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Have you played the Mistborn board game? Are you involved in that at all?
My assistant loves board games. I play Magic: The Gathering. Not necessarily board games. So I've just been *inaudible* to him. They have been very involved, my team has been. When they do a CCG, I will be involved.
It's very subtle, but at the end of Oathbringer, when Jasnah goes to find Shallan on the battlefield, she goes to grab Shallan, Shallan's over here as Radiant. She has Shards *inaudible*?
That's a Read and Find Out. I'm being very coy on Shardplate, even though you have seen characters with it in the books before. Because I want to wait until I can do some reveals in viewpoint character.
I will tell you this: You have indeed seen people with Shardplate multiple times in the books. Or at least, the soon aftermath of someone.
If you have a metalmind, you have, like, weight stored in it, and you want to transfer it to a different metalmind, can you just transfer it directly? Or does it pass into you, and then you lose some of the power, and then it goes...
You don't have to draw it completely out. You are gonna lose a little in the transfer. But it's not as much as you probably think. You can kind of do a little hack thing where it goes through.
There are Allomantic savants, are there Feruchemical savants?
Much harder to do. My feeling on Feruchemical savants was because it was your own power in the first place, you can't steep in it so much in the way. But, if you can get someone else's power or if you are fueling your Feruchemy another way, you would become one. So, the Lord Ruler is a good example.
Was Miles a...
Yeah. Miles would be the same sort of thing.
Is that why he didn't die as quickly in the execution?
Yes.
So yeah. Normally no but if you can Compound you become... basically that is how I am explaining part of the Compounding abilities.
The man that gives Nightblood to Szeth at the end of Words of Radiance, I don't understand who he is.
...Oh Nale, oh you mean Nale. Nale's one of the Heralds.
But I thought that those guys left? At the be-- In the prequel, at the beginning of The Way of Kings.
They abandoned their swords and went about the world, but did not return to the place where they were supposed to go, which was off-world.
So they just die?
They did not die.
So they're all still out there? Somewhere in the cosmere?
It can be assumed that they are all still out there unless some of them died since then. It was 4,000 years ago.
But the one guy that stayed, went crazy because--
The one guy they abandoned was left in their version of hell, and the rest of them were supposed to return and didn't.
Every day?
Every time they die they're supposed to go back. Or every time the war is over. You are asking good questions, they're questions that will make more sense as the book progresses.
When someone dies on Nalthis, their Breaths: go away with the soul, or remain in the corpse?
Breaths return to Endowment.
Together with the soul? Or remain in the corpse?
The soul--
Passes away?
Yes, unless it turns into a Cognitive Shadow. Then, the soul goes into the Beyond. And so the actual essence of the soul, the Investiture of it, does return to Endowment.
Could an AI bond a spren?
RAFO
Is Hoid the most knowledgeable about what's going on in the cosmere?
No, Khriss is the most aware by a long shot. Nazh knows a lot as well. Hoid might know more than Nazh but he is pretty in the know as well so it's close.
How do you pronounce Kelsier's name?
I say "kelsi-er" (ˈkɛlsiəɹ). In world, they'd say "kelsi-eh" (ˈkɛlsiˌei). Yeah, most people would.
What book was the most fun to write?
The most fun to write was probably the third Wax and Wayne book, which is called Bands of Mourning. It was just a blast.
I'm supposed to ask how Odium and Honor's Investiture could be so similar.
Odium and Honor, like a lot of the Shards, can be considered to have a similar theme. But that is very common among the Shards, in my opinion.
Philen watches Elend enter the Assembly Hall
We get a random viewpoint here. No, Philen isn't going to be a major viewpoint in the book. He just fills a role that you'll often see in my books–that of the section given to a random person because I wanted to show a different perspective on things.
In this case, I wanted to show Elend entering the assembly hall, as he would be seen by someone sitting on the inside. This was one of the dramatic scenes that I planned from early on for the book, and it was nice to find a way to fulfill it.
Of course, there's more to Philen's viewpoint than that one image. I also wanted to make him a little more memorable so that the next few Assembly meetings would work better. I've reinforced Penrod a bit, but I worried that Philen would be forgettable unless I gave him a viewpoint. And, since he is a modestly big player in the next little bit of political wrangling, it felt right to let him take the stage for a few moments.
Finally, it was simply fun to write from a brief–but new–viewpoint. Philen thinks very differently from the other viewpoint characters. His sentences are quick and eager, and his internal narrative has a shallowness to it in both sentence structure and content. He's not very smart, but he is rather clever, and those things mixing together–along with his native eagerness–made for an interesting viewpoint to write.
In Sixth of the Dusk, the Aviar, they [ate all those worms]. What happens if someone else eats the worms on Patji? Do they get powers?
Has-- It doesn’t work for a human. They’ve tried that. But there might be something more there.
If a gold Ferring got electrocuted, would he get paralyzed and/or heal and [react normally]?
So he gets electrocuted. You're asking does Cosmere healing prevent you from being stunned by a taser?
Huh, what a good question. I'm going to say, and I could contradict this, so this is Word of Brandon canon until I contradict it, you could still stun them with electrical stimulation of muscles, because it's not doing any harm and it's just how muscles normally work. So I think that's a good workaround.
All right, the question that arises here is pretty obvious: How in the multiverse did Davriel let himself get caught up in the mess happening on Ravnica. Well, the events of the story I wrote kind of blew his cover—and, just as feared—soon after, he got several visits from extra-planar entities looking for planeswalkers to recruit for their cause. He also got a very cryptic message that I’ll, perhaps, get into some time in the future.
Suffice it to say that in the end, he decided to show up and do his best to encourage everyone that he was useless. He figured that way, next time everyone decided to go murder one another, they’d neglect to invite him. Unfortunately, he arrived, and everything has basically gone to hell. (And, having been there before, he’s not a fan.)
We can therefore summarize Davriel’s opinion on events with the following list:
Now, if you’ll excuse him, he’s going to go see if Cruel Celebrant’s party has any snacks not infused with the blood of the innocent. (It really tastes far worse than everyone claims, and he’s convinced they just like to look trendy by consuming it.)
We have been introduced to two ways to refer to a magic system up until RoW. Khriss has referred to manifestations of Investiture (in the context of the Metallic Arts) and elsewhere has used the term Invested Arts, which seemed to be the in-world term for a magic system. However, RoW has now introduced the term "arcana". Is this a synonym for Invested Art or a term for a specific sort of "power set" like Stoneshaping or Lightweaving that might be present in different forms in multiple Invested Arts throughout the cosmere?
For the first question, arcana isn't really either of those things. Invested Arts would still be the official title. Where is arcana is more of a simple, more colloquial catch all. It's like maybe the difference between saying Olympic Categories and just sports.
Are Shallan's "memories" a form of Surgebinding?
Good question! Shallan has something besides pure physiology aiding her when taking a memory.
Movie/Television Updates
The Reckoners
Still held by Fox, with 21 Laps producing. They renewed their option this summer, so they are still interested in the property, though I haven't had any specific updates in a while. I have no idea how the Disney acquisition might affect things.
We've had some discussion, people wondering whether Taln actually broke the Oathpact, or did something else happen? Like he just got too crazy to be able to hold the Oathpact back or something else, or is that all totally off track?
RAFO! There are scenes in the stories talking about that, so it is a question I expect people to be asking.
One of the things I'm most excited about with this book [Rhythm of War] has been what you described as being a foundational scene that you got to write that you've been thinking of forever. In the Cosmere and in your writing, has there been anything that you've done on that level? You have huge reveals and awesome scenes all over the place, but has there been one that's been cooking for so long and then you finally got to put it on the page? Or is this the first time you got to do that?
No, the first one of these was Kaladin taking the Shardblade at the end of Words of Radiance. That was the first really big one that I had been planning for a long time. Even stretches back to some things in Way of Kings Prime that I never got to write, because I never wrote the second book of that series. So that is one of those moments that just have been planned forever.
Most of these are Stormlight or Dragonsteel. Because Mistborn did not have as long of a cooking phase. So while there's cool moments in it, it's not like I spent ten years planning them. I spent, like, two years planning them. And so the ones for... there's one in Words of Radiance, there's one in this book, and there's one at the end of Book Five. (And there's one in Book Ten, also, but there's a bunch of them in Stormlight, the back five.) In the first five, we've got one in this book. (You'll know when you get to it. I think you'll know when you get to it.) And there's one in the next book that I first thought of and tried playing with an outline of... boy, it was, like, '98 or '99, before I even started Prime. After Five, we'll have a lot to talk about about that moment. But you'll find one in this book.
Vin Soothes the Koloss
She does it by Soothing the koloss. I think this is probably the easiest of the twists in the book–after all, I showed her doing the exact same thing to a kandra, then told you that kandra and koloss were very similar. So this shouldn't have been too much of a logical leap. If Vin hadn't been exhausted and overworked here, she probably would have figured it out earlier.
I thought it important, by the way, to show her fighting without her powers–and to show that she's still good, even when she doesn't have pewter steel or iron. She's a dangerous person. The metals just make her VERY dangerous.
By the way, I used Kelsier's last words–obliquely–as the thing that pulled her out of her stupor when she fell to the lack of pewter. She's been burning it far too much for this entire book, and hopefully you're expecting her to have to pay for that at some point. She would have dropped unconscious if she hadn't thought of her friends.
Kelsier would have been proud. His last words to her had been a chastisement, since she hadn't been treating their friends as well as she should have. He insisted on rescuing Spook from the cages, rushing into an obvious trap despite the danger. Vin has done nearly the same thing in returning to Luthadel.
Vin admits her real reason for disliking OreSeur.
Obviously, the most important events in this chapter deal with Vin and OreSeur and their relationship. The real reason why she hates him is something that I hope you've been wondering about. I intended the "He ate Kelsier" argument to fall flat for readers. Vin's smarter than that, as OreSeur said. Eating Kelsier's dead body is a little, dumb thing. A person who grew up on the street wouldn't be bothered by such a simple, if brutal, event–particularly not for as long as Vin has kept her grudge against OreSeur.
So this is why. She did love Kelsier–not romantically, perhaps, though Vin's emotions at the time weren't as simple as she'd now like to think. Either way, Kelsier's death affected her greatly. Focusing on OreSeur–who knew about Kelsier's real plan, but didn't stop him from executing it–gave her someone to hate. She couldn't hate Kelsier, but she could resent the one who had let him die.
It's a complicated relationship. But, then, aren't most relationships complicated?
One of the projects I'm most excited for from you Brandon is Adamant (the Silence of the Lambs in Space story--It's in second-place 'cause The Aztlanian). You once mentioned that you were considering trying to slide it in the cosmere, but were unsure because it would require removing a Shakespeare reference of which you were fond. Have you considered adding it to this fledgling Skywardverse? (Thereby cementing your claim to fame as the "crossover universes" guy)
I doubt I'll put Adamant into the Skyward universe if only because I'm so enamored with how it turned out when I did...what I did to it. (You'll see eventually.) It really is a lot of fun set up the way it is now.
During the course of Oathbringer, and not counting what happens towards the end of the book, are all nine [Unmade] active in the world again (no longer imprisoned)?
RAFO.
Aluminum, when you burn aluminum, does it actually destroy the metals or just take away their power?
It destroys the metals.
Same with chromium?
Yeah.
So it actually gets rid of the metals?
It actually trans-- Â It does a-- Â matter, energy, investiture are the same things in the cosmere. Â You have some sort of transfer happening relating to those things.
The question sort of relates to metal poisoning--
Yeah, you would not get metal poisoning after that.
Who's your favorite planeswalker?
Probably Elspeth. When Elspeth is dressed in armor appropriate for her personality. I have a thing about that. But I really like-- I mean, it's me. I like the questing knight searching for answers who thought she found them and then they turned-- the moral axis was upended. That was a really cool story, to me.
Would you ever write any planeswalker stories?
If I were asked by Wizards of the Coast to write a story, I would probably say yes... I've told them this, as well, that if they asked me to write a story, I would probably say yes.
So that's not Secret Project, either.
I didn't say that.
Is there any way to get the novel version of White Sand, or is all just graphic?
If you want a novel version of White Sand, if you sign up for my mailing list, we send you the ebook. And you are welcome to print your own copy (as long as you don't distribute it) that you make for yourself. That's the best way to get White Sand. I don't have any plans to print them right now. It's possible that someday I will. So if you wanna be patient, maybe we'll do some Dragonsteel Edition, or something like that.
Since Teft is dead, may he rest in peace, could you tell us what his fourth Ideal would have been if he had spoken it before Vyre killed him?
Hmmm... Fourth Ideal for Teft. I would like to give that more thought, rather than be on the spot for it here, so it's a RAFO, but not a promise that I'll answer you. There are things I would want to consider before I answer that. It's a great question. That's the one I'm saddest not to be able to answer, but I don't think I can answer that on the spot, while I'm doing other things right now. It deserves more consideration than an off the cuff answer.
Is there any significance to Syl appearing to Kaladin in full sized human form?
To her? Yes. In world, I would not say a huge significance.
If for some reason Davriel had to join the Gatewatch, what oath will he take?
Because nobody will leave me alone, I will keep watch.
The effects of trellium on the bendalloy? Those are going to RAFO'd
They are. I'm sorry. These are the sorts of things the future series will be dealing with.
What is one Epic power you wished was in one of the Reckoners books but isn't?
If there had been one, I'd have put it in.
Was that little remark about queuing by Sigzil [in Oathbringer] a little dig at us Brits?
Uh, yes.
In WoR and OB we hear about the Veden/Kharbranthian Half Shard shields that can resist Shardblade strikes, and which involve trapping Radiant spren according to Taravangian. In RoW they aren't mentioned, despite the book spending a long time talking about fabrial science.
Both Oathbringer and Rhythm of War raised some unanswered questions though. First, when the fabrial fails and the Shardblade starts cutting again, has something terrible happened to the spren contained inside the gemstone, similar to when Kaladin stabs a voidspren with Syl in the Kholinar palace? Second, are the honorspren OK with these fabrials, ethically, like they are with other modern fabrials?
I do want to get more into half shards when it's the right place, so I'll RAFO most of that for now. I'm not sure EXACTLY what the other questions are asking, as the wording wasn't 100% clear to me, but if you are asking if things like Soulcasters are okay with spren: yes. If it's half-shards, it's a RAFO.
What would happen if a Parshendi were to attract a spren and bring it into the Highstorm? Like, an Honorspren of some sort?
Sapient spren have a choice of whether they get bonded or not, unless you entrap them some way. But simply attracting them...simply going into the Highstorm with one wouldn't work, what you said is 'attracted a spren', so, to answer that actually... The thing is, honorspren, all the spren of Honor and Cultivation, not honorspren capital, Honorspren or whatever... The spren that create the orders of the Knights Radiant have not, in the past, been attracted to Parshendi because of certain events in the past.
*inaudible*
You'll have to Read and Find Out.
Dalinar had two non-Stormfather visions. First at the end of Words of Radiance, and second with Nohadon in Oathbringer. I'm curious if these two are related or they come from different sources?
So, by even answering that, this is one of those questions I tend to RAFO because by answering it I'm implying that your postulations are correct, which I am not even willing to do. It's more of a RAFO in that... let's just say I'm not even willing to confirm the postulations.
Part Three Wrap-up
I named this section of the book "King." However, that's supposed to be a slightly ironic title, since Elend gets deposed at the end of part two, spends this entire section working to get his throne back, then eventually loses it anyway.
The irony is that during this section, in my mind, Elend really learned to be a king. Yet it's the place where he has it most brutally pounded into him that his rule is not wanted.
Idealism has a cost. Or, at least, I think it SHOULD have a cost. If you are holding up your ideals as true, then you should have to be willing to sacrifice for them, otherwise it just doesn't feel right. I don't think this is me forcing the story to prove a point—I think it's me trying to represent, as accurately as I can, the way the world works.
The measure of Elend Venture is not going to be what kind of king he would make. It's going to be the kind of man he makes once he's been rejected.
When you say that the Returned are Cognitive Shadows, are they shadows of the people they were pre-death? In other words, is Lightsong Llarimar's Cognitive Shadow stapled to his body with a Divine Breath?
Yes, they are. (The evidence in the books is Lightsong obtaining some of the memories his pre-death soul had.)
So if the skaa on Scadrial had gone out in the mists more often, would they have had a longer lifespan?
*Hesitant* The skaa lifespans are more related to their status in life than genetic predisposition. Going in the mists probably would not have changed that.
I didn't think of it that way, I thought of it more from a, "Oh, people on Roshar have a longer lifespan because of Investiture." Because the mists are Invested.
*Hesitant* Technically yes, but I think it's going to be pretty miniscule. Technically yes.
Projects in Development
Dark One
A perennial favorite on the State of the Sanderson is this YA series about a boy who discovers he's the Dark One, a figure from prophecy fated to destroy the world. My outlines are looking okay for this one, but it doesn't feel like the right time to do it. I pitched it to my editors at Random House along with the new YA series above, and we all agreed the other project was a better follow-up to the Reckoners.
Dark One is bound to get done someday. That day isn't now.
d No Projected Start Date
Hey, Brandon as a big fan of the Stormlight books. I'm wondering what is the ratio between dark eyes and light eyes in the country where Kaladin is from. Sorry if this was mentioned in the books and I just forgot.
Weighted toward darkeyes, though the lighteye/darkeye disparity is not nearly as great as the noble/peasant disparity was in our world.
I know the second book in the series isn't due out until next year, but can you tell us how many books there will be total in the series?
A trilogy. As for it being open-ended, I can't reveal the ending of the third book, or anything about it, while the first book is just barely out! So, you'll have to wait and see.
Evi, in Oathbringer, she uses strange idioms and you mentioned you wanna be on the lookout for people who use strange idioms... Is Evi native to Roshar?
Yes... Her people are related to the Iri, who are not native to Roshar. But she is not Iriali herself. And all the Iriali, they are native to Roshar, people who are born now, even if their people aren't. So Evi-- You can say, right, like, no humans are native to Roshar. But, yes, she was born on Roshar.
...Would she might have some of the same blood in her that Vivenna and Siri would have?
Viviena and Siri... Oh, from... Ah, I'll RAFO that.
Can you tell me what the Alethi word for "peace" is, so I can make a glyph out of it? I'd love to use it for a personal project.
edit: is it Ororo? Since Adolin's name is made up of "adoda", meaning light, and the suffix "lin" meaning, son of. And Oroden means child of light, So that would make "den" the suffix here, and thus oro the first half of the word for peace, if i'm correct, leading to Ororo?
Yes, you are correct, though the Alethi would probably write it and use it in names as Oroho, pronounced "Or-oh-ho." But you could write it either way, or simply as Oro.
Have you thought of titles for the rest of The Stormlight Archive?
No, I only named the first five when I was doing my outline. They were Stones Unhallowed, Oathbringer, and I don't like the other name so I'm not going to mention it.
Is there only one seon for every given Aon?
Yes, there is. Now, there is only one Seon for every Aon, but there are Aons that you don't know about, yet.
In Words of Radiance, can you give me a worldhopper that you haven't told us about?
Afraid not. The problem, I just get asked that, like, twenty times per signing, and I wouldn't have anything left.... I'm sorry... The one I get asked a lot is, "Can you name a Shard you haven't named before?"
There's, like, three left!
Yeah, I mean... And people already pulled out from me all the worldhoppers that I am comfortable talking about.
Will we see more animals like that strange slug?
You will indeed see more of both Doomslug and creatures like her.
Is there's a real life analog to what the singers sound like when they're speaking to the Rhythms?
Let me get back to you on that. This is actually, that's a RAFO, but it's a RAFO with an explanation. I have tried to find one that I like. I have not yet found one that I like. I'm sure it exists, or I have faith that it exists, but I haven't gotten one I like. We will definitely have to have one when we make the television show or movie, which I am fully confident that someday we will. So if I were to say yes to that now, and talk about some of the ones I think are kind of closer, then we may have to change that entirely when we make the television show.
You're writing so many stories at once with so many different characters. Does it ever get confusing?
Once in a while. But the way my brain chemistry works, it's good for me to be always thinking about something new and jumping around a little bit, it helps me a ton. Different writers are very different. They don't want to do that at all, and it's just fine. There's no one right way to do it. I don't usually have trouble. It's the excitement of keeping track of it all that's fun for me.
