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Are any of the interlude characters that we’ve met in other interludes?
You’ve met Axies the collector, and he appears in another interlude. Rysn is in an interlude in the first two books. You met Ash in one of the interludes and she’s going to be an important character, she’s very relevant. So I would say that a lot of the interludes have characters that show up again or are likely to show up again.
Do Cryptics have the same general dislike of honorspren as Syl has towards Cryptics?
RAFO!!
Meaning
Aon Ene represents wit, intelligence, and cleverness. In recent years, the Aon has also begun to be associated with prosperity and wealth as well. It was once a popular Aon for names, though in recent years it has fallen out of favor in this regard, and names using it are now considered a little old-fashioned.
The Aon has become a favored symbol of merchants in recent years, as cultural bias looked unfavorably on a shop using the symbol for gold or jewels. (Such symbols on a shop were seen as lavish or presumptuous by some.) Instead, many bankers instead use this Aon on their door to indicate their profession. The appropriation of the symbol is a reference to a quote from the appropriately named Enelan, a scholar who lived about a hundred years before the fall of Elantris: “No wealth of gold and silver can purchase a keen mind, but the man of wit will often find treasures beyond what mere lucre can provide.”
More traditionally, the symbol was used–and still is used–as a representation of books and scholarly research. Indeed, many scholars, scribes, and illuminators have grown upset by the banking industry’s tendency to use this Aon, as they see it as an appropriation of what they believe to be their own symbol. Part of the tension between the groups has made the Aon fall out of favor for names, though others–generally those who are more traditional–still favor it.
The shape of the Aon is said to represent two sides of an argument, interacting together in different ways. If one looks closely, one can see that there are, indeed, that the two halves are simply the same set of symbols reversed.
History And Use
Some scholars have expressed amusement that this symbol should come to mean intelligence in a broad sense, as the classical meaning of Aon Ene was far more narrow. Ene was the Aon which represented cleverness, the ability to out-wit and out-think opponents. It was often applied in stories and tales to those who had a slyness about them, and often was the symbol which represented the trickster figure. Indeed, those who plaid tricks on others were said to be Enefels–literally, Wit Killers, or those who kill with wit.
During the Middle Era, when Elantris’s influence expanded and the kingdom of Arelon began to take shape, Aon Ene was attributed to the guild of storytellers who brought tales of the marvels in Elantris. It was often rumored that these people, who took upon themselves the Enefel name, were agents of the Elantrians. Their purpose was to spread good will about the city and its inhabitants, calming the rural populace, who regarded Elantris and its magics with suspicion.
Over the centuries, this guild of storytellers transformed into a more scholarly group who gathered stories and histories from the people. By the dawn of the Late Era–about two centuries before the fall of Elantris–the group had burgeoned beyond its origins into several distinct sects of scholars and philosophers. By the time of the fall of Elantris, the constant association of this group with Aon Ene expanded its meaning into the more familiar use, representing scholarly intelligence and study.
Some still remember the original meaning, however. Though most of those are themselves scholars, and find the entire transformation to be something of a humorous joke played by history itself.
Naming and Usage in ELANTRIS
As use of the name is out of favor recently, the only character in Elantris who appears with Aon Ene in their name is Sarene herself. Eventeo, Sarene’s father, is not only a traditionalist, but a scholar himself. He is well aware of the ancient meaning of the Aon, and has remarked on occasion that he finds the choice particularly accurate when applied to his daughter.
Ene is one of the primary constellations in the Arelene sky, and the star pattern is the most easy to pick out. It contains the pole star of the world, a concept which has fascinated philosophers throughout history.
Eventeo’s use of the simple word “Ene” as a nick-name for Sarene is another traditional association with names attached to the Aon. Much as some cultures shorten words or names into common nicknames, Ene–pronounced Eeenee–is a commonly applied term of endearment for someone who has this Aon in their name.
AonDor
This Aon has a powerful and unusual AonDor counterpart. A properly drawn Aon Ene puts forth a light, known by many as the Light of the Mind. When sitting in this Aon’s light, one’s mental abilities are enhanced. The Elantrian–or anyone else who happens to be close to the Aon–can memorize more quickly, think more clearly, and stave off mind-clouding effects of tiredness and sickness.
Used in conjunction with other Aons, Aon Ene is what is known as a “Linking Aon.” Using it properly in the Aon equation will link subsections of Aon lists together, coordinating which effects take place at which times during the Aon List’s progression. It is an important Aon to learn to use well for complex Aon Linkings, and no true AonDor master is without substantial practice in its use.
Anymore Shardblade designs available by chance?
Not at this time, I'm sorry to say... the thing about Blades is that it's hard to go too wrong, they come in a wide variety of shapes and most any you imagine are probably more correct than not. They're always basically swords, he's rejected my designs in the past when they get too wacky in the shapes of the blades.
Not as crazy loose with the term "sword" as something like the various zanpakuto of Bleach, but certainly as unusual as the less extreme parts of the Final Fantasy sword catalog.
There's even some that look quite normal, if a bit on the large side. They don't have to be Big Damn Swords (see Szeth's), and they don't have to all ripple or twist or have wacky hilts and etchings. Elhokar's looks nearly normal.
So you have a lot of freedom in designing Shardblades, it's hard to go really wrong.
There is a proper design for Dalinar's Oathbringer, but he gave that sword up. I don't think anyone's taken a shot at illustrating his current blade, myself included.
Is neurodiversity a requirement to become a Radiant? Like do you have to be non-neurotypical?
Read the back of Words of Radiance for your answer, the back of the cover.
Are there certain topics you want to avoid in your writing?
There certainly are some topics I'd never cover, like certain types of abuse.
Is Eshonai going to be a Radiant? You mentioned in the beginning that there's going to be ten books, ten Radiants - and Eshonai's book is one of them...
So. In the past, parshmen were - Parshendi were not allowed to become Knights Radiant. However, what I said, might imply that that could change.
Is there more about Marsh in the next book?
Marsh will... you will find out more about Marsh, but that's probably some of the stuff that will be in either Secret History 2 if I write it, or the next Era. Marsh is only a little bit involved in this Era. You'll see more of him later.
Are there any easter eggs that you either got to add or wished to add to the story that reference something Magic-related that's close to you?
Hmm. I toyed with writing in cameos for some people I know, but decided against it, as I know Wizards isn't fond of that sort of thing in their card art, and figured it would be a bad idea in fiction.
I want Rysn to keep accidentally finding herself in ever increasingly plot-relevant situations until she just becomes a worldhopper by accident.
u/mistborn, please seriously consider this. It would be amazing.
I've got some plans for her. Saying anything more would be a RAFO.
If an Elantrian were to tattoo someone with an Aon with the intent of it working...
Could that work? Yes... you could make that work. There is some trouble with moving some Aons around, so it's gonna depend on how you're building and things, but you can make that work.
On a more serious note, I'll get to some of the major events in the chapter in a moment. First, let's talk over some smaller annotations. I like the fact that Lukel doesn't like Kaloo–it seems like a perfect characterization for both of them. I will note, however, that Lukel has much better lines in this chapter than Kaloo does. His crack about Ahan getting sick by sheer laws of probability makes me chuckle every time I read them. Kaloo, on the other hand, spends all of his time trying to be honorable and true. Raoden is a good hero, but he can be dreadfully boring sometimes. Maybe that's why he threw himself into the Kaloo persona so eagerly.
Complex "magic" system in Mistborn, and the complex one in Elantris; what base ideas do you build from for this?
For Mistborn, Alchemy and biological metabolism. For Elantris, Chinese linguistics and geometry mixed.
If someone burned atium in the modern era, after Sazed changed things around, would it do the same thing that it did in the previous era?
Yes it would.
It would? Interesting.
If you could find some.
If you could find some…
If it didn’t then Marsh would be dead.
Good point.
If it changed its powers.
I asked whether we could call the Bands of Mourning the Survivor's Spearhead and whether it did have all 16 basic metal metalminds.
He hesitated a little but eventually said yes, there were all 16 metalminds.
I asked whether Marasi tapped all of them, because she would tap Kelsier's Identity and memories.
He said intentions are important and she didn't tap all of them.
If you're willing to answer it, how did Bloody Tan pull off the move in the intro to the Wax and Wayne books?
RAFO. I do think I'll actually answer that some day. If I don't I'll just put it online. Bloody Tan had influences.
<>
Magic for me - in my books - is anything that breaks the fundamental laws of our physics. So new physics in another world... <>
Can Nightwatcher RAFO people?
*laughs* Nightwatcher can do whatever she wants!
It was mentioned that there are 16 gods in your Cosmere.
Depends on your definition of god.
Shards. Are the ten orders of the Knight Radiants related to specific gods? Because Honor, child of Honor-Kaladin
So all the magic on Roshar, all the surgebinding on Roshar, is going to have its roots in Honor and Cultivation. Um... There is some Odium influence too, but that’s mostly voidbinding, which is the map in the back of the first book.
I was wondering how much-
But, but even the powers, it’s, it’s really this sort of thing. What’s going in Stormlight is that people are accessing fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe. They’re accessing them through the filter of Cultivation and Honor. So, that’s not to say, on another world you couldn’t have someone influence gravity. Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual, and some of the magics lean more Honor and some them lean more Cultivation, as you can obviously see, in the way that they take place.
The question kind of rooted because, Wyndle in the short story is always saying that he’s a cultivationspren, he doesn’t like [...]. I kind of got the idea that each order had a different Shard.
That is a good thing to think, but that is not how it is. Some of them self-identify more in certain ways. Syl is an honorspren, that’s what they call a honorspren, they self-identify as the closest to Honor. Is that true? Well, I don’t know. For instance, you might talk to different spren, who are like, no, highspren are like “We’re the ones most like Honor. We are the ones that keep oaths the best. Those honorspren will let their people break their oaths if they think it’s for a good cause. That’s not Honor-like.” There would be disagreement.
Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?
Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.
Does the Physical Realm of the cosmere have more or less the same structure as our own? It's obvious from Mistborn that solar systems function as they do in our universe, but it's less obvious if there are galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and so forth. Are there?
If the cosmere does have the same structure as our own, are the Shardworlds all in the same general area (a galaxy, for example), or are they completely spread out?
Good question. I designed the cosmere to have much the same structure, but imagined the action happening in a compact dwarf galaxy. Still a lot going on, but far, far fewer stars and systems than our own.
So you know the coin that Kelsier and Vin were Pushing on?
Mhm.
What ever happened to that?
I did not keep that around, I'm sorry. It's lost to the mists of time.
Can a kandra burn things if they-- could they burn lerasium--and if they did would they be able to burn other things?
Yes that is possible. It is even plausible that an kandra could gain other powers, they just don't know how to do it.
So we know that there are Siah Aimian/human hybrids like the Natanans. Do Dysian Aimian hybrids exist and if not, could they?
*Makes face* I don't think the biology is compatible.
How hard would it be for a Sleepless to imitate the larkin powers in one of their hordelings?
Oh, they would take generations and generations of purposeful attempts at mutating that out.
Could they theoretically do it?
They could theoretically do it.
I was the one with the weird alcohol question. I'm a brewer so I was trying to complete the article I wrote--I wrote the article on the [Coppermind].
So really, you're going to have to give me advice. What would you think?
Basically, if they have distillation apparatus? Because they've replaced a lot of technology with Stormlight technology
They do have distillation apparatus.
Okay. Then anything above 20% alcohol has to be a distilled spirit. Anything below has to be a brewed spirit.
Okay, brewed. So a wine can be brewed? You call wine a brewed spirit?
Technically, you call it fermented, but I'd say brewing process. Otherwise it's a distillation apparatus, and you have to actually distill it and boil off the alcohol.
That I know about. But the actual terminology...What we don't see a lot of in the Stormlight Archive is a beer. The hops, the fermented, the bubbles. You just don't see that. What you see is things we would call a wine, and things we would call a hard alcohol. A spirit, I guess. That spectrum is, to most people there, one spectrum. They do use grains for making things like a Horneater White. So that's probably going to be as close to a..
Everclear?
Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
Pink, by the way, doesn't have any alcohol according to the chart?
Yeah it's just juice. Just a squeezed juice, I actually kind of imagine that one. And the next one is they squeeze the juice and ferment it. And then at some point during that line, I guess it would be at the 20% mark, they start distilling, and some of them are going to be grains that they made and stuff like that.
So you can take that all as canon now, and you can write it.
So it's juice, not tea? Because it said tea in the little chart? It said, "I've had tea stronger than this."
Oh yeah. It's not a tea. "I've had tea stronger than this" is just a joke that it doesn't have any alcohol in it. It is a juice.
If you were in the Reckoners books, what kind of superpowers would you have and what would be your weakness?
I'm canonized in the Reckoners books and the Reckoners board game as Quicksand. My weakness is early mornings. Wake me up too early and my powers go away.
Would magic from one world work on another and if so, how?
Generally, magics in the cosmere work on different planets. But it depends on the magic. Things like the Dor on Sel are locked to the geography, so it gets difficult. The Metallic Arts work pretty much universally though. Making Surgebinding work on another planet would require Stormlight and the spren are bound to Roshar, so getting them off planet is quite hard.
So the magics kind of work differently depending on whether a sentient being is involved, how the magic works and how it's powered. It would be very easy to take some Breaths off of Nalthis, which is a problem for them. It gets very complicated.
Can there be a mixing of magic?
Yes, there can be.
If you were an Epic what would your powers be?
Truthfully it would be something like summoning books out of the air. Â But if I wanted one I would pick flying.
How much of a Mistborn prequel would the game have been? Are we talking; post pit Kelsier, or more of a Lord Ruler's first days taking over the other nations? Something in the middle?
It was set early in the Final Empire's existence--second or third century, I believe. So a pretty deep in the past prequel.
So...all the 3 Way of Kings books begin from a different person's perspective in the past. Who're you doing next time?
Let me see...so Gavilar is last, so he's not fourth. I think it's Navani, but I'm not 100% sure. Yes, I think it's Navani, but I will have to look at what I've got in my notes. The 4th one's been the wild card. I always went with Szeth first and Gavilar last.
*written* How will the everstorm affect Vasher?
*written* "Vasher will probably just hide, but it signals something bad for him...
That'll probably make sense to you in a long time.
If you drew a stick figure of a chalkling, would it be able to spike other chalklings and get their powers?
*laughter* No, because no one in this world knows what that is, because they're separate universes, but it is very clever. If you were doing it, I'd probably let you get away with it.
I was also wondering if... I just finished reading the Ars Arcanum in the back of Bands of Mourning and I heard it mention that god metals could be alloyed to give different abilities or traits.
Yes.
Could you give an example of one?
So, you could alloy lerasium with certain metals of the sixteen in the table and get, if you had just enough lerasium, it would make them a misting of those powers.
I have a question about Mistborn. Is it possible for a spike to steal powers from other worlds?
It is possible, yes.
And, by extension, Feruchemical storage... in the metalmind...
Oh, in the metalmind, if they had the other power, could they store the power...
If there is the Feruchemist, like the...
So that is theoretically possible, but it would take a lot of finagling. Yeah, theoretically possible.
Do you prefer writing epic fantasy or young adult?
My first love is epic fantasy, but if I only did that, I'd go crazy. I have to change basically every other book and like to be able to jump around.
The graphic novel we are working on right now is White Sand, which is one of my early unpublished novels. We felt we could adapt that to take the poorly written stuff out and leave the awesome stuff.
Do you have any updates for the progress of that?
Yeah, it's going really well. We just got a sample of the cover art for the first volume. I think they are collecting 6 chapters in a book, and there will be 18 chapters total. So three volumes, and I think we are almost done with the first six. One of the things that I told them is that I really want to be far along in this project before we release anything. Because The Wheel of Time fans got burned on their comic.
I think that there have been enough instances of things like that, so I want to be able to produce something complete and say, "Look, we've got this much of it done and this much more to do. We've at least got the first 6 chapters, a complete book you can read."
Or it's like, we've got all this and it's only six months to the last one, it's not 2, 3, maybe 4 years.
Lightsong and Blushweaver Visit Hopefinder
I wanted to show some Returned of different ages; I think it's important for people to realize that you can be any age when you Return. There are children, babies, grandmothers, and people in their middle years who Return.
Hopefinder is the youngest person at court currently, though there are a couple of other gods who Returned when they were in their teens. It's hard to tell them from the other gods now, however. (And often, when a god Returns in their middle years, their body transforms to be much more youthful. Not always; it depends on the god.)
The Attack on the Salt Merchant Was a Cover
Denth did dozens of things like this, subtle methods of bringing the two kingdoms closer to war. This is the only one that Vivenna and Vasher figure out soon enough to be able to counter.
In this scene, Vivenna's chapter arc is her struggle with deciding when to make judgments and when not to. It seems that in our society, it's taboo to judge someone. If you judge, you're seen as intolerant. And most of us hate being labeled that way. I remember seeing an advertisement online just a few days ago that said something like "Please teach your children tolerance; teach them not to judge others."
Now, those who read my blog know that I'm big on trying to understand other people's viewpoints. I don't like how harsh our dialogues about charged issues tend to be. I've said I'm a peacemaker by temperament. However, I think telling someone, "Don't judge others" is just plain ridiculous. (Of course, maybe it's all just semantics.)
We have to judge. We do it every day. We decide who we want to be friends with. We judge which candidates we want to vote for. We judge which activities we want to be a part of. A lot of these judgments are influenced by our thoughts on the people involved in them.
It's not good to be racist. Skin color is a terrible reason to judge someone. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't sometimes make judgments about people for other reasons. I think maybe we've become hypersensitive to this sort of thing.
When you're writing maps for grand scale things like atlas style maps, they're presumably fairly straightforward because you rarely would say, "This character is moving north." You would say, "This character is moving toward the town." When you're writing (or rather when Isaac is drawing) town maps, you often presumably would say, "This character is going to dart left, down an alley." Do you wind up having to path out where a character would go in order to make the map at least somewhat accurate?
I do keep this in mind when I'm reading the books, and I'll write it down. If something doesn't quite work I'll tell Brandon about it. There's a bit of what we call handwavium on that, with the city blocks. I'll put enough city blocks in there that-- Sometimes it doesn't matter because it will work out, if that makes any sense. But we did, on this map right here, the map of Kholinar-- Down at the bottom we have a map of one of the levels of the palace in Kholinar and we did have to do a lot of reading and going back to-- Our continuity editor, Karen, went back and found every instance of where people were at in the palace in the previous two books and then we used that to draw out this map. So we did have to make sure that left was left and right was right on this particular one.
Have you ever written something else that you pulled into the cosmere?
You know, I don't do that very often. In fact, I'm trying to think of one that was outside the cosmere that pulled into it, and I can't think of one. I have pushed stories out of the cosmere very frequently. And the reason I do this is because I don't want to be setting things in the cosmere just because of the cosmere. I want to be setting things in the cosmere because they work and advance the story of the cosmere in a way I want it to be. And I want to be sure that I'm not just saying "Well, we'll shove this in the cosmere." So I very frequently try things out in the cosmere, and then pull them back. One of the main reasons I pull them back is I don't want any connection to Earth in the cosmere. So if a book needs a connection to Earth, or for some reason I like how the connection to Earth works, I will pull it out of the cosmere. The only thing I can think of that was out and went in was Dark One. But then it went out again.
Cett's Appearance
Bringing in Cett like this was dramatic, but I hope it makes sense, too. Explanation is coming in the next chapter.
Is Lift the only one who is able to see the afterimage around Szeth when he moves? And would she have seen that afterimage around him before he was brought back to life by Nalan?
Lift is seeing that Szeth's soul isn't quite attached to his body any longer. She is not the only one that can see it, but her special physiology is certainly helping her see it.
Could the entire city of Newcago in the Reckoner's world act as a giant steel metalmind?
Sure! Yes. That'd be awesome.
Chapter Five
This chapter includes two very important events. The first is the establishment of Hrathen and Sarene's relationship. The "dramatic eye-lock" is, admittedly, over-used in fiction. However, I found it appropriate here, since I later have Hrathen remark on Sarene. I wanted to establish that the two had an understanding, and I needed to introduce an overplot for Sarene. Hrathen got his thirty-day timebomb in chapter three, and Raoden not only has his exile, but the problems with the gangs established in the last chapter. So far, Sarene only had her suspicion regarding Raoden's death, which really isn't enough to carry her sections of the novel.
One of the plotting elements I had to establish in this book was the fact that a single man–in this case, Hrathen–can have a serious and profound effect on the future of an entire people. If I didn't establish this, then Sarene's sections would lack a sense of drama, since Hrathen himself wouldn't seem like much of a threat. You'll have to judge for yourself if I actually manage to do this or not.
Will we be seeing more of Spensa's mom?
Yes, you will.
Since I started the thread about outposts and stone bridges, I felt like getting some input there.
Brandon told me that single highprinces could not erect outposts because due to the superior mobility of the Parshendi—they would overwhelm any small outpost quickly. Soulcasting stone bridges is also not plausible. Apparently, they would need to first get the wooden bridge out there, then soulcast it and then, since the stone is heavier than the wood, they would have to reinforce it, e.g. with ropes. These could then be cut by the Parshendi, so it would not help at all. Dalinar with his mobile bridges is on a better track in his opinion. He did say however that several highprinces working together could easily establish outposts in the Plains. He said the competitive nature of the Alethi was doing them a huge disservice in the war and that if they would work together, they could have taken the Plains long ago.
What is Wyrn’s or Hrathen’s seons’ names?
Um that is--
Or if you don’t know the name off the top of your head then what the Aon translates as.
Right. It’s been ten years, it’s in the notes. It will be important when I write the second ones.
We've seen Kandra True Bodies made of crystal, stone, or wood. Can a kandra use a True Body made of metal? If so, what happens if each metal "bone" had a Hemalurgic charge, and each one is touching an appropriate bind point?
Yes. And that would work, better than you think, because Kandra have fluid bind points. But too many spikes can be dangerous to the psyche, even with Ati not messing things up.
All the people with powers fit into one category.
All the people with powers fit into one category? Yes.
Was there a reason you chose to do that?
Was there a reason I chose to do that? Well, I'm not sure if I can answer that... So I assume you're asking-- The original premise for Steelheart was that everyone who has superpowers is evil.
Yes.
And that is just the original premise so that is not a spoiler. In my-- The reason I came up with the series is I wanted to tell a story about a world where Superman was not there to save you, or what not. Where it was "what if people started gaining these powers and did terrible things with them". When I was touring for the first book I told people the story of how I came up with that, I imagined-- when someone cut me off in traffic I imagined blowing their car up and feeling very satisfied and like "Yeah" and then feeling really guilty because I'm like "Is that really what I'd do with superpowers? Oh... Well I better write a book about it." *laughter* It's what authors do, anything that makes us think, or makes us have strong emotion, we're like "Well that's going in a book". And so it was an intentional choice, it was the whole premise and concept for me. And then the question became did the powers corrupt, or did only evil people get them, or what's going on. And that is one of the primary questions going on in the first book. They've mostly kind of drilled down to an answer by the second book.
So you've obviously done these talks before, what is your favorite question you've ever had and what was its answer?
What is my favorite question? See people ask me this one, so I have a glib response. My favorite question is "How can I buy more of your books?" *laughter* And my answer is "Talk to the wonderful booksellers." But no I always have trouble with those questions because I get, y'know, I don’t know if I have favorite questions? People also always ask what should I be asking you? and I'm like "I don’t know, that's your job. I wrote the books, come on. Give me a break."
