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I've seen online, but I haven't been able to find an actual confirmation. In Way of Kings, it describes Shin Warriors as being bought and sold by means of small stones. Are those Oathstones?
Those are very similar to Oathstones indeed. You will find out a lot more. But yes, you're on the right track.
Talking about physics and cosmere... Is the gravity on each planet the same as on Earth? It shouldn't.
And if it isn't? How does the changes affect things like Coinshoting or Surges out of Scadrial/Roshar?
They are not all the same. And you'll have to wait and see on how that affects things. :)
When I spoke with EUOL he was pretty firm on the overarching shards books being 36 in number. I had actually asked him about Hoid's connection with White Sand as I had noticed something during his story. (Those of you who have read the preliminary White Sand will see the connection.)
He also mentioned that he has a diagram of how the books relate to each other and the shards. He said that he may eventually publish it so we can see the connections, but that many more books would have to be written first.
In Elantris, did the Hoed actually die when they entered the pool?
Now THAT is the question people should be asking.
Is Jasnah ever going to find true love?
I'm not going to answer that.
Are birds native to Roshar?
Birds are not native to Roshar.
...Did they come over with the initial humans?
They did. The humans brought them over, along with a lot of other beasts. Like, horses aren't native to Roshar either. You can tell pretty easily the non-native things. Like, Roshar doesn't have any grapes. So the word wine got genericized in the same the way that the word chicken did. You'll see bunches of that. Like the way the weather works. Roshar does not have weather patterns like Ashyn did. They're used to seasons. Suddenly, the words for the seasons, all these weird things that you may have been wondering through the first couple of books, you're like, "Oh I see why they just call hard alcohol a wine," or, "I see why they call everything a chicken." It's kind of related to this.
In the <third Stormlight book>, are we going to learn more about the Ghostbloods, and about the organization Mraize is in?
Yes, and yes.
The Way of Kings serves mostly as an introduction to the world of The Stormlight Archives but only hints at the larger story arc. With the long wait before Book 2, can you provide hungry fans with any teasers?
What Jasnah is trying to do in this book becomes very important to the next two books. That's a very big teaser. The second book will delve much more deeply into the magic; particularly, Shadesmar will be much more of an important aspect. I don't want to give spoilers.
A lot more magic. I'm telling the story about the awakening of an Age of Legends-style world of mechanical magic, and you can look forward to seeing a lot more of that. We only hint at it here. A very important discovery was made by some characters in a random interlude that will have long-lasting ramifications.
I felt the illustrations added a lot to the book physically and to the story. Will there be more in book two and so on if you have your way or was it a one book experiment?
I'm glad you like what the illustrations added to the book and the story. I plan future volumes to have more of them.
Can any person absorb a Shard? Or do they have to be somewhat "magical"? (Like Vin and SazeD)
One does not have to be somewhat magical, so to speak, but it does help.
Was there a teacher who inspired any of you?
Yes. The teacher who handed me my first fantasy novel was a fantastic teacher. And she is part of why I'm writing right now. The thing is, teaching writing, it's hard to do. And I don't know... you can motivate people. But teaching people how to write? You've gotta get them writing yourself. And I think the best teachers motivate you to do it yourself. That was what I was trying to say, when I said "High school teachers can't teach writing." What I'm trying to say is, you need to be reading and writing yourself. The teacher can only do so much. They can inspire you, but they can't teach you to do it. You've gotta do it yourself.
Would you consider or have you considered romantic relationships between spren and humans?
That's a RAFO.
if Kelsier were to take the shard Odium, how terrifying and dangerous would he be?
I could see Kelsier being very dangerous with Odium. His hatred of certain groups of people would lead him down bad paths.
I know you're doing a lot of sequels, and stuff like that, like other worlds. Are there gonna be any books about new worlds?
Yes, there are still a few major worlds important to the sequence that I need to squeeze in somewhere.
Why don't you have to say the words if you're just bonding a Cryptic?
Every Order's First Oath is the same. Then the Second Oaths for the Cryptics go into truths, but everybody says the First Oath the same regardless of Order. Which should raise the question of--
Did Shallan say it when she was a teeny-weeny, like in the cradle?
That should raise a question. She wasn't teeny-weeny, but it should raise a question there.
Your languages in Stormlight, do you have a way you do names and such?
Usually there's two different ways that I approach it. If I'm going to spend a lot of time in the linguistics, I'll look for linguistic themes like in Stormlight it's names that are symmetrical or things like that. If I need to shortcut, I'm going to look for an Earth culture and I'm going to use the language kind of based on more themes from that culture and the sounds they have and try to replicate that but not using the actual words from that culture.
Okay, next question. The Hemalurgic bind points for the right and left eyes - are they the same?
In terms of...?
Like, the Inquisitor spikes, is it the exact same process for either eye? Is it interchangeable?
They're slightly different.
And on bind points... are these something that we could figure out ourselves one day, through analysis and guessing? Or is it something we'll just have to wait and see?
They're... it would be a lot of trial and error, but it's... possible? And you need Intent, so... it would be a lot of trial and error. It wouldn't be easy. Probably not.
Chapter Thirty-Seven - Part Two
Human Tries to Make a New Koloss
Yes, koloss are people. I assume that many of you guessed this. Then, again, many of you probably didn't. The clues are there, if you care to look—including the fact that small spikes were found in the koloss bodies after the siege of Luthadel. (It's mentioned at the end of book two.)
Unfortunately, the heroes just don't know enough about Hemalurgy to make the connection until this dramatic reveal by Human. There are only three magic systems in this book—all related, all dealing with metal. It's mentioned in book two that koloss, Inquisitors, and—yes, even kandra—are related in some way. All were created by the Lord Ruler during his Ascension.
And all were created from existing material, one might say. There's a little more depth to the kandra, since they're a race that (kind of) breeds true. You'll see as the book progresses. However, all were created through Hemalurgy, and the spikes are very, very important.
I have a question for the world of Steelheart. How do the electric sockets work if everything is steel?
How do the electric sockets work? They needed to be rebuilt for the electric sockets to work, but you can also get down far enough where the builders, the machines, have rebuilt everything and so that wouldn't all have been turned to steel. Some of that has been dug out and reworked and rebuilt. There are some pretty crazy things that happened.
In Shadows for Silence one of the characters refers to “Justice has died here.” Is that the actual Shard of Justice?
That’s a great theory! (Big grin, raised eyebrows.)
I don't know if someone has already commented on this, but something that's caught my attention after listening to the audiobooks back to back is that there seems to be a commonality of a significant event happening 300 years in the past. Was there a particular event that happened on one planet that has cascaded to others?
There are events that have happened on one planet, and cascaded through, but don't fixate too much on 300 years. The different books are happening on slightly different timelines, for one thing, so the separate '300 years' notations might not actually line up at the same year, if that makes sense.
Does mechanical Feruchemy draw from the user or the machine?
Let's see if I can phrase this correctly. Feruchemy-- I don't want you to guess everything I'm going to do, then the books won't be interesting for you in the future. When I'm approaching using them mechanically I'm trying to keep to the core principles of the magic as much as possible.
So this question I think was quite difficult for Brandon. I hope I didn't cause any kind of offense when I asked it, but I think it's a question that... It's a good question, because it shows a lot about Brandon, not only as a writer, and as the kind and respectful guy we know he is, but also it shows the feelings and kind of commitment he has to you fans as well, which I think was really great. I'll start by reading a quote which I'll read to you now. "I think the concept of anyone else working on the Wheel of Time series was very painful for Robert Jordan." Just to put it in context: he did go on to say that he was eventually happy that someone was continuing his series, so there's no issue with that. The question I wanted to ask Brandon was, for any reason if he couldn't write tomorrow, how would he feel if someone else was to continue his Stormlight series? Is it something he would allow, is it something he would be happy someone else is doing? And what are his thoughts?
Yes. I certainly would. If I were far enough along in it. If happened tomorrow, it were only one book in. At that point, I'd say, "You know what? Scrap the project. Don't make people... You know, don't..." I don't have enough notoriety for it to happen. But let's say I got seven books in and there were three books left. At that point I would say, "Definitely, it needs to be finished." I do keep very good notes. And so, basically, I would trust my editor to find somebody, and I would want them to work very closely with my assistant Peter who has known me for many years and is very... He's the one that knows the most about my books and my worlds, aside from myself. And there are lots of very talented authors. There are plenty of authors who are even more talented, you know...more talented than I am, certainly. Plenty of authors. And so, finding the right one, I would leave that up to editors and people like that. I mean, most people that I would want, that I would pick, are too popular in their own right to want to go write this dopey guy's books. I think Brent Weeks and I write very similarly, and I think he would be a fantastic choice, but there are plenty of authors out there that I think could do the job if I left the right notes.
Is Sazed the "Seventeenth Shard", as referred to in the epigraphs of part two of The Way of Kings?
Sazed is not the Seventeeth Shard. Whether he's IN the Seventeenth Shard is another question. It is an organization.
Shallan explains the theory that all spren can be divided into two categories (emotions and forces). Jasnah then links these to Cultivation and Honor, and also notes that voidspren are of Odium.
Is this theory maybe a little incomplete? Is there a third category of spren for "sensationspren" like painspren (which don't seem to involve emotions or forces)?
In Vorin thought, those would be emotions, but that doesn't mean that the scholars who think about these things are right.
Does Silverlight have a Shard?
Good question. I will RAFO that.
Shallan. What the crap are the headless spren?
You will find out! Read and Find out! I did just finish her flashback sequence, which is the first thing I wrote for the second book.
What to Do with the Mistfallen
Everything I've read indicates that people during times like these—and soldiers in particular—were a fairly superstitious lot. I think it makes sense. If your job is to fight, and you face death regularly, then you might be very careful not to do anything that might upset your luck. Particularly if you live in an era without a ton of scientific light and reasoning.
Hating the mistfallen makes a lot of sense by their rationale, and—if I were in the army—I might very well agree with this sentiment. Elend and Ham should have worked harder to smooth things over, but with tensions as high as they are, it's not an ideal situation. Remember, these are guys who have only been running an army for a few years. Everything they've learned, they've had to learn the hard way.
Sending Demoux and the others away was the right decision at this point.
Favorite Joke
Particularly the carnivorous kind.
As I've mentioned before, the Hrathen chapters tend to be shorter than the other two. As Raoden and Sarene's chapters pick up, I was left struggling just a bit to find things to do in the complimentary Hrathen chapters. I probably could have sped up his plot through these middle chapters just a bit. However, the triad system means that I had to give him a viewpoint every third chapter. That is probably why he got so many contemplative sections–and, possibly, is what in turn made him into such an interesting character personality wise. It's kind of hard to dissect these kinds of things now that the book has been done for five years.
Anyway, I did need this chapter to give Hrathen a chance to do some more foreshadowing on Dilaf. The emergence of Dilaf in these chapters is, I think, one of the more interesting and surprising elements from the middle Hrathen chapters. When Dilaf is originally presented in the book, I expected people to see him as a simple sidekick to Hrathen, much in the same way that I established Galladon and Ashe to be counterparts to Raoden and Sarene. With this parallelism in servant characters, I hoped to pull of a subtle surprise with Dilaf when he started to make trouble for Hrathen, as he is doing in these chapters.
Did you ever feel trapped by the magic system you <write/create>, for example you want to change something but you can't because of scenario you set up something in other way?
Yes, all the time and it’s good for me. It forces me to state my rules and forces their characters to stay to their rules, so it’s very good for my writing but happens all the time.
Vin Observes the Mists
There's a lot going on in this chapter, even though it seems to basically be filler. Again, the setup in my books can be rather extensive. I apologize if you find this sort of thing slow, but it's how I work. Maybe if I point out some of the important factors of the chapter, it will highlight what I'm trying to do.
First off, we have Vin pointing out to the reader that the mists are definitely supernatural. Included in this are the fact that they don't go indoors, the way they pull away from Vin but spin around other Allomancers, and the way they vanish too quickly before the sun. Added to that is the part where Human says he can sense a hatred from the mists.
These things are all related and connected to Vin in ways that—if you've read the book already—you should be able to pick out on your own.
What's interesting about the difference between the classic era Allomancy symbols and the Alloy of Law era ones is, when you get to Alloy of Law, the rusty nails become railroad spikes almost, right?
Yep, they do. We codified that, we decided, "Okay, now they're turning these things into typefaces, they're turning them into fonts." We even have some that hopefully we'll use later in the 1980s era trilogy, Era 3, where we've made them really thick. They're just different font, too, we've been playing with different ideas of, "How would they use the Allomantic symbols as typefaces?"
While I loved Mistborn and am excited to see you optioned the film rights already, I think that Warbreaker would translate to film even more easily/successfully
So I guess my question is, do you agree that Warbreaker will translate to film better? Did you discuss this with the Paloppa Guys? Which of your works do you think is most "marketable" as a medium—to—big—budget film?
I think the magic system of WARBREAKER is certainly better suited to film than a lot of the MISTBORN magic system. However, I think the plot and storytelling of MISTBORN—because of the action/adventure style of it—would translate better to film. Story structure-wise, MISTBORN, particularly the first book, is probably the best book-to-film translation I think I've got. I think WARBREAKER would make a wonderful graphic novel, and someday I would love to sell rights to it in that medium. And certainly if we make a MISTBORN film, the metals would have to work in a very different way. They would probably be understated in the film itself.
How fast could a steel/steel Twinborn move?
You'd hit physical limits eventually. While the Metallurgic arts generally enhanced the body to deal with the powers granted, things like air resistance would hold you back--perhaps even kill you--if you weren't careful.
What would happen if you burned Duralumin and Bendalloy?
He gave us a big RAFO, and i think hinted at that it was going to play a part in future books, so its going to be important.
So, in Oathbringer, when Dalinar goes to the Nightwatcher, we see Cultivation intervene directly. How closely does she supervise other Nightwatcher visits? ...Could the Nightwatcher give a boon that Cultivation wouldn't want her to?
Well, yes. "Wouldn't want her to" is a strong phrase. Like, Cultivation is always aware of what's going on. Cultivation rarely intervenes, even if she thinks it would be a bad boon, because she wants the Nightwatcher to learn. And she also is very interested in seeing what happens. So, rarely intervenes, but is aware.
Would she intervene if she thought the boon would help Odium?
Not necessarily.
Is Roshar *broken* in some way? Shards, storms, Spren—everything there seems very fragmented.
Roshar is broken in some way. You are on to something there.
We know that you can't Lash people in Shardplate, but can you Lash the person inside the Plate? If they had their helm off, for example. At that point Plate should be just dead weight, right?
There's a bit of an interference envelope. Wearing plate, the person has this big ball of investiture around them, and so pushing any through it--even by touching a person without a helm--is going to be tough. Easier than with the helm on though, I suppose.
Investiture acts (roughly) like a saturated solution in these cases. Sticking more power into something like a Feruchemical storage or a hyper-invested object like Plate is increasingly hard. The other part is that Investiture tends to interfere with other Investiture, unless there's a familiar resonance. (This is part of what philosophers call Identity.) Slapping your hand through a sand master's stream of sand will cause interference, and make them start to drop. It's not that the sand is supporting them, it's that the investiture holding them up gets scrambled for a moment because of your own investiture.
Investiture pushed toward someone inside a hyper-invested (supersaturated) system like a person in Shardplate is going to get hard push-back.
This is similar to the reason that it's harder to Push on invested coins. Depends on how invested they are, in that case. It's generally not as hard as doing something like Lashing a person in plate. (This is more about the interference than the saturation of investiture.) But the two principles are what I use to guide the physics in these areas.
Can we take that as a hint that the Investiture in the Plates and the Investiture that the Surge of [Adhesion] uses come from different Shards? Or do they interfere because they "belong" to different spren?
You know, I should have realized this one would bring out the follow up questions. Let's leave it at what I posted for now. This is a deep, deep rabbit hole, and I do need to try to get some more writing done tonight. So...RAFO. (Sorry.)
How many books do you read per year?
Not as many as I want. Maybe twelve or fifteen.
Do you ever stop reading something, or do you always finish a book?
I stop reading nowadays, if it's just not working for me. I couldn't do that when I was younger. But now that I'm a writer... I hit this moment, a lot of writers hit this, where reading becomes less fun for you for a while, while you're becoming a writer. And then, a lot of us just push over it, but it changes you. And what changed me is, I just don't stick with a book that I'm not enjoying. I do always give them twenty percent. 'cause I figure, you need to give a book enough time to get its hooks in you. You can't judge it based on the first little bits. But if by about a quarter, it's just not working for me, I will abandon it.
Asking about the new novella
I suppose I shouldn't be coy, as there aren't many stories this could be. Yes, it's a sequel to Sixth of the Dusk. I've spoken about wanting to do one.
Unfortunately, I only had time to get a little ways into it. I suspect I'll pick it back up on the flight to Spain in July. And if I don't finish it then, I have another long haul flight in October to visit France then Israel.
It's generally hard to do Stormlight on flights like that; the books are too intricate, and the distractions too multitudinous. But novellas tend to work, so we'll see if I can get this one done on these trips.
If a Mistborn were to burn a metal that's been Forged by a Soulstamp, is there a different effect from another, or?
So they Forged it from one metal into another metal?
Yes.
So once they started to burn it, it would break the Forgery and it would turn back into its original metal. So you'd have just the briefest moment of getting what it said it was and then it would go back to the other and then if you were a Misting of the wrong type, you would get no more from it.
What about Feruchemy or Hemalurgy?
So Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. You would have a lot of trouble Investing it because it's already Invested. So you would run into troubles right away trying to Invest it, because it's already got all the Investiture messing with it. You could theoretically make it happen, but it would take enough work and conniving that it just wouldn't be worth it.
You'll notice in the "Sarene prays in the chapel" scene that I take care to describe how high-necked, long-sleeved, and generally enveloping Sarene's dress is. Hopefully, this doesn't look suspicious. However, those of you who are watching carefully probably realized what was going to happen at the wedding. This was just too good an opportunity to pass up–for the surprise factor, for the wrinkles it throws in to the plot, and because it lets me mix Sarene and Raoden again.
This prayer scene also offers our first, and only, real look into Sarene's religious mindset. Her faith is probably one of the only simple aspects of her personality–she believes, and it doesn't need to go much further than that for her. That's why I had this prayer be so simple. Sometimes, a simple thing can be far more powerful than a complex one.
Chapter Sixty Two - Part One
Some Notes
Here we have another of my attempts to space out climaxes. Sazed's character climax—the first, and perhaps most important of his climactic chapters—comes here after Spook's climax, but before the book really begins to end. I hope I squeezed this into the right place.
Before I talk about Sazed's revelation, however, let's do a few notes. First off, Spook is alive. Yes, I let him live. He earned it, for one, and for another, there is something very important he still needs to do. You'll see.
Either way, I think—with the number of viewpoint characters I've killed in my books—that I've earned the right to have someone survive a very dangerous situation like Spook went through.
I haven't read Way of Kings yet, but I've read Warbreaker and Mistborn, and the thing I like most about them is the Magic systems. Will Way of Kings have multiple magic systems?
Depending on how you count it, Stormlight Archive will have 3 or 30 different magic systems.
Lukel
And, here we have Lukel joking again. Just like a the end of last chapter, where he faints. Comic relief shouldn't be underestimated, I think. Especially comic relief like this–jests and levity given in-character by people who are trying to lighten the mood of a stressful time. Lukel isn't there simply to entertain the reader, he's there to show a different side of human reaction. I think that if I were in his situation, I'd be trying to find a way to laugh about what happened too.
If Hemalurgy can be used to transfer Investiture regardless of the planet, is someone gathering pieces of different Investitures the way Hoid got, for example, the Lerasium bead?
Yes.
We were wondering about the stances and I was wondering if you could match them?
*unfolds image*
I would have you email it to us, because Ben McSweeney made the final call as he drew these, on which one was which. While I had notes on each of them, he matched the stances to them, and so it would be really easy for me to get them wrong.
Are we going to see a clash between Nightblood and a Shardblade anytime soon?
Yes.
Thought I'd just get this out into the world since I hadn't yet: The Feruchemical symbol for Harmony.
Ah, so I am not the only one who thought they looked like fangs
I was looking to the Feruchemical symbols for lerasium and atium for inspiration. Thus the sort of fang-like projections. :) This is starting to look very Decepticons to me...
So cool. The symmetry is perfect. I also love that you can see elements of the symbols of lerasium and atium in it.
That's exactly what I was going for. Glad you saw those symbols in there!
Hey, you say Harmony do you mean harmonium? As far as we know, we only have symbols for metals, not Shards
The symbol for Scadrial (at least among the Cosmere-aware) is also the symbol for Harmony but will probably also be used for Harmonium. It was a mashup of the other god metal symbols. It was natural to make a symbol to fill this void in the Feruchemical symbols as well.
Was this on purpose or is it an accident? I can see both the symbol of the Chalice and symbol of the phallus in this, is this a sign of him being an Eunuch?
Totally on accident!
Rare to see symmetry in Feruchemy glyphs; does that reflect Harmony's "balanced" nature? Or perhaps an implicit connection to Roshar's glyphs...?
Harmony's symbol was symmetrical and balanced in its Allomantic form, so I decided to carry that over in its Feruchemical form. No relationship to Roshar's glyphs. :)
