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Questioner

The ten Surges on Roshar, I think you've said are basically a different set of laws of physics.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Questioner

Are those laws of physics consistent throughout the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, to an extent. You would consider, like - it's kind of weird because I based them on the idea of the fundamental forces, but this is kind of like a human construction. You could say that physics is pure and natural, but we're still putting things in boxes. And the scientists on Roshar would, for instance, consider being able to travel between the Cognitive and Physical Realms as a force, the thing that pulls people back and forth between that, as a fundamental force. I don't know if it would fit our definition of a fundamental force.

Questioner

So for most of your planets do you just assume that gravity is 9.8 m/s, and do you have a reason for that, or--

Brandon Sanderson

It just depends on the planet. Like Roshar… it's 0.7 Earth gravity on Roshar.

Questioner

Oh really?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, otherwise they couldn't lift those bridges, and you couldn't have the-- Even with the help of the spren, you couldn't have the giant beasties. So it's a high-oxygen, low-gravity environment. So fire acts a little differently on Roshar than it does on other planets. People are taller, like if you put a Rosharan next to someone else the low-gravity would have had that effect.

Questioner

Oh, I didn't even know that.

Brandon Sanderson

Generally you should assume when I'm using numbers they're in-world numbers. So, for instance, a Rosharan foot is actually larger than a foot in another-- Stuff like that. I have to do some jockeying of these things to not be completely off-putting and confusing to people who are not expecting-- to the casual reader, but like days. A Rosharan year is 500 days, but they're twenty hour days, I made an hour basically our hour just to keep it from being too crazy for people. But that means when it says Kaladin's 18 he's really actually like 20 years old and a little over, or something like that, I forget the numbers. Everyone's a little bit older than they sound but it works just for the average reader.

Questioner (paraphrased)

What's one thing you wished hadn't been cut?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There was a scene where Perrin, the Ogier, and everyone cleansed the Ways that had to be cut that I was sad about.

Questioner

Have we seen Kelsier outside of Mistborn yet, and will we see him outside of Mistborn?

Brandon Sanderson

No you have not. And RAFO, but realize, he is-- The way Investiture works, you would consider him similar to how you would consider a spren. It's gonna be hard for him to get off-world.

Questioner

It also means that he can still-- He gets kind of close, he gets really close--

Brandon Sanderson

I considered him still--

Questioner

Still on this side.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but he got close to the line. But I would say he did not get off [Scadrial].

Questioner

So it's gonna be hard.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Is there a romance planned?

Brandon Sanderson

You'll have to wait and see! This is an action/adventure story first and a character study second. So know that if there's romance, it won't be a focus.

clyguy

Someone else brought up the point, can blood be Awakened?

Brandon Sanderson

Anything can be Awakened.

clyguy

If you make a human-shaped mold and you poured blood into it and you Awakened it, would you have a Terminator T-1000 style blood-golem that could recombine?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, heh, well Awakening liquid is possible but I don't think it would work the way you want it to.

Questioner 2

If you had enough of a cloud in one place, could you Awaken a cloud?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, you could Awaken anything. It's probably not going to work the way you want it to. There is a reason why they Awaken the things that they do. For instance if you want to make a transforming golem, you would be much better off with something thicker.

Chaos (paraphrased)

We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all.

MS-07B-3

It's noted in Oathbringer that Taln was the only Herald who was not supposed to have been one, and that he was not a king, general, scholar, or anyone "special" as it were. So what occupation did he hold before becoming a Herald?

Brandon Sanderson

He was a soldier and bodyguard.

Firm_Spell

Probably a RAFO but whose voice Dalinar constantly hears ("unite them"), if it's not the Stormfather (confirmed in the book). I'm confused...It is supposed to be Honor, but Honor is dead.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

What is the status of the White Sand graphic novel?

Brandon Sanderson

White Sand graphic novel. Let me run down the big list of things people are waiting for. So, White Sand graphic novel is on the good list, that's going really well. The author we had adapt it was fantastic and the artist is doing a great job. We're doing it in eighteen issues. However, because the people with The Wheel of Time (I don't know if any of you guys bought those graphic novels) but they released those individually, people bought subscriptions up front and then it took them forever to deliver on those. Because I have been burnt by that I said "You can't release any of the issues until you have a certain amount done". So because of that, they just decided they would release them only as graphic novels. So they're doing six-issue chunks. So it's kind of weird, there's eighteen issues, but really it's three books of six issues, and they are working on issue number six right now to release the first chunk next year. And we're very pleased with it.

So, the big list. I am working on Stormlight 3 right now, so you can follow on the progress bars. Once I'm done touring, which I've been doing for way too long, you'll start to see those inch up again, and if I finish it by May or June then it can come out next year. If I don't finish it by then it would be the following Spring. So that's what I'm working on right now.

In the queue we have the sequel to Shadows of Self coming out in January and we have the last of The Reckoners, and that is coming out in February. That's a little too close, I wish they hadn't scheduled them like that, but I'm not in charge when they put the books. 

After I write Stormlight 3 my goal is to write a new book that's kind of in the teen-ish-- it's kind of hard because Steelheart here is not published by a teen publisher, the only one published by a teen publisher here is Rithmatist. But something for the Steelheart-- like older teen/young adult-ish, crazy, wacky things like that; I've signed a contract on that. So that'll be my next project. 

Then I'm going to do Rithmatist 2, then I'm going to do Wax and Wayne 4, which is the last of that sequence. Then I'm going to do Stormlight 4.

If the book you're waiting for is not in that list then it's going to come after Stormlight 4 so don't hold your breath.

Mistborn videogame is basically vaporware at this point I'm afraid. I love the guys that are making it. They're still working on it, they still plan to release it. I haven't seen even a demo or early footage or anything like that, so I'm not certain they'll be able to do anything and you guys should not hold your breath on that.

So, movies, I've sold Mistborn, The Emperor's Soul and Steelheart, all are in production, but that doesn't mean anything in Hollywood, in production can mean anything. None of them have started filming yet. Until something starts filming you should assume that it's a hopeful dream. Those are the hopeful dreams that people are paying me a lot of money for. So, there you are.

wiresegal

What color is Moelach in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO

Questioner

Is there a character based off of Emily [Sanderson]?

Brandon Sanderson

Not really... she asked me not to put her in the books as a cameo sort of thing. Some of my friends are in the books as cameos, and some are in the books as more than cameos, like Skar [from Bridge Four] is based on my friend Skar.

Emily Sanderson

And in that case, he looks like him, he acts like him.

Brandon Sanderson

Because Skar is one of the few people I know who is in the military, so I'm like, "I'm gonna use you as a character, because you act like a military person, and I think that's a good thing." He's like, "Yeah, I'm totally on board with that." Most of them are just cameos and things like that.

Emily Sanderson

In most cases, when Brandon puts someone in a book, it's not the whole person. It's a character trait, or a physical trait, or a personality trait, or something like that. Sometimes I'll see characters who say things that I've said.

Brandon Sanderson

Syl says "I'm intelligent and articulate"... that came from when you were... three?

Emily Sanderson

That's a quote from when I was three, and my dad taught me to say... no, I was younger than that, I was like eighteen months old, and I could speak really clearly, and he taught me to say "I am intelligent and articulate". Brandon heard that story from my dad and put that in.

Brandon Sanderson

The character that I would say owes the most to Emily - even though it's not based on Emily - is Navani, because being able to have a wonderful wife has helped me to write a wonderful wife. They're very different people, but there's definitely some...

Emily Sanderson

I can relate with Navani in a lot of ways, in certain roles that she has.

Brandon Sanderson

The prologue to this new book [Stormlight Four] is Navani, and it owes some very specific things to Emily.

stormlightfan70

At any point did Tanavast relinquish the power of Honor to someone else?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Mason Wheeler

After another thousand years will the Well of Ascension to fill up again, or did Harmony do away with that?

Brandon Sanderson

One would not expect the Well of Ascension to fill again. People in-world assume it will not, and they have legitimate reasons to think that.

Questioner

Is what happened on Roshar similar to what happened in Arelon, of being thematically broken due to something...?

Brandon Sanderson

*Hesitant noise* Yes, you are correct.

Questioner

I'm a creative myself but not really so much an authorial type but a systems designer type. And that's actually what attracted me to your books first, is that their systems are so... meticulous is not the right word. They're so hard.

Brandon Sanderson

Right, hard magic.

Questioner

And I'm not going to ask you to go over Sanderson's Laws but they add up to this magical materialism almost, which I think works really well with your storytelling. Do you have any particular method for meshing together the rules that you create for a system and creating a balance that allows you to tell a compelling story with it?

Brandon Sanderson

That's an excellent question because this is a really interesting give and take. Everything needs to be done in service to the story and the danger of these systems is doing the same sort of thing that an outline does to a story. Too rigid of an outline means you just don't have a good story in a lot of cases. Too rigid of a magic system can actually make certain stories just not work. And I don't think this is the only way you have to do it. For me, this is a lot of the fun but I have to let myself bend.

A good example of this, alright? I wanted to do speed bubbles... But one of the powers is these speed bubbles, right? You can slow down or speed up time around you in a bubble, right? So what I do is I say "Okay if we can do this, science-y people--" I go to my science-y people, that's the official term, I said "What's this going to do?" And they're like "Yeah, red shift. You're going to irradiate everybody." I'm like "Oh, right." *laughter* "Right, irradiating the room. A flashlight becomes a laser beam." Like stuff like this, I have-- What I do-- The difference between me and a science fiction writer is I say "I still want speed bubbles, so we will build into the magic system why the red shift doesn't happen and I will go with that. I will make a rule for it and I'll be consistent but I can make up a rule." And that is something I will recommend to fantasists versus science fiction writers is this thing. Remember the story is king. Be consistent once you've done something but go ahead and give yourself the wiggle room to build something that's going to become-- be for great storytelling. And that balance between being consistent and telling a great story is where you want to be.

Chaos2651

Can you tell us what the rest of the Feruchemical and Hemalurgic powers are? Since, you know, you won't be writing in the Mistborn world for many years, and those Feruchemical and Hemalurgic Tables might not even come into existence if the Allomantic Metals one doesn't sell. Pretty please?

Brandon Sanderson

I will release this eventually. I'm still tweaking the powers—their names, and how they function—and so I'd rather hold off on revealing anything specific right now. We might include them in the RPG, though.

Chaos2651

When is the Table of Allomantic Metals coming out?

Brandon Sanderson

Printer emailed me today for final confirmation. Should be very soon now.

Questioner

Someone who has Breath Investiture, can they give Breath to somebody who doesn't, so like somebody from Scadrial, or--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Would the Scadrian be able to use it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. You have seen people from off-planet who have Breath before.

Moderator

Or, indeed, perfect pitch?

Brandon Sanderson

Uhuh. *laughter* And are making use of it in a variety of ways.

Brandon Sanderson

Tertiary Projects

Dark One

Ah, the eternal Dark One update. If you've been reading State of the Sanderson posts for a while now, you might be looking forward to this one (still) making no progress.

My anti-Harry Potter story told from the viewpoint of a boy who discovers he is prophesied to be the Dark One…has made no progress this year. I've had a ton of trouble writing this one. I did set aside three different versions of the first chapter of this, each of which have a very different tone from one another, to be Patreon Random Hat Rewards for January, February, and March. If you want to read "The Eyes" and these three chapters, you could sign up for those months only.

Be warned, though, the Patreon is primarily intended for people who want to support Writing Excuses. The rewards are mostly afterthoughts as a thank you, rather than true incentives to coax you into spending money. The tidbits you'll get probably aren't going to be worth the $10 you give for them. (For example, each of the ones I've mentioned are a few thousand words at most.)

The real reward is supposed to be Writing Excuses going ad-free, so don't sign up just to get the fiction.

Status: Nope.

Questioner

With regards to Legion, are you planning on writing another short story?

Brandon Sanderson

I am planning a third Legion short story, and then I will probably let that one lay fallow for a while. I don't know when I'll do that, it might be next year. I usually do a novella every year. And so, we'll see, it might be Legion next year to kind of wrap that up, not that it's really gonna be an ending because those are kind of episodic, but it will be the end of writing those for a while.

Shardbound

We've seen different Shards have different prophetic abilities--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.  

Shardbound

Is this a result of the Shard itself, the wielder, or a combination of the two.

Brandon Sanderson

More the Shard.

Turambar97

Will there ever be a point in your books where different or all types of investiture clash ?? What I mean will there be a fight between people with different kinds of investiture or will there be a team composed of such people ?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this will happen.

Look for the future of the cosmere to be about the interaction of ideologies, magics, and settings. It's less about an avengers style team up, and more about the clash between cultures.

Questioner

I had a question about [steel] Ferrings. So, I saw that you had mentioned in a previous talk that you could only move so fast with air resistance, like eventually you'd start burning up. If you were to become an Edgedancer as well?

Brandon Sanderson

If you can combine those two powers, Edgedancing and [steel] Ferring, then you are able to do things that would circumvent that restriction. Yes, indeed.

Brandon Sanderson

The name of this section was Snow and Ash. I think that's pretty self-explanatory. While some of the section titles were tough to come up with, this one was rather easy. The image of the snow and the ash mixing was powerful to me because of how similar, yet at the same time opposite, the two materials are.

It was a brutal section, and actually marks the pseudo-ending of the book. We've dealt with the major conflict that was raised in the first chapter. The armies are defeated with and the city is safe.

However, there's still something to do. I had a lot of trouble deciding how to work the separate climaxes of this book. Did I try to interweave them, having Vin find the Well of Ascension even as the koloss were attacking? That seemed too obvious, and I felt one of the two plots would overshadow the other. Beyond that, I worried it would all just become a big mess, hard to follow. It IS possible to have too much going on during an ending.

So I went with the other option—dealing with the armies, then moving on to a final, shorter section that focused on the Well of Ascension. We're getting into parts of the book that were very heavily revised, and so these are things that will probably end up with deleted scenes on the website, once I get around to posting them.

dvoraen

Dai-Gonarthis is speculated by Mythica's author Hessi to be the cause of Aimia's destruction. Does this have relevance to the Night of Sorrows?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

I've had this question burning deep inside me since I finished RoW, is there a truest Surge of Odium? My headcanon for now is Transportation.

Brandon Sanderson

Hey! So, I'll deal with this eventually in the books, so it's a RAFO for now! But do keep in mind that the Surges on Roshar, as they're understood now, are mostly Honor/Cultivation.

unknown

Is it possible to make an artificial shard? And not in an easy manner but if one had the resources and time could they make one?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not sure what an artificial shard would be. You'd be using the power from Adonalsium to do it--so it wouldn't be 'artificial,' by cosmere terms. You'd just be collecting power. The question becomes if you gather enough of it, would it combine back together--which is a RAFO in the world. Nobody knows.

Isaac Stewart

I think they might have [the Highprince glyphs] in order on the warcamps map, when I have them on the edge. They might be in order, but I might have put them together in a way that they just looks nice... I think I might have picked an order that looked cool. I'm like, "Ah, this one looks better here and moved them around."

Pagerunner

One of them's upside down, right?

Isaac Stewart

I think they go all into a symbol in the middle... You might have some of them upside down. I'll have to look at my old file that has the originals. And you can see, too, that their glyphs, they're starting to look different from what I do now stylistically.

Pagerunner

You talked about the Shard line, and I've seen that, they all have this line down the middle.

Isaac Stewart

Yeah, we started changing things. That's just how things work. Things evolve. But, it works in the history. There was probably a time when the calligraphy, it was just in the vogue to do it this way. The rules could have changed. If you're the Calligrapher's Guild, you're gonna want to change the style, see what's in vogue. Because, hey, now all the nobles need to change their house logos so their logos, their glyphs don't look... "Oh, that looks so old." They want to stay relevant, so they probably do things like that. It's interesting how that-- Even though there's a kind of way they look like mistakes, it's how things work in the real world, people make slight changes and people do things a slightly different way, but I imagine those particular glyphs are a little more simplified than some of the stuff that we're doing. If we were to go into, like, Sadeas's glyph, for example, it's really simple. But I have other places where it's got more lines and stuff. His personal banner is probably gonna have more stuff in it.

Pagerunner

One of the Kholin glyphs has all these extra letters. It's like, "Wait a minute, what are these letters?"

Isaac Stewart

People call them "screw with you" lines. No, they call them "screw you lines," and it was never meant to mess with people. It was meant to make it look cool.

DCD328

[Personalization Request] To Hoid, with a message that hints at his quest.

Brandon Sanderson

To make that which once was.

Phantine

Is there anything interesting about the etymology of the Drominad system?

Whenever I think of it I immediately think 'Dromedary'.

Brandon Sanderson

I'll get into it someday, but it's nothing that should be immediately obvious.

Botanica

Except for in the prelude, does Kalak appear somewhere in the books? (A bit RAFO, but is he the shorter Alethi-looking man who accompanied Nale in WoK/WoR prologue?)

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Have you ever been to the Free Kingdoms, and if you have what was it like?

Brandon Sanderson

I have not been to the Free Kingdoms. They won't let me in. They think that I'm a Librarian agent, which I keep telling them I'm not but they keep pointing to the fact that I write lots of books and I go speak at libraries, and I hang out with librarians, and some of my good friends are librarians, so they don't trust me. I can't get a pass.

uchoo786

So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm?

Brandon Sanderson

The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak.

Questioner

Where did you get the idea for the Reckoners series?

Brandon Sanderson

Where did I get the idea for writing the Reckoners series? I almost got in a car wreck. I was driving to a book signing and I was late and somebody cut me off in traffic. And it was like-- I had to slam on the brakes and things like that and I thought-- At that moment I'm like "You, person in front of me, are so lucky I don't have superpowers, 'cause if I did I would blow your car up right now. BOOM" It's a great Michael Bay effect, like it explodes and I drive through the smoke. It was really awesome; I remember it. And then I was immediately horrified, right? I'm like "Here I write all these books about people protecting the world with their powers and what would I do if I had them? I'd be blowing up people because they inconvenience me." *laughter* And this is where the series came from, I thought about that the entire rest of the drive, which was about another hour. And I thought "What if-- What could we do if people just started manifesting superpowers and-- You couldn't throw them in prison, or if you did they'd just break out. You couldn't defeat them with the armies. What would the society do if there were legitimately super-powered individuals?" It's kind of the same tactic that Watchmen took, if you've ever read that, but it kind of goes the other direction with "They are all evil, what do we do?" That was the origin and I wrote a whole book series about it.

Questioner

Do you have any plans <for, like, having any of your novels made into graphic novels>?

Brandon Sanderson

"Would I like to have any of my novels made into graphic novels?" We're actually doing one right now. I've hit-- I've kept away from doing this for a while because I didn't want to just give people the same story. So <I kept thinking>, "Oh, I'll write a side story for something." But then that requires so much time for me, that if I were going to do that I'd just release it as a novel. So we <caught> this kind of weird place where I wasn't sure what to do. But then my agent pitched taking one of my books that was unpublished during my days that I was trying to break in, that was pretty good, and had a good magic system, but needed a lot of editing. And said, "Why don't we do that? Because we can edit it during the same time that we're preparing the graphic novel, and then do a graphic novel version." And that turned out really well. We got another writer to help me and do the writing-- someone who knew comic books. And the script turned out fantastic, so we sent it in as being turned in. They've done 5 out of 6 issues. And it will be 18 issues, but they'll issue them in 6-issue clumps. They actually will only be graphic novels, there won't be-- And there will be three of those. So the first of those should come out next year. The first six. It's called White Sand. If you want to read the book, I do send that book out to people who just write to me. Because I don't think the book as it stands is good enough to charge you for. So be aware that if-- But it was written about the same time as Elantris, and it's just a little worse than Elantris.

Chaos (paraphrased)

Does Ruin have a pool, similar to Preservation's pool with the Well of Ascension and Skai's pool in Elantris?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes. His pool is the Pits [Pits of Hathsin].

getrekt36act

Can the grappling hook on the ships only work on acclivity-stone debris, or is it just easier to use with acclivity debris?

Brandon Sanderson

It can work on anything. It IS easier with acclivity debris.

Spriy

I've been wondering if the Ars Arcanum for Mistborn 7 will include a guide to speaking High Imperial.

Brandon Sanderson

No promises, I'm afraid. I like the rules for High Imperial being kind of vague.

Questioner

Zahel calls Renarin--he says to Renarin-- I'm sorry, about Renarin... *brief interruption*

Brandon Sanderson

So, keep going.

Questioner

He calls him "the son of the most powerful human on this..." And I was wondering, the word "human", is that referring to Dalinar or is it referring to maybe Dalinar *inaudible/interrupted*

Brandon Sanderson

Good question! It is referring to Dalinar.

Questioner

It is!? So how would you finish that sentence? "The most powerful human on this..."

Brandon Sanderson

"Planet."

Koajan

I have a question about the man at the end of Rhythm of War that Kaladin finds, that used to recollect lost objects from the Shattered Plains, such as Rock's razor or even Tien's horse. Will we get to know more about him, or is it just a random man?

Brandon Sanderson

So, what is happening there is all RAFO material. I'm not gonna answer any specifics about Tien's horse or even about Tien. There are lots of ways you can theorize that this happened, and I'm not gonna canonize which of them it is. One of those includes Hoid and his shenanigans, that's a possibility. One of which is kind of some Fortune being bent around what's going on. Other possibilities are that there's a divine manifestation. I'm not gonna say which of those it is, but there are lots of plausible answers there.

HorseCannon

I didn't realize Horneaters had parshmen blood, didn't even realize that was possible. How closely are humans and parshmen related, do they have a common ancestor? Or is one an artificially created version of the other?

Brandon Sanderson

There was intermixing long ago. Horneaters and Herdazians are both a result. (Signs of this are the stone carapace on Herdazian fingernails and the Horneater extra jaw pieces--in the back of the mouth--for breaking shells.)

Humans and parshmen don't have a common ancestor. And as a side note, both of these strains of humanoids predate the ascension of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium.

ccstat

Are there Aimian-Human hybrids as well? (Either type of Aimian) If so, are the Thaylen people one of these?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Blightsong

*via private message*

Some of us believe that you are saying that humans and listeners existed pre-Shattering while some of us believe that you are saying that Horneaters and Herdazians existed pre-Shattering (you have mentioned that humans had been on Roshar since before the Shattering recently). What were you trying to say here?

Brandon Sanderson

Humans (other than those on Yolen) existed pre-Shattering, as did parshmen.

Cheese_Ninja

Seems like Taravangian asked for the capacity to do two different things from Nightwatcher as his Boon, and got two different things in return, am I reading that right?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, I'm afraid.

Questioner

In terms of discussing Identity, I know that in Emperor's Soul, they talk about Identity, and the Parshendi talk about losing their Identity, and then I was just rereading Bands of Mourning, and one of the kandra talks about how the spikes are their Identity. Are all of those things connected somehow or are they different forms of Identity?

Brandon Sanderson

They are connected, although the Parshendi losing their identity is a little more metaphorical. But yeah, the idea of these things-- Identity is an innate attribute in the cosmere that is related to your soul, your spirit, and it is one of the things that Hemalurgy can fiddle with and Feruchemy can fiddle with. It's kind of important to how the [Metallic] Arts play out, but it's important to all the magics...

Identity is involved in why you can't use another person's metalminds, right, that kind of thing. And those are all related. The Parshendi is more metaphorical. 

Questioner

I wondered because it's always capitalized, in the book.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep, and it's done intentionally. Peter always asks, "Are you sure this one is capitalized?" "Yeah."

Dancingedge

While Epics already age slower can their powers protect them from aging completely, be it by simply negating it or for example returning them to a specific age, upon resurrection.

Brandon Sanderson

There are no known Epics who don't age at all.

EarthRester

In Warbreaker, the closer an inanimate object is to a humanoid shape, the easier it is to awaken it.

Hypothetically, say a race of sentient quadrupedal canines had access to BioChromatic Breath. Would they have an easier time awakening objects if they were closer to a canine shape, or is the rule still that it needs to be more humanoid?

Brandon Sanderson

Closer to canine.

Darkness (paraphrased)

Will Jasnah's sisters show up in the present day arc?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Jasnah sisters… Oh… OH! The other… Veristitalians. Um… yes. You will actually meet two more Veristitalians in the next book!

Brandon Sanderson

Projected Novel Release Schedule

There's a good chance I won't hold to this, but just so you know, here's how I view my upcoming novel release schedule (not including any novellas or short stories that may or may not appear during moments when I need to do something new):

January 2016: Wax and Wayne 3

February 2016: Reckoners 3 (final book)

June 2016: Alcatraz 5

Sometime 2017: Stormlight 3

Sometime 2017: Rithmatist 2

Spring 2018: New YA project 1

Fall 2018: Wax and Wayne 4 (final book)

Sometime 2019: Stormlight 4

Sometime 2019: New YA project 2

Sometime 2020: Elantris 2

Sometime 2020 New YA project 3 (final book)

Sometime 2021: Stormlight 5 (ending of first arc)

Sometime 2022: Elantris 3 (final book)

Questioner

Is-- As of Era Two in Mistborn, is Bavadin still alive?

Brandon Sanderson

Ehhh... *long pause* I'm pretty sure I've answered that, but just in case I haven't I'm going to RAFO it.

Ravi

Does [Nazh] ever have any arguments with Khriss?

Isaac Stewart

All the time.

Ravi

But, they're basically best friends anyway right?

Isaac Stewart

I don't know about that, I'd have to ask Brandon. But I imagine that they get along pretty well and he feels okay being grumpy around her.

Ravi

So it's not like Mythbusters where they're only friends on TV but not actually friends in real life?

Isaac Stewart

I would imagine it's not like that.

Questioner (paraphrased)

Anything you can tell us about Steelheart's sequel, Firefight?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It starts off in Chicago, but then moves to New York. It will show off an... interesting version of Manhattan, similarly to how Steelheart's showed off an interesting version of Chicago. It will also introduce three new Epics.