Advanced Search

Brandon Sanderson

Vasher the Hero

We finally start to get a sense here of Vasher's true motivations. When designing him as a character, one of my goals was to force myself to stretch. I wanted to tell a story about a hero who was very different from my standard. A person who wasn't glib, who wasn't good with people. The opposite of Kelsier or Raoden—a man who had trouble expressing himself, who let his anger get the better of him, and who was rough around the edges. You really get to see who he is in this chapter as he shoves Vivenna around and bullies the Idrians.

Vasher tries, and his heart is good, but he just doesn't have a delicate bone in his body. He doesn't know how to influence people. He made for a fascinating hero to write for that reason, but it also led me to want to keep him more mysterious from the beginning. I felt that if we spent too much time with him, we wouldn't be as interested in him. The way people who read the book kept crying for more Vasher and more Nightblood made me think I was right in keeping their chapters sparse—it meant that by the time you reached this point in the book, you were (hopefully) very interested in what he was doing.

17th Shard

If you put all the Shardblades and all the Shardplate together in one place, will you create a Voltron?

Brandon Sanderson

*laughs* No!

Stroniax

Does Szeth-son-son-Vallano's Surgebinding require an honorspren like Kaladin's?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it does not. (Hm....) Gold star to you.

Nashan'Elin (paraphrased)

Could Honor and Autonomy be considered opposites, like, Autonomy freeing from Honor's oaths?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, you could definitely think of it that way. Those two are more likely to be opposed than some others.

Bugsy6912

Does Investiture warp spacetime like objects with mass/energy do in our world?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes--but the warping is not on the Physical Realm.

Questioner

Second question, if completely hypothetically, and forbid! - somebody had to do for you what you did for Robert Jordan, who would your choice be?

Brandon Sanderson

I would probably either pick Brent Weeks, who has a very similar style to me, or Brian McClellan, who is one of my students who is now publishing books, and writing very good books. Those guys, either one, I think would do a fine job.

Questioner

I read McClellan's book on your recommendation. Can you let him know that he needs to put women in his books?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, that's what I actually told him. My number one criticism when he called me and said, "What do you think of my book?" I said, "You only put one woman in your book, and she's a cliche." She's the friendly cliche, *audio obscured*. The first thing that happens is you get the cliched damsel in distress, then when people realize "Oh, that's being sexist," they then make the girl awesome, but have no personality. That's like step two. Then step three is real characters, and so I did let him know, and he promised he would do better with future books. I think it is the most legitimate criticism of that book, is that he's just bad with women. But you know, my first book I was terrible; I just didn't publish that one. He's unfortunate that he published it. But even in Mistborn, I only had Vin, so we all fall into this trap, and I've read many women who only put one guy in the book, and he's perfect. It's just something that new authors have a problem with very naturally, so hopefully he'll catch on the same way I caught on.

Questioner (paraphrased)

What was your inspiration for Grandpa Smedry?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

[Brandon's] mother, who was always late to things. [Brandon]'s the inspiration for Alcatraz *he held up his broken phone to us*.

Questioner

Where does the concept for the broadsheets come from?

Brandon Sanderson

So I get together with my team: which is Ben McSweeney who does a lot of the artwork, Isaac who does all the symbols and maps, my editorial assistant, and myself. And then we brainstorm as many cool things as we can, and then Isaac lays it out, Ben does all the art, and then together we all just write different *inaudible* for the articles so it feels like a newspaper that a lot of different people are writing.

Questioner

That's awesome. Thank you very much this is very cool.

Brandon Sanderson

That's how we do it.

Isaac wrote the Allomancer Jak pieces in the next one so you should read that one. It's really fun, it's his debut of fiction.

KalynaAnne

If you drew a Line of Forbiddance on, like, a slate and then you can hold the slate--

Brandon Sanderson

Moving stuff around starts playing with things. So I'm going to say, I will deal with that in the next book but it doesn't work how you want it to work.

KalynaAnne

Okay, I'll accept that answer.

Brandon Sanderson

For logistical reasons, when I was building the magic, I was "Ehhh, we've got to not have this be possible."

Questioner

First of all thank you for creating your own justified physics laws for your magic systems. Coming from a scientist I appreciate that, even though--

Brandon Sanderson

My pleasure. I like to have-- You know I was a chemist for one year in college, one year until I washed out. No really what it was… In high school chemistry is about blowing stuff up and doing cool experiments. They use that to trick you. *laughter* Because then you go to college and their like "Great! Now you are doing math equations, all day" And while I loved-- Oh, Eric's over here, he's like "Yes! That's what I love, math equations. Give me more!" I really did enjoy a lot of the concepts, I just did not enjoy the busy work so that's why I jumped ship. But I like my magic to make sense. Don't get me wrong, when I say "Err on the side of awesome" I don't mean "Write your stories in such a way that they don't make sense" but I will often start with "This is a cool image, I want to have work. How can I work out the logistics of that?" That's the difference between me and a science fiction writer. Science fiction writer extrapolates forward to what would happen with technology. I start with something cool and extrapolate backward.

DataLoreHD

If Angels were made from mana, how could Tacenda feel the Nameless One's soul at the end?

Brandon Sanderson

That is the big question, isn't it? That should not have happened. Something odd was going on.

Questioner

Lopen, from the end of The Wheel of Time; and Lopen, from Stormlight Archive. Do they have anything in common?

Brandon Sanderson

Lopen, is there a character in Wheel of Time called Lopen? ...Must just be a coincidence, then. *laughter* I didn't write any intentional Wheel of Time references to my books, or anything like that. The only cameo sort of thing there is in there for me is, the sword that Robert Jordan's cousin gave to me out of Robert Jordan's collection, I wrote into the book. Kind of in the same way Robert Jordan wrote himself into the books as a ter'angreal that had lots of stories in it, that they discovered was his cameo for himself. I wrote in my sword. So my sword, that they gave me, which has painted dragons on the scabbard that look a lot (in my mind) like the ones on Rand's arms. And I don't know if he got that from that katana that he was given, but it was the one they gave my out of the collection, so I wrote it in. But any other connections you think you run into are going to be just coincidences. I do have a fondness for certain types of names.

Questioner

I heard rumors for a collectible card game, possibly, for the Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Rhapsody (paraphrased)

Will the Threnody book take place in the Homeland?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The book is tentatively called The Dusk Brigade. A group wants to free the homeland of the Evil. It doesn't go well for them. Opening scene is all ships sinking and people washing up on shore.

Viper (paraphrased)

Wyrn can see into the future... is he a follower of Dominion or of Odium? Cause Dominion is [Splintered], so...

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Dominion.

Brandon Sanderson

This [Perfect State] is a story, a novella that I wrote, oh, maybe three years ago now. It was between two books, at some point, and I didn't have anything to do, but I knew a revision was coming back soon, so I didn't want to start another big project. And so, I sat down and wrote this. And I just finally had time to do a revision on it, so we're going to be releasing it, this spring sometime.

I think what we're doing is we're putting this and the story that's in Dangerous Women [Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell], if you haven't read that, we're putting together in a little two-pack collection that I'm gonna be taking to conventions and things like that. So, that's how you would read this.

Questioner

How involved are you in the Wheel of Time [television] development?

Brandon Sanderson

How involved am I in the Wheel of Time development? Not at all. They haven't contacted me. If they did I would be involved, but they have not contacted me.

Questioner

That's disappointing.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, well. I mean, I don't think they're as far as long as Harriet's limited communication to the fact has made it sound. I don't-- I think they are just starting the process. Now they own the rights outright, which is a big advantage for actually getting something made. I think the chances are pretty good. But I doubt they're beyond looking at screenwrite--scripts and things like that. Maybe they'll write a script for a season of a TV show and come to me and say, "Hey Brandon, do you want to consult on this?" But I would expect that they would wait until then. I don't know. If they ask me... But I-- the Wheel of Time is not mine, and so I have very limited creation with any of the business side of stuff on the Wheel of Time.

Questioner

I just got done with Elantris the other day. Are all of the planets--is Shadesmar the same place? Can you access all planets from Shadesmar?

Brandon Sanderson

You can walk through Shadesmar between the planets. Yes. A little bit of bending of space/time in that, but yes.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The way that Hoid and Defending Elysium do FTL travel is very different.

Questioner

How's Nightblood going to react to Szeth's spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Hmmmm! I'll give you a RAFO on that, here's your card.

Questioner

Are you going to write any chapter from the point of view of a spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Will I ever write any chapters from the viewpoint of a spren.

It's likely that I eventually will but it will probably be an interlude. The Stormlight Archive is about ten characters at its essence, and none of them are a spren. You've met all of them I believe and each of them will have a book with a flashback sequence in it, which is another thing I'm doing to make sure each book has an identity.

Epic fantasy I also feel part of the problem is when later books stop having an identity because the story kind of blurs together for the writer. My goal is if I have a good solid flashback sequence for each of these characters to give an arc it'll help me keep each book distinct, which I feel is very important.

If you ask me later I'll tell you who some of those are. In three of the first five I've been very upfront with who they are. I don't talk about the back five very often because I don't want the focus to be on those yet.

Pastor Chris

Don't suppose you're flying by Leeds while you're jetting around Europe? I'm guessing Stephen Leeds is named after Leeds after all!

Brandon Sanderson

Afraid not. (Though yes, he was. I was traveling in Europe when I wrote the first Legion story.)

Kaist

Are the lighteyes descendants of the first people who took the Shards after the Knights Radiant abandoned them?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm afraid I have to RAFO this too.

Paladin Brewer (paraphrased)

The metal used on Shardblades for training, is it made out of aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

*laughing/smiling* That's a very smart question, well done, you're on the right track.

Questioner

[I noticed] Nazh's name at the bottom of the illustrations a lot - is that a character that's going to come in in the future?

Brandon Sanderson

He's already appeared in the books. Very very cameo-ish tangential things, you have to be really looking to spot him.

*brief conversation about space age Mistborn*

Argent

Books, plural?

Brandon Sanderson

He wasn't in The Way of Kings, no. Not on screen, I don't think.

Questioner

Could a Forger, like, reforge a Shardplate to look differently?

Brandon Sanderson

So here's the thing... Um, yes, *but*... Anything that is Invested is-- resists all of the forms of Investiture. And the level of Investiture in it determines how hard it is. Forging is one of these things that-- It's very hard to reforge things that are Invested. Not impossible though. So yes, *but*... Do you see what I'm saying? There's that-- there's a pretty significant "but" on that one.

ryzvonusef

How much of [Defending Elysium] is canon for Skyward?

Brandon Sanderson

I consider it to be canon, though it's been some time in-world, and a lot has happened. Also, DE doesn't contain the full story, just what those characters knew at that time.

justinkjeppesen

Any suggestions for finding time to write for a full time dad with a full time non-writing job?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on whether or not your day job is creatively draining. If it is writing/programming, etc (more)

You'll have a much harder time, as those jobs flex the same muscles as novel writing.

The people I've known who do it tend to get up an hour early, before their brain is worn out, and write then.

Basically, you'll have to give something up. Television, video games, golf, something. (But not family time.)

Chris King

Did seons exist when the Aonic peoples discovered Elantris?

Brandon Sanderson

When the Aonic peoples discovered Elantris, did seons exist-- Okay let me go back to my timeline... It kind of means you have to define what you mean by Aonic. The problem is if you dig back too far in history it's kind of like asking "What's a German?" You know what I mean?

Chris King

Because the Aons are based upon Elantris itself and so they don't become Aonic until they are writing the Aons.

Brandon Sanderson

And Aonic is also-- You are talking about the people and so it's like are the Normans Brits? Or are they Vikings? Or are they Frenchman?

Chris King

Why don't we phrase it as the people of Sel when they discovered Elantris.

Brandon Sanderson

No, no, that's getting, okay-- Let's go ahead and RAFO that one, just because the history of Elantris is very interesting to the cosmere. When people are starting to get an inkling of that.

Chris King

Odium was there once upon a time.

Brandon Sanderson

Yah... And the question of who built Elantris and how they built Elantris. What's going on with the Elantrians back then and things like this. So let's just RAFO that.

Questioner

Are the [shades] on Threnody the same as the [Cognitive Shadows]?

Brandon Sanderson

They are a very very similar breed.

Ghero6

In Vahr's case, did collecting Breath from other rebel-minded people strengthen his determination and resolve?

Brandon Sanderson

It would have had an influence on him, but you would need the numbers of Breaths that he had for any effect to manifest. It's basically a non-issue in the current book, but it could be an issue in some of the things that will happen in the next book.

Questioner

What book are you currently working on?

Brandon Sanderson

The sequel to Skyward. Skyward is my Fall release this year. It is a YA fighter pilot book. Space opera. It's a lot of fun.

Andrew The Great (paraphrased)

How do you name characters?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Based mostly on linguistic patterns and other things like that. When Brandon has a particular group of people, they speak a particular way. He constructs names for them using those speech patterns.

Questioner

What did you do to get into the head of the opposite gender?

Brandon Sanderson

This is an excellent question. She is saying that Vin turned out really well and it's hard for her to write male characters. This was actually really hard for me at first too. Several of my first unpublished novels had really lame, weak female chaarcters and it was one of the big transitions I had to make in transitioning from aspiring to professional.

 The biggest change was just a mindset change for me, and this might not be your problem, but I found that I was sticking people into roles rather than creating character who had a life outside of the story and then saying what happened when the story happened to them. It was this transformation in my head where I'm like "Wait, everyone is the hero in their own story, what would they be doing otherwise, what are they passionate about, how are they weird, how are they quirky."

 This is the problem with a lot of people who are kinda aware of this issue who write the other gender: they don't make the other gender weird and quirky. You'll see this: female writers, the men will just kinda be this paragon. Male writers: the woman will be up on this pedestal. They don't feel real because of that. Try to say, "if they were staring in the story, how would I design them. What makes them weird, what makes them passionate, why don't they fit their role?" That's the best thing you can ask, "why dont they fit their role."

Little Wilson

Can you give us any hints about Vax's magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Little Wilson

*sighs* Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Nope, nope, nope. Big RAFO. *interruption*

Isaac Stewart

It's a magic system based on RAFO. The more RAFO you get, the more Investiture you're able to bestow.

Questioner (Paraphrased)

What was your involvement with the Infinity Blade franchise?

Brandon Sanderson

What happened there was, I came in when the first game was already made. They said we'd really like to do something, and I really like the guys, they're friends of mine, and I'm like, "You don't have a story here. You've got to have a protagonist and things like this." So then I said, "Okay, let's take what you have, tell me what you have for the world, and let's brainstorm together, and let's construct a narrative. And so we did it together. We spent a lot of time in their offices constructing the next two games, then I was able to write the novellas between the two.

Questioner

So did you have any input on the game stories, then?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I did. I had a lot of influence, though I did not write the dialogue, so sometimes it's a little bit cringe-worthy. They sent me the script, but I just didn't have time to go over the scripts for them. Sometime I'd like to actually do a game with them, because they make great games.

Argent

Do all Surgebinders breathe Stormlight in, or are there other ways? Is Lift one-of-a-kind in this regard?

Brandon Sanderson

Lift is one of a kind.

Questioner

Will we ever see Spook again?

Brandon Sanderson

You are unlikely... Okay how about-- Spook's touch is all over the books everywhere. So if you watch in the new ones, things he has done have had lasting ramifications. So you-- you will probably hear from him again, but it might be in the form of journals and things like that.

Questioner

Are there ever any Coinshots or Lurchers that get motion sick?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that does happen. It's kind of like being left-handed in Roshar. There are certain things that are not a good match.

OneArmedLopen

The Lopen is one of my favorite characters. Any chance we’ll get the story of King Lopen?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a chance--not a huge one, but a moderate one.

Questioner

How many worlds does [the cosmere] have in it?

Brandon Sanderson

A couple hundred. A couple hundred stars.

Questioner

How many planets are your books going to use?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Louise

Which one will you focused more in the future, the Heralds or Radiants? Will you dig deeper into each of Heralds story and some of Radiants?

Brandon Sanderson

I feel that I should probably RAFO this one. We are going to delve into the Radiants as orders a lot. But the Radiants as individuals? Depends on what you mean. Kaladin is well on the path toward becoming one of them, though he's not one yet, as Teft is quick to point out. So if you mean focusing on actual Knights Radiant, we'll have to see if anyone actually manages to become one.The Heralds are integral to the entire story, which is why the Prelude focuses on them. Since someone showed up at the end of the book claiming to be one of them, I think you can obviously expect some attention to be drawn there. Who each of the Heralds are and what their natures were is important.

Ray745

So once upon a time Brandon was going to write Szeth as the flashback character for book three, but then Brandon changed his mind, decided to write Dalinar's flashback chapters to see how that would go, and then after writing them made book 3 Dalinar's book instead. Here is a quote from the first Stormlight Book 3 Update post Brandon made in this subreddit

As someone else has posted, I have finished the rough draft of Dalinar's flashbacks for Stormlight Three. I consider the experiment of writing his flashbacks for this book, instead of waiting for book five, to be a success. Therefore, I'm proceeding with the Dalinar/Szeth flip.

The reasoning for this is something I can't discuss in detail until the book is released. I'd be happy to revisit this topic once you all have a chance to read the novel.

Now that the book has been out for 6 months or so, I'd love to hear Brandon discuss the reasoning behind this. Personally, I have a very tough time imagining how this book would have played out if Szeth had been the flashback character. Clearly we wouldn't have had to Dalinar/Odium confrontation if we didn't have Dalinar's flashbacks, as those were integral to the overall storyline. I'd love to hear what the plot of this book was originally supposed to be when Szeth was going to have the flashbacks. Does anyone know the answers to this, or am I going to have to hope Brandon sees this post and decides to answer more than a RAFO? :)

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm. This is going to be difficult to answer without straying into spoilers for books four and five. It's also hard to say how the books would have played out if I'd swapped these back.

The Dalinar/Odium confrontation would still have happened, as that was something I'd been planning for a while. But how would things have played out? Hard to say, as an outline is only a rough guide--even for someone like me. It's when you get to the nitty gritty of the story that things come together.

Having finished the book, it's hard for me to imagine going another direction--as I made the decisions I did because I felt they were the ones that were right for the story. And a lot has changed over the years as I've worked on the details. (Kaladin's arc from book two, for example, was originally plotted for book three--parallel to Szeth and his flashbacks, which share some similarities.)

Dalinar's flashbacks would work very well for book five for reasons I can't explain yet--but it became clear to me that I needed them for this book, despite the outline looking at the Szeth/Kaladin dynamic. (Which was upended anyway when I moved Kaladin's second character arc to book two.)

So...that's a whole lot of not saying much, I'm afraid. I can answer a lot more once book five is out.

sv15249

Does it mean that we shouldn't expect any explanations or clues about what happened with Dalinar at the end of Oathbringer before book 5?

Ask just to know if we'll know more in book 4 or we'll have to wait a bit longer.To avoid false expectations:)

Brandon Sanderson

There will be explanations and clues, but I would anticipate more Dalinar in book 5 than in book 4.

Questioner

Are we going to find out more about Hoid in the next book?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but only little bits and pieces until a little later. The further we get along, the more comfortable I will be giving you Hoid stuff. Particularly in Stormlight. So yes, but it's a tentative yes.

Questioner

How would you pronounce Rock's full name?

Brandon Sanderson

I usually get this wrong. *apprehensively chants the name* I think, but there might be something in there. It actually means... in Horneater you don't have to use a pronoun at the beginning, which is one of the weird things, you usually start with a verb. It means something along the lines of "I saw a beautiful wet stone that no one is paying attention to, but it was really cool because of the water pattern on it." Right, like, that's what his name means, and it kinda just means "Hey, appreciate the beauty of nature." Its kind of a little Horneater, their version of the haiku. The meaning is "Nature is beautiful, don't walk past the beauty of nature and ignore it." But his name actually kinda means "lonely, or forgotten rock". But "I saw a beautiful rock washed by rainwater that everyone is ignoring." Anyway, it doesn't translate all that well, I'm using a bunch of weird Asian and Indo-European language structures for this so it's not real easy to translate to English.

coltonx9

Does Vivenna's Blade have a name and if so what?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. It's intentionally not mentioned. Not an accident.

Josh

If Elendel is named for Elend then who's Lutha?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Kurkistan

Can Hemalurgy be used to steal Shardblades directly, transferring ownership from the victim to the spike's recipient without a need for the recipient to physically take the Shardblade first?

Brandon Sanderson

A novel use of Hemalurgy which is not outside the sphere of its powers.

MS-07B-3

Which spren is your favorite to write for, and why is it Design?

Brandon Sanderson

They all have their charms, but undermining Wit like that is its own special flavor of fun.

Questioner

..One of things I had difficulty with was coming up with names for the characters and seeing how your names are more than just random collections of letters, a lot of them actually have meanings behind them. I was wondering how you were able to do that.

Brandon Sanderson

That's actually a very good question and number one you should keep writing, even if you feel like what you are writing is a rip-off, it is better to finish that first book and be acknowledging your influences because you want to be practicing. And sometimes it is very useful to lean on something else while you do it. In fact this is how Great Masters did artwork, you can find-- I don't know if you guys know this-- various different versions of the Mona Lisa, we saw one in Spain, my wife and I, that was done by DaVinci's student while DaVinci was painting the Mona Lisa. "Here's what I painted now you do it too"  That was the means by which the Great Masters would train their students, so leaning on someone is just fine. You just can't publish it like that, but it can teach you a whole lot. Don't feel bad about that.

Names, I use two general methods, and this is not going to give it the justice it deserves, I'm giving you the five minute version. One version is I look for the linguistic attribute that is interesting to me that will visually distinguish these people on the page. So when you are coming across them and you see that name, I want you to say "I bet that they're from this country". That is really tough because that means they all have to feel similar but you can't let everyone get confused over who's who and that's the real challenge, it's the getting confused. For instance in Warbreaker I tried using some different things like we don't in our world. In Warbreaker I used repeated consonant sounds, so you get someone like Vivenna, when you see that double v, you are like she must be-- Llarimar, there's a double L, you pronounce them both out. T'telir. And when you get double repeated consonants you are like "Oh they are from this region, that makes sense to me even though they start with different letter there is something to them" The same sort of thing is supposed to happen in The Way of Kings, you see names that are mostly symmetrical. When you see something like Shallan and her name is a derivation of Shalash, who was one of the Heralds and its a symmetrical name. When you see something that reads almost, or does read, forward and backward the same way you are like "They must be either Alethi or they must be-- They've got to be Vorin because that is the Vorin religion influencing this". And hopefully it will give you some subconscious cue when you run across those names and you'll get it.

Now a way to do this that is easier is than doing all of that is going to take a lot of work linguistically is to go get yourself a nice atlas and say everyone from this country is going to have names that are analogous to this region in our world and I am then going to take this atlas and look for these names and use baby names from that culture... I did this in Emperor's Soul, I just picked ancient Persia, I picked people who lived there in this era and what they named their cities there and I'm going to take those words and I'm going to screw with them until it is not actually a word but it feels like it might be one. That way everyone from this region is going to feel like they've got a similar name. Or I can just-- For that book it was much easier because the linguistics were not as big a deal.  I could basically just crib off the bat. And that works very well also.

Sometimes I do it intentionally, Mistborn was supposed to evoke a sense of 1820's Paris, or London, that was what I was shooting for with the grime and the dirt, the ash falling. So I used French names and Germanic names and Spanish names and things like this, so when you run into Vin, Vin is just wine in French and Kelsier [Kelsi-ay] is how they would say-- you can say Kelsier [Kelsi-er] if you want-- and they have Kelsier and Demoux so you can go "Oh this is a French sounding region" so when you get some like Elend and Straff you are like "They are from a different region. They sound like the eat meat and potatoes and they try to conquer Europe periodically, those guys" *laughter* That helps you distinguish the regions very easily.