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Second sentance of the above paragraph. The plural of 'axis' is 'axes', not 'axi'.
For the record, I don't think the "axi" thing is a grammatical error. It's more just a unique cosmere term.
This is a Cosmere term. Stormlightning is correct.
I'm here as an "ambassador" of Cosmere Argentina, so, we as a community have a question that we'd like to ask. Have you taken inspiration for a character, a place, community, or whatever on a Latin American society?
Yes. So the main Latin American inspiration would be the Herdazians, but the secondary would be: Lift and her people are based on Bolivian indigenous peoples and kind of what is going on down there, so both in the Stormlight Archive is where I've kinda taken my Latin America inspirations.
So, I mean, Herdazians is more Mexico than South America, but Lift is Bolivia. Kinda looking into some of the Bolivian Indigenous, and what they would look like and things like that. Obviously, I'm not saying they all act like Lift, but Lift is her own person.
Should the fact that the Aons in the Hoid/Riina painting are missing the chasm line be taken as canonical? If so, is this because of whatever method they are using to perform AonDor outside Sel? Or because of post-Elantris changes to Sel?
We let Howard pick what he wanted to illustrate, and then send illustrations in. And originally, he just did a whole bunch of weird, arcane symbols. And I’m like, “No, you need to actually use Aons in this art.” But we let him just kind of pick the Aons. You should not consider that art to necessarily be… Imagine that art to be somebody on Silverlight painting a picture of a story they heard. That art can be in-universe. (In fact, I believe that I would consider it in-universe.) But somebody painted it, and they just used whatever pictures of Aons they had sitting around, like Howard did. In other words, don’t be looking at those Aons as actual representations of how you would program in AonDor, how about that. And don’t read too much into that.
By the time of Tress, stories from things happening around the cosmere, and stories that Hoid tells, have become of interest to some people, and because of that it’s plausible that there could even end up being some sort of book written where it’s like, “Hey, he told me this story. I’m writing it down for the rest of you guys to read.” I’m not saying that’s what Tress actually is; obviously, we have the audience for Tress. I’m just saying, you can imagine world of people doing Hoid fanart.
Does Hoid have fans?
Yes, by that point in history Hoid does. He has far more detractors, but…
Is there an in-universe Hoid fan club?
Depends on what you call people who are fully aware of who he is and what he is. I would say yes. I mean, the royals in our world have fans. There’s fans of the royals, there’s fans of equivalent, just people who are known throughout. And he is a figure in a lot of peoples’ mythology and religion. Would you call the Horneaters Hoid fans? Because they have legends stretching back thousands of years to him as a trickster god, to the point that Rock is fully able to recognize him (not when he’s in his Wit persona, at least not at first).
Going hand-in-hand with the maps is the character Nazh, who annotates many of the in-universe maps. How much of Nazh was your idea? What about him appeals to you?
The story behind Nazh is, I was in Brandon’s writing group when we were workshopping The Rithmatist. And there’s a character named Nalizar in that book. I could never remember his name, so I kept calling him Nazrilof. So it became this running gag with Brandon, like… “Nalizar and Nazh are different people. Nazh is your alter ego, Isaac, and Nalizar is a character in The Rithmatist.”
When we got to The Alloy of Law, Brandon and I were firmly in the camp of including maps that are artifacts from the world. And we thought, where are they getting these? And who’s labeling them? Diana Wynne Jones wrote a book called The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, and there’s a map in the front that basically says that if a location is labeled on the map, then by golly you’re gonna go to the place during the course of the story. Fantasy maps have gotten this reputation of being kind of spoilery.
So when we got to the map of Elendel, we were looking at it, thinking if we only labeled the places that were necessary for the story, then we’re falling into this trope of fantasy. So how can we subvert this a bit? So, if the novel is compiled by Khriss, presumably, then maybe she has somebody who goes and gets the maps and labels them for her with pertinent information. It might still feel a little like “these labeled things are the important parts” but at least there’s an in-world reason why that is. That allowed us to develop a character around that. Brandon said, “Why don’t we have Nazh do this?” to which I agreed, and Brandon said, “Isaac, welcome to the Cosmere.”
Since then, Nazh’s role has grown into basically a sidekick for Khriss. Now, when working with Nazh, we think of him as a grumpy James Bond.
Could you explain a little more about Cognitive Shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive Shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an [entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavast’s and not Honor’s). The second however really doesn’t make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasn’t verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a “ghost”? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruin’s prison counts as “death” in this situation?)
On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a Cognitive Shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive Shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.
Is the mist /spirit/ a Cognitive Shadow then?
The mist spirit is a little more complicated than that. That was actually Leras, kind of. He was in the process of dying. But other things are involved there that, unfortunately, must be RAFOd.
In the first epigraphs in Rhythm of War, we get Navani's lecture on the different metals, and it talks about how the different metals can do different things to fabrials. Have all of the 16 metals in Allomancy been tried in relation to fabrials?
No.
Have they discovered any others with different effects?
Any others that she didn't talk about? I don't know. I'm gonna say no, but it's possible that there's one I'm not thinking of. Let's just say that certain people in the cosmere are very aware of this now, and are very quickly experimenting with the metals Navani is not able to get a hold of easily.
It's a good call in the abstract but the choice of character to genderswap is not great. Docks, sure, but I'd rather have Ham stay male (and, superficially, stereotypical), and swap any/all of Clubs, Marsh, and Yeden instead.
I understand this complaint, though you might want to look at the post I made just before this one in another thread.
Nothing is set in stone, but we need to imagine the Mistborn film as an alternate version of the cosmere, hopefully as close in heart as the MCU to the comics--but distant in some specific choices. In this case, Ham is working really well changed. Remember, you're only going to have a few comments from him/her in the film. The real place to get to know the character will be in the television show that goes between movies one and three (assuming this plan actually plays out--which it might not.)
If a TV show is successful, then it gets renewed. If Books 1 & 3 are already planned to be movies, what do you do with the TV series when, hopefully the show being a big hit, the network renews it for further seasons? Is there additional plot to be explored between books 2 and 3 somehow? Or did I misunderstand what you were talking about entirely?
So, there is a lot of buzz in Hollywood right now about integrated television and film properties. Further seasons, if this all works, would be Secret History blending into the time between Eras one and Two.
Does a metal need to be swallowed to be burned? Or can it be injected or snorted?
It could be either of those two things. Yes. Basically, metal into the body in any way is going to work, generally. There's nothing magical about the stomach, even though it works the best when we talk about it. It's just more intermixing the nature of the metal with your soul in the cosmere, your Spiritual entity, is what gives them that ability.
Can you give away a Divine Breath to another human? If so would they have the same powers as a Returned or would they just 'store' it like an inanimate object that Breath is stored in when not Awakened? Does a human require a 'crack' in their spirit web to receive a divine Breath?
So, a Divine Breath-- you're kind of going along the wrong direction on that line of reasoning. Divine Breaths cannot be transferred. When they are used they immediately become kinetic Investiture and are activated. This manifests normally as healing the person, both body, mind, and soul, but you can't give it up, transfer it in the same way you can regular Breaths.
What is the most powerful Radiant Order? Bondsmith?
"Power" is related to situation, perception, and need. A Bondsmith can probably draw the most raw investiture, depending on the situation--but comparisons like this ignore the heart of the matter. I don't look at people in the cosmere as having a "power level," because I don't consider it to be a good measure of the way the stories will play out.
Have you figured out how old you think you're gonna be when you finish the Cosmere?
My goal is by age 72.
Since the dead spren are said to have been more or less "reabsorbed" into the cosmere, why did they leave behind physical shards at all?
We'll find out more about dead spren as the books move forward.
When is the next book coming out?
The Rithmatist is the number one most requested sequel I get. This is probably because people know that I’m working on Stormlight, otherwise that would be the number one most requested. To understand, I have to tell you a story about where The Rithmatist came from. So after I finished Warbreaker, I very deliberately said, I want to write something else in the Cosmere, and maybe this is the time to write the backstory of a character named Hoid. So I sat down and tried to [...] write this book, which I called The Liar of Partinel. The book was a disaster. Sometimes even as a pro, books just don’t go well. I had a contract for it and everything. I was supposed to be writing this book, and then its sequel, and... big disaster. I finished the first book, I forced myself to finish it, but I had no desire to revise. It was just not what it needed to be. When I eventually write that story, people are going to be expecting a lot from it and it can’t be a half-hearted book, and it felt half-hearted.
So instead of [...] I told my editor, “oh yeah, I’ll be getting to that” and I wrote a [...] book, which was called Scribbler back then. Originally named Scribbler, and the origins for it were, the magic system is the start of this one, as you might be able to guess. I started doing these little drawings, which Ben McSweeney eventually re-drew to be a little bit better, but they started as my own drawing that we put between the chapters. But we started with those because I wanted to do something new with magic that I hadn’t done before. What I realized is that I never made a book where the magic was used to play games. We as human beings, we play games with everything. We turn anything into a game. This is a hallmark of humankind, we play with stuff. When we’re no longer killing each other, we come up with jousting, so we can make that a game. The idea of basically playing magical Starcraft on the ground around you was really interesting to me.
So I started doing all these drawings and writing this book without telling my editor or anybody I was writing this book. Wonderful experience. The book came out very very well, it just came together. It’s one of those books, you don’t expect it, I didn’t have long term plans, I hadn’t worked on an outline for years and years, I discovery wrote most of the book. About the time I had to go to my editor and tell him, “I’ve written a book on accident”, I think I sent you The Rithmatist, right Joshua?
I said I wrote this book on accident, right around that time, I got a phone call from Harriet McDougal, who’s Robert Jordan’s widow. She said, it’s a long story but it ended with me on the phone with her, because she’d left me a voicemail and I’d missed it, but I eventually got a hold of her, and she said, “Well I was just wondering if you would be willing to finish my husband’s series, the Wheel of Time”. To which I responded, “dakjs;dlfj;alkna;sdf” [verbal keyboard smash basically]. I really did. I wrote her an email the next saying, “Dear Harriet, I promise I’m not an idiot.” But the book that got left hanging was The Rithmatist. Liar of Partinel I was happy to shelve and do nothing with. It wasn’t a good book. Rithmatist was. But I knew that if I were stopping to do the Wheel of Time that I would not have the time to do a Rithmatist sequel for a while. Because my career so far had gone standalone, series, standalone, and then I was looking to do another series, which is why I tried Liar of Partinel.
Once I did Wheel of Time, I said now is the time to do Way of Kings, which I had been putting off for a while cause my skills weren’t capable. I tried it and it hadn’t worked and I was like, I need to get better as a writer. But I was pretty sure I could do it, so I sandwiched Way of Kings in between two Wheel of Time books. But then I had The Way of Kings going and people expecting those, which is a good thing I got started on it because it’s a long series. If I were still putting it off, we might have troubles when it actually came out. So eventually, Rithmatist, I need to release this book, it’s really good, people are going to like this. So I gave it to Tor and had them release it. But the problem is, when am I going to do a sequel? It had been a little side project in the first place that I’d done instead of writing something else.
I found time about 3 years ago. I took out my outline. My process often is, I will write a first book, then I will outline a series for it, then I will revise the first book to match the outline. I did this with Mistborn, I did it with the Reckoners, and I had gotten as far as outlining for the second book of The Rithmatist. I sat down to write it and I didn’t like the outline anymore. There were some things wrong with it. One, I had grown a lot as a writer. One, I don’t know if you guys discussed this, but the Rithmatist as a whole, it’s a great book but there’s a big danger zone in it. And that is, how do you treat indigenous people during the area of colonialism? There’s a big big minefield there, and the second book’s goal was to start dealing with that minefield, and I felt my outline for the second book did not do that respectfully. As I had grown as a writer, when I looked at the outline, and I was like, I cannot write this book because I’m not treating the original inhabitants of America’s cultures well enough. So I stopped and I read three books on Aztec culture. The second book is called The Aztlanian. Aztlan is the mythical origin of the Aztecs, it’s where their legends say they came from. If I’m dealing with real world mythology, that minefield grows so much bigger. You gotta do it right. This is something I wanted to do right. So I read a bunch of books. I rebuilt my outline, I felt really good about it, but there was no more time to write. I had a month or two left, so I wrote the fifth Alcatraz book instead. I can do those in a month or so, but this I knew was going to take three to four months, so I put it off again.
I’m still looking for a hole in my schedule. The new outline for The Aztlanian is very good, it’s solid, I feel like I’ve got a handle on how to write it in a sensitive way, because we don’t want to avoid difficult topics in science fiction and fantasy. If we do that, it’s just the same as it’s always been. But if you are going to touch on sensitive topics, you need to do it really well. I really like where it is now, but when am I going to write The Aztlanian? I don’t know yet. The answer to you is, when am I going to do this? I have to find a time between my mainline projects, which right now are Stormlight Archive for Tor, alternating with Mistborn novels, and for Random house it’s the Reckoners books and that sequence. In between one of those times, I will find some time to The Aztlanian, and I will do it, and I hope it will be awesome, but I don’t know when that is.
This is the book I’ve left hanging the most. Most everything else is a side project or it’s the Alcatraz books, which I’m making fun of people by taking a long long time, it’s intentional. If you haven’t read those books, they’re very different from everything else that I’ve done. The whole point is to make fun of the reader while the reader reads them. Every book plays some sort of dirty trick on the reader. The fifth book ends on a huge huge huge down note with the author, who’s Alcatraz, of the book saying “I’m not going to write any more, sorry guys”. But then there’s a little footnote at the end, one of the other characters like, “I’ll write the story so you get an actual ending.” Jokes like that on the reader, and the fact that it’s taking forever is part of the joke. Rithmatist is the one I actually feel bad about.
This chapter in particular was a challenge to write. My experience with Sazed in The Hero of Ages warned me that a character deep in depression can be a difficult and dangerous thing to write. Depression is a serious challenge for real people—and therefore also for characters. Additionally, it pushes a character not to act.
Inactive characters are boring, and though I wanted to start Kaladin in a difficult place, I didn't want him to be inactive. So how did I go about making scenes of a depressed fallen hero locked in a cage interesting and active? The final result might not seem like much in the scope of the entire novel, but these chapters are some of the ones I'm the most proud of. I feel I get Kaladin and his character across solidly while having him actually do things—try to save the other slave, rip up the map, etc.
Syl, obviously, is a big part of why these scenes work. She is so different from the rest of what's happening, and she has such stark progress as a character, that I think she "saves" these chapters.
You might be interested to know, then, that she was actually developed for a completely different book in the cosmere. I often speak about how books come together when different ideas work better together than they ever did separate. Kaladin and Syl are an excellent example of this. He didn't work in The Way of Kings Prime, and her book just wasn't going anywhere. Put them together, and magic happened. (Literally and figuratively.)
So, Zahel seems to carry a lot of baggage from his various experiences with war and violence.
Will we get to see what lead to him being this way?
Goal is for you to eventually get these answers. Either in the Warbreaker sequel, or another place that will become evident as the cosmere progresses.
I'm pretty sure Mark Twain inspired Wit/Hoid from Brandon Sanderson's cosmere of books. Care to comment?
Most certainly he had an influence.
I heard rumors for a collectible card game, possibly, for the Cosmere?
That's possible. The guys who did the Mistborn RPG are really interested in doing one, so we'll see. It's just in the discussion stages right now. There's not even contracts for it or anything.
You see, in a few places, Shards that can read people's minds, or send thoughts to people's minds. What, in other settings, would be called telepathy. Do we have, in any Shardworlds, a magic system where ordinary people have telepathy?
I've actually designed one that I think is interesting, whether I will make that work or not, I'm not sure. But there is a very interesting world, one that i have right now in the Cosmere, that we will see. I try not to canonize these things till I actually write the story. As happened with Silence Divine, where people have been for six years, "When are you going to write this story?" Because I wrote one chapter of it.
But yes, I do have something that works that way.
Humans have red blood, are there any other types of beings in the Cosmere that also have red blood?
I haven't decided yet, so that's a RAFO.
Why can lerasium be burned by anyone in the cosmere, while atium is restricted to a small portion of the population of one planet?
RAFO.
Was busy yesterday writing a picture book.
Don't leave us with less info! What is it about?
RAFO for now. I want to show it around to some people first and see what they think. I'll tell you all what it's about if:
A) It doesn't turn out to be good enough to publish professionally.
or
B) We get a deal for it.
It is not cosmere, however. I wrote it in part to practice the format, as some day I'd like to do some of Hoid's stories (like the Girl who Looked Up) as picture books.
I only yesterday found out you changed the ending for [Words of Radiance]. So here is my question. I've only read the first version where Kaladin kills Szeth. When Szeth gets killed now, it's by the storm. What is it that specifically kills him since he can normally just evade the storm or even be healed by stormlight?
Good question! So, the idea here is that Szeth has given up, and wants to die. I wanted the storm to kill him, then, as opposed to Kaladin. What kills him is losing control in the storm, and being slammed into the ground.
The bigger change here was actually my desire to leave it at least partially clear that he's not dead, in order to avoid the 'fake out' ending. Having him be dead and reborn was important, but I felt in the first stab I erred on the side of pulling a fast one on the reader.
Is there conspiracyspren? We have kind of a family joke about that one.
So, conspiracyspren... Let's just say this. I have purposefully not made spren of certain things that I think would undermine the very purpose of the spren. If that makes sense?
My question was going to be: What emotion would you never write a spren for?
Well there are ones that-- I would go with that. Things that undermine the very nature.-- But I wouldn't say never to anything. In the cosmere, particularly on Roshar, if people start to personify something, there's a chance it would become a spren, and that could be anything. The current vogue question to ask me is "will there be memespren..." And my response is always, "If people personify something, then there's a chance that a spren will develop out of it."
Hey, is Brandon willing to tell us which universe Skyward is in yet? He said a while aback that it was in a universe (not cosmere) that he'd written before.
So, here's the thing--it's a pretty big spoiler. Meaning if you know the novella this is tied to (and it's one of the ones mentioned in this thread) you'll know a moderately large plot point in the book.
It's not the type of spoiler that will ruin a story--I do think some readers would enjoy watching how I lace them together. But do be warned that if you haven't read my science fiction novellas, and you hate spoilers, you might want to wait until Skyward is out to read them.
That said, if you know the terminology of the novellas in question, you'll find your answer in chapter seventeen.
From all of your Cosmere books, do you have anywhere written what the timeframe between the series are?
I haven’t done that officially. We have it ourselves. What I’ve told people is that they are basically in order of being released. I haven’t jumped back. At least if you count the first of each individual series. So they’re roughly in order chronologically. White Sand is out of order because that’s chronologically one of the earliest. And now Stormlight and Wax & Wayne… Wax & Wayne are post-Stormlight, but I’m releasing… You know, it’s a little mixed up now.
Okay, I was almost expecting that in the Arcanum.
Yeah, we will do that eventually. There are just some secrets in there that I’m not sure I want to release, and there are other things I’m not sure I want to canonize because I’m still tweaking the dates a little bit.
Hey Brandon!
Here's a quote from Oathbringer:
She willed steps to Soulcast beneath her feet. Individual axi of air lined up and packed next to each other, then Soulcast into stone—though in spite of the realms being linked, this was difficult.
Hey Brandon, what's an axi?
It is the word for an atom in the cosmere, coming from one of the original magics used on Yolen pre-shattering. To some, it's a theoretical smallest division of matter. But others use it scientifically to mean simply an atom.
How many worlds does [the cosmere] have in it?
A couple hundred. A couple hundred stars.
How many planets are your books going to use?
Habitable worlds, in Goldilocks zones? There's probably 20 or 30, maybe a few more. Maybe up to 50, but you'll only really... there'll be like, ten or so core planets that you'll see stories from.
What’s the most dangerous non-Shard thing in the cosmere?
Nightblood’s up there, Hoid is up there, but not deadly dangerous, a different type of dangerous, yeah no, what we know of, right now, those, those are in the running. Chasmfiends, chasmfiends are pretty nasty. Whitespines are a little more nasty probably. The… the Unmade are pretty nasty. Yeah. There’s a couple of mercenary troops that you haven’t met yet that are really quite, quite dangerous, I would list them as well.
I have finished the frustratingly secret projects that I rudely refuse to tell you about, and am now working full steam on the Dark One novel. Plus a lot of detours into the worldbuilding of my Cosmere series, which really should wait until I'm done with Dark One but it's too exciting and I can't help myself :)
How does Nightblood work on Roshar?
Well Nightblood feeds on Investiture, which is the general life-force/magic-force in the cosmere and so he can feed on basically any source of magical energy.
And do other magics work on other worlds?
I've been describing it lately more like you see DC current and AC current, where they're similar things but slightly different. It is possible to make magics work on other planets, some it's easier than others.
What is the Grand Apparatus?
The Grand Apparatus is a reference to a planet in the cosmere you haven't seen yet that is completely... it's very obviously constructed for a certain purpose.
By the way, that's not my canon name for it. It probably will be, but I haven't Googled that to make sure someone else hasn't used it. "Did you not know that Microsoft has a thing called the Grand Apparatus?" That happened to me once; I've got Silverlight, they're like, "Like the Microsoft program?"
Aight I always thought that shades mar was just the term used on roshar for cognitive realm. I guess it’s just a widely considered term used in the cosmere
Yeah, I'm not sure how this idea got started, but Shadesmar is not just a Rosharan term. It's widely used.
Since we generally don't see inhabitants of your worlds refer to their planets by name, where do the names come from?
From world-hoppers, Shards, and those who know about the cosmere.
You have once said, with regard to a question about Shards being the most powerful thing in the cosmere, that some would say that other "subtle forces" are being manifest. Are these subtle forces related to Adonalsium's opposition?
There is belief in a God who is not one of the Shards.
How's the Nicki Savage story going?
Thanks for asking about this! The Nicki Savage story has been plotted and planned and is almost ready to be written. It was derailed for the time being, however, by Taldain needing a little love.
Are you going to tie that to the events of any of the existing Mistborn (or Cosmere?) stories, or will it be like the Allomancer Jak ones, where it exists in isolation?
The Nicki Savage story I've got currently planned deals with Nicki in the real world as opposed to her serialized persona. While it's not in the main sequence of novels, it is not as isolated as the Allomancer Jak stories.
I asked if there was there a pure form of Investiture that is not tied to any Shard, and you said that my question had some false premises. Can you elaborate on what I had wrong there?
The false premise, the main one, is that other Investiture is not pure. Investiture, by its definition, comes from a certain place. That's like saying, "Is there water that doesn't have hydrogen in it? Is there pure water without hydrogen? Can you take the hydrogen out, and make purer water?" That's the problem there. This idea that Investiture is impure because it's tied to a Shard is a false premise. That is pure Investiture.
Is there Investiture that is not related to any Shard, then?
There can't be, because the Shards were what the original... it's like saying, "I've got four pieces of a cookie. Are there any pieces that didn't come from the original cookie." You just said, "There's four pieces of this cookie." What you really wanna be saying is, "Is there non-Adonalsium-origin power like Investiture in the cosmere?" Is that what you're getting at? Or are you getting at, "Is there one of the Shards that is not held by a sapient entity?" Like, you could be asking so many questions from these things that I don't know how to answer what you're looking for. So, think about those, and ask me some of those questions next time.
Any clues on where we see Hemalurgy elsewhere in the cosmere?
No, we'll RAFO that for now.
Adien's Secret
I almost cut this entire twist from the book. I've never been happy with how it worked out, and I think there are–as I've mentioned–still a few too many surprises and twists at the end of the book. (Though, I have fixed it somewhat. It used to be that virtually EVERYONE had a secret past or personality trait that came out in these last four chapters.) Anyway, I don't like the Adien twist–it lacks power since we don't really care about him, and his character–the autistic–isn't terribly original anyway.
I've left the Adien twist in for a single reason. However, it's a bit of a spoiler, so I'll put it invisible for those of you who haven't read the ending yet. You can come back and read this later.
Anyway, Adien is my planned hero for book two. I like the concept of a healed autistic being the hero of the next book. And, since he's so good with numbers, he would be incredibly powerful at AonDor. I think he'd be a compelling character to look at, so I left him in this book in case I wanted to use him in the next one.
Adien has been an Elantrian for some time. That's why Kiin's family knows so much about Elantrians. Read back to the earlier chapters, and you'll see a scene or two where Sarene wonders why they know so much about Elantris and its occupants. They hid Adien's transformation with makeup, and his autism kept him out of social circles anyway, so no one really paid much attention to the fact that he was never around.
I know it's a RAFO, but how the eff did Wyrn see into the future? That seems above even a Shardholder's abilities! I bet that sucker's tapping into the Shadesmar. But I digress...
Ha, wow, that is indeed a RAFO. Note that we have seen temporal abilities in the cosmere before. Most of the time these are related directly to the pure essence of a Shard or to a Splinter.
Demoux. Him, also being in the Interlude. How is that one...
He is part of a group called the Seventeenth Shard. [They] are cosmere-aware and travel around the planets and have a kind of pact of non-intervention. Which they aren't doing a very good job on, because they brought the common cold to Roshar.
How did he actually find out about this?
I will give you [a RAFO card], because I will answer about the Seventeenth Shard eventually.
So all these questions are actually going to be answered?
The Seventeenth Shard will have a big role to play in future books.
Is Hoid part of the...?
Hoid is not part of the Seventeenth Shard. They're trying to chase him down.
Are the Essences strictly just a Roshar thing, or are they also connected to the manifestations of Investiture on other Shardworlds? For example, is the Essence of Foil in any way connected to the Metallic Arts of Scadrial?
The idea that things exist on three realms is not unique to Roshar.
That those things are self-aware is a Rosharan thing, though other places in the cosmere have similar beliefs.
The problems of transporting investiture reminded me of asymptotic freedom a lot, is an analog of that at work in the Cosmere?
I'd say yes, but with fair warning that I am not an expert on quantum mechanics.
Regarding this, I remember asking a question a while back about a chapter's annotation of two ardents measuring some flamespren's sizes, where sizes are fixed once measured (like real-life projective measurements in quantum mechanics). And then the annotation with Navani stating that flamespren are trapped and then the gem divided and used for conjoined fabrials, which sounds a lot like entanglement and/or cat states. So I'd say you may not be an expert but you sure know enough to at least make this a fun read for a physicist!
I've joked before that the way I treat Quantum mechanics in some of these spren relationships is the way that people THINK quantum mechanics work. But I did use some intentional entanglement language in the explanation I think you're referencing. (If it's the place where she's explaining something similar to the famous two marbles in a bag thought experiment for explaining entanglement.)
Who is the most powerful non-Shard entity in the cosmere?
It's probably Hoid.
Regarding the ending of the Mistborn Trilogy: What was up with Ruin having red hair? Is that significant? Does it mean that Ruin was originally a human who gained his powers somehow? My friend thought that Ruin was actually another red-haired character in the series, though I don't remember his name. I think he was a minor captain or something.
I try to make all of the cosmere stuff "bonus material" so to speak. I don't think it's essential to understanding Mistborn to know Ruin's origin. Those who want expanded information can find it, and theorize upon it. However, I intend to warn people up-front before writing any book where you have to know this to understand it.
Within the realm of Mistborn only, all you really need to know is that someone was holding this power--and that the 'individuals' of Ruin and Preservation were people, changed by the power they held. It holds to the theme of the story, with what happens regarding Sazed and other characters.
Have we seen any evidence of Hemalurgy on Roshar? And, as sort of an addendum, given the end of Oathbringer, was what happened to Jezrien Hemalurgy?
There are certain cosmere philosophers that would count it. I would divide it as two separate things that are using similar fundamentals... I wouldn't call it myself, but there are people who would disagree with me in-world. Have we seen evidence? I would say no evidence that is easily-- easy to pick out.
But it's there?
Yes, there are people with Hemalurgy who have been to Roshar. I'm pretty sure they've been on-screen.
I can't take credit for this, because it is a friend's question, but he has this little theory that your more quiet and reserved characters end up being super important or just interesting characters somehow and he has this theory that Dabbid from Kings is like a worldhopper that just went there and like "I'm just going to stay quiet and watch what's going on."
The question is: Is Dabbid from The Way of Kings, who you may not quite remember, he is the bridgeman who is very quiet and displays some very strong signs of PTSD, and things like this, even though he was healed. Is it-- Yeah, what's going on with him. And that is definitely a RAFO. But it's not a RAFO-- Like sometimes Read And Find Out means "I'm going to reveal it eventually", sometimes it means "I don't want to crush any fans' theories" and I won't tell you which one it is until the end of the series...
What's your opinion on golems/constructs/robots? The Lifeless are a somewhat similar concept, but I was curious as to whether there's a world in the cosmere that might have a more classical take on ye ol' fantasy standby guardian, or are Awakened suits of armor as close as we can get? Is the Future Mistborn trilogy going to have Anti-Allomancer Alluminaughts?
Ha. I am fascinated the idea of golems, and when I play an RPG I'm often trying to make golems of one sort or another. However, I worry that the idea is a little overdone in fiction, so my takes on that sort of thing come in more unusual flavors.
We have seen some Hoid-related groups on the diferent worlds of the Cosmere...
Worldbringers on Scadrial, Worldsingers on Roshar, Enefel on Sel (this one is a wild guess)
Is there a Hoid-related group on Nalthis? Maybe the Five Scholars are part of it? (That would explain the Shardblade/Nightblood thing you've been talking lately)
Hoid did not found the Five Scholars.
With Awakening, given that you know the correct command word, could you potentially give anything to the other person, using Awakening?
Using Awakening, it has to be related to the fundamental aspects of Investiture.
Which are…?
How would we find what those are?
…How would you find what those are? Spend a lot of time researching the cosmere, have some conversations with Khriss, and come up with some theories! …There's a bunch of them written in the books and indicated, so yes.
Spren bonds: there was some intimation somewhere that I read that there might not have been spren bonds before [Aharietiam, the day the Desolations ended]?
I'm not going to answer that one either but we will delve much more into this. The spren were around back then but they were not nearly what they are now: they've changed over the course of the book obviously. I think the cosmere theorists have figured it out. They are much more prevalent following Honor and what happened to him, but there were some spren on the planet before even that happened.
