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What are Cultivation's feelings with regards to the Stormfather?
Cultivation's feelings... Cultivation is, *long pause* I just have to decide how I can say things that are not spoilers. Cultivation-- The Stormfather reminds her of certain things about someone else she knew, and she feels the same way about the Stormfather in some ways as this person that she knew.
[Warbreaker] ends on, you could totally write a second one. Is that in the works?
It is, but it's kind of a distant plan. It's kind of just more for fun. I wrote this-- I had already written Way of Kings, and I wrote this as a prequel to Way of Kings on a different world, and then it got published before Way of Kings got published. But the characters from this were already continuity in Way of Kings, so I just kept using them, because I figured it works out. Really, Warbreaker, I see it as Vasher's (and Nightblood, the sequel), the prequel, to where he came from, who was Kaladin's swordmaster in the first version of Way of Kings back when Kaladin was training to be a Shardbearer in the first book. Vasher was a major part of that, and Warbreaker was a flashback to where he'd come from.
Vasher is Zahel, right?
Yes, Vasher is Zahel from The Stormlight Archive. Who is still kind of the swordmaster, but he's no longer Kaladin's, it didn't work out that way. But he ends up as Renarin's instead.
...Were the Heralds alive for the human exodus from Ashyn?
Yes. They were not Heralds then, but they all made that trip. I believe. My timeline-- You can't nail me down on that one, because it's possible that Ash was born after, but I don't think so.
'inaudible*
There's a lot of divisions in the lighteyes. The lighteyes are basically...there's as many of them as there are darkeyes and the lower ranks of lighteyes are basically peasants, like you would look at them and say, but they're not quite, they're like Roman citizens, not all the Roman citizens were wealthy, things like this. And so all of them, their lives would be fairly familiar to you. The higher you go on the rankings, the less likely they are to care for their own children.
*inaudible*
You'll see a very young child in the next book and I think at least one baby. But it's not a baby of relevance to any of the main characters.
Is there a specific mineral deposit around the Purelake? Is there a sacred enclave?
RAFO.
They [the Alethi] are tan.
You're not wrong for your observation, here, /u/Faenors7. When I saw them, I noted to Isaac that the skin tone for the Alethi in the cards [Stormlight Archive Playing Cards from the Way of Kings Leatherbound Kicksterter] was a touch darker than I imagined. But it was within the variance (I'll explain below) we imagine for the Alethi, so I decided here that we should leave it.
The reason is that we've allowed a lot of leeway to artists in their depictions. If they paint everyone looking white, we speak up, and we usually show them some of our guides of models and pieces of art we think are on target for character designs.
However, I haven't wanted to have a strict skin tone guide. Thing is, most Rosharans don't look at skin tone so much as eye color and hair color. It isn't that they ignore skin tone, but it isn't the same for them as it is for us, in part because a lot of cultures (like the Alethi and the Vedens) have a wide range of skin tones.
It's something I think we (myself included) are a little blind to in American culture. Like, we call someone black if they (like President Obama) are of a mixed race heritage. This is partially because of our particular biases. But what makes someone black is actually pretty nebulous as a skin tone shade when you look at the wide variety of black skin tones. The same goes for what ethnicity we consider white, when a hundred and fifty years ago, the more olive-skinned European people's would have not been lumped into that group.
I often point to India as a good example of what you might find in Alethkar--you find a ton of skin tones across the sub-continent, and they're all Indian. Same for the Alethi. And I don't spend a lot of time talking about whose skin tone is darker, and whose is lighter, within that range.
So when we get back something like these cards--and this is how the artist views and imagines the characters--we roll with it, offering little pieces of feedback here and there. (We had her make tweaks to Adolin, for example, to get him closer to how I imagined him.) Same for the poster--which has the Alethi characters with lighter skin, closer to what we'd see on a Japanese person on Earth.
This might be the wrong path, and I'd appreciate feedback on it. I do want to be careful not to whitewash characters (something I've had trouble with before in cover art) but I also worry if we focus too much on exactly how dark or light the skin of these characters are, we're missing the point a little. I believe in letting people who read the books imagine the characters as they would like, with me providing some guidance. It's a central theme to me in how I perceive the author-reader relationship.
This was why I was hesitant at first to even have depictions of characters in the books. (And why I liked the first cover of the US edition so much.) As we've moved along, however, I've taken a different tactic--that of admiring, and even including, different depictions from different artists, letting variety (hopefully) let the reader imagine as they want.
Sorry for the long post. It's a topic that keeps coming up, so I thought I should say something more definitive. Hopefully, people can keep a link to this post in their pockets whenever discussions about this pop up.
I guess I must've misremembered a quote of you talking about them as darker. Oops.
Well, you're probably not remembering wrong. I've been asked before if the Alethi skin tone is darker than, say, a person from Japan might have. And I'll usually say, yes--in general they are. But I also think it's all right to paint them like a modern day Earth person from that region, as that's often what artists will use for a model or reference. So in general, if you saw an Alethi person, you'd think, "Asian person, with tanner skin than most." But that's imagining an average Alethi, with some having a darker tone, and some having a lighter one.
The new Kelsier is something that this book needed. If he hadn't been forced to go through the guilt of nearly-losing Vin (a reminder to him of how one of his jobs lost him Mare) I don't think he would have had the solemnity and dedication to accomplish the things he does in the rest of the story.
He'll return more to his old, joking self as the next few chapters pass. However, he'll always remember what he nearly let happen to Vin, and it will become an important aspect of his character.
Is Glys a normal Truthwatcher spren?
You'd have to read the book, it's a RAFO.
Two attributes that can be stored up by Feruchemists, by the way, are healing and the ability to move very quickly. The Lord Ruler had access to both of these abilities in extreme, augmented ways, which was part of what has made him so powerful. More on THIS sort of thing in book two.
When will we get Stormlight 3?
A year after he's done and he thinks he'll be done this summer, so Fall-ish 2017.
Has Odium used the weapon created by Adonalsium's opposition?
Has who? Odium?
Has Odium--
Odium, has Odium? That's a RAFO.
Would you tell me the intent of Bavadin's Shard?
Hmm… Are we ready to release that?
I don't know-- well we haven't-- We haven't written it into the scripts yet, but we've only done so many of the scripts so-- I don't know if that would be better place for us to reveal it or not...
If you're confident that you like what we're doing with it then we can release it now.
Great. Well we had that big discussion and it sounded like that’s what we wanted to do.
Okay, we're going to have Isaac write it. He's in charge of White Sand now. And you can choose whether to share this with people or not because it's not on the recording.
Oh it isn't?
No, I talked around it on purpose.
*writes* Autonomy.
What's your stance on fanfiction?
I approve of fanfiction. *brief interruption* I think that there are many pros in the field who started in fanfiction, so it can be a springboard to professional writing. Most painters don't start by-- with their own style. They start by imitating a style. I also take the oppos-- the other stance of, if you just do it because it's fun, there's nothing wrong with that either. I'm unlikely to read the fanfiction set in my worlds, but it is also perfectly okay to do.
David's similes or metaphors. Was Megan correcting them as to be metaphors intentional from the start? Or is that something that afterwards, lots of people had been complaining?
I was aware they would complain. But their complaining did prompt me to make sure I mentioned it.
Is the sword given to Szeth at the end of the book [Words of Radiance] related to Nightblood from Warbreaker?
It's the same sword.
It is?
Mmhmm.
Seons are Splinters?
Yes. Splinters of Devotion.
Um, Splintered...Honor is the *inaudible*...the stormwall...
The Stormfather?
The Stormfather.
The Stormfather is technically a Splinter of Honor, but it was an intentional Splinter, that Honor did himself.
Does he have another Splinter?
So, all of the honorspren are Splinters of Honor, but this is a different situation because he actually did this intentionally.
Can modern-day Felt get his hands on atium?
He would know how to try going about it, he would not be able to get ahold of it right now. It would be outside-- It's not something he can just pop off. He would have some ideas on how to try to go about it. I doubt he could pull it off.
If we spike a Soulbearer with some Metallic ability, what happens to the Hemalurgical charge of the spike if the ability is stored completely in nicrosil at the time?
RAFO
If you were on Roshar, and tapped Connection, would you be unable to use Scadrial magic?
No, but that's a good question. You would not be able to use Selish magic though, because that is dependent on location.
If you hadn't had the opportunity to write for MtG, would any of these characters have made it in one form or another into one of your other books, or would they only fit in this setting? If they would have made it into a different story, which one?
I've wanted to do this story for a number of years, and it was inspired by me asking myself (after my first visit to WoTC a number of years back) what I would do if I were to write a story for them.
I didn't seriously consider doing this in another setting, since the concept of demons and contracts isn't really a Cosmere one--and the first ideas were for Davriel and Miss Highwater. That said, spren bonds have some slight similarities, so it's not impossible.
Any plans for any adaptations in the near future?
If, by this, you mean film adaptations--we're trying very hard. Unfortunately, it's up to Hollywood more than it is me.
Would you prefer film or TV adaptations? (If the choice was magically yours)
Depends on the series. I'd like to see Mistborn and The Reckoners as film, Stormlight and Wax and Wayne as TV.
Much like in The Wheel of Time where there are false Dragons, are there people on Roshar who are pretending to be Heralds that are not?
Are there people on Roshar who are-- There are definitely lots of people who have claimed to be Heralds who were not.
You said "have." The question was, are there?
I'm sure there are people around who've-- *laughter* I'm sure you can go to any city in the United States and find someone who claims to be Jesus, right? So yes! Absolutely!
What was Vin supposed to do at the end of Well of Ascension? How exactly did not-using the power, end up releasing Ruin? I still don't get how that all worked. Can you explain it?
What was she supposed to do? Well, this is difficult to answer, since the prophecies have been changed and shifted so much. Originally, the prophesies intended for a person to go take the power every thousand years and become a protector of mankind for a period of time. Someone to keep an eye on Ruin in Preservation's absence and watch over the world as he would have done. Imagine an avatar who arrives every thousand years and lives for their lifetime blessing the people with the power of Preservation, renewing Ruin's prison, and generally being a force for protection. (Note that Ruin wouldn't have gotten out if the prison wasn't renewed, he'd simply have been able to touch the world a little bit more.) Obviously, it changed a LOT during the years that Ruin was playing with things.
What should she have done? Well, Ruin's release was inevitable. Even if she hadn't let him go, the world would have 'wound down' eventually. The ashfalls would have grown worse over the centuries, and the next buildup of the Well might not have come in time for them to do anything. Or, perhaps, mankind would have found a way to adapt. But Ruin was going to get himself out eventually, so the choice Vin made was all right. There weren't really any good choices at this point. She could have decided to take the power and become a 'good' Lord Ruler, trying to keep the world from falling apart. Of course, she would have had to make herself immortal with Hemalurgy to make that work right. And since she was already tainted, chances are good she wouldn't have ended up any better than the Lord Ruler himself.
A question that has it's roots in Dragonsteel. When Ruin changes words, is he actually changing words,or is he changing what people see?
Did we canonize this question Peter? I'm pretty sure we did. I thought we answered this one already.
Let's just say that most of the time, Ruin was searching for a place to transition, where he could change what was being trans-transcribed. Or what was being heard, or what was being said.
That's pretty interesting.
So the easiest time for him is when a scribe is writing in a new book, he's copying a new book down, and he just pops in and changes the words.
Okay. That makes sense.
Could I get the material that Bleeder's spikes are made out of?
No. Nice try.
So is it the same thing with the Parshendi, are there other races that can do similar things and Invest creatures like that themselves?
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.
For the Dangerous Women story, are you going to write anything again in that world?
That world will show up again. Silence probably won't, but the world itself, yes. It's called Threnody, it is one of the Cosmere worlds. There's not a Shard there but there are interesting things happening. There's actually been a character in other books who's from Threnody. It will eventually be clear who that is, but they have shown up in many previous Sanderson novels.
Would that be Hoid?
Hoid is not from Threnody. Good question though. Hoid is from Yolen.
What would happen if Lift ate aluminum or other Allomantic metals?
Lift would not be able to do anything with Allomantic metals. Good question.
Does that include turning them into Stormlight?
Yes, that includes turning them into Stormlight.
For Skyward, which character, apart from Spensa, was the most fun to write?
M-bot. Cobb had his moments too.
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.
I actually thought about this. My answer ended up being a no.
Can you give a little explanation why?
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.
I've been recently introduced to you as an author, and I heard "lighteyed" and "darkeyed." What is that?
So, in The Stormlight Archive, their ethnic divisions in one of the cultures is by eye color. It traces back to when there was an ancient magic that eye color was related to, and in the modern culture, if you have lighteyes (like you), that's nobility. If you have Darkeyes (like you), you are not noble, you are... you know. So, instead of dividing by skin color or by nationality, they are much more interested in eye color. But that's only one of the cultures, that's a big important one.
I am currently submitting a story to major science fiction magazines under a pseudonym to see if I am good enough-- It's a flash fiction piece, which is the thing I'm worst at... I knew that, if I sent it as me, they would take it, because putting one pages in in order to be able to say "Brandon Sanderson" on the cover is just an enormously advantageous cost/benefit analysis for a magazine. I probably wouldn't submit a full-size story, because I I know I am good enough to get in magazines on those; but I don't know about flash fiction. So I've been submitting that under a pseudonym.
Will you let us know eventually?
Yeah, if it gets rejected from all the major places, then I'll tell you and be like, "Well. This wasn't good enough to actually sell." We still have it out at a few various magazines.
The reading:
- He read this reading again (I was hoping for something new but only like??? 5 people in the audience had read Words of Radiance and the other excerpt he had prepared had WoR spoilers in it). It's young Dalinar at the feast.
- The only thing of note is in our reading he originally called Sadeas's wife "Ialai Sadeas", then he stopped, cleared his throat and corrected to "Ialai Torol" which would be an interesting naming convention, or his name really is Sadeas Torol and we've all be wrong this whole time.
Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax [in The Bands of Mourning]? And where did he get it?
Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax and where did he get it. This is an answer-- You are getting RAFO'd-- But this is one I do intend to talk about eventually. There are lots of seeds of things in the Mistborn series that I can't promise I'm going to be able to get to, that I hope I'll be able to get to. Secret History, which is in the Arcanum Unbounded that hopefully many of you have. If you haven't read through to the end of the released Mistborn books, don't look at that story, because it's a behind-the-scenes story of things that are happening, that I put seeds in the original trilogy for. That's another seed, and it might be one I can take up. I might just have to explain it someday.
So, can we talk about your science fiction stuff, like Defending Elysium? Do you have any intention to go further with that?
I have no current intentions. I kind of have ideas for where I would go, but I just have so many projects that right now I'm letting that one lay as is.
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.
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.)
Were humans the first sentient race in the cosmere?
Tied. So technically, it depends on what you count, if you count tied for first as first.
Back in, I think, Words of Radiance I asked you-- Somebody asked the question that had to do with the number 10 on Roshar and I didn't get the question on the recording--which was horrible--but your answer talked about Honor's purposes. Is what you said, and you mentioned 10 of them and that is why the number 10 is so sacred. Could you say something so I have something on the record? So we know what you said about that?
Honor's purposes...
Or Shard's purposes... Like what is that all about?
That will become-- I said it vaguely on purpose.
Also, if you look, I've inputted in the last drafts a little hint here of Vasher being a Returned. He says he could have the Fifth Heightening if he wanted it, which is true. He has his Returned Breath suppressed, but if he let it out, he could instantly have the Fifth Heightening. However, he'd be instantly recognizable as Returned the moment he did that. Plus, he couldn't use that Returned Breath for Awakening things.
My question is - I am writing a paper in my *inaudible* and thinking about Plato's allegory of the cave and how America has created an echo chamber with the media, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.
Okay, clever. Boy, that is a really interesting premise. I agree 100% with that exploration. Do I have any thoughts on it? I think part of the purpose of fiction is force us to explore people who are not like ourselves and don't think like ourselves. And my biggest worry with the echo chamber is it's going to start crowding out the art that has anything you don't agree with, which I think are the most important things to be reading. And,at least, for me, that was always the most important thing to be reading, so, I would say, as an artist, this worries me, because it kind of undermines one of the most important purposes of art.
In The Rithmatist, in the Inception chamber, there's that chalk creature. Does that have anything to do with how they gain Rithmatic powers?
It has everything to do with how they gain Rithmatic powers.
If a metalmind is melted down and changes shape, does it still retain its power?
Yes, only by mixing it with other metals would the power be completely lost. Also if any pieces of the metalmind are lost, then some of the power will be lost (as it would be in the missing pieces).
Lightspren, the ones who like to travel, are they the Willshaper spren? I thought it was pretty obvious.
Yeah.
Adonalsium was 'killed' and split by the 16 who would eventually become shards, so that means there was an original holder of the power, and could their name have been Adonal?
This is a good question...that will be covered in the Dragonsteel series, when I get to it. (Sorry.)
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?
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
So I wanted to ask how Count Dooku was?
Count Dooku has passed on to the Beyond for plants. I know, I know. Count Dooku-- The funny thing is, this isn't even a picture of Count Dooku. The joke with Count Dooku was Count Dooku was actually not a potted plant-- he was a plant that lived in a glass sphere, with just the roots into the water. Now that was a joke when, you know, Alcatraz put the joke about the potted plant in there--was given to me by a friend of mine. But Count Dooku has since moved on to the great Beyond for plants. So we had to use a different picture. We didn't have an actual picture.
So Nightblood is basically a Shardblade from a different god-Shard--
Yes.
--is that how it works?
Mmhmm.
Are there going to be-- Are there Allomantic Shardblades?
Not yet... And the Nightblood experiment has been an interesting experiment.
Are the Unmade the analogs to Heralds?
There is certainly something similar going on there. Be aware that it's not a one-to-one correlation, that they're not exactly the same. For instance: Many of the- the Unmade are referenced by Taravangian in this, and he uses a phrase for them, and that is correct, that's what they are.
I've got a few Warbreaker questions: Is Clod a Lifeless Arsteel?
Yes. Good eye.
Are there any kandra on Roshar?
Yes.
Is Axies one of them?
No, but good guess. The Aimians are a different race.
