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You have said AonDor comes from something analogous to a Nahel bond. What is an Elantrian specifically bonded to? The Cognitive aspect of Arelon? The Dor overall? Etc.
It's not exactly that, but that's the right way to be thinking.
How accurate would it be to say that Allomancy is granted by a Nahel bond to Preservation?
Different kind of bond. Different mechanics.
If a person who could use Stormlight went to the world of Mistborn, would they still have the same strength? Would the distance from the god depend on it?
The only one that the distance matters is Elantris because of the power being trapped in the Cognitive Realm makes distance important. The thing is, you would need to get Stormlight.
Or like Mistborn, they would have the same type of strength?
It's a lot easier for Allomancers to move between planets than the others just because it's harder to get stormlight because it runs out. It's harder to get the sand unless you can find some kinetic investiture to recharge it. I would say the easiest to travel is Mistborn. Sandmaster is probably second easiest, then it gets a little hard from there. I guess, it depends, you can just carry the Breath with you. That works just fine. Getting new Breath, though... There's a lot of different variables going on there.
What are dragons like?
In the Cosmere? They are sneaky and long-lived.
Will they have wings?
They do have wings, depending on what form they're in. They are natural shapeshifters.
Are they Cognitive Shadows or are they people?
They are people.
"Deadeyes can't make choices," Notum said. "They don't have the presence of mind for it. I know this personally; my own father is a dead eye, cared for in the fortress now."
Third listen of the book, and I only just clocked that. I was under the impression that every single honorspren at the time of the Recreance became a deadeye, and that all currently conscious one's were descended from those the Stormfather made later (aside from the Ancient Daughter). How in the world can Notum's father be a deadeye without him being one too?
We became aware of this error sometime in the past year. Turns out Brandon momentarily confused Notum with the Reacher ship captain, who does have a deadeye father. The line will be changed eventually.
In Oathbringer we have an example of a different form of magic on Roshar, like when Hoid uses Breaths to perform...
Yes, Hoid has used both Breaths and Allomancy on screen in the Stormlight books.
Is this made possible through the Connection of Shadesmar and the Cognitive Realm?
Yeah, you can bring almost all the magic to any other planet, no problem. The only one that there's a problem with is AonDor but that has specifically to do with the way the AonDor works.
So hypothetically, could you see someone from Roshar become a Mistborn?
That would require Hemalurgy. Could happen. A lot of times, where you were born, with a lot of these magics, is having a big influence on your spiritual make up. But it would require Hemalurgy, or there are ways to get around it. You could become mechanically a Mistborn. That's probably not a phrase we want to canonize. You could use, for instance, some of the tools in Era 2.
Do you have a name for the division or the veil between realms? Like what separates the Cognitive from the Spiritual from the Physical?
I’ve had like three of four different names, and I don't think I've settled on one yet.
*in response to a discussion about RAFOs* There was the one about what painspren look like.
Yeah, what do painspren look like on the Cognitive Realm.
That's a RAFO.
That's a RAFO because it is actually relevant to future stories.
It'll be important.
Not that it's a big deal, but I got to hold some stuff back.
I've been thinking about possession within the Cosmere - is it possible for beings (dead, alive, or inbetween) to possess other beings in the Cosmere? Allomantic control over spiked creatures, and the existence of the Lifeless are both close to the idea, but neither is quite what I've been trying to imagine. I think I am looking more into whether one being's cognitive (and/or spiritual) aspect can fully replace (temporarily or permanently) another's. I imagine the victim would natively fight this, similarly to how Rashek's spiritual aspect resisted his anti-aging trick, but... is such a thing possible?
This is possible. (There are places where you've already seen the process either begin, or work partially.)
Are you talking about Ruin/Harmony controlling Hemalurgic Constructs and Odium controlling Voidbringers... or is there something else?
You will see soon.
Would Hoid be able to harm a Herald or a Cognitive Shadow?
Um, so, he is curious about this too. I don't know if I should canonize this. Let's say: odds are, no. Cosmere scholars would guess no.
How was Jasnah able to teleport into the [Cognitive] Realm when she didn't seem to have any Stormlight in her in Words of Radiance?
She had enough.
She had enough.
Yeah.
And is it just teleportation-- *interrupted*
Let's say... Jasnah's figured out some things that others haven't figured out, for one thing. *brief interruption* And, let's say that. But also, there's a little scene from it I wrote from her viewpoint just to know what was happening that's never going in the books. If you Google "Jasnah deleted scene Words of Radiance" you can read it. It talks about how she did what she did.
Oh good.
So that is out there. Just-- It was my reference for writing the scene. But-- One of her powers is called Elsecalling, which is basically popping in and out of Shadesmar more easily. It's hard for everyone else to do that.
My other question is, so when Shallan was on the land she was in the sea in Shadesmar.
Yes.
Is it exactly opposite?
Yeah, it's mirrored... Um... It's mirrored, yeah.
So any land is on sea. So she would have actually landed on land on the ocean.
Yeah... so... yes...
She kind of *inaudible*
Well that's, no for Jasnah that's... *interrupted*
Oh yeah yeah, Jasnah... In that scene where you see? She pops out in Shadesmar on the land.
So, was the scene at the end right as soon as that happened?
What the-- no, no, no. She spent months trying to get back out.
Oh, because she doesn't have the power to get back out.
Much harder to get back out.
*inaudible* trying to get back out, because she doesn't have any more Stormlight.
Yep. Much harder to get back out than it is to get back in even if you have Stormlight, and she is out of Stormlight, so...
Your magic systems are very structured, and specific rules that dominate them. But are there any universal laws that apply to all of the magic systems in the cosmere together?
Yes, there's several of them. Basically, the most important one and relevant to people who enjoy real physics is that I consider something called Investiture to be a third state of matter and energy. So, instead of e=mc^2, we have a third thing, Investiture, in there. And you can change Investiture to matter or to energy. And so, because of that, that law that you can do this, is where we see a lot of the cosmere magics living.
We also have a kind of rule that beings all exist, everything exists on three different levels. The Physical, the Spiritual, and the Cognitive. And, like we have DNA for our Physical self, we also have Mental DNA and Spiritual DNA, and all three influence one another. For instance, you couldn't test an Allomancer's blood and find the Allomancy gene, because it is in a different set of their DNA. You just have three sets. You could compose a test that could test it on the Spiritual Realm, but you're gonna have to use a different branch of physics to do that and determine who was an Allomancer. And so they all work on this kind of fundamental rules of: your Identity, your Connection, and being part of your soul, and the magics working through those things.
So there's some fundamental rules about this, about changing forms from energy to matter, and you having this Identity, Investiture, and Connection stored in your Spiritual DNA that are really relevant to everything.
When someone dies on Nalthis, their Breaths: go away with the soul, or remain in the corpse?
Breaths return to Endowment.
Together with the soul? Or remain in the corpse?
The soul--
Passes away?
Yes, unless it turns into a Cognitive Shadow. Then, the soul goes into the Beyond. And so the actual essence of the soul, the Investiture of it, does return to Endowment.
Ah, so Azir has a larger population density, at least. Cosmere-wise, is Elendel the largest, or could say, T'Telir match it?
Azir has a large population density. Cosmere-wise, though, Eldendel is by far the largest. Though I don't have strict population numbers on places like Silverlight. (Which, for years, I assumed I'd have to rename--but I think the program Silverlight is dead, so I can go back to calling the city that.)
And of course, what exactly is Silverlight? I don't think I've ever heard of it before. A Threnodian city?
Silverlight is mentioned in the Cosmere collection, I believe, in one of the essays. It's a city somewhere in the cosmere, with some relevance you will discover eventually.
Is Silverlight the city that exists in the Cognitive Realm, in an area corresponding to deep space in the Physical? And if that's the RAFO I expect it is, will we see an answer in Arcanum Unbounded?
RAFO.
I believe it's referenced in Unbounded, but I can't remember if I cut it or not. (I have been touchy about mentioning the place since Microsoft took the name in 06 or whenever it was.)
This one will remain a mystery for a while.
What perspective is this constellation map seen/drawn from? Somebody from an earlier signing in this tour said they spoke with you about this, and you mentioned Silverlight, but not exactly... I got the impression that your reply wasn't transcribed verbatim Can you address the perspective issue here? We now know that Silverlight is in the Cognitive Realm (where the stars don't necessarily match their physical arrangement, if they are visible at all), so if you worried about accidentally revealing that earlier, it's no longer an issue.
The map was created to reside in Silverlight and represents a partial view of the night sky from a point we have not yet revealed. So, no, this is not a view of the night sky from Silverlight. This is a mural painted for a patron whose travels have taken them far far afield.
Quesion about Selish magic systems. So, you've described, in the past, the Dor in the Cognitive Realm as being almost like magma. Is that just in consistency, or also does that also include in its temperature?
No, it's more temperature than consistency. Plasma-ish is maybe even a better way of putting it.
Is a Shard's influence of power based on Physical distance, Cognitive distance, something else, or does it vary from Shard to Shard?
It varies, but is definitely more Physical.
Request that Brandon write a clue to the nature of the cosmere, specifically Realmatic theory.
Entities exist on all three realms that are only vaguely shadowed on the other realms.
You have seen entities who exist primarily on the Cognitive Realm + are shadowed on the Physical.
Would a Feruchemist actively storing Identity be more susceptible to Forgery? Would more outlandish changes be able to take effect? Thanks for your time, and have a wonderful day.
Yes, if you store Identity, it makes you susceptible to ALL KINDS of things in the Cosmere. Forgery would be on the short list.
Does the difficulty of affecting metals in a body with Allomancy have to do with Identity?
No, more to do with the fact that most people are innately Invested in the Cosmere--and certain planets have extra Investiture. Something Invested is more difficult to transform/move/etc with another form of Investiture.
That is what I had originally thought before you capitalized "ALL KINDS." Is Soulcasting people like Jasnah Kholin did doubly hard since people a have a strong sense of Identity and have innate Investiture?
We're getting a bit far on this course, so it's time to pull out the RAFOs. I don't want to overplay my hand and leave the books without anything to talk about. :)
Does that 'inside a body' thing work on most magics?
For instance, if Han stuck Luke into a Mistborn Tauntaun (a distant and unlucky relative of the mistborn llama), would Luke be protected from both the cold and emotional allomancy?
He'd have to get him inside a living one.
It does work on most magics, though the interactions can be odd unless you know a lot about the workings. Emotional Allomancy, for example, works by lapping against the outsides of someone's cognitive self, influencing you the way music might stir your soul. So being inside a living body wouldn't necessarily stop it--you'd just have more interference. Kind of like how you can still hear music outside if it's loud enough.
Actual mind control in the cosmere requires you to get INSIDE the soul, which you've seen happen frequently enough. There has to be a gap or an opening.
Or, conversely, you just have to be so powerful that you can push through the interference.
A character in The Stormlight Archive who eventually was able to heal of a wound. An old wound, and normally healing old wounds, with Regrowth, can't be healed.
This is a limitation of healing someone else, versus healing yourself. Healing someone else is a weaker method, at least as it's understood by the Radiants currently. Figuring out how to make Regrowth fix older wounds is more difficult. When you are highly Invested in such a way that you have a spren bond, then you are able to kind of rewrite your Spiritual self to better match your Cognitive self. Basically, what your soul is better comes to match your perception of your soul and who you are, and who you want to be becomes more important. And because of that, the Radiant bond is able to heal things and even change physiology that normal Regrowth wouldn't be capable of doing.
I have a specific question about one Perpendicularity, on First of the Sun. You've mentioned that it's dangerous.
Yes.
Is that because there are predators that can sense your thoughts, that can sense your presence in the Cognitive Realm as you're travelling across the Perpendicularity before you cross over--
That's a Read And Find Out.
Is Dalinar Unity because he's the combination of all three Shards, through the Thrill, the boon and curse, and the Stormfather?
So, I'm leaving that as a RAFO, Read and Find Out, but that's a very good theory.
Which Bondsmith spren would you each have?
Emily's in charge of facilities, so a building spren makes a lot of sense for her. I might be more Nightwatcher than Stormfather, with kind of the things that I do.
We know that finer gemstones like the King's Drop can hold Stormlight longer and encases other things that I won't say because of spoilers. Is that because of the craftsmanship, connecting their Identity in the Cognitive Realm?
Excellent question. "You can hold Stormlight in gemstones, and the more perfect a gemstone the more Stormlight it'll hold. Is the craftsmanship required to create it part of the reason why?" And no, it's actually the crystalline structure. Fewer flaws in the crystalline structure means fewer places for the Stormlight to wiggle out.
Do gemstones exist naturally on Roshar? Or are they all gemhearts?
Yes, but you gotta dig through lots of layers of cremstone to get to them, so most of the time you're getting them from gemhearts.
My understanding of the... spren is that they grant powers based on what they understand to be fundamental? Ish?
Ish. I wouldn't 100% go with that. I would say these are the fundamental forces-- They aren't as scientific as our fundamental forces, but I would say it's more than just what the spren view and what the humans view in that case. But they are more philosophical than scientific, in cases.
Other cognitive beings, could they-- A spren on Earth. Would it grant electromagnetism surge, for example?
That, I would say yes.
After people die, in this universe, where exactly do they go? Because, at first they appear in this one world, and then they go somewhere else.
So where do people go when they die. *laughter* In the cosmere. One of the things that's very important to me as a writer, when I am writing stories, is when we get to these kind of fundamental questions about faith and religion and things like this, that the narrative is allowing multiple characters' viewpoints to be plausibly true, if this makes sense. For instance, I am not gonna come out and say, "Is there a capital-G God of the cosmere, is there an afterlife?" These are not questions I'm gonna answer, because in-world, they can't answer them. What they can say is, your Investiture will leave what we call a Cognitive Shadow, which is an imprint of your personality that can do certain things. And that most of those fade away, and you can see them, glimpse them, and then watch them go. But, are they going somewhere? Or are they not? Is that simply the Investiture being reclaimed, Is it more of a Buddhist thought, where your soul is getting recycled and used again? Is it nothing, you return to, you know, being-- yeah, is it a different type of matter? Or is there a Beyond, is there a capital-G God? Things like this. These questions are not answered. I'm never gonna answer those.
Now, the characters will try to answer them. But it's important to me that both Dalinar and Jasnah can exist in the same universe, and that the story is not saying "This one is right, and this one is wrong." The story is saying "This is how this one sees the world; this is how this one sees the world." It's very important to me from the beginning to do that, just because-- Like, I hate reading a book where someone espouses my viewpoint only to get proven wrong by the entire structure of the narrative, and in that universe, that person is wrong. But I'm like, "In our universe, I don't think that I am. Just the way you constructed everything makes it so that I have to be wrong, if I were living in your universe, even if it's a universe that's not a sci-fi/fantasy one." If that makes sense.
This is just kind of for respecting my characters and for the people who hold the viewpoints of my characters, in particular if they happen to be different from my own viewpoints. I feel there are certain lines I'm not gonna cross.
So, the answer is: who do you believe? Which of the philosophies in the books do you look at and say "Yeah!" Or, even better: listen to lots of different ones, and maybe these different viewpoints are all gonna have interesting points that'll give you things to think upon.
Where does Syl go when she's not with Kaladin?
She frequently goes many places, wherever she desires. But she originally is from the Cognitive Realm, so Shadesmar. There is something going on there.
When she [Shallan] Soulcasts, does she physically go? Or does she just think?
She transitions into the Cognitive Realm… Yeah she transitions but she’s not a hundred percent there…
Then does Jasnah’s… does she work the same way?
She goes completely over. That’s one of the differences between their magics. Shallan could get there if she wanted to, she hasn’t so far completely transitioned.
Even during regular Soulcasting, for both of them?
Oh for regular Soulcasting Jasnah doesn’t either.
‘Cause we were talking about the scene with the ship and Shallan. So would an outside observer see her shift over or—
The outside observer would see weirdness happening for sure.
I don’t know if this has been discussed any wear before, but I can’t get this idea out of my mind that a massive influx of stormlight due to the rediscovering of shadesmar by the common person through the oath gates will cause inflation to skyrocket in shadesmar cities. This does not even account for the war that is also likely to absorb a lot of resources in the cognitive realm, further increasing the scarcity of certain materials, which would only drive prices higher due to the low of supply and demand. I’m just curious if this would even happen based off of the unique qualities of trade in shadesmar (items can just disappear, and money can too if it’s not in the right gem), but it would seem that it would based off of my current understanding of economic theory.
Is this something you are able to talk about?
Not yet, as it's something I don't want to dig in to too much yet. Consider it a RAFO for now.
Would a stick like this [that looks like a burning torch] be more prone to soulcasting into fire because of the cognitive association?
It would be, actually. For the same reason that it's easier to Awaken a piece of cloth cut into the shape of a person.
Will we see the fate of Adonalsium's Cognitive Shadow?
RAFO. I won't even establish if there is one. Good question, but I will not say yes or no to even if one exists.
In Mistborn 5, Shadows of Self, Wax chases Bleeder into the mist after the party where she was speaking in his mind to taunt him. As Wax jumps into the mist to follow, he has an internal monologue thinking about Vin. He says he can see her vaguely within the mist.
"Slight of frame, short hair splayed out as she moved, mistcloak fluttering behind her. It was a fancy, wasn't it?"
Has the mist become a self aware Splinter of Harmony similar to how the Stormfather operated with Honor? Also, since the mist "tuned" Vin to be able to take the Shard of Preservation, does the mist remember Vin in some form? And is it still connected to her similar to how a Returned is connected to their former self?
You're making some excellent theories here; I'm not sure if I want to stamp any of them out. I like where you're going on this. I will say that this is related to where, if you read in Words of Radiance, you will see odd things sometimes happen with Investiture. There is a scene (that I don't think a lot of people pick up on) where Syl is responding to Connection threads being built and is looking different than she should look and things like this. We're looking more at the Spiritual Realm and Spirit Webs and Connections and things like that. Not to stamp out any of your theories, but also to kind of direct you—often times when I'm writing pure Investiture or beings of Investiture, they respond to echoes in the Spiritual Realm. And like I said, you'll see this in Syl sometimes.
I'll leave it there. Continue theorizing but go that direction.
Could you Invest... Could you use a nicrosil metalmind to Invest the sort of Investiture enough that you could open a Perpendicularity up to the Cognitive Realm?
So, I'll just say it this way. Enough concentrated Investiture in one point is going to pierce the Realms, no matter what form it takes.
...So, it doesn't have to be a nicrosil metalmind.
No.
Okay... But it could be?
Yes. That is theoretically possible.
Are spren Cognitive aspects?
:) You guys are figuring this all out pretty well. I want to hold off on talking much about the nature of the spren because the characters in-world are discovering this as the books progress.
Did the Physical, Spiritual, and Cognitive Realms exist before Adonalsium split?
They did. In fact, if you can ever get a hold of Dragonsteel, (Which I don't let a lot of people read because it's got big spoilers and it doesn't really work anymore. It was one of the early books I wrote. It is the prelude to the Cosmere.) the opening chapters are in a classroom where someone is learning about the three aspects. So, yeah.
Can you tell us about Transportation? Is it like gates from Wheel of Time?
Oh, Elsecalling? No. But-- but yes.
*laughter* I meant, like, the whole-- Just the Surge?
Does it go to the Cognitive Realm, is that all it does?
It is the power by which they created the Oathgates... So, there is a little more to it than that. But yes, it's basically-- yeah.
Adhesion allows you to bind things together.
Gravitation allows you to change the direction and strength of an object's gravitational attraction, including that of yourself, which essentially gives you the power of flight.
Division allows you to manipulate the rate an object decays.
Abrasion allows you to make objects, including yourself, frictionless.
Progression and Regrowth allows you to heal organisms and alter their growth.
Illumination allows you to create illusions.
Transformation allows you to soulcast objects from one material into another.
Transportation allows you to travel between the Cognitive and Physical realms.
Cohesion allows you to alter the shape of solid objects.
Tension allows you to alter the stiffness of objects.
Who's telling "Unite Them" to Dalinar because it's obviously not Stormfather nor Honor because he's hearing it even outside of the visions, right?
He is hearing that, that is a RAFO. You can have a RAFO card.
TenSoon wonders, and I wonder too- How can kandra think and be sentient without brains? Doesn't the body need a physical coordinator to relay between the Physical and Cognitive realm? Or do the spikes do a good enough job with that?
I imagine kandra having a non-centralized nervous system, with brain power spread through their bodies. Well, non-centralized is probably the wrong way to say it. They have lobes of thought and memory attached to muscles here and there, and don't have a single 'brain.' They certainly have brain-like material, though.
Is the only reason that Yolen is not reachable, according to Khriss, because it doesn’t have any sentient minds on it thinking of it as a planet, so it doesn’t appear in the Cognitive?
Ahh, no. Good question, but no.
I remember reading a WoB about which of your characters you'd invite to dinner (of which Hoid and Kelsier were two) and you said the both of them have a bit of a problem with each other. Is it anything major and when did this problem happen? (Have they also seen each other again now Kelsier's a cognitive shadow?)
Big RAFO.
Lightsong's personality is very different than Stennimar's. If the Returned are their previous lives--Cognitive Shadows as you've said before, just stapled with Divine Breath--where do their new personalities come from?
My argument there is when I was writing him, getting into a kind of writer-thing, this is the person he would have become... My philosophy there was, the way that the Returned happen, and you losing your memories, it comes down to this nature versus nurture thing for me. The personality-- He is the same person, but with certain life experiences removed. Different circumstances. And in his case, that resulted in, let's say, a secondary mode of personality that had never been encouraged before.
Just like how, you put me in the right situation I'm an extrovert, but in a lot of situations I'm an introvert. So you remove a lot of the cultural conditioning and that is who he becomes.
You have mentioned before that there are several groups on Roshar who have Parshendi blood, like the Horneaters, but are there any that have Aimian blood? And are Aimian's more beings of the cognitive realm than humans and listeners, since their shadows go towards the sun?
What Rosharans call Aimians are two different races, neither of which is particularly human, despite how they may look. More will be revealed eventually.
We started out in the earlier books knowing that there's this Hoid guy, he's a worldhopper. Hey, worldhoppers exist. And then we've kind of been given more and more. In Secret History it said you'd be surprised about the economy you've upended by destroying the perpedicularity. what amount of people are travelling between worlds? Hundreds? Thousands? Billions?
...Thousands.
Is it like vacation? Or is it like...
Well, I wouldn't call it--
Is it the frontier? Or is it from where you could go?
It depends on the roadway. Let's say you look at frontier era America. How hard was it to get to England? It was really far away, but it was actually relatively safe and common to do this. How difficult was it to get to Boise, Idaho? That's harder, but you know how to do it. How easy was it to get to, let's say, the Hawaiian Islands? You're starting to get into like, the question comes here, certain pathways are more traveled. There are going to be caravans, there are going to be guides. There are going to be safe travels between certain places that are done commonly enough that if you are in the know and are in the right place you can be like "I wanna buy passage here." And you go there, and you can have a reasonable expectation that you're going to make it to where you're going.
Other places, you say, "I wanna go here", and they're like, "Yeah, I've known someone who tried that and they never came back. I'm not taking you." So, where you're going, where you're trafficking, Khriss gives you some indications of which ones are easy to get to and which ones are commonly visited. I would recommend that if you want to go on vacation in the cosmere, like, "I want to go somewhere different," go to Nalthis. Go to Nalthis. Nalthis is great to go to, right? They even have customs that you can go through. You can like, arrive, and things like this. Don't go to Sel. Sel is not good to go to. Sel is really dangerous to go to. There's a dead Shard--two of them--in the Cognitive Realm that will destroy you. Other places, Scadrial, used to be a lot easier to get to. Roshar, depends on which era you're talking about. Sometimes it's pretty easy to go to. Those nice Horneaters will treat you like a god and feed you food. However, right now, it might not be a good time to try to visit Roshar.
Do the Fused still require a bond with a spren for maintaining a form/full sapience, or does the Investiture that makes them Cognitive Shadows fulfill that requirement?
They do not require a bond with a spren, so yes, the Investiture handles all of that.
Allomancy is fueled by Preservation's body? How exactly does that work? And how does that interact with Atium—it's fueled by both gods' bodies?
The powers of Ruin and Preservation are Shards of Adonalsium, pieces of the power of creation itself. Allomancy, Hemalurgy, Feruchemy are manifestations of this power in mortal form, the ability to touch the powers of creation and use them. These metallic powers are how people's physical forms interpret the use of the Shard, though it's not the only possible way they could be interpreted or used. It's what the genetics and Realmatic interactions of Scadrial allow for, and has to do with the Spiritual, the Cognitive, and the Physical Realms.
Condensed 'essence' of these godly powers can act as super-fuel for Allomancy, Feruchemy, or really any of the powers. The form of that super fuel is important. In liquid form it's most potent, in gas form it's able to fuel Allomancy as if working as a metal. In physical form it is rigid and does one specific thing. In the case of atium, it allows sight into the future. In the case of concentrated Preservation, it gives one a permanent connection to the mists and the powers of creation. (I.e., it makes them an Allomancer.)
So when a person is burning metals, they aren't using Preservation's body as a fuel so to speak—though they are tapping into the powers of creation just slightly. When Vin burns the mists, however, she'd doing just that—using the essence of Preservation, the Shard of Adonalsium itself—to fuel Allomancy. Doing this, however, rips 'troughs' through her body. It's like forcing far too much pressure through a very small, fragile hose. That much power eventually vaporizes the corporeal host, which is acting as the block and forcing the power into a single type of conduit (Allomancy) and frees it to be more expansive.
In Secret History, outside of Fadrex City, Kelsier was in the Cognitive and Hoid was in the Physical. Kelsier touched Hoid and got hurt. How did that happen and was it intentional?
RAFO.
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.
Is the key to the [Oathgates] dead spren?
*dry laughter* That’s an excellent question, you will actually find out a lot more about the Oathgates when you see them from the cognitive side.
If there only existed a single atom in the cosmere, would that atom have a Cognitive aspect?
Yes, it probably would.
When you kill someone to create a Hemalurgic spike, does their soul appear in the Cognitive Realm when they die or is it trapped in the spike?
Weird, kind of creepy stuff happens. You're not getting the whole soul, you're getting a piece of it. I'll leave you with that.
