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Have you ever followed the cremposting subreddit?
I don't really follow it. I go to it when people tag me, and that's about it. I think it's hilarious, but it's not one that I track a lot.
That's for Cosmere memes, basically, and/or Brandon Sanderson memes. If you feel like going there and cremposting, you may do so. They tag me on some interesting things, now and then.
do you decide what cosmere hints you'll let out before going to events? Or just decide on the fly?
A little of both. Usually, they pry more out of me than I'm planning, though.
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.
So, you talked about another teen series. What was it called?
The Apocalypse Guard. Yeah, I've got some concept art on my website.
Is it gonna be a Cosmere story?
It's gonna be Reckoners continuity.
What is the difference between Scadrian science and Rosharan science for the future of the Cosmere?
That is a RAFO.
Do you think the Worldsingers will eventually get some time? That's who I'm most curious about. It's just so cool to see new parts of the world/cosmere.
Possibly. Someday, I hope to be able to do more with the connection between them and other groups with oddly similar names across the cosmere.
I always wondered if there was a connection between Worldsingers and Worldbringers. Can I take this as confirmation there is one?
Yes, there is a connection.
Could a coppermind be able to memorize physical memory?
Ooh, never been asked that before. I am going to RAFO that, but in an "I need to think about it more" sort of way, cause I have actually never been asked that. My gut instinct says no, but maybe. I'm gonna have to really ponder on physical memory and the cosmere, and how that all works. Good question. Not often I get stumped by one like that.
I guess... At what point or which book will Sixth of the Dusk eventually tie in to?
So... Heh...
And if that is unanswerable, then how many years until that book comes out?
It's not unanswerable, but it's a ways off. The problem is that's a weird planet, and visiting it from Shadesmar is-- it just-- in the Cosmere Collection I'll talk about that, okay? It's a weird planet, and getting to it is interesting.
Okay...
There's no Shard in residence, but there's a Shardpool. But it's on... one of the most dangerous places... that exists. And so, let's just say it's not going to be relevant until you can regularly travel there somehow that doesn't involve popping up into a giant death trap.
Okay, follow-up question though. How many people have tried to pop up, only to find out it was a death trap?
Go ahead and read what Khriss has to say about it.
When were you planning on having the fourth Wax & Wayne book?
So, it'll be the next Cosmere book I write. I probably won't get to it until earlier next year. So well see when the publisher decides to publish it after I turn it in.
Um, what about us (Wit fans)? Will we see any more of him in this book? RAFO?
:) Well, he hasn't skipped a book in the cosmere yet...!
Was he in Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, or does that only count as a story, not a book?
I was meaning full novels. There are a number of the novellas where he doesn't appear.
I asked him about the time between each of the original 99 desolations.
It turns out that the number 99 in the stories was made up, and that there were much fewer of them. He also then stated that the cosmere runs along a 10,000 year gap and that Roshar falls right into the middle of the timeline. He ended with "That should give you a perspective of the timeline and events of the desolations".
Lift can drink EVERYONE under the table.
It's established that stormlight can heal the toxic aspects of alcohol, thanks to the misadventures of Veil. It's established that shortly after consumption, Lift can metabolize caloric value into stormlight. Alcohol is VERY high in caloric density, on par with sugar and fat, well above complex carbohydrates and vegetables. So Lift, once she gets around to trying booze, should be able to quickly turn the calorie value of alcohol into stormlight which then cures the drunkenness. Indeed alcohol might well be a good way for her to keep her reserves, since it keeps very well, can be produced from sources that don't work as food, and is so calorically dense. It also means she can beat Rock at a drinking contest, even if they both start with the same amount of stormlight in gems. This should happen.
Yup, I think this is accurate.
End of [Words of Radiance], Szeth meets Nightblood. Nightblood normally makes people feel very sick as a test. He does not have this. And I'm curious if there's a reason for that other than you didn't want to end your book with Szeth puking in a corner.
What happens when you take Nightblood is based entirely on what your desire on how to use Nightblood is. If your intent does not align with Nightblood's created Intent, which is kind of a deep, Cosmere sort of thing. But, basically, if you want Nightblood because you can then destroy all of your enemies, you're not gonna match to that Intent. If your desire to use Nightblood is either: "I don't even want to use Nightblood," you're actually gonna be fine; or if your desire to Nightblood is matching what Nightblood's view is... And Szeth is, like, the perfect person, because Szeth only wants to do what he's told, and Nightblood kind of only wants to do what he's told. So there's, like, a perfect alignment. They're both messed up in the same way, and they both view the world in the same way, and it's hard to find a more perfect alignment than those two. And so, because of that, there was just no reaction. And that should be something that I wanted people to pick up on.
How do you decide on how much time passes between your world's big "magical moment" and present tense? For example, in Stormlight thousands of years pass between the Recreance and Shallan and Kaladin kicking it in a chasm. How do you know if 1,000 years or 100 years is appropriate?
There's no set rule for this, I'm afraid. I just run on instinct on this one, though I'm helped by having a larger continuity and timeline between books, so I have an idea of how things have played out cosmere-wide.
The visitors in the Sixth of the Dusk, do I know who they are?
I haven’t answered this for sure, but I have told people that it takes place in the future and is related to the rest of the cosmere…
Do we know how soon we’ll find out?
It’s a little ways off.
With so many worldhoppers, how is it that knowledge of the Cosmere is so uncommon? Are worldhoppers sworn to secrecy about this?
Not most of them.
But not uncommon maybe?
No, I mean the Seventeenth Shard's not supposed to intervene, so there are some that are not supposed to. The majority of them, no. But at the same time, yes, the Horneaters know about them because that's where the perpendicularity is. How many people travel to the Horneater Peaks?
And yes, in most large cities on Roshar you will find a handful of worldhoppers. But what are you going to say? "Yeah, I'm from another planet!" and they're like, "What's a planet?" Yes, Jasnah and people, scholars would be able to be like, "Wow, this in mind-blowing!" Other people are like, "Oh, is that over the mountains? I've never been over there."
It's not this thing that is going to spread as much until—I think until there's mass communication and there is mass literacy and understanding. To place yourself in the context, you can say, "I'm from the stars," and they'll be like, "Yeah, so are we! We came from the Tranquilline Halls! You see all these Iriali over there? They came from another land as well." To them it's mystical. They don't put together this in the same way that I think that... I think that if you went back in time to medieval era and you said, "I'm from beyond the stars!" they'd be like, "Okay. That's as weird as being from over there on the spice route. I've never been to the next village, I can't conceptualize being from the stars". They'll either just think you're weird or that won't be as mindblowing as it would be to people once they have education and mass communication.
Which is why I think things during Era Two of Mistborn—that at that point things are spreading, people are understanding. It's starting to be a thing, and to them it is kind of mind-blowing. But to your average person in Bavland, they'd be like, "Okay. Sounds good. Where's my food?"
Who would believe you?
Yeah. Who would believe you, who who understands what you're saying would believe you, and who else would have the context to understand? I just don't think that it's as big a thing as you think and also I think that in the era before mass communication, the numbers of people that are worldhoppers, even if they are in the hundreds or even thousands, is so small compared to the size of a planet like Roshar in populations that it just is not going to spread in the way that you think it will.
Is there an official cosmere coloring book? I feel like this should be a thing.
I've been investigating this possibility and already have an artist interested if everything lines up nicely.
In the comments, I saw that one of you was asking about my prewriting process [for Wax and Wayne Four]. In short, for this one, what I did is: there were three big steps. The beginning was, I wrote down Character, Setting, Plot together in a document, and I then did a subheading for each of the main characters. For this book, it'll be Wax, Wayne, Steris, and Marasi. And I said, "All right; what are their character arcs? How do they change? What do they want in this book? What's going on with them?" And that was the first pillar I wanted to hit; I wanted to make sure that everybody was working and that I knew where they were all going and where they would end. Because this is the last book of that sequence, and I want the ending to be spectacular.
Next part was setting. In this, mostly it was developing the magic system, making sure that the things that I'm doing with it, the new ideas that are coming in and developments, are in line with the general goals for the Cosmere and for Scadrial, and that everything that I wanted to do worked within the bounds of the magic, and bouncing that off of my team and making sure that I was explaining things well, why things worked like they did.
And then the last part was to construct the actual plot. This is: what is happening, what are people wanting to do? How am I weaving in character arcs to this large construct that is the plot of the book?
Are the glyphwards in Stormlight from Elantris?
No, the glyphwards are purely cultural. There are people who would say that they aren’t, even in-world, but that gets into theology and religion, whether there’s a definitive god and afterlife in the Cosmere or not, which I leave up to personal interpretation, in an effort to not undermine characters who believe spiritually different than I do.
Let's say I had a really hard/special/magic metal file. I took it to Roshar and started shaving pieces off and catching them in a bowl. Would they dissipate and kinda puff into embers like the Shardplate does in places or would I actually have a bit of metal? If I did, would that metal shaving be able to be burned by a Mistborn? I won't ask what it would do, as I know that's a RAFO, just, would it be possible?
Yes, this is possible. Shardplate that grows replacement parts and/or heals itself (through using stormlight) is converting investiture into metal. So, in your theoretical world with a file that could file some off, you'd end up with a substance that you'd call a metal, though not one we have on earth.
I'll RAFO if a Mistborn could burn it, but what you want to do here could be done. This is assuming that you're using a suit of dead Shardplate, as is commonly seen in the books so far.
How cosmere-aware was the Lord Ruler? If a Returned waltzed into Kredik Shaw, would he have any idea what was going on? Or at least be able to recognize, "Hey that guy seems Endowmenty."
Aware enough to know he wasn't alone, but not so aware that he'd know specifics. He didn't hold the power long enough to explore outward very far.
On all video games and stuff, I usually just do "Zellion" [as a username]. I've always liked that word. Now I'll never be able to get that in any game again, because I have released that there will be a mysterious Zellion figure in the future of the Cosmere. Any time I use a name, suddenly everyone jumps on it.
Lastly, less pressingly, do Spirit Points (Hemalurgic spots) apply to ever magic system, and through the cosmere at large? Ie. could Hemalurgy be used to take any other magic systems aspects, and do other magic systems also have these 'Points', such as Body Focuses, that work in similar ways?
Hemalurgy crosses magic systems. You could steal things from people on other worlds, if you knew the right places for the spikes.
How is homosexuality regarded across the cosmere?
I know one member of Bridge 4, though I forget who, is gay, but I'm asking more in the sense of legality, societal view, etc.
It would probably depend on the planet and culture involved. Roshar has many varied cultures and probably has multiple different acceptance levels. Scadrial is much more progressive and really only has two cultures so it's more likely that most if not all of the world accepts it. Maybe this is something you could ask [Brandon] at a signing or during an AMA.
Yes, this varies widely based on the planet, and even culture, TimAnEnchanter.
Roshar, for instance, has a lot of different perspectives on homosexuality. In Iri, the more religious segment (who believe that life is about new experiences) would approve, while the more rigid modern, secular society has outlawed it.
In Azir, you'd find something like existed in middle-ages India. (Some societies there had this curious system where a gay man would be given "social reassignment" so that he was treated like a woman, dressed like one, and had relations with men--even if he wasn't actually transsexual.)
Vorin culture is concerned with oaths. Extra-marital sexuality is strictly forbidden, but homosexuality is regarded the same by most as heterosexual relationships. If the proper oaths are spoken, then the Almighty approves. (This usually means marriage, but there are certain official forms of other relationships that would allow it also.)
There are actually a couple of scenes in Book Three talking about it, for those who are interested, as the family and romantic relationships of the bridgemen are becoming a larger part of the story. (Still a small part, I should note, for space limitations.)
On Scadrial, it's going to fall between Pathian lines (each individual decides for themselves) and Survivorist lines (you follow church hierarchy, which forbids it.)
Don't even get me started on Bavadin's religions.
What reasons do Survivorists use to rationalize heterosexuality? Thank you so much for these tidbits it's really interesting to hear more about this stuff from you. It would be great to see some of this canonized, maybe in an interlude, or random background discussion somewhere. Thank you again for your books! Also very interested in hearing why secular Iriali have decided to 'regress' on that.
Survivorism calls it unnatural, and not conducive to the survival of the species. More than that, though, Survivorism has become very conservative and slow to change. What early thinkers had to say is regarded very strictly in the religion. Back during the early days of the new era, repopulating the basin was of prime concern, and this became a big part of what led to moral codes in Survivorism.
On that note, in Secret History, Kelsier's reading the symbols. Does he not-- I mean he is able to understand them...
Right, right. So, if you go look really closely at what happens with Kelsier before he's able to start reading the symbols and understand the language, you can relate it to things in the cosmere that I've talked about before for how he's able to do that.
If a gold Feruchemist formed a Nahel bond, could Stormlight healing fill goldminds? Could they turn into basically a hospital by storing Identity?
Plausible, there's a few things you're not considering.
Projects in Development
Dragonsteel/Liar of Partinel
This is Hoid's origin story, a prequel to the entire Cosmere. The time is not right. It's going to happen eventually, but I feel that I shouldn't dig into this until Stormlight is completely done. (All ten books.) So don't hold your breath on this one.
Status: Loooong way off
World Map
The world map for Roshar changed dramatically between various iterations of the book.
Work on this novel started when I was fifteen. Back then, most of the plots and characters were combined with another world of mine, called Yolen. (That's where the book Dragonsteel takes place.) Somewhere in my early 20s, after I had a whole lot more experience and knew (kind of) what I was doing, I realized that the plots I had going in this world didn't click well together, so I divided the books into two separate series.
I wrote Dragonsteel first, back in 1999 or 2000. (Although Dragonsteel was the third book I wrote in the cosmere—after White Sand and Elantris—it was meant to be the chronological origin of the sequence. Hoid was one of the main characters of that series. The first book even includes significant viewpoints from him.)
I started outlining The Way of Kings fairly soon after. That original map I imagined as a continent with three prongs facing downward, with a connection at the top. There was the Alethi prong in the center, Shinovar to the west, and a long prong with Natanatan on the east.
Over the years, my worldbuilding skills grew. And part of that growth was realizing that the map I'd designed didn't work well for the story I wanted to tell. I wanted something better, and I changed designs.
I gave Isaac the outline of this world that became Roshar. (Based on an iteration of a Julia set, though for a while I played around with making the whole continent a cymatic shape.) That didn't happen for Mistborn, where I basically just told him, "Make the world map as you wish, with these guidelines." Mistborn, I knew, was going to happen basically in a couple of cities.
The Way of Kings was going to be huge, and I wanted scope for the project. That meant a big, epic map. I'm very pleased with Isaac's work here. Do note that this is a southern hemisphere continent, with the equator up north.
Before, Inquisitors had supernatural healing. How did they get the Feruchemists for the spike? Were the keepers not so hidden after all?
The keepers have been hunted for years. Much like skaa Allomancers, they were often captured and taken by the Inquisitors. It didn't happen nearly as often, of course. Two things to remember, however: Not all Inquisitors had the same spikes, and spikes CAN be reused with much less effectiveness. The longer they are outside of a body, the more their power degrades.
I wonder whether Jasnah has been to the Cognitive Realm of planets other than Roshar?
She has not, she is not horribly cosmere-aware as of the end of Oathbringer, she is starting to get an inkling. Give her some time and you might be impressed with how quickly she can come up to speed.
I have a questions. I read in the book that under the Lord Ruler, the Steel Inquisitors had 9 spikes. So they had 8 spikes for the normal Allomantic abilities, and only one left. But they needed one more. One would be a Feruchemical spike which granted the user healing abilities. And the other one would be an atium spike. In the book they burned it often, but how? But then, how could they burn atium? They would have needed an atium spike (extremely expensive) and an Mistborn (because atium Mistings weren't discovered).
Somehow, the number of the spike just don't make sense. There should be 10. Do you have some ideas, or is it just an mistake by Brandon Sanderson?
The official answer is that the number varies depending on how many Mistings they can find and sacrifice. Not all Inquisitors will have all the same powers.
Have the Heralds lost Connection and Identity? And, if so, can Regrowth heal it?
*Brandon motions for Joel to hold up the RAFO sign*
Is Nazh a cartographer?
Nazh. So Nazh knows enough that he-- Like he knows more than the average person, but I would not call him a cartographer. I would describe him... as a grumpy, cosmere James Bond. Not nearly as cool, but it's the same sort of thing. "Here's the mission. You need to do this. Get in. Infiltrate. Get this thing." Right?
Sigzil mentions that perhaps billions of people die every day in the Cosmere. This would require about 6000 modern earths. Was this a mistake, or has the scale dramatically increased from the 50-100 stars you mentioned?
Nah, it's Sigzil exaggerating. He's Hoid's apprentice, he has dramatic license and hyperbole as a tool that he can use at will. He has no idea how many people actually die, he's not gonna run the- well, he could run the math, he's that type of person, but he has not run that math.
What is the structure of the Cosmere like? i.e. What planets are in which systems orbiting what stars in what galaxy.
We'll produce a map of this eventually. Right not, it's not terribly relevant. (Though in books, you can occasionally pick out some cosmological feature seen from different planets.) The stars are very close on a galactic scale--part of a dwarf galaxy.
I have a question about the cosmere, and Hoid specifically. The way that he is worldhopping, is he using Cognitive and *inaudible* Realms?
The times you have seen him worldhop, it has involved shardpools, or perpendicularities, as we call them. He is using primarily the Cognitive Realm.
Because, from what I understood from Secret History, that he's going through the shardpool, from the Cognitive to the normal Realm.
Yeah, he's traveling through the Cognitive Realm, and then jumping back to the Physical one, once he's where he wants to go.
So, I'm guessing what's going on, though, is that he's travelling between planets using the Cognitive and coming out from the shardpool to the Physical Realm?
Yes, that is exactly right.
Seasons on Roshar are based around the storms (ie long lighter storms in the winter, short stronger storms in the summer) rather than time or temperature
Temperature stays fairly constant because of the lack of an axial tilt
Despite not having traditional seasons they have the concept of seasons which must have come from somewhere else (read as: cosmere shenanigans)
With the recent release of the Magic: The Gathering Forgotten Realms set, has Wizards floated the idea of a Cosmere type set?
I'm obviously in pretty regular contact with Wizards, having written a story for them, and things like that. There's a lot of fans in house. So I think that probably we will do these someday. But at the same time, they are still figuring out how to make with their fanbase not rioting at them. Some of the fanbase does not like other IPs getting mixed in to Magic: The Gathering, and so Wizards is figuring out how to do that. We have talked to them. Nothing's come of it yet, but I think it's probably inevitable. I don't know. They know how much I love their game, and a lot of them read my books, so I would imagine that someday, we'll do it. At the very least, we'll do one of these Secret Lair things or something like that, but maybe something more. Like, I would hold out for a full set, like they're doing with Lord of the Rings. But they also are doing Commander decks themed to certain properties, which would be another really cool thing.
I imagine we would, but I can't... All I can say right now is, we've all been like, "Hey wouldn't that be cool?" And that's as far as it's gone.
On Nalthis, can aluminum prevent somebody from Returning? So if you kill somebody with aluminum and leave the weapon in them?
I don't think that's going to be enough. I think that…
Different way then?
Yeah there are totally ways. I don’t think that that’s going to be enough. There's a difference between being inert and blocking Investiture, and actually sucking out Investiture. If you stuck Nightblood inside of a corpse; there are certain things… if you had a larkin or whatever sitting there that ingests the Investiture as it was coming in, that would prevent [Returning]. I think with aluminum you would just have somebody that comes alive with a wound, so maybe... But I think it would just heal around [the aluminum] and you'd just have a spike in you, kind of like Hemalurgy—but not like Hemalurgy. It's inert, but you know what I mean.
Which suggests you can't actually Awaken aluminum.
No. It's not going to hold a charge.
I assume you can't Forge it, either.
No. In fact the unForgable metal-
Ralkalest?
There's an unForgeable metal mentioned.
Could we call it aluminum if we wanted to?
Let's just say that aluminum through most cultures was considered a mythological metal, and when people could actually find some, they considered it more valuable than gold, in our culture. So just sayin'...
Does anyone understand what [Brandon] means in saying that dead Shardblades cannot heal the soul, whereas living ones can?
It seems like it's been a while since I've read WoR, and I can't make out how the original scene demonstrates this? Is he talking about Kaladin's soul or Szeth's?
I don't understand it myself, except that two Orders can use Regrowth. But that might not be what Brandon is talking about.
To what extent are Cognitive shadows the same as the individuals they are shadows of? Do you count them as the same person or are they just a "copy" so to speak? Or is this a discussion for philosophers (which you've said is the case with the cosmere's "far afterlife")?
I've considered answering this a few times, and have decided I just have to RAFO it. This is a discussion for philosophers, as you've said. It may become a plot point in future books.
Its interesting that his most popular female characters all seem to have mental health issues.
Hmm, I’m not aware of Jasnah being on the spectrum. Her trauma is something different, though we may not find out until we get her flashbacks.
All of the Knights Radiant (basically, all of the Cosmere’s Investiture users) have some kind of trauma.
Introduction: The Longer Version
Back in January this year, Wizards of the Coast approached me. Knowing of my love for their game, Magic: The Gathering, they were wondering if I would be willing to write a tie-in story for them. They mentioned since it was the 25th birthday of Magic, they wanted to do something special—and might be able to splurge on a Brandon Sanderson story.
I was, of course, interested—but went back to Wizards with a proposal that I think surprised them. You see, I knew they'd been doing some very interesting things with their stories in recent months. (The multi-part Dominaria sequence by Martha Wells is a good example, if you are interested.) I liked how they were using free stories on their website to both enhance the lore and give some work to talented writers.
Way back in the beginning of my career, one of the things I liked to do was periodically release free stories. Defending Elysium, Firstborn, and even Warbreaker are examples. Over the years, though, I've gotten busy enough that I haven't found a good opportunity to do this again. I liked the idea of doing a story for Wizards in part for this reason.
So I went back to them with a proposal: I didn't actually want payment for this story. I just wanted them to put it up for free on their website, and then if (later down the road) it generated any money by being in a collection or in print on its own, I wanted my portion of that donated to charity. In exchange for doing it for free, I wanted to be allowed to write the story my way. That meant me picking one of their settings, then developing my own characters and plot to happen there. (As opposed to writing the story for one of their official releases, as most of the other writers they hired were doing.)
It wasn't that I had anything against writing one of the main-line-setting stories. I just felt that in this case, I wanted greater flexibility. Beyond that, for several years now, I've had a story brewing in my head that I felt was a perfect match for one of their settings—a story I couldn't make work in the Cosmere, but which I really wanted to write.
Wizards was on board immediately—and so, "Secret Project" was born.
Regarding the Story
Wizards has a lot of great settings for the card game, so I had plenty of options. The story I'd been brewing was specifically inspired by their Innistrad set—a gothic horror setting with some magepunk elements underpinning it. It has had a very interesting evolution over the years, and was the setting for one of the best Magic sets of all time. Ever since writing Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, I've wanted to do another horror/fantasy hybrid, and so I dove into what became Children of the Nameless.
I don't know exactly what Wizards was expecting of me, but I suspect a 250-page behemoth of a story wasn't it. (At 50k words, the story is roughly half the size of something like Skyward.) I have to say, though, working with them was an absolute pleasure. They jumped on board with the main character pitch I made, integrating him right away into the larger Magic story. They even went so far as to loop me in on conference calls, where I could explain my character concepts so they could develop art. I'd thought they might be worried about letting me go off on my own like this, but they were instead enthusiastic and supportive.
So, it is with great pleasure I present Children of the Nameless. Consider it a Christmas present from me and from Wizards of the Coast to you. I hope you enjoy it!
Between the Awakened steelmind from The Sunlit Man, and the Awakened metalminds mentioned in the Isles of the Emberdark readings, this is twice now we've heard about Awakened metalminds in the future of the cosmere. What makes Awakening a steelmind valuable in a spacehsip, presumably as some kind of ship AI, if regular steel metalminds store physical speed; I would've expected a zincmind instead, for its mental speed capabilities.
RAFO.
For the Shards of Adonalsium, which are basically the deities of the cosmere, I have picked things like Odium, Ruin, and Preservation, to be words that are really easy to... they mean something, you understand exactly what they are, there's going to be sixteen of them, so trying to remember all sixteen different names if they weren't something like that is going to be really hard. It makes it easier to keep which is which, it has an ominous feel to them, and they regionalize, translate into other languages really easily. So that's what I've done.
We have now seen shades across the Cosmere. Please let me know if I'm thinking along the correct line. Is one of the reasons that shades form because their access to the Spiritual Realm has been altered or damaged?
RAFO. You are definitely theorizing along the correct lines. I can't verify the exact mechanism, but you're thinking along the right path.
I will also be doing another YA series to follow up The Reckoners, for those who like those. This one-- So here's the pitch. I'm actually pitching one of my books! It's great. *laughter*
It's the story of what happens if you call the Justice League for help and they're all gone solving a bigger problem and you get the intern. *laughter* It's actually about a girl named Emma and she is the coffee girl for the Apocalypse Guard who are-- Like in the Reckoners universe there's people with super powers. The Apocalypse Guard is kind of bigger than that. In the Reckoners books they've discovered the multiverse, the different dimensions-- A very comic book thing. I'd already done something like the Cosmere, so I decided to go with the multiple dimensions theory in this one. Some of them are stable, they're real worlds and things. A lot of them are just shadows. But the stable ones, they find, are all undergoing some big disaster. Or most of them are. It's all kind-- Something is happening that's put all these worlds in crisis. And so they formed the Apocalypse Guard. There's people with superpowers but there's also lots of engineers and scientists. It's not like they sweep in and save the day in a couple minutes, they spend like eight months building this big plan to save these planets. And so they've got a plan, they're going to save a planet, and then something attacks them. Completely unexpectedly. Disaster happens. Emma the coffee girl gets transported to one of these worlds that's about to be destroyed. And she has no powers, they're all off fighting whatever attacked this thing, and she either has to get off this world or put in action their plan, that they've been working on for many months, by herself and one guy that is tech support. *laughter* Yeah, those are our two main characters. One is tech support, over the headphones, trying to talk her through putting the plan together. And she is the coffee girl. And they have to deal with this.
The world is actually a cool one I came up with a few years ago that's surrounded in an envelope of water, all around it. Based on the idea of the Firmament. So there's land, air, and then water. And the water can't come crashing down, but it's where some old philosophers thought the Flood was. In ancient days, before the Flood, you would have looked up and seen air, the clouds, and then an envelope of water. The Firmament. And I've always thought that idea was really cool, so that's going to happen on the world. They've got to stop the flood that's going to destroy the planet. Or get off of it, or something.
What are the chances - I actually really like the Mistborn Adventure Game. What are the chances of more roleplaying games set in the Cosmere?
I've asked them if they'll do a Stormlight one and they're interested in doing it.
Aha, I'm interested in doing it and I'm a really good designer. *clamor from audience* <How would I go about doing that?>
If you want to get one of my licenses, the best advice we can give you... the way that Crafty was, is, they made a really good game that wasn't themed. They came to me and said "I've done this, I know how to...". Like our base fear in choosing your people is that they won't be able to finish the product for people waiting for it and know how to distribute it. So, if you have done other games, if you have done that, then your chances go up. If you haven't, my recommendation is go and make your own, prove that you can distribute a game and manufacture a game and things like that - and then come to us. Because, we don't care how big or small you are, as long as you're able to fulfil on your promises and as long as you make quality stuff that people enjoy, right? That's... that's our thing. So, that's your path to getting one of the licenses, okay?
I read a lot of the Star Wars books, and they have a timeline in the front of each book. I know that you mentioned that you don't want to force people to have to read them in a certain order. Is that something that you've ever thought of?
It is. I've actually thought of starting to stick in the back of the book, a guide to the cosmere and stuff. It's just, finding the space for it in the books and all of that is tricky. I think we will eventually do it. But it's just one of the many things that I have to find time to do.
Will we be seeing any more worlds from the cosmere?
There are other word-worlds you will see, there are several I haven’t visited yet at all. White Sand, the world of that book which was one of my earlier novels I never published. I intend to eventually do that series, it may not have the same title or anything but I do intend to do that series, there will be a sequel trilogy to Mistborn, eventually. I’m actually in the middle of working on a short story for that world right now to release online and there will be sequels to elantris but the sequels to elantris will deal with new characters they won’t they won’t, they’ll take place the second book will take place 10 years after the first book.
