack of dragons in your book.
Yes, I know, I know. They started showing up. Secret Project One has the first onscreen as a dragon. But yes, the dragons have been kinda hiding out. The thing is, one of the first books I wrote in the Cosmere had a lot of dragons. It was called Dragonsteel. But it didn't get published. That book, it's still canon to the lore of the Cosmere, and I know all about it, but... yeah, you're right.
Someone brings a server and computer plus monitor to Roshar and uses AI to create AI art. Would creationspren or any other spren gather?
No, because it is emotion and perception of the person doing the creating that is drawing the creationspren. However, do that long enough, and there's a decent chance that a sufficiently strong AI would start gaining sentience in the cosmere, because of Investiture and the way things work.
So what about logicspren?
Logicspren are drawn to people's arguments. It's the person's emotion and thoughts that draw the spren, not the activity necessarily, in most cases. Some of the more... There's a division line. The spren that are a little more on the Cultivation spren, they can be drawn to just... Lifespren and rockspren, they're not looking for the human emotion, necessarily. But things like creationspren and logicspren are.
What's it like handing over keys to parts of the Cosmere to Dan and others? How do you see this collaboration working in the future once stories begin overlapping more?
It's very interesting. It's been, in some ways, a little bit easier than some of the other things. One of the things I realized in doing some of my collaborations that I did in the past was that handing over a story that I had been working on was actually kind of hard. Like, I didn't get to write the story. And once someone else wrote it, then it was written, and there was a part of me that was kind of a little bit sad. (Though some of those stories turned out fantastically, like The Original, which I wrote with Mary Robinette. She wrote it in a way I couldn't have.)
But with the Cosmere stories, we decided we're not doing that. What's happening with both Isaac and Dan (who are working on Cosmere stories) is, we sat down and we brainstormed stories in the Cosmere using some of my worldbuilding and things, but stories they wanted to tell that match who they are and their voices. So these are not books that I was planning to write, that I had outlined. These are books we're, like, "You know what? It'll work better if someone else doesn't just try to do a Brandon story that Brandon was planning to write, and instead we let them take the worldbuilding, the basis, and extrapolate from it." So Dan and Isaac and I have a brainstorming session every week, and we are working on just, right now, the worldbuilding and the plotting for Dan's story. And we've been spending a lot of time on it. It'll probably be another six months or a year before he even starts writing it, because we want to get it absolutely right. And it's a story that's doing the themes and what-not that Dan is really interested in. We're just (Isaac and I) making sure to help out and make sure it fits in the Cosmere. So I think it's gonna be a different kind of collaboration that I think is gonna work really well.
And I'm excited by it. There's nothing for this one that I'm like, "Oh, I wish I could write that." It is absolutely a Dan story built for Dan. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I won't say anything about it. I want Dan to come on and be able to talk about what's exciting, why he's made the decisions he has. But I'll say this: one of the nice things, we're in a spot where we can do something I never got to do when I was younger. Which is: have an art team do concept art. So Dan can say "I need this," and then the concept art team goes and comes back with twenty different versions of a worldbuilding thing done by three different artists, that he can be like "Oh, this is the one; extrapolate on this." It's actually a lot of fun. Having a concept art team is something that most writers never get to have, and I am really excited to be able to have it.
Heads-up that Horneater might not be involved in the [Words of Radiance leatherbound] Kickstarter. Brandon's writing time is really booked up currently.
How have the Skyward Flight stories affected your writing of Defiant?
They affected them quite a bit. A lot will be spoilers but I already mentioned a couple things. New slugs were discovered, different relationship things happened, the relationships with the other races in the universe have developed, some big events happened. Basically, when I sat down to write it, I couldn't not take these all into account so I just wrote it with no coddling the fact that all of this had happened. My writing group is indicating that maybe I want to give a little bit more--which I'll try to do--for readers to bring them up to speed on what happened. But, y'know, these novellas, we imagined them as side stories but we both like to write things that are epic and expansive and interconnected--
And it grows.
--and it stops being side stories very quickly, once you get a couple of excited authors involved.
Every time we had a conversation the scope grew a little.
That's why they ended up... we say novellas, they were fifty thousand words each.
One of em's fifty.
What are the others?
Sixty.
Did anything else notable happen on Roshar on Taravangian's perfect day?
Yes.
Can you tell me anything about that, or no?
Nope. But I can give you a RAFO card.
If there was enough Investiture available, would a Forger be able to soulstamp lerasium, take it, and then remain a Mistborn after the stamp has worn off?
No, they would not remain a Mistborn. They would be able to do it during the time that they... It would wear off. Because their genetics would change back.
If a Hemalurgic spike loses its charge, does that mean the remaining part of the person's soul trapped will move on to the Beyond?
Yep.
In Dawnshard, when Rysn's looking at the mural, it's exploding the sun into four pieces and then each of them is broken into four from there. Based on this, would it be reasonable to assume four Shards of similar Intent could be able to form like a super-Shard without the issues Sazed is encountering? For example, say Honor, Valor, Mercy, and the last maybe unknown Shard like Wisdom or something like that?
That is a correct line of theorizing.
We have now seen shades across the Cosmere. Please let me know if I'm thinking along the correct line. Is one of the reasons that shades form because their access to the Spiritual Realm has been altered or damaged?
RAFO. You are definitely theorizing along the correct lines. I can't verify the exact mechanism, but you're thinking along the right path.
A lot of the Radiantspren descriptions are in some way similar to the essence described to them.
Yet Truthwatcher spren and Edgedancer spren seem to have switched essences in their descriptions.
Truthwatcher spren have been described as light passing through glass/crystal, yet that is the Edgedancer essence. Similarly, Edgedancer spren have been described as looking like vines, yet plants/pulp are the Truthwatcher essence.
Is this deliberate, or even meaningful?
It's important to remember that the table of the Ten Essences and Their Historical Associations is an in-world document based on the understanding of the people of Roshar. Some parts of it reflect reality more closely than other parts. Some of it attempts to put things in little boxes that resist being constrained to those boxes. Some of it may be essentially irrelevant. And there may also be other associations that exist but are not reflected in the table.
Also, feel free to quote me on this.
We have now seen Midnight Essence on Lumar and as part of the Unmade on Roshar, should we assume that all the other Unmade have connections to Odium’s other conquests like maybe Sja-anat and Ambition?
Midnight Essence is more like Lightweaving in that multiple magic systems will reach the same conclusion. When something is done to the magic to corrupt it, it becomes like Midnight Essence. So while there are similarities between the two and they work the same they may not have the same point of origin.
So there is no meaningful connection between Sja-anat and Ambition?
You weren’t going to let me off the hook. You are theorizing in a very interesting direction. RAFO!
Hadinar, who hangs out with Azure… is he a worldhopper?
Umm… I’m going to go ahead and give you a RAFO card on that. Yeah… RAFO.
The Lost Metal Ars Arcanum calls Hemalurgic decay a thing of the past. The term has been used to describe the loss of power in spikes outside of bodies, as well as the small amount of power that is lost at the moment a spike is created. Which one of those things no longer happens?
The first one, the decay of spikes outside of a body. They have figured out how to make that no longer a thing.
So it's still a thing that happens in the cosmere, they just know how to avoid that completely?
Yes.
We were wondering if you made a conscious choice with Charlie to focus on the lighter parts of his story rather than exploring some of the more tragic elements of his past. Just because if you actually look at it, he hasn't had a great life.
He has not had a great life. So, there's a couple of reasons. Yes, I did. One is - Charlie, as a person, is somebody who is... it's not that he hasn't been touched by these things, he definitely has been. But the person he presents to the world is somebody who is actively deciding to move on as best they can. This is not always a decision, but for Charlie that's a part of his persona. That's how he handles the fact that his father replaced him so easily, sent him off to be killed, and things like this. This is his coping mechanism, is his dramatic optimism. And because of that, it's letting Charlie control his narrative a little bit.
Part of it is the nature of the kind of the story that I was telling. It is not impossible in Hoid's voice (as I do occasionally both in Tress and Yumi) to get into the deeper character stuff, but I want to play those cards wisely, because the natural mocking nature of his narrative could undermine powerful moments if I'm not careful. So I play those cards carefully.
It's those two things kind of mixing together that gets us the lighthearted version of Charlie. That is really how he is, that's not Hoid sugar-coating it, but that is how he processes what's happened to him. Let's just say he's super happy! Where he ended up, maybe... he wants nothing to do with going back to his old life. He's quite pleased with how things played out.
In original Dragonsteel, there is the point where Hoid gets a hold of a Tamu Kek and calls Frost just to kind of prank him. Frost thinks it's an actual devotee praying to him and it turns out it's just Hoid, he's found one, and he's... yeah. That's from 2009 - no, 1999 Dragonsteel. When Dragonsteel Prime comes out you'll be able to read Hoid pranking Frost with a Tamu Kek.
As he would, because he's Hoid.
As he would, yep. He was trying to prove that Frost was a Dragon and Frost was not letting on that he was, he was hanging out as an old dude and turns out Hoid got him.
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.
Originally, Kaladin and Moash were essentially the major darkeyes who were in a position to criticize the nobility and lighteyed culture. Now that Kaladin has kind of (if not emotionally) bought into the system to some extent, by outranking most lighteyes, and Moash has gone full villain, are we going to get another character playing that role of a darkeyed or lower class individual who is critiquing the system?
Yeah, I've been looking at that. One of the questions is whether Lift can justifiably fulfill that role, as someone who considers herself a bit of an outsider even among the Radiants. But let's hang a little bit of a RAFO on that, ask me after you've read book five.
What research about the aethers is Xisis hoarding?
His biggest interest is how aethers break down, and he's really researching the water cycle, and trying to figure out how the seethe happens, because he's very interested in the decomposition of aethers, which is what's causing the seethe. That's what he is hoarding there. He's got quite the establishment in Silverlight as well. Silverlight was once upon a time a bunch of dragon palaces, they all still have their skyscrapers there, basically. He's taking a little detour for some decades on Lumar, but his home base would be in Silverlight.
That kind of answers my follow up question, that was, is his scholarly seclusion typical of dragons, or just something unique to him?
He's taken a bit of seclusion, but I wouldn't say... There's a whole bunch of different things about dragons. If you've got a Tamu Kek, you can contact them, you can pray to them, and they can actually influence your emotions. They're all kind of like little mini gods. They're not immortal immortal, but they're pretty long lived and functionally immortal. They've been around for a while doing all kinds of stuff, so there's all kinds of things going on with them. Some of them will be secluded. Some of them take their duties very seriously, like Frost takes his duties very very very seriously. Other ones just don't care. You will get some themes with dragons, they do like bargains, they do tend to have their interests, they do tend to collect people and have either followers or corporations or things like that--I don't want to go too cyberpunk on us, but yeah. You'll notice some themes the more you get to know them.
I will warn you, in the cosmere, there are more Anne McCaffrey style dragons, lesser dragons if you want, that do not have a human form. The greater dragons, as well call them, they're basically like amphibians, they have to spend a part of their life cycle in a humanoid form. They give birth in humanoid form, then have a transformation in puberty to dragon form, and then can go back and forth after that. But we've got some Anne McCaffrey style dragons, we've even got some little drakelings on one planet that are not six limbed and stuff like that. We'll eventually have some more dragons, but when I was writing the early books in the cosmere, we were a little dragon flooded with Eragon and How to Train Your Dragon, so I didn't write the dragon stories. But maybe some day.
That's fascinating. And also, that means we got our Tamu Kek, which seems to be a theme with these because we always have a Tamu Kek somewhere.
One of the few ways to have an ansible in the cosmere in the early days, pre technology, if you wanted to communicate between planets, this is one of the only ways. Really handy to get a hold of one of those, or to get some seons. Before we get technological solutions, those were your two main ways to communicate across planets.
Stacking and other forms of art, like the TV dramas at the end, attract the spirits, but for some reason, painting doesn't. Could you elaborate on why, and the mechanical reasons behind that?
The painting would. The problem is that the way the painters are doing it, is a little too by-the-numbers. Painter isn't the only one who's just kind of doing it by rote. They have a little bit of... "commodification of art"-commentary going on in this, and things like that. I think the painting could draw the spirits; the painting does at the end. He draws Yumi, right? Which is working under the same mechanics. I think that part of it is proximity, part of it is the mechanical nature of it.
It is kind of in some ways, I think--kind of off the record--drawing the nightmares, as well as painting the nightmares. Because people are doing this, this is part of why the nightmares are finding their way. And it's one of these things that happen so often in life, that the thing that you're doing in order to stop the thing from happening actually causes it to happen more. It's the American football thing, right? We put helmets on people to protect them, which makes them feel more comfortable hitting each other harder, which causes, actually, more injuries than in sports where people are unpadded. And it's one of those kinds of, "And they're painting the nightmares to stop the nightmares but that's also kinda drawing the nightmares."
I do think you could draw the spirits with painting. I just think there's kind of a collection of things--remember, what it took from Yumi to actually, legitimately draw spirits away from the machinery. It took how many centuries of practice on her part? I think it's a combination of all those factors why the paintings aren't quite drawing the spirits. And it did, right? Painter drew the spirits. Now, it's telling that he drew the spirits on the job that he wasn't required to do, because his shift was over, and he could've gone home, and he didn't. He went anyway. And that's the time the spirits noticed him. But they'd been watching him already, anyway. I think, in the chronology, if you actually go and break it down, they talk to Yumi before he actually even saves that child and say, "We've been watching someone, we got somebody for you." But that was kind of the straw that turned the camel into a superhero. I dunno, there's a mixed metaphor for you.
It looks like all my questions this time are going to be about parallels between different things. This one between white sand and sand mastery and some aether stuff. I noticed that are are parallels, the water requirement, there's a bond--the omnibus really stresses that the sand master is forging a bond there--there is the legendary thirteenth aether spore which may be white, may be black, that's a little weird. What's going on here? Has Autonomy corrupted an aether?
RAFO! You are theorizing along the correct lines, Argent, well done.
Will we ever learn anything canonical about the person Luthadel was named after?
Someday, maybe.
It seems there is a special interaction between silver and Investiture, in at least certain places in the Cosmere. We've seen how silver interacts with aethers, and we've seen over on Threnody. So that makes silver the second really really special metal to interact with investiture. Is the plan now to have aluminum block investiture, and silver destroy investiture?
Yeah, that's the way I'm going with it. To make a distinction between them, that's where we're going.
But silver is still non-Allomantic. No silvereyes.
No, non-Allomantic, yup. No silvereyes. This is my nod towards silvereye-ness, and yeah, there we go.
So would [silver] be effective against spren, just like [anti-Investiture]?
Well, you'll have to find out. RAFO!
Can we confirm that Xisis is "Foil," and do all dragons have a nickname?
Yes, all dragons have a nickname. It's very common. And you are allowed to confirm that.
Spores are said to eventually overwhelm a ship's silver defenses. Do aether spores ruin silver like the Shades over in Threnody do?
Yes. It'd take a lot, but yeah. Basically, this is how we have a ship that sinks not destroy the whole ocean.
Can we finally confirm what type of spren is used to create half-shards? Is it Radiant spren, Shardplate spren, or something different?
RAFO! This theoretically should be confirmed in the RPG. We should be giving you all the tools that you need for these sorts of things, including all of the armor spren, all the different brands of Fused, and things like that. The stuff we need so that you can roleplay...
People who are making them?
Yeah. This should all get confirmed in that.
Can you tell us, what is the Command the father machine got in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter?
Yes, I can.
What is it?
RAFO.
It has to be very precise; I'm not going to look it up, it is in my notes. I would say it wrong if I gave it to you right now. It's one of those RAFOs of "Brandon doesn't want to look in his notes because we're in the lightning round."
Staying with Yumi, since we're asking the big questions here. I want to talk about the big machine, the father machine.
Yes.
There are some really interesting what feel like intentional parallels between it and Nightblood.
Yes.
There's smoke involved, there's eating of souls, there's a whole bunch of things. So what I do want to ask is: one, was the father machine Awakened using Breaths, using Nalthian Awakening? Or are you using Awakening as Lightweaving or Bondsmithing which is an overarching system in the Cosmere?
It's the second. This wouldn't exist in the pre-space-age as much; by space age there's a certain terminology that is going between... basically it's starting with the arcanists and moving to the general population. What certain themes in the Cosmere magics mean. And so when Hoid says "this is an Awakened machine" his audience understands what that means. It does not necessarily mean Breaths Awaken, but Breaths are one of the main ways that people see things be Awakened. You should be noticing those parallels, but that's a term that in the Cosmere is becoming genericized to mean un-living object being given some measure of sentience and even sapience by application of Investiture, Commands, and these sorts of things. By this point they've all interacted with various Awakened machines of sorts in the future Cosmere. They know what this means. They've talked to an Awakened computer.
Interesting! Very interesting! That's what I was hoping you would answer. Because Awakening is such a cool term for Awakening an object, right!
One notable difference between the father machine and Nightblood other than them using different magic systems to be Awakened is that the Machine was able to somehow draw people's souls at a distance, which seems EXTREMELY broken to me.
Yeah. I had to let... This is going to be a pretty special circumstance for this book. But yes. It is pretty broken. You wouldn't want this to be... this could be very dangerous in the wrong hands. Don't expect this to be very commonly used in the Cosmere.
Was that a side effect of the magic system that was used to Awaken the machine, or was there something else going on?
This is a side effect of what Virtuosity did and the bit of Virtuosity in all the people allowing the Machine to have enough of a plausible Connection to them to draw upon them.
Ok. Interesting. I will think about this while I pass the ball back to Matt.
Yeah. This is me pushing just a little bit hard on the boundaries of what is possible. It is possible, but it it is pushing further than I normally would on the bounds of what that can do.
Can silver help a spore eater with their condition?
Yeah, it can stab them through the heart with a silver knife so they die. Much better ending. There is potentially an application of silver that could maybe help them, it would not be my first go to. Silver can be pretty destructive.
Why do rat skulls glow on Threnody?
*laughs gleefully* RAFO. There's a pretty good reason, but that's a RAFO. We're gonna do a book on Threnody eventually.
Could the yoki-hijo do other magical effects at some point, other than binding the spirits?
Yes, they definitely could.
If we are looking at very highly Invested beings, we have Yumi, and we are told that she is more Invested than Elantrians, more Invested than Returned. Let's compare Yumi, Elantrians, and Heralds. Who is most Invested, who is least Invested?
Of those, probably Heralds... The thing is, the Heralds varied. How in tune and aligned they are with their oaths, their promise... It wasn't Oaths, but they did promise certain things when they became Heralds. It was pre Knights Radiants, it's not as formalized as Oaths. How in line with the power of Honor, how in line with the kind of natural Investiture of Roshar--which is separate from Honor, Cultivation and Odium--are they, how can they draw upon that. I will call them the least of the three though.
So Heralds on the bottom, and Yumi on top, and Elantrians in the middle?
Yumi on top, but Yumi's very close to an Elantrian. They're within the same conversation. And most of the yoki-hijo were traditionally in the past less, they've gained Investiture over time.
I am fully in Stormlight mode, there is not a lot to tease. We will be doing the Words of Radiance Kickstarter, but like you already know, we pushed that back again. I'm not gonna do another Kickstarter when people are still waiting for their Frugal. I think they've all shipped out, but some people still won't even have received those, I'm not gonna start up a Kickstarter, it just seems a little tone deaf. So we'll be doing that in March, we're coming up with all sorts of fun things for that. You will be able to get Horneater there, you will be able to get a new Sanderson Curiosity, we'll be doing Dragonsteel Prime as part of that.
Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.
What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a one-to-one, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a one-to-one.
But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.
Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.
So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.
In Lost Metal, you had Marasi ultimately reject Kelsier’s offer of joining the Ghostbloods, and I think that's a decision we've seen some division on with the fans. So I'm curious, what’s your analysis and thoughts on that? Because it was an interesting and fun character choice.
Yeah, I'm not surprised there's some division of fans; there was division among the beta readers on this. And there is even—like, I, as I was writing the book, left myself the option to have her join if I wanted her to. I didn't lock myself in in that part of the outline.
My instinct was this isn't a good place for her. And so why…? And then when I got to the end am like, no, this isn't a good place for her. So, you know, Marasi’s journey through the books has been, "how do I change the world?", "how much am I interested in changing the world?", and "how much do I change the world?". Kind of in conversation with the dreams that she had as a younger person and the reality that she's now living?
And one of the things I wanted to deal with in this book was this idea that she is kind of worried that she's just— she's becoming a cop, with all that that entails, right? That there's a culture to that and whatnot. And should she be doing more? And all of that. And so that did lead a lot toward the whole Ghostbloods thing, right? And I expected a lot of people to be like, "Oh, yeah, well, here's the easy answer."
The problem is Kelsier is just such a terrible match to Marasi, right? Like personality-wise, you know, Kelsier is about the shadows. He honestly believes that if all the information were known that it would be worse for the world. He can share it in a small group. And he's got this sort of "I need to take care of people and I need to do it my way" sort of philosophy, which is really antithetical to somebody like Marasi, who, you know, her whole thing is "we need to be better as a society, not as individuals, and we need to be—". And so I at the end decided this is just a really bad place for her, right?
But she needed a place. Actually, the first draft of the book, I didn't have her make the decision to go into politics. She had rejected politics in the first book, right? She’s like, "I'm not going that way, that’s not that's not for me." And I went double back on that. I'm like, no, this is probably the right route for her, which is nice because like, it it kind of snapped together for me at that point when I did the revision to be like, no, she does need something. If she's going to turn down Kelsier, she needs something.
You know, you will have some fun in Era 3. Era 3, I don't know…? I warned you I might spoil unwritten books… Have I said this? I might have said this—you guys will know—Era 3’s working title for the series is Ghostbloods, right? And so like you know Mistborn: Ghostbloods is what Era 3 is going to be called, most likely. So if you were sad, well, just remember if Marasi joined the Ghostbloods we're still skipping decades. You would not have been able to see her as a member of the Ghostbloods. But that's what the name of the next series is going to be.
I want to ask you about my favorite character, Kelsier! Which is a controversial opinion but I hold to it. In Secret History, when he steals that orb from the Ire, is that orb full of purified Dor? Is that the first time we see that?
That is the first time we see that.
I guess this kind of answers this question a bit, that you have more planned for the Ghostbloods in the future, but in followup to that, we were wondering... you also have Shallan reject the Ghostbloods in Rhythm of War, which was published right before. So did that play into the decision at all. Were you trying to approach the same arc from a different angle or was it more just the characters?
No, this was just the individual characters and what they need, so no. In my head, Marasi walking away from an offer is very different from Shallan declaring war. There will be lots of fun with that in upcoming books, lets just say that.
Kind of a similar question about the Midnight Essence, now that we have seen that crop up in Tress as well as in Stormlight Archive. Is something similar happening with the Midnight Essence? We have also the nightmares, in Yumi, that appear similar, they're also mimicking things.
So, there's a couple of things getting interwoven here. The actual idea of Midnight Essence is a concept like Lightweaving that predates the Shattering of Adonalsium, that various magic systems are basically "borrowing" a law of the cosmere and creating a parallel effect from the same basis, if that makes any sense.
Yumi is a little distinct from that. It's feeling similar; I would not call it true Midnight Essence. It's an awful lot more like a Lightweaving that has--because Lightweavings can have mass to them, because investiture can have mass to it--so you're looking a little bit more like... imagine a bunch of Stormlight becoming tangible, you can touch it, because of a powerful Lightweaving or something like that. Of course, these things all bleed together because I'm using the same fundamental principles to make them. But, for me, Midnight Essence has this personality that comes prefixed. What the Midnight Mother is making, what you're seeing in the Midnight Sea and things like this, you're gonna get some similar personalities to these things, and not necessarily the same with the nightmares.
So it's more of a autonomous-- a Lightweaving that's become autonomous and has kind of broken down a bit?
Yeah... the problem is it's also got the Cognitive Shadow, right? It's a really invested Cognitive Shadow that is borrowing this Investiture to interact with the world. Because these are their shadows; these are their Cognitive Shadows, all of these people's Cognitive Shadows. But the power is not themselves. Remember, a Cognitive Shadow is a little bit like a fossil, like Vasher describes it. You've got this pattern there, and then the power kind of makes it manifest and be able to interact, and things like that. And, when that personality asserts itself with that power in the right place, you end up with a person that is the shadow running it. But at the same time, you've got this mass of power and energy that the machine is kind of controlling, which pulls back and overrides the personality sometimes. You've got a very weird set of circumstances going on here.
But it was very fun to figure out all the backstory and the behind on it, and get it all working. This one was a little complex, to get these things all working behind the scenes. I like how they turned out. Yumi, if you dig into it, it has both pluses and minuses. The minuses is - from the beta readers and the alpha readers - the ending for non-arcanists was really overwhelming, which is why we have those Hoid scenes where he's like, "Okay, let me explain." It seems pretty obvious, I would expect that this is, like, "Alright, Brandon needs to do better explanations, Hoid's just gonna do it." But, because of all the work I did behind the scenes on Yumi, Yumi matches kind of cosmerological magic system stuff in ways that a lot of the side projects that I do just don't. Yumi is very deeply intertwined and following all of these processes in a way that works really well for me. But it also gets you into where you start to need a master's degree in the cosmere to figure it all out, which is why to make it easier, we have Hoid just spell it out for people. It is a little clunky; I prefer the clunkiness to the previous version where you needed a master's degree in the cosmere to understand even what was going on.
We only know the people of Komashi as having Investiture from Virtuosity, why does their Investiture seem to be split into the two streams of power known as hion? Is this something unique to Virtuosity as a Shard, or just how it happens to manifest on Komashi?
Yes. This will be a theme you will see wherever Virtuosity is involved. So yeah. hmmmmm interesting. This will be a theme. There is a sub theme to this in the Cosmere. The Push and Pull. The opposites should be echoing through the magic systems. It is more expressed in Virtuosity than the others but do keep in mind that the Yin Yang sort of thing is there in the Cosmere as well in the general magic system, but more pronounced with Virtuosity, shall we say.
