Found 1880 entries in 0.128 seconds.
m4ge
If a Splintered Shard is somehow reformed, is it possible to change the word that expresses its Intent?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, but that's a very implausible thing depending on how... so, you're getting into some weird Cosmere stuff here. Most of the ways that these different Shards could manifest could be described differently. Odium is trying very hard to describe his Shard as something different, and there's an argument there. But it depends on if you're like actually changing it or if you just want to call it something different. You could just call Odium Hatred and it's not going to change anything, but if you wanted to change Odium to mean Passion like Odium thinks that it means, then that's more difficult.
Questioner
So is it the same thing with the Parshendi, are there other races that can do similar things and Invest creatures like that themselves?
Brandon Sanderson
Um, ye-- In the cosmere, yes there are other things that do that but they're pretty rare, whereas things like seons and spren are actually only medium rare. They're some kind of medium common.
xnkvbo
If an Awakener with Perfect Invocation turns something white, can they or another Awakener then use the white thing back to gray, back to white.
Brandon Sanderson
I actually thought about this. My answer ended up being a no.
xnkvbo
Can you give a little explanation why?
Brandon Sanderson
I will delve into it more as I delve into the nature of color and why it's relevant to multiple magics in the cosmere. So it's a RAFO.
Questioner
Beyond the crossover of Hoid between most of the Cosmere books, with the addition of the Secret Project books, will we be seeing potential meetings of other worldhoppers and magic systems to more mainstream series, like Stormlight Archives and Mistborn?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, most likely you will see more and more of that.
Questioner
What would a kandra look like in Shadesmar, and do they have any special abilities in the Cognitive or Spiritual Realm?
Brandon Sanderson
Not sure if I want to canonize what they would look like. I will RAFO what they look like. There is nothing that they would have as a special power over a human being in the Cognitive Realm, except for the fact that they are trained to think of themselves in certain ways. They have mental training, someone else could learn this, but they have over many centuries, this ability. And your ability to perceive yourself in certain ways is very powerful in the cosmere, and the kandra are very good at this.
Questioner
So it would less limiting than in the Physical Realm, where they have to adopt the bones and persona?
Brandon Sanderson
Here's the thing, if they went to the Cognitive Realm, they'd go there Physically, so they'd be under the same rules. There's a theoretical whatever out there that maybe, if they got killed, and their soul, and things like this, but in most cases, a kandra would go like a human would, and they'd be following the same rules. So if you got a kandra who somehow persisted as a Cognitive Shadow, they would have certain advantages over people who had not trained in perception the way they have.
Questioner
The universities of Silverlight, where is that headquartered?
Brandon Sanderson
In the city of Silverlight.
Questioner
Does that happen to be in Shadesmar like the IRE are?
Brandon Sanderson
A lot of people think that it is what they call (the fans) The Restaurant At The End Of The Cosmere. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I haven't talked about where it is yet.
Questioner
Will we see more of that in novels?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, Silverlight will be referenced. I have a story brewing set in Silverlight.
Questioner
I'm not very good understanding how the cosmere works. So, any tips on how to get to that? Like, get the little hints that are--
Brandon Sanderson
Just watch out for Hoid and watch out for people who use the wrong words. Like if they use the word "coin" or "dirt" or things like that just aren't on Roshar. That's a pretty big clue that they're not one hundred percent on the up and up.
Ryan
Are there any Dark Souls Easter eggs in any of your books?
Brandon Sanderson
I don't think I've put any Dark Souls Easter eggs in. Maybe I should at some point. I don't think I've intentionally -- I stay away from pop culture Easter eggs in the Cosmere books. I do do Easter eggs, but they're usually like people that are my friends and family and things like that. There's a bit of a fourth wall break that happens.
Not that I don't do it in some things. Like, the Krell are an Easter egg from Forbidden Planet. That word comes from that, which is one of my favorite old school sci-fi movies. So I do things like this all the time, but I don't go into it thinking, "I want to find an Easter egg to mention this!"
Even stuff like where Wayne is reading a book about talking bunnies, people are like, "Ooh! It's an Easter egg reference to Watership Down!" I don't really mean it to be that. I mean it to be that talking animal books are just a thing that happens in a lot of cultures, and I felt like it felt natural for this timeframe, there. It wasn't me even referencing -- I try to stay away from references to our world, but I do it on occasion, so it's a very valid question. And maybe there are some things I've done that I don't even remember doing.
Kenobi_01
Crossover Time: Which Planeswalker would fit in best/worst/most interestingly into a Cosmere story, and ditto for one of your characters, in an MTG set? (Outside of Hoid: we both know the Mending would be nothing compared to the carnage he would cause in the Multiverse). I suspect Sazed would have an... interesting time with Gideon. Especially on Theros and Amonkhet.
Brandon Sanderson
I like your Sazed/Gideon idea. Tamiyo trying to figure out the science of Roshar's moons might be fun, also. (Hint, it's weird.)
Questioner
What makes fantasy creatures good and how do you go about creating them?
Brandon Sanderson
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?"
Daniel Greene
Well, we're getting to that common meme of Syndrome from Incredibles, where it's like, "When everyone is special, no one is," because once you commodify power, which is that whole villain's point... And that's gonna be such a fascinating angle for the development. Or it will not be touched on at all, and we're just theorizing. Brandon, would you mind answering that question? Was this a worth while conversation?
Brandon Sanderson
Power is already a commodity. Power is a commodity in Stormlight during the Stormlight first era. Power is a commodity (to an extent) in Mistborn. So yeah, power is a commodity in the cosmere. It's been from the very beginning.
Questioner
Can you put the Cosmere books into [chronological] order?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
- Elantris
- The Emperor’s Soul
- First Mistborn trilogy (The Final Empire)
- Warbreaker
- Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
- The Stormlight Archive
- Wax and Wayne Era Mistborn (Alloy of Law)
- Sixth of the Dusk
- Future Mistborn trilogy
Argent
Recently, somebody came up with a very clever theory about the meaning of The Way of Kings endsheet, and I liked it very much. I suspect you want to keep most of that a secret, but maybe you can answer this also vague question - is there another chart, in-world, similar to the ones on frontsheet and endsheet, that we haven't seen?
Brandon Sanderson
I'm afraid that the first one is RAFO territory. Let me point out that most charts in Cosmere books are human attempts at understanding the world. There are fundamental principles to them, but also human groupings and perspectives worked in.
Questioner
In your books, you have some pretty powerful healing magics, and we've also seen some characters sustain some pretty traumatic brain injuries. The human brain stores information as electrical connections, right? So if you blew a part of it out, you could grow it all back, but those connections wouldn't really be there. Have you considered that?
Brandon Sanderson
I have. This is why you will see memory... So, Cognitive Shadows maintain a person's memory. And your Cognitive aspect, your Invested self, maintains your memory in the cosmere. This is why you will also see people's memory being edited by accessing some of the Investiture. You'll see this in Warbreaker; you saw this in the end of Rhythm of War. Your Cognitive self, your Invested self, keeps a duplicate of all your memories. So this allows very significant trauma to the Physical sense; as long as the Cognitive sense is still attached to that body, those memories will be reimplanted in the Physical self, or will be accessed. And this was just necessary for me to even have things like what happened with Raoden in the beginning of Elantris, and for ghosts to exist, and things like that. It actually works pretty well, because it lets me use it to edit people's memories by accessing their Investiture.
And one of the other things that's going on here is: if you have more Investiture, you can remember more, and better. But then that's dangerous, because it's a lot easier to access that Investiture. And it's a lot harder to notice when it has been edited. Hmm.
The Sovereign (Paraphrased)
I had asked for a new piece of information about the Diagram that is important to the cosmere.
Brandon Sanderson
If Dalinar lives, something worse must be attempted.
Questioner
Do you ever feel stifled? Now that you’ve got a couple of different lines going in different worlds that have your next 40 years planned out?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes and no. I do start to feel a little stifled, and so you’ll see me do random side projects. It’s my steam valve to blow that pressure off, and then I get back to what I’m working on. That basically why you have Alloy of Law, because as much as I would’ve liked to have jumped right into the next Wheel of Time Book, I couldn’t. After writing Towers of Midnight, I was feeling too creatively stifled, and so I had to go take a break, and let myself for three months do whatever I wanted. And Alloy of Law came out of that.
So that is how I do it. That’s where Rithmatist came from, that’s where Steelheart came from, that’s kind of where Alcatraz came from, these non-mainland books, that’s where they are going to come from. You can anticipate me doing that more often in the future. It is a different life for me now that when I was unpublished, and could just write whatever I wanted, and things like that, but at the same time, I have long loved the big epic series, and I’ve always wanted to do one. That’s why I built what I built. I didn’t do it because “Oh, this is what sells, I have to do this.” I did this because I wanted to have this big grand epic. That’s why I built the Cosmere books as I did.
So I don’t feel stifled in that at all, even though I’ll finish one book than be like “Man, I can’t go into the next one of these” and go and do something different, because it’s my grand plan. You know, it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do. So I hope that people will stick with me for all these books, because I’ll do a lot of them. But they will fit together in some really cool ways once they are all done. I think you’ll be very very impressed, but that’s a while off
Tahona1125
Is there any chance White Sand the novel ever gets revised and published? I'm not sure if there is a place for both the novel and graphic novel, but I really enjoyed the read.
Peter Ahlstrom
Well, Brandon said it's not outside the realm of possibility, but I hope he doesn't. The first draft of White Sand is already nearly 20 years old at this point. Nowadays, Brandon has better ideas. He has plenty of things to write that he's excited about. He has already written White Sand twice, and I think it would be hard for him to get excited about it, and his excitement translates into a good book.
Assuming the three volumes sell well enough to warrant continuing the story, then Brandon could get excited about outlining the sequel to get adapted into more volumes.
And, since it's the Cosmere, you can be assured that sand masters will show up when all the planets start interacting with each other.
Boogalyhu34
Can Nightblood be considered a Splinter and does it function like a spren realmatically, are there distinct differences is what I'm asking.
Brandon Sanderson
Nightblood is kind of his own strange thing. He's an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another. He's closest to a spren, but kind of like a...robot spren, for lack of better words to use.
Argent
When you say that Nightblood is "an attempt to use one magic to replicate something in another," do you mean life in general, or are you referring to a specific effect in a specific magic system?
Brandon Sanderson
There are those involved who knew that Shardblades existed before they tried the Nightblood experiment.
uchoo786
So does this mean Vasher had knowledge of Shardblades before creating Nightblood?
Brandon Sanderson
It means what I wrote, and nothing more at this point. :)
wickedmath
Dude. That's the most tantalizing RAFO I've seen in awhile. Have other Shards made Shardblades besides Honor?
Brandon Sanderson
:) RAFO
Phantine
Is that why Vasher uses the word 'Investiture' instead of some personal term for it?
Brandon Sanderson
I could be wrong, but I think Vasher was the first one in any book I allowed to use cosmere-aware terms for speaking of things like the magics. (Investiture is one of these.)
A_Shadow
Was Hoid a Feruchemist before he ever got to Scadrial?
I remember reading this somewhere but I can't find it. Not sure if it is a theory or a WoB.
Brandon Sanderson
I don't believe I ever said anything like that.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
Will there be any sequels to Elantris?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
In 2015, the 10th anniversary of the series, he intends to release Dragonriders, three books based on side characters. They will take place 10 years after events, in the city of Dakhor.
Javi
(paraphrased)
Could you compare the Ones Above's technology with your idea of Scadrial Era 4?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yes
Javi
(paraphrased)
So could the people be related? Could Scadrial be the origin for the Ones Above?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yes, they are definitely related
Xandeis
These Shards everyone is talking about...what are they?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO. ;)
Questioner
Is Thinker from the Purelake scene Demoux [from the Mistborn Era 1]?
Brandon Sanderson
Demoux is indeed in that scene.
And for those who didn’t hear, about the other one, there is a scene in the Way of Kings. People have been trying to figure out… there are some members of… there are some people there that I have hinted are from other books, and they have now figured out two of the three. I don’t think you’ve figured out the third one, and you won’t because…
Mi'chelle
Has their book been written yet? Has their book been published?
Brandon Sanderson
Their book has not been published yet. I won’t say if it’s been written yet. Is anyone confused at what’s going on there? There is a connection between the books.
Brandon Sanderson
Inside Puck's copy of Elantris Brandon wrote "Do not go to Shadesmar on this world (really, I'm not kidding)" on the title page, then said "You guys can chew on that for a little while."
Megan Thee Cosmere
Now that the rest of the yoki-hijo have passed on, will there be a new yoki-hijo born? Specifically, will we see an individual with higher than Elantrian levels of Investiture and Colin Firth levels of historical drama talent?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Cosmere For Dummies
Can Yumi travel offworld?
Brandon Sanderson
That’s a good question. And the answer is actually yes; which might be counterintuitive. But Yumi could travel offworld. That might give you a little piece in the puzzle of things to travel offworld.
Cosmere Questioner
[The arc of spears from the Way of Kings chapter headings and Allomantic symbols.] Coincidence that they look so similar?
Brandon Sanderson
Yes. Yep, there was no instruction to Isaac to draw those similarly.
Cosmere Questioner
If two Shardpools were described the same exact color, like emerald, would that mean anything significant? Like, the Investiture is from the exact same source?
Brandon Sanderson
Not necessarily. Not necessarily.
Cosmere Questioner
Kredik Shaw. Lots of towers, some are simply nothing more than lots of metal that sounds like Hemalurgy on the land. Is that?
Brandon Sanderson
It is meant to evoke Hemalurgy, but it is not actually Hemalurgic.
