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YouTube Livestream 25 ()
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Questioner

Which order of Knights Radiant was hardest for conception?

Brandon Sanderson

It was definitely the Dustbringers, which I'm not even sure yet, because I haven't done a lot with them in the books. But I wanted the Dustbringers to be more than just "generic fire magic." Not that people haven't done great things with generic fire magic that they have individualized, but kind of the whole idea behind the Surges in the Stormlight Archive is that they are using, as the elements of their society and the fundamental forces, things that you wouldn't normally see as magic systems in a fantasy novel. And generic fire magic didn't fit into that schema very well.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 ()
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Questioner

Mraize's Basement Emporium. Is that more like a trophy room or a "In case of emergencies" room?

Multiple people

Or a bank vault?

Or a weapon's vault?

Or both?

Brandon Sanderson

So, yes...

I mean, he can't use the aether, right? ...He can't use the aether, he doesn't have an aether. But the sand, the sand does stuff. So a handful of sand is a really useful amount of sand to have if you're not a sandmaster. Because sand reacts to Investiture. So if you let it fade and you take it somewhere, as soon as Investiture goes kinetic, it'll turn white again. So you'll be able to use it to tell who's using Inve-- it works just like a Seeker, like bronze pulses...

So having white sand, having sand around is really good. If you can keep the little beasties that are growing on the sand around, they will react to basically the Investiture equivalent of radiation. So that's handy.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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Argent

Are the glyphs on The Way of Kings front sheet the Alethi glyphs for the Radiant orders and the Surges? If so, can you tell us the name (i.e. the pronunciation) of the Windrunners glyph? Or, if you don't have this one, maybe another one?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. I'll see if we can get all of the pronunciations into the appendix of the third book.

General Reddit 2020 ()
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Windy reddit_02.png

Windrunner17

The other one is me trying to understand Bondsmiths a bit for their article. Dalinar uses his powers to heal the buildings in Thaylen City, and what he does does not seem to be a straightforward application of a Surge. Is he making use of Tension or Adhesion? Or some mix of them both? I realize that sometimes things may not fall easily into one category or another, so I'd accept any sort of clarification on this.

Brandon Sanderson

What Dalinar did is a mixture of abilities, and a spiritual connection, that is only possible to a Bondsmith.

JordanCon 2021 ()
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Pagerunner

Bronze Allomancy and tones. Normally you can only hear Allomancy--they haven't figured to use Feruchemy. Is that because they need to learn to listen on a different pure tone?

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily, but I like the way you're theorizing.

Idaho Falls signing ()
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Questioner

Is there a combination of two Surges that you wouldn't normally see, that'd be fun to write about.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah. It was actually a tough decision to let myself-- make myself put them in the groupings that I did. Because my brain naturally wants to say, "What about this, what about this?"

What would be really interesting, you could do really cool things as a Stoneward with manipulating matter and changing it and stuff, and then burning things into it with-- whichever power that is-- [Division]... I should know. Well, I should know. But I always go look at the list. The Dustbringer power. But I think you could do really interesting sculpture type stuff with that. With the burning, you could add color to the things, to an extent. Like grayscale? But it's not really something that's built into the magic.

Starsight Release Party ()
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Aradanftw

If you were to use Hemalurgy on a Surgebinder, would it steal the Surge or the actual spren bond?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to steal the spren bond, but you've got to remember the spren has power over that bond. So what you're doing is (1) incredibly evil, even more evil, but (2) you may not end up with what you want, because that spren has free will in most cases. You may go through all this trouble and then they may break the bond, and you would be left without it. So you would need something else to force them to be unable to break the bond, which would be even more evil, but it is possible in Hemalurgy.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 ()
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PhoenixKnight777

Each Order of Radiant has some resonance between their Surges, correct? Can you give us some examples of what would happen in a Surgebinder somehow achieved an impossible pairing, such as Division and Illumination or Transformation and Gravitation?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't really thought about it. You go ahead and theorize on that, I'm sure you can come up with interesting ones. Totally possible in the cosmere. The structure that is on Roshar prevents it from currently happening, but totally possible. I mean, very plausible. I haven't theorized on those yet, so I'm not going to right now.

/r/books AMA 2015 ()
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unknown

Hey Brandon! If you're still answering these...what would happen if a Surgebinder absorbed Voidlight? (Or whatever's powering the Everstorm)

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. (Sorry.)

Argent

Is Voidlight a good name for it? We've been playing with the words "void" and "odium", stitching them together into Voidlight, Voids (as opposed to Surges), Voidspren, Odiumspren, etc. Are any of those accurate?

Brandon Sanderson

It may not be accurate, but it is a valid conjecture. Afraid I won't say more right now.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 3 ()
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asmodeus

We now know that Glys and Tumi were Enlightened, and that has⁠—to some extent⁠—affected Renarin's Oaths and Surges. Could this Enlightenment have only happened one way? In the sense that is every Enlightened mistspren going to be displaying the same changes, or is there room for exploration here?

Brandon Sanderson

Good question and RAFO. I'm glad you're asking that, but I am going to RAFO it.

Starsight Release Party ()
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Aradanftw

Let's say you wanted to be the Mistborn equivalent of a Surgebinder, having all ten Surges, would the best way to do that to bond at least five Honorblades or can you bond more than one spren?

Brandon Sanderson

You could bond five Honorblades. That'd be the easiest way by far. Because convincing multiple spren to bond you is going to be really tough, so by far the easiest way is just to get... you'd actually need all ten Honor... No, you'd need five Honorblades for the five... Yeah.

Aradanftw

You'd have to get the right ones.

Brandon Sanderson

You'd have to get the right ones and then you'd have all ten. 

Aradanftw

And then, there's nothing wrong with bonding five individual Blades? You don't have to have five arms?

Brandon Sanderson

You do not have to have five arms. You could bond five Blades if you wanted to.

Aradanftw

Really cool. Thank you.

Brandon Sanderson

Particularly Honorblades. 

Aradanftw

They're special.

Brandon Sanderson

Mhm.

Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A ()
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DracostarA

When the Sleepless refer to 'Surgebinding' with the Dawnshards do they mean it specifically in the Rosharan sense, or just because that is the word Roshar has for magic.

I.e. if this occurred on Scadrial would they still call it 'Surgebinding' or something else?

Brandon Sanderson

Surgebinding is kind of a catch-all for cosmere magic here, as you're assuming. Literally binding (using) surges (a word for what we would call types of magic.)

FirebreatherRay

So, Rosharans would look at an Allomancer or Feruchemist and say, "Yep, that there is a Surgebinder," correct?

Brandon Sanderson

Many Rosharans. Many would also just think of them as some kind of voidbringer or other mythological figure, from local lore.

HORSEthe

Wait, have mistborn been to roshar or am I reading this wrong?

Brandon Sanderson

What I mean is that someone like from, say, Bavland might have different stories they tell about creatures in the night than someone from Rira. So while they might call someone who uses strange abilities a surgebinder, they are probably more likely to talk about the local equivalent of something like a fae creature from local British lore.

Words of Radiance Chicago signing ()
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Argent

Can the forms of power of the listeners be treated as anti-equivalents of the Orders of the Knights Radiant? Could we consider Stormforms to be anti-Windrunners?

Brandon Sanderson

You could consider it that way, but there is not a one-to-one analogue.

Argent

Because it seemed like there are ten voidforms, and their abilities are kind of anti-Surges...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes, there is definitely something there, but again I say, it's not a one-to-one correlation. They are not going to be exactly opposite.

FanX 2018 ()
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Questioner

I'm just curious, there are 16 Allomantic metals, 16 Feruchemical metals, there are 16 Shards of Adonalsium. Are there 16 surges?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Questioner

So there's no correlation?

Brandon Sanderson

10 is an important number on Roshar.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
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LewsTherinTelescope

When Leshwi says Lezian has gone six thousand years and never failed to hunt down his killers, does that mean it's been six thousand years since his first death to a human? Six thousand years since the First Desolation? Or does it mean six thousand years prior to Aharietiam, since he hasn't exactly done much pursuing of normal humans while on Braize for 4.5k years?

(The first seems more likely to me from the wording, but if he's been on Braize for 4.5k years, he hasn't done anywhere near 6k years of pursuing.)

Brandon Sanderson

It's the first. And yes, he's spent a LONG time not pursuing. But that's the sort of thing the Fused gloss over when talking about something like this.

LewsTherinTelescope

Was this first death to a human during the First Desolation? It seems the Fused didn't have Surges at that time, so I imagine a normal human killing one wouldn't be much more difficult than killing a normal singer?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO on that one! Can't say too much about those days for a few more years.

General Reddit 2021 ()
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LewsTherinTelescope — Surge Seeds.png

LewsTherinTelescope

You've said before that, while the Ten Surges arose due to perception of what things are fundamental forces, there were "seeds" that influenced what people perceived as fundamental. Is knowledge of the Rosharan Shards and Dawnshards the "seed" referenced here?

Brandon Sanderson

The Shards yes, but I wouldn't say the Dawnshards were involved directly--but the Shards were influenced by the Dawnshards, so... It gets muddy.

General Reddit 2020 ()
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italia06823834

Yeah a shared vision with Navani would be pretty helpful. I assume the mechanism messing with the Radiants in the Tower would also mess with bringing someone into the vision. But then again, the pure Honor Surge Adhesion still works for Kaladin and aren't the vision tied directly with Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

It would have messed with such a vision, yes.

The Ten Orders of Knights Radiant ()
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Brandon Sanderson

Bondsmith

I will unite

Bondsmith oaths are focused on unity, unification, and bringing others together. However, this is a loose theme, as there are so few Bondsmiths—and the three sources of their powers are so different in personality—that the oaths can end up taking a variety of different shapes, depending on the situation.

Anyone can become a Bondsmith, subject to persuading one of the three spren who grant Bondsmith powers. Those powers tend to work differently for one Bondsmith than another, and even those Surges they share with other Orders tend to work differently for Bondsmiths.

The Bondsmiths are unusual in that there are never more than three full members. Historically, they worked to resolve disputes and help set up functioning governments. Even though there can only be three full members, there were times that some Bondsmiths did take squires. Beyond that, many of the retinues that protected the Bondsmiths were considered members of the Order–going so far as to swear oaths, even though they didn’t have a spren and never would. Some even called this the most pure form of being a Radiant, because these were oaths sworn not in the name of gaining powers, but simply for the good of the oaths themselves.

Bondsmiths are generally the heart and soul of the Radiants, the most protected and highly regarded of the Orders, capable of doing incredible things with the nature of oaths, bonds, and power. The Order, including the aforementioned squires and attendants, tends to attract the peacemakers of the world, those who want to bring people together rather than divide them.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As ()
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dce42

Since it seems like the sibling is more "dead" than sleeping, is the event that caused this to occur from a certain Bondsmith breaking Odium's surges from the Parsh?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!

dce42

Is it more of a 4/5 RAFO, or a 6-10 RAFO?

Brandon Sanderson

4/5 RAFO, I'd say.

Shadows of Self release party ()
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zas678

Can you detect Feruchemy with bronze Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

It is actually possible but it's very difficult. There's a tweak that you need to do to make it work and I haven't talked about that yet. They do not know how to do it… on Scadrial. But you can theoretically detect all kinds of active Investiture. Investiture that's being used. Kinetic Investiture would be the way to call it.

Idaho Falls signing ()
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Questioner

Dalinar Ascends, right? Like, right then, there.

Brandon Sanderson

I have RAFO'd that. Whether he is Ascending or not is a RAFO.

Questioner

Okay, because I know he kind of mentions from that, I don't know how to say his name but the older guy who has the Diagram--

Brandon Sanderson

Taravangian, yeah. Whether that deserves to be a capital "A" or not is a matter of argument. It can be disputed.

Questioner

I guess my main question would just be Dalinar's now able to pull Stormlight and give it to people now.

Brandon Sanderson

He definitely can. That is a Bondsmith power, so.

Questioner

That is a Bondsmith power, okay.

Brandon Sanderson

That is specifically a Bondsmith power.

Questioner

Because my roommate was saying well, the Stormfather was surprised he could do that or was the Stormfather surprised that he was able to bridge--

Brandon Sanderson

He was surprised by what was happening to Dalinar as a whole.

Questioner

Oh okay, that's what I thought because I was like, because I felt like the Stormlight, that power would be a Bondsmith power.

Brandon Sanderson

Let's say that the Stormfather and Odium were seeing something in Dalinar that, perhaps, the average person watching even who is knowledgeable about Surges would not completely understand... But he will be able to use that power and Bondsmiths in the past have used that same power.

Warsaw signing ()
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Oversleep (paraphrased)

Back in Mistborn Marsh said that there is a pattern for higher metals. So that would mean that atium and gold would share a pattern but they're not really part of the same quadrant...

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Humans see patterns everywhere, that's it.