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For Epics: if you had an Epic that was around their weakness all the time would that make them more like an other person so that they could be gifted other Epic powers?
You can already be gifted other powers if you're an Epic... no, it interferes, you can't. You can already... Maybe, maybe.
How did Spook die?
That's a RAFO. There's your card.
Were there cadmium/bendalloy and possibly chromium/nicrosil mistings in the Final Empire? If yes, were the mists Snapping those too?
Um, yes, there were, but since the mists were trying to create a pattern to be a sign, and people didn't know all the metals, they (the mists) had to use substitutions. They were acting the way we've seen other cognitive shadows, who are deceased, act.
Can the various forms of Investiture on other worlds in the cosmere be classified as "end positive" or "end negative" like they are on Scadrial?
Some can. Not all.
So assuming you have mentioned that it is technically possible to be able to use one magic system on another planet from a different one...
Yes.
Is it possible to fuel that... Like, say could you fuel Awakening using Stormlight, or do you have to bring Breaths?
Yes, you could!
Okay.
Excellent question. Now it's-- there are tricks to making it happen on each world. Some are easier than others, but yes you can.
So could that allow a loophole to maybe... convert from one form of power to another? Or like from Stormlight to Breath?
Yes. In fact, that's part of why Vasher--
Vasher. I wondered that.
--is on Roshar, is because it's a lot easier to get Stormlight than Breath.
Will we get more of Lift?
You will get a lot more with Lift. She was written into the outline from the very beginning as one of the people who gets a book of her own
How is heat a mental attribute in Feruchemy?
Because I messed up. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but that power was supposed to be swapped with another one. (You might be able to guess which one.) However, by the time I realized my mistake, it had already been canonized in print in the trilogy, so I was stuck with it. I've been tempted to go back and correct the error, but it reaches pretty far back. People drawing upon warmth is mentioned in the first book. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that in general the 'physical, mental, etc' things are applied by people--they are boxes that people investigating the magic have used to describe it.
Is it still the plan to write Dragonsteel last?
Next-to-last. Mistborn final Era will be... yeah, Mistborn 4 will be last.
A question in general with your writing process. Do you learn a lot from your students that have gone on to become authors in their own right? Do you come back looking at their works and maybe saying "I can incorporate this kind of style into my writing?"
I would say I tend to learn more from the writers who were with me when I was breaking in who are around my age, 'cause we're all kind of going through the same things. So people like Dan Wells or Mary Robinette Kowal that are kind of my group that broke in around the same time, I try to talk to them a lot about writing. This is where my writing podcast came from, Writing Excuses. It was me just wanting to ask them how they fix thing, how they deal with this thing, how they deal with that. Certainly, some of my students have gone on to do really great stuff that is inspiring. Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books are great. Charlie Holmberg, who writes the Paper Magician, the Glass Magician books are great. Lot of really great writers. I don't know how much credit I can take from them. But I am inspired a lot by a lot of the books that I read. But I wouldn't say that group specifically. Though working with new writers is kind of inspiring in its own way. Less about the things they're writing, and more just remembering what it was like, and the passion you have when you're a brand new writer. That kind of fresh-faced innocence is handy for someone, the longer you go.
My top (realistic) potential options here:
1) Silverlight novella2) The Silence Divine3) SotD 2
(But seriously, give me that Silverlight novella. PLEASE, Brandon.)
Silverlight novella probably needs to wait until I've done the Threnody novel, for some connective tissue reasons, but we'll see.
Quick question. Will we ever see the Traveller short story be published in something like Arcanum Unbounded 2?
Probably not, at least not without a rework.
This just further leads me to bet that the new group that'll be introduced in the Threnody novel will have Silverlight ties.
It will.
Will it by chance be tied to how Nazh has gotten involved with Khriss?
No, though we're working on a White Sand graphic novel sequel that will start into that story, hopefully.
What happened with Abraham’s court martial?
So that is backstory that is a RAFO. Why Abraham was there is not something he necessarily likes to talk about, not that he’s shy, but at the same time it’s not something he easily talks about. And so I will not talk about it, I will let him, someday perhaps, talk about it.
Barring the Almighty, did we seen a Shardholder (like Sazed) in this book?"
I think "Shardholder" would get confusing alongside "Shardbearer." Basically, in the Cosmere's terms, when someone holds a Shard of Adonalsium, I call that person a Shard of Adonalsium. They are imbued with the power of that Shard, but they also become the Shard. Fans can use whatever terminology they wish, but this is how I term it.You did at least see the direct effects of two of the Shards of Adonalsium, but I won't say whether or not you actually saw a Shard of Adonalsium.
The tumblr side of the fandom is wondering what kind of steel (carbon steel, stainless steel, weathering steel, etc) Chicago was transformed into by Steelheart in that book...is this known? (We were wondering if "the Bean" was changed...sorry).
Good question. I don't know.
We've seen Cognitive Shadows in the Cognitive Realm (e.g. Kelsier), and in the Physical (Returned, Shades, Heralds (kind of, sort of)). Is it alright to refer to shadows both with and without a body as "Cognitive Shadows"?
Yes. The Shadow is the spirit, though, so there is some distinction.
I have a question about Nightblood. What are all the powers the sword has and how much is he going to be involved in the next few books.
Those are total RAFOs. I mean, I could tell you the powers you have seen him have on screen so far, I'm not going to tell you he has others. What you have seen on-screen that he can do is he absorbs Investiture completely and he will rip it out of any object he touches, and everything has Investiture, leaving behind basically... how you see it is he turns everything he touches into black mist, it just disintegrates everything. He also has the power that people who see him, he has an emotional effect on them, one of several emotional effects depending on how they would want to use him. If you watch for when he is seeing people you will see how it is.
All fighting over him.
That's not the only effect he has though, he has other effects.
Does he bestow any effects on his wielder? Like Szeth's original Shardblade gave him the same powers as Kaladin.
Nightblood... that's a RAFO but Nightblood was created on a different planet, so.
Excuse me [Mr. Sanderson], I’m just reading Words of Radiance & something struck me. Is Bridge Four’s salute anything like the Wakandan salute from Black Panther?
Very close. It isn't done across the chest though, but with the hands held out.
You said it was because of your work on The Wheel of Time that you were able to do this story justice. What did you mean?
Wheel of Time forced me to stretch as an author and it forced me to learn to juggle multiple viewpoints. I hadn't had a lot of practice writing sequels or planning sequels, and then I had to write the twelfth book in a fourteen book series. This taught me a lot about working with sequels. Also, seeing what Robert Jordan did for foreshadowing really taught me a lot about how to foreshadow across a big long epic. But I would say mostly it's just juggling the viewpoints, learning how to make sure all the characters are making appearances and we're enjoying them all and everything is balanced all without losing track.
Did Cultivation come to Roshar with Honor, or was she already on Roshar when Honor arrived?
Good question. They came together.
*inaudible*...Wit and Hoid are two different people and one is just going by the other's name.
Oh. Okay. There have been other people named Hoid, before, in the past, but you have never met them.
What has been your best writing experience?
What has been my best writing experience? There's a lot of them, I don't know if I can pick a best one. It's just the thing I love is, I spent ten years writing books kind of by myself alone at night working a graveyard shift at a hotel and the fact that I get to do this full time and I don't have to answer the phone and bring people laundry in the middle of writing a cool scene about shardblades. That's really nice. That I don't have to be-- I'm writing the climax and "Ah you would like a wake up call?" and then back to my climax. So being able to share the stories with people, having people who want to read them and support me is really fun.
There are two Shards on Roshar. Odium's presence is felt on Roshar, but he is on Braize, the third planet in the system.
Is that Shard on The Silence Divine?
Oh, you mean Ashyn. Ashyn is mostly barren with small fertile patches
There are two Shards on Roshar; however, Honor is dead.
Could a Twinborn with Feruchemical zinc and Allomantic atium beat an atium Misting in a fight because of the enhanced mental capacity?
RAFO.
Those dots [in Allomancy symbols] can move around. They are an alphabet, so you can use these as an alphabet to write things. And the placement of the dot will tell you where the vowel is that comes after it.
So, if you do tin and duralumin... tin is the "I." (It looked like an "I," so I assigned "I" to it. Plus, I thought it was cool. My name starts with an "I," and I wanted it). Duralumin is the letter for "S." And the ones that are not vowels, you can move the dot around for different things.
I think you can throw the dot outside of it, and it will make a different sound, and I can't remember. Like, it might go from "Sah" to "Say." And if you don't change it, then it just acts...
I think, on the Badali [rings], they're just transliterating it one-to-one.
Do we get to see more Vasher in Stormlight.
Um, yes. So, you're gonna see a little bit in the next book. There will be a point where you'll see some more, but it's a ways off.
Deep lore question: Why is the storm that goes backwards called the Everstorm and not the Reversestorm?
Heh heh heh. That is actually a RAFO, which stands for Read And Find Out. I can explain the terminology a lot better after upcoming books are out.
Okay, cool, so you just have to wait.
You do have to wait on that one.
Do you ever read upcoming kid authors?
Will I ever read upcoming kid authors? Yes, I will. I can't promise to get to everybody who wants me to read a book by them, but I will read-- I try to read. So, if you want to send me something, you can. I get to them very infrequently, but if you get published by a publisher, something like that, I'm much more likely to.
Was the black mist spirit that Alendi saw Preservation or Ruin? Which one?
RAFO!
I feel like you're the kind of person who sneaks little details all over the place. Do you have a favorite that you've ever snuck in somewhere?
Oh yeah. Most definitely, the first line of The Final Empire. I have never been able to, so far, pull off as long a con as the first line of the first book being the climax of the third book. I do have some other long cons going, but they haven't paid off yet.
I just found out today that you have a charity called the Lightweaver Foundation.
I do.
What are you trying to accomplish with it?
I'm trying to find ways to give away my money.
Excellent!
It's less that I'm trying to funnel money into it from other sources. Sometimes, we sell things or do things that I want to do for charity, but mostly it's, so far we've put a library in the homeless shelter in Salt Lake and we've donated a bunch of books to schools and prisons and libraries. When someone comes and says, "Hey, can you donate to this thing," I just funnel it through the charity. It basically exists to give away my money.
Are there any Cognitive Shades of Mistborn Llamas?
Hehe-- In the Alcatraz universe, there sure are. 'Cause, I mean, in the Alcatraz universe it is canon, for instance, that Asmodean existed, and it's canon that Spook existed and High Imperial exists. So in the Alcatraz universe all bets are off.
Are Allomancer more or less common than in the time of the Survivor?
They are more common, but slightly less powerful.
This is for Isaac, actually. What are you working on right now? Are you working with anything with Brandon or with someone else?
Yeah, I am. I just finished a version of the Feruchemical table. If you’ve seen the Allomantic table, it's very similar to that. New frames. I actually created it a different way, and I think it looks nicer than the other one. It makes me want to go back and redo the other one, but it also has new symbols and some new information.
That'll debut in the Mistborn RPG, and then we'll sell prints.
We're studying King Lear in English, and I noticed that the character of The Fool is very much like Wit. I was wondering if you've ever read King Lear, and did you write Wit to be like him?
Yeah, Wit comes from The Fool from King Lear, and Twelfth Night also has one. The jester character in Shakespeare is a direct inspiration for Wit. I love them. Particulary, the fool in Lear. Lear is one of my favorite stories, and even to this day, maybe The Fool... it might be Kent who says it, says "See better, Lear." That line is one of those succinct, beautiful, powerful lines that's burned into the back of my brain that I read way back when I was in high school, and I have since experienced King Lear. Usually, I like to go to Shakespeare, rather than read Shakespeare, for obvious reasons.
I would say, though, I was already writing Wit at the time, the fact that Robin Hobb did such a fantastic fool character in The Assassins books, that fool definitely had an influence on my as well. One of the things I always wanted to do with Wit was to make sure that he felt different from just another court jester, because I'm assuming I'm not the only one inspired by Shakespeare to create a character similar. And I spent a lot of time early in my career, in the unpublished days, saying "What's gonna make Wit, what's gonna make Hoid different from just another jester?" And I spent a lot of time on that. And when I publish, eventually, I'll let you guys read Dragonsteel. He reads way more like a Shakespearean fool in Dragonsteel than he eventually became in the later Cosmere books, once I was getting published.
Oh, and as bonus aside, let me point something out to you. Human and his group of koloss were inside the Homeland when the sun came out, destroying everything on the surface. They were still there when Sazed rearranged the world and fixed things. TenSoon and the kandra were also inside, though they had been turned into mistwraiths. Hum . . . Wonder what happened to them. . . .
What makes fantasy creatures good and how do you go about creating them?
I try to build mine from the ecology of the world of the world I'm building. I try to extrapolate from that and this is just because I have this sort of "one foot in fantasy, one foot in science" approach to writing the cosmere in particular. And because of that, I want the flora and the fauna to feel integrated with the world that they're on and to be interesting in that aspect. Obviously, I have not done this in most books to the extent that I did in Stormlight. But one of the fun things for me to do is to ask, "What have I changed about this world? What would that do to the ecology?". What do I look for other than that? I want something that's visually interesting. I want something that'll draw well. I want something that'll not just be what I've seen before and that will be a nice take on what I've seen before. That's the thing, I mentioned before: human creativity is about recombining things in interesting ways. That's how we seem to work. We don't come up something we've never seen before, we put a horn on something we've seen before and call it something new, which is cool. We're remixers, is what we're really good at doing. And I ask myself, "What can I remix that I haven't seen remixed before?"
Why does Nightblood need to eat Investiture?
So, Nightblood is... leaky, is how I would say it.
Does his sheath help with that somehow?
Yes.
We are all fans of all of Brandon's stuff in our house, but we are particularly taken with Alcatraz. And I'm very alarmed by the publisher description that Shattered Lens is the "fourth and final book." Because the story isn't over yet! End of comas? Altar of encyclopedias? Attica?? Please, PLEASE reassure us that there is indeed another book coming out. Because otherwise we might have to picket Scholastic's offices or something!
I'd be happy if you would picket—though I say that mostly jokingly. I didn't want them to put that on the book. It's not the last book. But those who know what's happened behind the scenes know that Scholastic and I have not seen eye to eye on how the Alcatraz books have been packaged and distributed.
Rithmatist? Is there...
Someday, there will be a sequel. I sat down and tried to write it. And I ran into some things that were just kind of problems, both in the worldbuilding and in the story I was gonna write, and it just didn't work. So I put it aside, and I've been working on the outline, and when I feel comfortable that I can do a sequel that's as good as the first one, I will write it, but it was not going well enough, that I felt it was... something was missing. So, I will take another stab at it before too much longer...
I now wish that I had not left that little teaser at the end of the first one. If I would have wrapped that up a little tighter, then you wouldn't have... I mean, I would still write it, but I feel bad about that teaser that there's more when it has been hard to get that sequel done.
Before the Ascension, why did the mists appear just as the well was gaining power? Did they come out at other times?
This one is trickier. From what I got out of it, it's because the mists are a manifestation of Preservation, and physical manifestations of Preservation (including Allomancers) are intended to do two things - stop Ruin, and protect the Well of Ascension. Which are kind of the same thing. So, when the Well was dormant, the mists didn't really have much to do. The Deepness form of the mists is a result of the conscious part of Preservation freaking out and trying to produce a way to protect the well, mostly by producing more Allomancers. That's why the mists do all the funky things in the Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages - they're trying to produce more Allomancers to combat Ruin.
Does titles of the five books from the first arc create a ketek?
No. I actually considered it but it’s just too confusing so I actually tossed that out before I even started the first book. But I did consider it. It just was too confusing.
is the title 'Shadows of Self' a reflection on the character development if Wax, or another thing like Kandra.
The answer is yes. If you look through the previous Mistborn books, I actually used the phrase 'shadow of self' at some point.
Can you put the Cosmere books into [chronological] order?
Here is the order that I have publicly confirmed. There are obviously other books and stories fitting in there. For those, you’ll just need to RAFO.
Could you Invest... Could you use a nicrosil metalmind to Invest the sort of Investiture enough that you could open a Perpendicularity up to the Cognitive Realm?
So, I'll just say it this way. Enough concentrated Investiture in one point is going to pierce the Realms, no matter what form it takes.
...So, it doesn't have to be a nicrosil metalmind.
No.
Okay... But it could be?
Yes. That is theoretically possible.
White Sand ombinus?
I’m gonna have to be careful with what I say here, because we’re working with Dynamite, and I want to give them an update.
But I will say that that’s kind of the big thing that I’m doing around Rhythm of War artwork and Kickstarter stuff. When I have time, I’ve been making adjustments to White Sand. Continuity adjustments…
There are some things that I can tell you. I can tell you that we are adding 38 new pages of artwork that comes at the very beginning. There may be more. This depends on discussions with Dynamite. But we have a really great artist working on that. He’s almost done with it. I want to announce who it is, but I want to talk to Dynamite first. But I just want to say that he’s doing an amazing job. We’ve got a great colorist, we’ve got a great letterer. In fact, the colorist and letterer did work on some of the stuff that’s in the original White Sand.
It’s coming together really nicely. I think fans are gonna be really happy with the adjustments. And it’s going to place it more firmly in the cosmere than it has with the previous versions. Which were just fine; we loved working with the artist and the writer at Dynamite. I consider Rik a friend. This is just taking something that was already good and making it a little bit better. And a little bit more just continuity-wise fit in with the cosmere. We want to do more things with these characters, and so we wanted to make sure the continuity was working correctly.
Chapter Twenty
I worry a little bit about this chapter. The problem is, it's probably one of the chapters that has undergone the most revisions. Not in a "Fix problems" way–more in a "I need to add scenes to the book. Where shall I put them" kind of way.
For instance, the beginning has a few paragraphs that–looking at them now–I think drag on a bit. The reiteration of Vin's relationship with Shan, for instance. I put it in because I need to indicate that time has passed, and that Vin's relationships have continued, but I worry that I spent too much time on it at the beginning of the scene. Next, I added another scene showing skaa life (the one with children shaking the trees) in order to remind the reader of how bad things are. Then, later on, I changed the book to have canal convoys rather than caravans. So, this chapter got some more revisions. Then, I added a lot to the scene with Marsh, including Vin’s discussion of her mother.
All in all, it feels like a hodge-podge chapter to me. A lot of important information is explained, but it doesn't fit together as well as I might have wanted. The rhythm of the chapter is just a little. . .off.
I'm not certain how interested people are in the real theory of Allomancy and how it works. However, I do think that some people like to hear the theory and background to magic systems like this, so I try to include the occasional explanation. For those of you who don't fit into this category, I apologize for Marsh's lengthy explanation here.
Once upon a time I asked you about the magic system as described in Elantris and The Emperor's Soul, how in The Emperor's Soul [Shai] describes it as, she talks about the Spiritual Realm as the, like, the wall wanting to be beautiful. And how in Elantris they describe the Dor as what makes a river want to flow. And I assumed that meant that they were connected. But according to that [Arcanum Unbounded] it says that the Investiture is housed in the Cognitive Realm and how unlike most of the other magic systems its magic comes from the Cognitive. And so now I am confused.
Okay, they are related but there's an overarching theory, er, kind of philosophy of what Investiture is and it imbuing things with desires that in our world may not actually have desires. And that is connected. The fact that the Dor is the Cognitive Realm is not the way it's supposed to be. That is a prob-- well, in some ways it's a feature, but it's also very much a bug.
Chapter Ten
And here we finally reach the culmination of a plot cycle I've been working on for four books now, but really kicked into overdrive in Oathbringer.
I knew pretty early into the creation of the "new" Kaladin (as opposed to Merin, from Prime) that I was going to have to deal with the fact that he'd been put through hell--and that sort of thing leaves scars on a person. Just like I eventually realized I needed to step up and do my research to properly treat Shallan's arc, I decided early on I'd need to be responsible with how I treated what Kaladin had been through.
Mental health has become a theme in the Stormlight Archive, but I've often noted that it isn't that I set out to write specifically about that topic. More, I feel that the extreme circumstances I'm putting characters into naturally lead to these kinds of conflicts. If I'm going to follow through with what the characters are experiencing, it means talking about these ideas.
This chapter is the unmarked "end" of what I imagined being the cold open lead-in to the novel. (The kind of "climax to a book between the two novels you didn't see" that I've been talking about in these annotations.) With the next chapter, we'll go to a character we haven't seen yet this book, and begin into the core plot of the novel.
What color of Magic [the Gathering] decks would some of your characters play?
It's going to depend on the character right? I often say Kelsier is black-blue. I feel that Vin is red-green probably. And Sazed is about as mono-white as you get. It's going to depend on the characters. Kaladin is pretty mono-white, though some of his powers are blue based so you could make a very good argument <for that.> That's the thing in Magic, you have both personalities and power suites of characters influencing what colors they [are] and what they would play. So you get Kaladin where personalty: white, power set: blue, would be pretty common. Dalinar is going to be mono-red for most of his life moving slowly into white-red. And you'll get someone like Jasnah who is very mono-blue with some touches of black or Shallan who is also just mono-red.
Well you answered my question about Allomancers being able to burn metals in other realms. Is that because the Shards are sort of… My impression from the book was that the Shards were, in the Mistborn books, specifically in that area but is it because the universe is formed across all of them that that is why the metals...
So, most of the magics are not region-dependent, because the Spiritual Realm-- in the Spiritual Realm space doesn’t exist. All things are the same distance from one another.
Okay, so when Kelsier is in the-- Which Realm is he in?
He’s in the Cognitive Realm.
Is he seeing people from other worlds or is he--
No, he meets some people who are traveling but Cognitive Realm is location dependent. He is on the Cognitive Realm on Scadrial and the people he runs into there-- until he kind of travels off into space, which is where he finds the fortress.
So even though he’s tied to Scadrial could he go to the Cognitive Realm of other worlds?
He would have trouble getting to another planet, being a Cognitive shadow like he was.
So is there some particular thing that somebody would need to have to be able to move between the realms?
A body is helpful. Depends on what their ties are and things like that. Not always, but yeah.
How would an Awakened with Breath piece of cloth react if it got hit with a Shardblade?
A Shardblade would probably be able to cut it, but it depends on how much Breath we're talking about.
So if it had enough, it might be able to block it
Yes.
