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What is the gem cut that holds the most Stormlight, and does it vary from gem to gem?
It does vary from gem to gem, and... I've got this written down somewhere... I am going RAFO, because it's more of a "go to my notes and find out."
Where is Hoid on the religious scale about the Beyond?
That's a RAFO.
Kaladin has known two Lightweavers.
What happens when a Reshi island dies?
So, it becomes that big old shell, and eventually-- shells, they last a long time, but people are gonna move off of it.
Will people try to get the gemheart?
Yeah, people will try to get the gemheart.
Will we see Scadrial in cyberpunk era?
I have plans for Scadrial cyberpunk but the problem is I don't know if I'll have a long enough lifespan to write all these books. So I'm trying to avoid adding any more books to the Cosmere outline until I get a little further along I'm gonna have to write; consider that Oathbringer turned out to be a quarter longer than Words of Radiance. I really need to be sure I'm keeping going and trying to keep from expanding too big. Definitely the 1980s one, some cyberpunk themes will bleed into it cause that's when cyberpunk started.
But maybe I'll see the new Blade Runner and I'll have to write one, so...
So, I don't know which one it's in, but when Nazh was analyzing Bridge Four--
Nazh was analyzing Bridge Four, yes.
Why?
Why was Nazh analyzing Bridge Four? Well, you will find clues to that in the pieces of art in The Stormlight Archive, that he was trying to obtain...they are very interested...certain elements of the Cosmere are very interested in the progress of the Nahel bond as the Knights Radiant are making them.
I just saw the Feruchemical Table medallion on the store, and it reminded me of a question that was raised on the forums a little while back. It appears there's a mistake in the metal pattern, with regards to pure metals and alloys; Chromium and nicrosil are in the opposite places from what we'd expect. I've attached a color-coded example; with pure metals in green, and alloys in blue, it's evident that the Spiritual quadrant has them criss-cross, unlike the other quadrants. The medallion matches the poster's layout; that's where the question originally arose, from the poster. Is there a reason for this switch? Or is it an error in the pattern?
I just looked over the chart, and rather than the metals being in the wrong places, it looks like I accidentally swapped the symbols. So the medallion is correct. It's the symbols for chromium and nicrosil that ought to be swapped. I've cc'd Peter on this email, too, so he's aware of the mistake. I'll try to remedy this for future printings.
[Destroyed cities is a theme in The Reckoners, there was a war in Portland] Did you have anything specific in mind for Seattle?
Yes, but I don’t want to canonize it… I have to save it for when I’m actually writing.
I want to know what Sazed's robes look like.
Sazed robes are long, and they've got a V pattern.
*Inaudible*
It is sewn into it. The V pattern is just sewn into it like that. Of alternating colors. Not alternating, various colors. Kind of a rainbow look.
is there a word for baby chulls and if not, can it be chulldren?
The baby form is a chull cremling. Sorry...
Hold on. Are you saying that when we see cremlings, they are at least some of the time immature forms of other creatures? Or is it just a broadly used term?
Some of the time they are!
You hired four artists to contribute to this book and had their artwork included in the book. Why did you decide to do this?
When I say four artists I am including Michael Whelan whom I didn't hire, the company commissioned, so we really have three interior artists and then Michael Whelan who did the beautiful cover. Again, I wanted to use the form of this novel to try and enhance what epic fantasy can do, and downplay the things that are tough about it. One of the tough things about epic fantasy is the learning curve. How much you have to learn a pay attention to, how many things there are to just know. I felt that occasional illustrations could really help with that. For instance, how Shallan's sketch book, or uses of multiples maps, could give us a visual component to the book. You know, pictures really are worth a thousand words. You can have on that page something that shows a creature much better than I can describe it. And so I felt that that would help deemphasize the problem of the learning curve, while at the same time helping to make this world real. Epic fantasy is about immersion, and I wanted to make this world real since that's one of the great things we can do with epic fantasy. We've got the space and the room to just build a completely real world, and I felt that the art would allow me to do that, which is why I decided to do "in world" art.
I didn't want to take this toward a graphic novel. I like graphic novels but it wasn't appropriate here to do illustrations of the scenes and characters from the books, because I don't want to tell you what they look like. I want that to be up to your own imagination. And so we wanted that "in world" ephemera feel to it, as though it were some piece of art that you found in the world and included.
I think it goes back to Tolkien. There's a map in The Hobbit, and that map isn't just a random map, which has become almost a cliché of fantasy books, and of epic fantasy. "Oh, of course there's a random map in the front!" Well [Tolkien] wanted you to think this map was the actual map the characters carried around and that's why he included it. He wrote his books as if he were the archivist putting them together and translating them and bringing them to you, this wonderful story from another world, and he included the map because the map was there with the notes. That's what I wanted the feel for this ephemera to be. As though whoever's been writing the Ars Arcanum for all of the books has collected this book together, done the translation and included pieces of art and maps and things that they found in the world that had been collected during these events, and that's what you're getting.
Have we seen a Dawnshard in any Cosmere book?
Yes and no. *hands RAFO card*
Are we ever gonna find out about all ten Surgebinders?
Yes. In fact, each book is kind of dedicated to a Surgebinder. Each embossing is one of the orders.
Specifically to?
Yeah, the *inaudible* that are in the...
*inaudble*
Yeah.
Do you think you'll ever store Stormlight in a metalmind?
RAFO!
What was your hardest character to kill?
Oh. That's spoileriffic. I would say it's a character who dies at the end of The Wheel of Time, which is a series that I finished for another author. Because it was someone someone else created. And then, having to write some of those scenes.
That would be really hard, because you're killing somebody else's character.
Right? And somebody I grew up with, right? So, I would say those are the hardest guys.
Aons look like Arelon; soulstamps look like MaiPon. Aons get weaker when you get further from Arelon, right? That's not just cause Elantris acts like a focus?
That's right, it's based on distance. That's why there are no stamped objects in Elantris.
So do soulstamps get weaker further from MaiPon? If you left Sel via Shadesmar and went to another planet, would the soulstamp stop working?
That's correct.
Could soulstamps be carved that used Arelon as a base form instead of MaiPon?
That's very interesting, isn't it?
I had a lot of fun writing Spensa. She's a character I've been working on for many, many years. This very imaginative and passionate woman who wants to be a fighter pilot. And it was actually very tough to get right, it took me years to get right. And that first chapter is my fourth version of the first chapter. I should be-- I'll probably post the other versions on my website once the book's out. But it is one of the hardest books to start that I've ever written. Just getting that tone down and getting it right and making her feel right was very, very difficult.
If you were a Smedry, what would your Talent be?
My Smedry talent is breaking things, it's where it came from. I break stuff. My phone is broken. My tablet, I've broken the screen already on this, and I haven't even had it a year, but my assistant went and got it fixed. I drop stuff. I broke my wife's phone.
If you ever get the go for a movie or TV show, who do you want to pick as Kaladin?
Kaladin is a hard one to cast. Because all of the Alethi are going to be hard to cast, because they're basically half Japanese/half Arab... So I'm not sure. I've been thinking for Dalinar lately, the guy who plays Drax the Destroyer. He's half Filipino and he has just the right look for Dalinar. You gotta look at him not in his make up for Guardians of the Galaxy. Get a little silvering hair on him. That's my latest casting choice. But I do not have a Kaladin.
Just like hiding a safe hand it can become sexualised if it is always covered in public.
Amusingly enough, not intended to be a sexual taboo, as it was written.
Fans did that all by themselves.
I mean it was explicitly mentioned that whores in the Warcamps had their safe hands uncovered, or wore gloves with the fingers cut off.
Something can be taboo, and signify taboo behavior, without it being explicitly about sex. I made a mention of lacy gloves being equivalent to lingerie at Brandon years ago, somewhere between WoK and WoR, and as I recall he told me, "Safehands are not a sex taboo".
But I kinda knew it would be like this, so... maybe he's seen my point. I haven't asked about it since then.
I don't recall as there's any scenes of Adolin's heart racing 'cause he got a glimpse of Shallan's fingertips. Dalinar doesn't wax on about Navani's knuckles. I might have missed it, but I feel fans have taken this much further than any Rosharan culture.
He may not have initially intended for them to have been, but he certainly has pivoted that way, I don't recall the exact wording, but when Adolin walks in on Shallan, and when Shallan is talking to Tin about non-vorin cultures, she compares it to walking around naked, having her breasts out, and being in her underwear at various points.
I will say that when we first talked about it, this predated stuff like safehandhub and every picture of a left hand getting an NSFV tag. It's possible that his view has changed over time as he sees what I saw then (because he is pure of heart, and I am... not). Even if it wasn't a sex thing, people will make it a sex thing.
In Secret History, Nazh briefly mentioned that there's requirements or conditions to become a Cognitive Shadow. Can you tell us one of those?
Uh, lots of Investiture. Is one way. As a certain person discovered.
If that person were to not have entered Preservation's pool, it still would have given the same result?
If they had not, they would be gone.
I wasn't clear. If they had done a different pool, not Preservation's.
Oh, if they had been able to Invest themselves heavily, then they could have stuck around, yes. That wasn't Preservation's pool, that was more a function of--dipping themselves, pulling an Achilles inside of a Shardpool when you are dead, turned out to work. It's not the only way, not everyone on... Threnody, for instance, is heavily Invested.
What's your favorite part about writing Skyward?
Spensa's character. She's a blast to write, and I have a lot of fun being in her viewpoint.
Writing the climactic sequence of Rhythm of War was the culmination of decades of planning and hoping. “It’s one of the big touchstone moments from when I built the outline all those years ago. When I was first trying to break in, I wrote so many first novels,” he says. “You can’t sell book three of a series if a publisher rejected book one, which meant I was creating all these outlines for huge series I never got to write. Young Brandon wished he could write some of the cool things he’d imagined for later books. This one I actually got to execute, and it was so satisfying. I finally got to a book four.”
I messaged earlier regarding Alloy of Law appendix narrator, unaware of today's torchat. maybe you can respond in the chat?
I haven't been telling people the name of the appendix author. It is either Hoid or one of the 17th sharders.
So, how much of an idea do you need before you start working on a book?
It depends on your writing style. For me, I need multiple ideas that are interacting in interesting ways. Some writers, no idea is required at all. They just start writing and see where it goes. Stephen King sometimes does that, when he writes books. We call it pantsing versus outlining, and I'm more of an outliner. I like lots of cool things that are interacting.
Hey Karen, I have a question I hope you can confirm for the Stormlight fans.
What are the exact gemstone types Rosharans use in their currency? In The Way of Kings Shallan suggests that only nine out of the ten Polestones are actually used in spheres (or is this wrong?), and while eight of those are accounted for in the books, we don't know whether the last one is a smokestone or a heliodor. Is this something you can and are willing to confirm for us?
Here's what I have on my wiki page. I'm pretty sure it was written by Brandon before I started to work on things.
Gemstones
â—† Sapphire: blue (deep)
â—† Zircon: blue (light)
â—† Ruby: red (deep)
â—† Amethyst & Garnet: red (light)
â—† Topaz: yellow (deep)
â—† Heliodor: yellow (light)
â—† Emerald: green (deep)
â—† Smokestone: grayscale (deep)
â—† Diamond: grayscale (light)
Elsewhere I found this list that shows the spheres from highest to lowest value. It says that smokestone coins are very rare.
Values: Highest - 50 (250, 1000)
â—† Stone: Emerald
â—† Color: Deep green
â—† Essence: Pulp
Values: Prime Pair - 25 (125, 500)
â—† Stone: Amethyst
â—† Color: Pale violet
â—† Essence: Mineral (Metals/claws)
â—† Stone: Sapphire (skymark)
â—† Color: Deep Blue
â—† Essence: Vapor
Values: Middle Weight - 10 (50, 200)
â—† Stone: Zircon
â—† Color: Pale blue
â—† Essence: Blood (Water-based liquids)
â—† Stone: Ruby (firemark)
â—† Color: Deep red
â—† Essence: Spark (Fire/Soul)
â—† Stone: Smokestone (Uncommon as a coin)
â—† Color: Translucent
â—† Essence: Smoke
Values: Less Weight - 5 (25, 100)
â—† Stone: Topaz
â—† Color: Pale orange
â—† Essence: Talus (Stone/Bone)
â—† Stone: Garnet
â—† Color: Deep violet (Bloodmarks)
â—† Essence: Flesh
â—† Stone: Heliodor
â—† Color: Light yellow
â—† Essence: (Sinew)
Cheapest 1 (5, 20)
â—† Stone: Diamond (Clear chip/mark/broam)
â—† Color: Transparent
â—† Essence: Glass (Crystal/Eyes)
One thing I am noticing is that the essences don't entirely match what's in the Ars Arcanum of the books.
Yeah, AA is correct and what we base things on. Like I said, these are probably written by Brandon a long time ago when he was just world building.
How did Regalia established contact with Calamity?
I think I'll save that for the next series I'm doing. If I don't answer that *inaudible* things like that in the next series, you can ask me again and I'll answer.
How unique are individual Breaths? Would collecting 100 Breaths from criminals and scumbags affect your personality in any way? Or collecting 100 Breaths from generous, charitable people?
I intended them to not be terribly individual. Breaths do bring some things along with them, but for the most part I wanted them to be a step removed from that
The Letters in Stormlight Archive. Wit and Sazed; are those the two people that are talking to each other?
Wit and Sazed are both involved in the Letters. Sazed is in there, and there are others, as well.
Why did the mist sickness only happen after the Lord Ruler's Death?
It didn't. It just happened on a much smaller scale. As you remember, the Lord Ruler basically =stagnation. Because it seemed the Lord Ruler would be taking the power again (as was intended, and as apparently had been done many times before), and because of the extreme stability of the Final Empire, Preservation (though it really only had a shadow of it's mind left) wasn't as freaked out. After the LR died, Preservation began to attempt to create more allomancers for the reasons mentioned in question 7. It also left clues, such as the number 16 everywhere, so that people would know it was preservation doing it, and not just random chance, or ruin. Turns out that that didn't work so well.
Kaladin's new occupation raised a discussion about the use of shardscalpels against tumors in Daniel's Discord, can you clarify what happens with a tumor when it is stabbed with a shard?
With training, it could be made to cut out a tumor--but that wouldn't be the natural result.
Cosmere surgery stuff is going to be...odd, at least on the magical side. How the person views themselves and the disease could influence things in interesting ways.
Sixth - when he comes up with a new magic system, what's the first basic thing he works on?
References Sanderson's First Law; magic limitations come first.
If Nightblood was to be used by a Scadrian, would that person have to be an Investiture ferring?
No, you could be burning any metal, and Nightblood would co-opt it and feed off that.
There's been a lot of discussion in the fandom on the exact name of Cultivation, due to the sentence construction where it is alluded.
Is her name Koravari, or Koravellium Avast? Or is it neither, and both are shifted versions of her original name?
RAFO for now.
Is there a plan to have Graphic Audio perform Dark One?
No, not right now. There is a decent chance that I’ll do a separate audio adaptation of Dark One that is made for the audiobook world, because I really like some of the stuff we’re doing in audio right now. But if I did that, I probably wouldn’t adapt the graphic novel, because the graphic novel is written to be a visual medium. But would, instead, take that original outline and do it like a radio drama instead. Something like that. I could see doing that.
Did the Lord Ruler ever have any children?
Yes, he did.
What’s your favourite kind of music?
I would say… at the end of the day… epic orchestra. But I will listen to basically anything. If you look on Spotify I have this playlist that I used when I wrote the third Stormlight book and you can listen to that, it'll show you a lot of my favorites.
*Inaudible*
Yeah, I'm "mistborn1", I think? If you google, if you search for Stormlight 3 soundtrack, you'll find it.
What can you tell me about where spren come from?
Spren come from where everything in the world of Roshar comes from. Â The are a natural part of life there. Â They come from the same place rocks and the wind and all of that...
The inside cover is beautiful. Do you plan to do something similar with every book?
We asked for colored endpages. At first Tor was hesitant; they're very expensive. We kind of begged a bit, then showed them these cool pages and talked about how great the book would be with them, and eventually Tor decided that they would go with it. One of the aspects of doing colored endpages like that is that generally you have to use the same endpages for the entire series, to offset the printing cost. So those same endpages will be in every hardcover of the series. There will be different interior art, however.
I sought refuge in the silent caverns. I didn’t dare go back to my mother and grandmother. My mother would undoubtedly be happy. She’d lost a husband to the Krell, and dreaded seeing me suffer the same fate. Gran Gran, she would tell me to fight. But fight what? The military itself didn’t want me. I felt like a fool. All this time, telling myself I’d become a pilot, and in truth I’d never had a chance. My teachers must have spent these years laughing at me behind their hands. I walked through an unfamiliar cavern on the outer edge of what I’d explored, hours away from Igneous. And still the feelings of embarrassment and anger shadowed me. What an idiot I had been.
I reached the edge of the subterranean cliff and knelt, activating my father’s light-line by tapping two fingers against my palm. The bracelet glowed more brightly. Gran Gran said we’d brought these with us to Detritus, that they were pieces of equipment used by the explorers and warriors of the old human space fleet. I wasn’t supposed to have one of course, but everyone thought that it had been destroyed when my father crashed. I placed my wrist against the stone of the cliff, and again tapped my fingers against my palm, an action the bracelet could sense. This command made an energy line stick to the rock, connecting my bracelet to the stone.
A three-finger tap let out more slack. Using that I could climb over the ledge, rope in hand, and lower myself to the bottom. Once down, another tap made the rope let go of the rock above then snap back into the bracelet housing. I didn’t know how it worked, only that it needed to recharge it every month or two, something I did in secret by plugging it into the power lines outside the caverns.
I crept into a cavern filled with kurdi mushrooms. They tasted foul but were edible and rats loved them. This would be prime hunting ground. So I turned off my light and settled down to wait, listening intently. I had never feared the darkness. It reminded me of the exercise Gran Gran taught, where I floated up toward the singing stars. You couldn’t fear the dark when you were a fighter. And I was a fighter.
I was, I was going, I was going to be a pilot...
I looked upward, trying to push away those feelings of loss. Instead, I was soaring. Toward the stars. And again I thought I could hear something calling to me, a sound like a distant flute. A nearby scraping pulled me back. Rat nails on stone. I raised my speargun, familiar motions guiding me, and engaging a smidgen of light from my light-line.
The rat turned in a panic toward me. My finger trembled on the trigger but I didn’t fire as it scrambled away. Why did it matter? Was I really just going to go on with my life like nothing had happened? Usually exploring kept my mind off my problems. Today they kept intruding like a rock in my shoe. Remember? Remember that your dreams have just been stolen?
I felt like I had those first days following my father’s death. When every moment, every object, every word reminded me of him and of the sudden hole inside me. I sighed, then attached one end of my light-line to my spear and commanded it to stick to the next thing it touched. I took aim at the top of another cliff and fired, sticking the weightless glowing rope in place. I climbed up, my speargun rattling in its straps on my back.
As a child I’d imagined that my father had survived his crash, that he was being held captive in these endless uncharted tunnels. I imagined saving him, like a figure from Gran Gran’s stories. Gilgamesh, or Joan of Arc, or Tarzan of Greystoke, a hero. The cavern trembled as if in outrage, and dust fell from the ceiling. An impact up on the surface. That was close, I thought. Had I climbed so far? I took out my book of hand-drawn maps. I’d been out here quite a while by now; hours at least. I had taken a nap a few caverns back.
I checked the clock on my light-line. It had passed to the next day, the day of the test, which would happen in the evening. I probably should have headed back. Mom and Gran Gran would worry if I didn’t show up for the test. To hell with the test, I thought, imagining the indignation I’d feel at being turned away at the door. Instead I climbed up through a tight squeeze into another tunnel. Out here my size was, for once, an advantage.
Another impact rocked the caverns. With this much debris falling, climbing to the surface was definitely stupid. I didn’t care. I felt reckless. I felt, almost heard, something driving me forward. I kept climbing until I finally reached a crack in the ceiling. Light shone through it, of an even, sterile type; too white, not orange enough. Cool, dry air blew in also, which was a good sign. I pushed my pack ahead of me, then squirmed through the crack and out into the light.
The surface. I looked up and saw the sky again. It never failed to take my breath away. A distant skylight shone down on a section of the land, but I was mostly in shadow. Just overhead, the sky sparkled with a shower of falling debris. Radiant lines like slashes. A formation of three scout-class starfighters flew through it, watching. Falling debris was often broken pieces of ships or other space junk, and salvage from it could be valuable. It played havoc with our sensors though, and could mask a Krell incursion.
I stood in the grey-blue dust and let the awe of the sky wash over me, feeling a particular sensation of wind against my cheeks. I’d come up close to Alta Base, which I could see in the distance, maybe only a thirty-five minute walk or so away. Now that the Krell knew where we were, there was no reason to hide the base, so it had expanded from a hidden bunker to several large buildings and a walled perimeter, antiaircraft guns, and an invisible shield to protect it from debris.
Outside that wall, groups of people worked a small strip of something I always found strange: trees and fields. What were they even doing over there? Trying to grow food in this dusty ground? I didn’t dare get close. The guards would take me for a scavenger from the distant caverns. Still, there was something dramatic about that stark green of those fields and the stubborn walls of the base. Alta was a monument to our determination. For three generations, humankind had lived like rats and nomads on this planet, but we would hide no longer.
The flight of starships streaked toward Alta, and I took a step toward them. Set your sights on something higher, my father had said. Something more grand. And where had that gotten me?
I shouldered my pack and my speargun, then hiked the other direction. I had been to a nearby passage before, and I figured with more exploring, I could connect some of my maps. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I found the passage’s mouth had collapsed completely.
I saw some debris hit the surface in the near distance, tossing up a spray of dust. I looked up and found a few smaller chunks streaking down overhead, fiery burning chunks of metal. Heading right toward me. Scud! I dashed back the way I had come. No! No! No! No! No! The air rumbled, and I could feel the heat of the approaching debris. There!
I spotted a small cavern opening in the surface, part crack, part cave mouth. I threw myself toward it, skidding and sliding inside. An enormous crash sounded behind me, and it seemed to shake the entire planet. Frantic, I engaged my light-line and slapped my hand against the stone as I fell into the churning chaos. I jerked up short, connected by the light-line to the wall, as rock chips and pebbles flew across me. The cavern trembled, then all grew still. I blinked dust from my eyes and found myself dangling by my light-line in the center of a small cavern, maybe thirty or forty feet high. I’d lost my pack somewhere, and I’d scraped up my arm pretty good.
Great, just great, Spensa. This is what throwing tantrums gets you. I groaned, my head throbbing, then tapped my fingers against my palm to let the light-line out, lowering myself to the floor. I flopped down, catching my breath. Other impacts sounded in the distance, but they dwindled. Finally, I wobbled to my feet and dusted myself off. I managed to locate the strap of my bag sticking out from some rubble nearby. I yanked it out, then checked the canteen and maps inside. They seemed okay.
My speargun was another matter. I found the handle but there was no sign of the rest. It was probably buried in that mound of rubble. I slumped down against the stone. I knew I shouldn’t go up to the surface during a debris fall. I had practically begged for this. A scrabbling sound came from nearby. A rat? I raised the handle of my gun immediately, and then felt doubly stupid. Still I forced myself to my feet, slung my pack over my shoulder, and increased the light of my bracelet. A shadow ducked away, and I followed, limping only a little. Maybe I could find another way out of here.
I raised my bracelet high, illuminating the small cavern, which had a high ceiling. My light reflected off something ahead of me. Metal? Maybe one of the water pipes? I walked toward it, and my brain took a moment to realize what I was seeing. There, nestled into the corner of the cavern, surrounded by rubble, was a starship.
Is Hoid the only one of his kind that we've met in the Cosmere books?
What do you mean by his kind?
Is he the only one from the planet he's originally from that we've met?
No. Because Ati and Leras, the Ruin and Preservation, were both from that same planet.
[...]
All of the Shards of Adonalsium were from that planet.
Is the order of the Ideals fixed? E.g. does Kaladin have to say the Windrunner Ideals in a specific order, or are they situation-specific?
Yes, the sequence is fixed. The oaths for each order are essentially a progression of understanding of the kind of person that each Order of Knights Radiant is trying to produce. The specific wording of each Ideal is not fixed, but the overall idea of each Ideal, and the order in which they are spoken, is.
In Way of Kings, all of the philosophers and logic masters are male, and reading and writing is described as a feminine art. It was long ago, so was there...
...This was a shift that happened in Roshar at a certain distinct point, where reading and writing became feminine arts. It was related to a power struggle over Shardblades and Shardplate, where certain people in charge realized, "If we can push the women towards something else, we can have all their weapons!" I know, it's not a good thing. But it happens. That's where safehands came form, and things like this, philosophies written in the past being taken kind of as dogma, and power struggles being involved, and things like this, and there was a shift happening. You'll find there's plenty of female philosophers, but they tend-- that tends to be a dividing point, and you start to see female philosophers appearing in Roshar after that divide, and you tend to see a lot more male philosophers beforehand. Good question.
Is there a reason for why so many early Radiants were family? Including theorized ones, we have Tien and Kaladin, Jasnah and Elhokar, Dalinar and Renarin, Shallan and Helaran...
Yes, so I can give you the "how the sausage is made," I call this the narrative reason vs the in-world reason. I can give you both.
In-world reasoning is that, when these bonds are forming, these human beings have bonds to other people, and that naturally leads the spren along those bonds. When Kaladin is forming a bond with a windspren [honorspren], and windspren [honorspren] start looking, or even other sapient spren start looking for people, they're going to notice. Remember, they're coming into the Physical Realm, it's very hard for them. They're doing this partially from the Cognitive Realm, searching and trying to get pulled through by the attention and the bond that is forming. They're naturally led to other people who are related. You could even say that, because of Tien, Syl found Kaladin.
I built this in for a narrative reason, and the narrative reason is: we generally are going to want to have a larger than average number of people among the core characters, who are involved in the magic system, and involved in the narrative. Because the magic system is so important in my books, I knew that I was gonna have a lot of friends and family of main characters end up with spren bonds.
But I don't think this is unusual. In fact, I think this is more true to life. It's not one of those coincidences we make up for a book; it's one of those coincidences that happens in life that seems unusual. It seems unusual if you look at it and say, "There are five people who became full-time in the publishing industry during the year Brandon was a senior at BYU. And they are all friends; in fact, they were all friends before they got published." This seems unusual; like, why didn't anyone else? There is nobody else that I know that broke in into the industry from that year. Maybe it happened, but nobody I knew who wasn't in our immediate friend group. Well, this is not that surprising if you actually look at it, because when one person breaks in, it becomes so much easier for everyone else that knew that person. Not just for networking reasons. (Networking reasons: obvious). The other obvious one is: the people are gonna know each other because they're all gonna be moving in the same circles, looking for each other without knowing it. They're gonna be looking for other good writers, and they're gonna be making connections with them. They're gonna notice when people ask questions in a class that are the right kinds of questions to be asking about getting published.
But even beyond those two things, once I broke in, Dan Wells has said before he realized, "Brandon did this; this is real. He actually did this. I can do this." And indeed, he went and broke in. Once this thing that seems impossible, whether it's becoming a full time novelist, or forming a spren bond and becoming a Knight Radiant; once you've seen somebody do it, it becomes way easier for you to conceive of yourself doing it. This is why C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were in the same writing group. This is why you see this sort of thing happening all around the world and in all sorts of professions, that people who were friends together... Every time that people are like, "Wow, these three major Hollywood stars knew each other in high school." Well, yes, that is actually more likely to happen than not, because of all these reasons I've talked about.
How many oaths can a Radiant swear?
There is an upper-limit/threshold to the number of oaths a Radiant may make. By the end of WoR, Shallan was a step higher than Kaladin.
Is Obrodai going to be the setting of Dark One?
Excellent question. That is also a RAFO. Sorry, sorry! This is partially because Dark One pops in and out of the cosmere a lot, depending on which version I'm doing. It's been the hardest book. For those who don't know anything about, this is a book I talk about in my blog once in a while... It's like the Harry Potter story, except you get told "By the way, you're the Dark One who's gonna destroy the world, so we're gonna assassinate you while you're a teenager, so that never happens." It's a really cool story that I have never been able to get to work.
*inaudible* one of the starts of one of the chapters...
Yeah, and Obrodai is one of the Shardworlds, but I keep hopping Dark One in and out of the cosmere. Sometimes it feels too self-referential to the fantasy genre to actually be in the cosmere. Because I don't want the cosmere to be self-referential, right? Whenever something gets even a little too silly, I'm like, "Nah, this can't be in the cosmere anymore." So, we'll see what happens.
So I have a question about Savants. Could you only get there by flaring, or if you burn it for a long period of time or like duralumin--
Yeah, you can get there other ways.
Nadia wants to know if we've kicked around the idea for publishing an illustrated version of the Stormlight Archive, or some sort of guide with illustrations.
Right. We've kicked around the idea of a world guide, which is pretty common in epic fantasy. George has some, Wheel of Time had the Big White Book as it was called, the guide to the Wheel of Time, and then following that, an encyclopedia. I could imagine doing world guides like that with lots of artwork and things like that for various Cosmere worlds.
I would not want to do it for Stormlight until book 5 is done, because then you've got kind of an - book 5 will wrap up the first major arc, and it would just be a good time for something like that as a companion to the first five books, but we haven't talked about it really seriously ever, just because we have so many projects on our plate that this one - just not one we've gotten around to.
And plus, you know, they tend to take a ton of work, or, conversely, a ton of randomness. I know the people who worked on the Big White Book for Wheel of Time, and they're very proud of it and they did some very good work. But a lot of the fans were disappointed for the artwork quality for some of the pieces in the Big White Book, and that's always been kind of a warning cry to me, that if you're expecting artwork like we have in the end-pages for the Stormlight Archive all the way through it - that's a lot of work, and involves a lot of Isaac's time, and so we would have to find a time when he is excited to do it, or that we can, you know, talk Ben McSweeney into doing that himself, or something like that.
So yeah, it's on the table, but I wouldn't expect it soon.
