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Out of all the characters, who do you identify with the most?
Hard to say because each of my characters I identify with in some way. Can't pick favorite characters or books becaues they're all my children.
Who is HOID? I have read Elantris and all three Mistborns but don't remember the name, am I missing something?
Hoid is a mystery which I cannot speak on other than what has been written in the text of the novels. However, I'm sure that others have explained it by now.
Was Nightblood always the same size?
*chuckles* I will RAFO that.
If you could bring one character from another universe into the cosmere, Who would it be?
What an interesting question. I'll play along in a moment, but I'll point out that it's generally not tempting for me to write other creator's characters. The ones I were most interested in writing were those in The Wheel of Time--and somehow, that ended up happening already.
Generally, when I consider a character that I love, my mind starts breaking down the "Why." I look at what effect they had on me, and what about them I really love--what is it this character does to the story that is so intriguing. Often, if I boil that down, I can start creating new characters who draw upon this, and other traditions--and that is what excites me.
That said, who would I bring to the cosmere, if I had the chance? I'll take a different tactic on this than, perhaps, you'd assume. I'd grab some of my favorite villains from other media, because it would be interesting to see how the characters would react. If Magneto were to deal with a world of people with magic, how would he react--and how would the characters react to him? What about Moriarty? Javert? (Okay, Nale's already got some Javert in him.)
Cthulhu? Nah. That's going to far
What exactly was Harmony's original plan for Lessie if she'd gone along with it?
Well the original plan was to turn Wax into what he kind of ended up being.
And Lessie would still be alive, then?
Yes, and kind of as his minder, slash, ya know...
Is Re-Shephir related at all to the Midnight Essence in Aether of Night?
Yes. It's me, like-- Related in that Aether of Night isn't canon, and I really liked how that worked in the cosmere, and I ported it to this instead. So that's like--
So you're not gonna write Aether of Night?
Aether of Night, I might eventually write, but the Mid--
It may be different?
Yeah.
Alcatraz follow-up?
I've had enough asking about it that I really should do the last one. It's back burner for now, but I want to.
Simply destroying the pits probably wouldn't destabilize the economy to the point that some of those here assume. The thing is, atium isn't the foundation of monetary value in the Final Empire–not like gold was in America for a time. It's simply a prime source of income and power for the Lord Ruler. Losing it will be a blow, but not enough to completely overthrow the empire. After all, the Lord Ruler still has his atium cache–and so, as the metal becomes more rare and valuable, he'd become more wealthy through atium inflation.
Does red in cosmere signify one Shard co-opting or corrupting another Shard's magic?
Yes.
What's the concept of the safehand?
Yes. There's a writerly answer and an in-world answer. Which do you want to know?
Let's do the writer answer.
Writer answer, so. I am fascinated by taboo. I am fascinated by the fact that in Asia you don't show your, the bottom of your foot to people. It's terribly offensive. I am fascinated that in some cultures some parts of the body are shown and others aren't. Things that we would consider vulgar, to other people are not, and vice versa. It just fascinates me as a writer and when I approached the books I was looking for a ways that I could give a feel for a human culture but not one that we have seen before and the safehand grew out of that.
Pretty sure [Szeth's] eyes change color when he takes in a bunch of Stormlight, but in the books it's never mentioned that Nightblood changes eye color... u/mistborn?
Nightblood did not change eye colors in Warbreaker. Everything else is a RAFO for now.
Stormlight tabletop RPG game. Have you ever looked into that? Would you ever consider that?
We would consider it. Since we've done one with Mistborn, it is certainly something we would consider. And Stormlight would be the thing we would do. But the Mistborn game is still having active support, and we enjoy our partnership there with Crafty, so there hasn't been a lot of real nitty-gritty detail discussion of doing a tabletop RPG. I expect it will happen someday, how about that; but we don't have any immediate plans.
Are Heralds are capable of procreation?
Yes. Not necessarily saying in the traditional way, but yes, Heralds are capable of procreation.
There is a Mistborn pen & paper RPG, Dungeons & Dragons style RPG does it give more information on the world?
It does.
Though I oversaw that I let them go-- They wanted to do more than I felt comfortable doing myself for my timing, so I let them go pretty crazy. So I say that it is canon until I contradict it. And some of it I will end up contradicting because they needed to be able to make the game the best way they could and I didn’t feel comfortable telling them all the stuff that was coming up because I didn’t want that to sneak into there.
For those who don’t know the Mistborn books, I’m going to do across the period of many centuries of writing—no, of in-world time.
*laughter*
The initial pitch to my editor was past, present, future. So the Mistborn books, we still haven’t hit present yet. We will eventually hit-- Present for these is going to be 1980’s level spy thriller, Tom Clancy-esque Mistborn with Allomancy. Yeah, it’s going to be really cool. The main character, she’s a code monkey who gets involved in all of this. It is really cool. And then we are going to go forward from there to the point where we get to a space opera and epic-- science-fiction space opera where Allomancy and Feruchemy have become the means by which space travel is possible. So that’s coming [...] I’m six books into what's going to be many, many. So just anticipate that with excitement.
Is the Seventeenth Shard based in Silverlight? Like their home of operations.
Yes.
About 1/3 through [The Bands of Mourning] I see Hoid is up to his old tricks again. And how can he "technically" own Seran?
I'll hopefully get around to explaining that some day...
Is there a plan for a book focusing on Hoid or will he always remain an enigma?
The final Mistborn sequence will have him as a main character, as will the Dragonsteel prequel novels.
If the spren that bond people scream when they touch a Shardblade, but then at the end of Words of Radiance Kaladin holds Szeth's honorblade and they do not have a problem with that, why does the Stormfather force Dalinar to get rid of his Honorblade at the end Words of Radiance?
So... He does not have an Honorblade at the end of Words of Radiance.
He does not. Oh, I thought he got it from... [Taln]
Yes, that's what the assumption is. If you look very closely, the blade that you think he ends up with is described differently from the one that he actually does.
Can you confirm the real names of the Heralds for me? I have Jezrien (ˈjɛzɹən), Nale (for Nalan) - is that right?
Nale (neil) is what-- Nale is, yes, yes.
Chana [pronounced Shana] or Chana...
Yeah.
Vedel.
Vedel (vəˈdÉ›l), yeah. Chana (ˈt͡ʃænÉ™) is also called Chanarach (ˈt͡ʃænəɹæt͡ʃ). Either one would be alright.
Okay, but her birth name...
Probably-- I think Chanarach is actually her birth name and Chana is the nickname.
Vedel... Pali, for Pailiah?
Yeah, I think Pali (ˈpæli) is the nickname in that case.
Okay, Ash?
No, that's a nickname.
What's the real one?
Shalash (ʃəˈlɑʃ).
That's not he just the Vorin...
No, that one was actually symmetrical.
Awesome. Battar (bəˈtɑɹ)?
Yes.
Kalak?
Kalak (kəˈlɑk), yes.
Talenel (tæləˈnÉ›l), with a nickname Taln (tæln)?
Yes.
And Ishar (ɪˈʃɑɹ)?
Yes.
Do we ever get to see more of Threnody?
You should, if I can figure out when to get the Threnody novel in, it's going to be a lot of fun.
Like you said earlier you are trying to finish some things--
Before I start new things. You wouldn't see it until Stormlight 5 is done, for sure.
Regarding Vasher... what was his name before he Returned?
That is a RAFO, but just a minor one... Vasher's past is a factor in Nightblood the book, and so I'm staying away from all answers about that.
How much did the alpha, beta, and gamma readers in your opinion influence the end product [of Oathbringer] here today?
...I find them invaluable. Let me define them for you first.
Alpha readers are a very select group. My editor, my agent, my wife, and, like, my assistant-- like Peter. These are alpha readers, people who are reading it in a very raw form.
Beta readers are more like a test audience. The difference between alpha reader and beta reader is that the alpha is somebody who's an industry professional, for me, who can say-- can look at the structure and say "here's some advice on structure" and things like this. A beta reader is just a person who likes books, whose job is just to say "I like this, I don't like this, this is why." Right?
Gamma readers are proofreaders. So, usually, Peter handles all the gamma readers. I don't even see what they say, because that's all to fix proofreading.
I am a very big believer in test audience. I know some writers don't use them at all, but I find it really, really helpful to see how people are responding to the text and the fiction, and then looking and saying, "What is it that is making them feel this way? Do I want that? Do I not want that?" It is just a huge piece of the toolbox for me, a huge tool in the toolbox. (That metaphor doesn't work, because a larger tool in your toolbox is not necessarily more useful, but go with me on it.) I would say, they had all kinds of effects. And we might have Peter do some blog posts on things that I changed because of the beta readers while I'm online. And once you've read the book, you can ask me, we'll try to post about some of this stuff. Usually, they're not making suggestions, they're just giving their feelings, and I'm looking for the places where I've misfired. Where I'm like, "I thought this scene would be super dramatic," but everyone is confused. That's the sort of scene you want to find, and then ask yourself, "How can I make it work instead."
You had 70, right?
Yeah, I had 70 beta readers on this. They wrote around 600,000 or 700,000 words. So, more than was in the book, about the book. Yeah. It's crazy.
What is the inspiration for the Parshendi?
There are a lot of different inspirations. One is wanting to build out of the setting a species that interacted with the setting and had a symbiotic relationship with the setting. The other was the idea of a people whose caste system, you could change castes and physically change into other castes of the system. So something like the hives you see, where you can switch from worker to various different tasks. I liked the cultural aspects of what that did.
I want to know what process you follow through building your vocabulary. Also, do you use a thesaurus?
What process do I use for developing my vocabulary, and do I use a thesaurus. My vocabulary development comes through reading other people's books and seeing the cool words they use and writing them down. And I can often pinpoint who I learned which word from. Like miasma I learned from Anne McCaffrey. Things like this-- Just seeing the words they use and looking them up when I don't know them. That's my favorite way. Do I use a thesaurus? I do use a thesaurus but only to come up with a word I know I should be using. There's two times I use it. One, when I come to a word I know there's a word there but I don't know what it is yet. The other time I use a thesaurus, which is really useful, is when I'm naming something. Like when I was naming the Reckoners, I need a cool word for this team. One that Marvel or DC hasn't used yet *laughter* They used everything. So I may use a thesaurus, but using a thesaurus is dangerous. It's a good tool but it's a dangerous tool for a writer. Because you don't want to use a word because it sounds cool, usually you want to use the right word. That can be difficult to balance.
Tell me something about the cosmere that has not been previously mentioned.
Long ago there was a plot to destroy Adonalsium. It failed.
How do states of matter affect how things look in the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms?
So, generally, how people perceive something is very important to the reflection in the Cognitive Realm, and so the physical state of matter is going to be involved in that, but generally, it flows the other direction from the Spiritual Realm.
Do the forms of Investiture that we've seen, Stormlight, metals, Shardpools, do the fact that those happen in general the same types of states of matter, all physical, solid, is kinda going to be like metal for Investiture?
Yeah, that is generally the way it will be.
From what is described in the end [of Dawnshard], are all the forms of Investiture derived in some way from one of the Dawnshards?
RAFO. (Sorry.)
What effects does a spren bond have on a Ryshadium? Sapience, or more?
It increases their intelligence a great deal and gives them a little extra hardiness to survive in Roshar. And in exchange, the spren gets pulled into the Physical Realm, which they really like.
Can being an Allomantic Savant be transferred through Hemalurgy?
A Savant cannot be, good question. No one's asked me that before.
So you have circles, or Lines of Warding. If you draw a semi-circle, like if a Rithmatist was backed up against a wall, can just a semi-circle act as a Line of Warding?
It can, but the sides are going to be so weak. I mean they can just go around it, but yes, the semi-circle would work.
So if you drew a semi-circle, and drew the other half up the wall--
That would be fine.
Would it be equally strong as if it was all flat on the ground?
It would probably-- It would be really hard to get that corner so it would be. In theoretical, magical Christmasland, yes. 'Cause chalklings are two-dimensional, so they don't even see that it's changed really. I mean it does but--
I assume I'm going to learn a lot more about this in Stormlight 3 but Nightblood, is he more dangerous or less dangerous now that he-- obviously he needs Investiture that is why *audio obscured* any Investiture?
I'd say more dangerous, a little bit easier to get the Stormlight.
I assumed I'd learn a lot more about him...
You will, and he's pretty dangerous, but he is also less dangerous because other people have Shardblades, if that makes sense.
So, they're all in... Urithiru, and that's safe from the Everstorm, right? Because they're trying to get everyone there, right?
It is definitely safer than the Shattered Plains.
So what makes it safer? Is it just the location?
They are on the east side of a mountain. It's coming from the other direction. They also think they might be high enough to be over the storm, judging based on the fact that Kaladin was able to hop over it, so he knows generally how high up they go.
Is the dying process - death, to Cognitive Realm staging area, to the Beyond - a universal process in the Cosmere?
Yes. it is a universal process. People don’t always hang out as long, depending on how much Investiture is around.
I really enjoyed the newspaper clippings that you've done in recent books, and I was just wondering what kind of preparation you've done for them, because they are really engaging.
He's enjoyed the newspaper clippings - which there is a bunch of them here, if you didn't pick one of these up, as promotion for this books... Because we have to chop it up, the broadsheet, in the book itself, we printed full ones that you can take, just because they look so nifty. I love the little one about the Soonie pups.
What preparation did I do?
My whole team, me, and Isaac [Stewart], and Ben McSweeney would put these together. Ben is one of the artists I use a lot, and Isaac is one of my employees. We read a whole bunch of Period newspapers and saw what they were doing. And we were like "wow, they advertised whiskey and cigars a whole bunch, stuff like that" *audience laughter* And we just kind of tried to get the tone down for those. And for these things I wrote some of them, but I didn't write all of them. Actually Ben wrote some and Isaac wrote some. With the idea being that we wanted to have a different kind of voice for the newspapers, so it felt like a bunch of different journalists were writing articles. And so we would brainstorm a bunch of ideas together, and we would all go out and write little clips about them, and we put the best ones in. And of course we hit little hints about the plot lines of this book and future books.
The screams on Roshar. Is that a cosmere-wide phenomenon?
RAFO.
At what point did you determine Spook's ultimate place in the Mistborn universe? Was it planned up front?
Spook was the big surprise in the series. Everything else was planned from the get go, but I grew to like him a great deal.
Can you write the Fourth Ideal of the Windrunners?
No. No no no no no no. [...] The Fourth Ideal is guessable, I feel. Much more so than... Well, you probably could have guessed the Second-- Third Ideal as the book progressed. I think you could guess the fourth one right now, but it's going to be hard. It's not obvious, but it's there.
I've been following the head writer of the Wheel of Time series for Amazon Prime. He was doing a Q&A on Twitter last month, and in it, he did not confirm Perrin in the series. How do you feel about that? And how do you think it'll affect the series?
I think, knowing Rafe [Judkins] a little bit (I've had a couple calls with him), he's not confirming things because they haven't settled on approving any of his outlines and things yet for the series. So he's not going to confirm a lot of things until he gets this outline together, and things like that. And The Wheel of Time is a really tough beast, because of how many characters there are, and how many introductions you have to give, and things like this. I would not imagine that they would leave Perrin out, but it's possible, I can see a world where you'd leave Perrin out of the first season, or at least have him as a background character, and then delve into him later on. Because you kind of need Mat and the dagger in the first season. And you definitely need Rand in the first season. But the Perrin stuff could easily be moved to another season, because it doesn't have payoffs until, like, Book Four, or something like this. That would be my guess, but I haven't talked to him specifically about this.
I do know earlier, different people working it, they had tried to take Mat out of the first season, because he kind of comes to his own in Book Three. And that turned out to be kind of a disaster. It's just them trying a difficult thing, and not taking anything off the table, I think, is a smart way to approach it. I would be very surprised if Perrin got pulled out completely. But I don't know, I haven't seen any outlines or things yet. And they're definitely not required to show them to me, or anything like that.
Khriss and Jasnah... are they ever gonna meet, because I feel like they'd be the ultimate power couple.
They would get along smashingly, is what I feel. I won't say if they're ever going to meet or not, but I do feel that they would get along.
Where is Nazh from?
Threnody!
Longevity of Radiants. So, I, before [Oathbringer], thought that they were immortal. So, they're not?
No.
Do they have longer lifespans?
Slightly. They're very healthy, but it's not an unusually expanded lifespan.
I know you can't comment [on Nakomi] that's what the wish was for :). Just hoping for some day in the future is all. I'm actually more concerned with this forsaken/aMoL secret we are apparently all missing.
I am sure someone has figured it out; I just don't watch the theory threads for WoT as well as I used to. Either way, I'll be able to reveal it on the 10th anniversary of the book being out.
I'm sure you're a busy man. That's good to know about the tenth anniversary, would you confirm it if it was directly asked to you? There's one theory I've seen but I don't want to push my luck :).
I wouldn't be able to confirm it or deny it.
Is it possible to Surgebind using gaseous Investiture other than Roshar's?
So here's the thing. It depends on your definition of Surgebinding. Surgebinding would be the Rosharan definition of all of the magics. They would call the Metallic Arts Surgebinding. You are binding the powers of creation, which the word "Surge" is that word translated from Rosharan into English, that's what the word means in Rosharan, is the powers of creation. The fundamental forces which inspired me to make this. So they would consider all of them to be Surgebinding. And that's just what you're doing, you are binding and using those powers.
Other people, including Khriss, would not agree with that definition. They would say: Surgebinding is specifically binding, through the Nahel bond, the spren, the specific manifestations of Investiture on Roshar, by using specific sets of oaths in order to gain access to those powers. So she would say: no, that is not Surgebinding when someone uses Allomancy. I would lean with her on that one, but the other one's a viable definition.
What you're really asking is, can someone, one of the Rosharan, the Knightly Radiant Orders, could they power that with a different form of Investiture from a different planet? And yes, this is possible, though there might be some difficulties in making it work, which I haven't explained entirely yet. But yes, this is possible. In fact, it is possible to power all of the different magics with the different forms of Investiture. That is a possibility
This is one of the reasons why Mraize and Thaidakar are so interested in Stormlight. Because if you could get Stormlight off, and you can crack that... just way easier to get Stormlight than it is to get the other ones. Like Breath, you could consider easy, but hard to morally harvest; in fact, perhaps impossible. If you want ethical, sustainable magic, then Roshar is a much better bet than some of the other places that you could...
Does that mean Mraize and [Thaidakar] want an ethically sustainable...?
They're really interested in the sustainable part. I would say that they both would say "yes" to that question. They would consider their actions to be, on an ethical spectrum, at least in the neutral area, perhaps. Others would disagree with that.
Where would they fall, philosophically speaking, like Kantianism, or?
I'd have to think about that. That's a good question. Certainly not as far on the utilitarianism side as someone like Taravangian, who's about as far as you can go. But Jasnah is pretty far on that side, also. Though she considers her version more of a "what is the greatest good I can do with any action I take?" (Which one is that? It's not Kantian, but you know what I mean.) That is a little on the utilitarian side. Not a little, that's... not as far as Taravangian, but that's definitely, yeah. They would maybe be in between those two, maybe. Depends. They're not the same individual, they would have different lines.
There's gonna be (let's just say) future books that explore Thaidakar's relationship with that. But you have seen in other books the lengths that Thaidakar is willing to take in order to achieve his goals. He is not far off from Taravangian in some of those things that he has done.
Is, like, fabrials that can imitate, I mean, very specific forms of Surgebinding... Are there fabrials that can imitate the Surge-- <stages> of Voidbinding?
Yes. That is theoretically possible.
Ten Orders of Radiants. Ten books. One new Order for each book?
Yes.
So we won't actually see the last one in action until the last book?
Oh, you may see them in action, but the thing about it is, it's actually focused on the people who have the flashback sequences. So, the first one was Kaladin, and he's a Windrunner. And the next one's Shallan, and she's a Lightweaver. In fact, if you pop open the first book and look on the cover, the stamp on the cover is the Windrunner stamp.
Are the Ten Essences related to the Ten Shardworld's Form-of-Investiture
They are not as related as philosophers from ancient days, who created those tables, thought that they were.
Does Hoid use his Feruchemical abilities with the atium to see the future?
Ah ah ah, I haven't confirmed that Hoid had Feruchemical abilities.
You haven't?
*grinning slyly* No, but most people think he has Allomancy.
I could never tell, and I've got nothing better to ask, so: which drawings from the Stormlight books were you responsible for? Just the "Shallan's Sketchbook" ones, and nothing else?
All of Shallan's pages, and a few of the chapter icons in WoR. And I assisted Michael on the Shallan endpage illustration, although the final painting is all him.
Mostly what I do is help conceptualize animals and plants, and to a lesser degree Plate and Blade designs.
What were the Allomantic metals based on?
The Allomantic metals were based on two main concepts, magic that feels one step science one step superstition so I was reading things like alchemy and I wanted something that was one half chemistry, one half alchemy. The idea of eating the metals and metabolizing them was really interesting to me because it's kind of almost scientific but not really. That mixed with me wanting to have a thieving crew have different powers that would help different members of a crew and I built the powers to match people like Ham and Breeze.
What's going on in the other pole of Scadrial?
Oooh that's a big ol' RAFO. But it is a RAFO with a promise that you will find out before too long.
So in these coming two Mistborn books, maybe? Because there was some mention of something to do with that, I thought, briefly, in Alloy of Law, just some vague--like there was something that had been found, or some brief contact, maybe...
*Brandon clears his throat, significantly* let me say this, so I don't spoil things. By the time we do the 1980's level technology, the whole world will have been explored. I mean, I can't really do the second trilogy, with-- I mean, by then, you know what the continents look like, and things. Even in Scadrial, where they just haven't explored nearly as much, but they're kind of behind on that so far, so sometime between now and then, exploration of the world has to happen.
Good point. Because they didn't have the whole volcano thing going on.
No they didn't. They did not.
How is there anyone alive over there?
Well, I can tell you this because it's in the annotations. The people down there were placed as kind of a control group to the changes that were made to the people of the north, where changes were made to live with the ash and things like that. But other changes were still made to them. Or changes happened to them, shall I say.
