Kurkistan
Can Regrowth do-- accomplish more for healing than Feruchemical gold can?
Brandon Sanderson
*Pause* I haven't decided yet.
Found 1880 entries in 0.153 seconds.
Can Regrowth do-- accomplish more for healing than Feruchemical gold can?
*Pause* I haven't decided yet.
Why did you choose the cities you chose for Steelheart and Firefight?
I wanted to choose cities that I was familiar with. Like cities I had driven in, cities I knew my way around in, and things like that. Which-- It was really just based on that concept, though I've always liked Chicago because as a kid going to Chicago-- that was the big city close to Nebraska. It was the one I knew and it was like the mid-western big city, if that makes any sense. So I always felt a kinship to that. That's why I picked Chicago. I also wanted one with a lake so I could fre-- turn the lake to steel.
...Have you chosen one for Calamity?
Yes. I originally chose Montreal, and my publisher-- I actually said "We could do Montreal or Atlanta" and they like Atlanta better. So I decided to go ahead and go with Atlanta.
Has Hemalurgy been used on another planet besides Scadrial?
Yes it has. Brandon did not want to give out any more details about who was getting spiked or if the spiking was successful.
Is there ambient Investiture in all of the planets, or just the Shardworlds?
*pauses* It's mostly Shardworlds. But that definition gets a little uncertain in the case of some various planets, like Threnody. There are other Threnody-esque sorts of things.
Hoid gets his tooth knocked out while in Kholinar. He prompts somebody else to help him with that. Is that because he has issues hurting not only other people but himself?
Yep.
And then he considers healing that at a later point in time. Which magic system does he consider using to heal that?
A magic system that predates-- predates any of the others.
What about Kaladin getting sliced with the Shardblade and then being able to rejuvenate?
That is a clue for what is going on with Szeth and his understanding of Shardblades and the Shardblade he has.
Which is an Honorblade, right?
I can't say, but Szeth says in Book One you can't heal a Shardblade wound with Stormlight. There are other very big but subtle discrepancies between what Szeth does and what Kaladin does.
Do you think you will ever include dragons in your books?
Dragonsteel, a series I’ll do someday, has Dragons in it. Hint: This world/series is very important to Hoid..
If Preservation and Ruin created life on Scadrial but did not create Feruchemy, where does it come from? The planet?
All magic systems come from Shards power in some way.
Would Hemalurgy work on an AI?
RAFO.
Aside from the Greater Roshar system, are there any other multiple shardworld systems?
Yes. You have not necessarily seen them though.
Was Tanavast a dragon?
Tanavast was not, but that's an excellent question. There are some other dragons out there. If you keep asking, you might get some yeses; but this is a no.
You’ve been known to say that the fantasy genre is the best genre because you can do anything another genre can do and you can have dragons. And yet, we haven’t had a dragon from you yet. Well we see a Sanderson Dragon anytime before Dragonsteel? I’m assuming Dragonsteel has dragons?
Yes, I smile inwardly as I say that, because I know that--indeed--I don't use a lot of dragons. I do like reading about them, but I haven't found myself eager to put them into my works. I think it's because I've read so many excellent dragon books, I figure, that area of fantasy is being covered by others--and I should try different things.
That said, Dragonsteel has dragons, and so you will eventually see them there. I don't know that I'll do them before.
Does a limb that has been "severed" by a Shardblade have any Hemalurgic bindpoints? If the same limb was then cut off more conventionally, would a Bloodmaker ferring be able to grow it back?
A severed Shardblade limb needs repair to the soul before it would function again. A Bloodmaker would be able to heal it without needing to grow it back.
I have a question for the world of Steelheart. How do the electric sockets work if everything is steel?
How do the electric sockets work? They needed to be rebuilt for the electric sockets to work, but you can also get down far enough where the builders, the machines, have rebuilt everything and so that wouldn't all have been turned to steel. Some of that has been dug out and reworked and rebuilt. There are some pretty crazy things that happened.
In a lot of your books there are, like, things that make them seem like they might be connected...
Okay, "in a lot of my books there are things that make them seem like they might be connected." *crowd laughs* What's that?
Is there going to be a crossover?
"Is there gonna be a crossover?" So for those who don't know, my books-- my epic fantasies are all connected. There's a hidden epic happening behind the scenes. There will be someday that I will do crossovers, but I am not doing it right now. The focus right now-- I don't want people to like read the books and be like, "I am so lost." I don't you to feel like you have to read my whole body of work to appreciate what's going on in one of them. So while there will be cameos, and sometimes they will be moderately relevant to the plot, it's only gonna remain mostly cameos for the moment, until I do a series which is upfront going to be, "Here's the big crossover. You have to know all eight magic systems or you're gonna go crazy."
In at least two of the books that I know of, a god is either dead or attacked in some form or fashion. Is there any reason for that?
Yes, there is an ongoing theme there, and it's primarily because there is an overarching story behind the story. The books are all in the same universe. And there is a character that's the same in all of the books. In Way of Kings it's Wit. He's actually in all of them.
My question: do we have any updates on Isaac Stewart's Mistborn Nicki Savage book?
Yeah, so Isaac's been working away at it. He has not shown it to me yet, but he is excited by it and he has shown it to the writing group I believe. So he is working very hard at that. We have Isaac's story and we also have Dan. Dan's is just in the very early stages of concepting and things like that, so. So yeah, you can corner Isaac and ask him for updates on it. I haven't seen the book yet, but he promises me it's getting very close to where he wants to show it to me.
Are sandlings from White Sand an early concept for crustaceans on Roshar, with greatshells being a parallel to deep sandlings?
No, um, the idea for white sandWhite Sand came first, and it was more that I was exploring divergent ecology, but I've been doing that in Dragonsteel and in White Sand and in here with Roshar. I would say that the fact that white sand hadn't been published meant that I could do something's that were similar without worrying about repeating myself, but it's not like I used them specifically as models.
*jokingly* So are we going to get to see little dragons running around in Dragonsteel?
Uh, well, in Dragonsteel the dragons are sapient, so when I write Dragonsteel I will put dragons in there, but the dragons are intelligent and uh, can take human form, but there are actual little dragons.
Wait, they can take human form?
Yes, yes, yup.
How does Feruchemical gold interact with organ transplants?
In an interesting way.
In a good interesting or bad interesting?
It depends on the situation.
Do the Heralds know about AonDor?
I would say, conceptually, a few of them do, but not in specific detail.
'Cause Ash's name is a combination of Transformation, Beauty, and Light. I didn't know if that was a coincidence, or--
There are some non-coincidences in the linguistics that people have started to pick up on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the people who have those names know about the origins of their names.
I'm a physical chemist and I'm reading your book [The Way of Kings] right now and at some point you have someone studying flamespren and what they saw, that's one of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics--
Yes.
So you got that from quantum mechanics?
I did get that from quantum mechanics.
How did you come across that and decide to incorporate that into your epic fantasy?
Well The Way of Kings' magic systems are based on the fundamental forces. That was the original idea and the extrapolation from them. I'm fascinated by quantum mechanics and I have worked them into the way that-- Remember in my worlds, my books, the magics are a new branch of physics, in these worlds. And so they interact with our normal physics, it's not like they are ignoring them, so they obey the laws of thermodynamics, even when they appear to be breaking them, and they interact with quantum and all the stuff. It's just very natural that they are going to, to me if that makes sense? It would be weird if they didn't interact with them.
So, one of the things I know, you have your own universe that you've produced, and it's fantastic. what's the series you're gonna create or have created that's the cornerstone, that will have the largest impact on the universe.
I would say Mistborn going all the way through is probably the most impact. Stormlight is gonna have a decent one, so is the Elantris world.
Is there gonna be a union book or series?
Yeah, the final Mistborn series.
Let's say we have a hypothetical situation with Miles Hundredlives. In this scenario, he is wearing a gold metalmind filled to the brim with stored healing power. He is then spiked with a cadmium spike and loses his gold allomancy.
Now, if I recall from various WoBs, he would be able to heal using the gold metalmind and regain his gold allomancy. I could be misremembering and he cannot heal it, but I believe he would be able to since it is part of his Identity.
However, one question I have never seen the answer to is this: what happens to the ability in the spike? Is the allomantic ability still contained in the spike, leading to a duplicate? Or is the spike's ability lost? Or maybe I have this whole thing wrong and Miles could never have regained the ability in the first place.
If the ability duplicates (which I doubt), that could lead to some crazy things. Also, this applies to any Twinborn with gold Feruchemy, I just thought Miles was a good example I guess :)
I'd like to see the exact WoB's here to make sure I'm being consistent, as I don't know that I confirmed you could regain lost powers--only that you could heal from hemalurgic soul damage. Most likely, what you'd end up with is a person who has been healed and can remove the spike from their body without damage, and without needing it to hold their soul together--but who has lost the ability in the spike.
Regardless, though, what you want here (the mass production of spikes charged and even blanked) is possible with the right levels of investiture. It's an energy, like things in our world. The difficulty is finding out how to 1) get enough investiture and 2) key it to the right people and/or magic.
Hope that's a little more clear.
That said, a lot of times people just ask me if something is possible--and a lot of things are possible, but just very difficult. And with the right boost of investiture, in the right circumstances, it WOULD be possible to regrow lost (to spikes) powers. It's just highly unlikely.
I'm not sure if the questions people are asking me are ones I've qualified, or not, in these instances. Also, this is all something I'm playing with still behind the scenes as we enter the modern age of Mistborn.
As requested, here are the WoBs I believe are related. They might be obsolete, however. And I assume things will get changed a lot before Era 4, but hey, it's fun to ask anyways :)
WoB #1:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/331/#e9434
This one states that as long as Miles still has his Identity, he would be able to use his Feruchemical metalminds after being spiked and would be able to heal.
WoB #2:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/102/#e983
This one says that Miles would be able to heal his soul using Feruchemical healing and regain his gold Allomancy (assuming he survives the spiking). I think this is the most essential one!
WoB #3:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/76/#e6335
This one is only somewhat related - implies that the Feruchemical and Allomantic powers are spiritually part of him.
WoB #4:
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/7/#e6435
Also tangentially related - damage to the soul from Hemalurgy can be healed (Although this might just be a Hoid thing). I guess the question could be expanded to include non-Feruchemical healing as a way to repair the soul after being spiked.
Well, I don't think any of those are specifically inaccurate. I just didn't quite understand what people were trying to get out of me. A lot of times, I don't know quite what people are trying to get out of me. I can see now they're trying to figure out.
I see now, and I appreciate you putting this all together for me so I can see what the fans are trying to figure out. So the answer is a cautious yes. The problem here is that he'd need to compound a TON of healing first--but yes, it would work. You could theoretically turn someone like Miles into an invested spike factory.
If he didn't have enough healing stored, though, he'd end up with a healed soul but a gap (like a scar on his soul) where his spiked-out abilities were. That could theoretically be healed with application of more investiture, depending on things like how he views himself, and if you could get the right type of investiture.
Is healing a universal Stormlight power than?
Yes, within reason. Some are better at it. But it is a universal power.
What's the etymology of "slontze"?
...This is from the Reckoners series, Steelheart. I wanted a fake Yiddish word. So I, you know, mention things like this, and it's not actually-- I-- It doesn't quite fit, but I wanted something that had the right feel, like that. I don't know why I wanted a fake Yiddish word. That just felt-- So I went through a bunch of Yiddish slang, and that's the word I came up with. So, that's what I do a lot, like "I want the feel of this."
Should all the Shardworlds have radios and the like, and progress in that...
Should they? Not yet.
Could they?
Could they? Yes.
In regards to the title of Dragonsteel, is Adonalsium a dragon?
No, good question though, excellent question. But they do live on the planet.
In The Lost Metal, we find that Sho Del have four arms, making six appendages. In the [sample] chapters for The Liar of Partinel, we find that a fain deer has six legs. Is this pattern important?
Yeah.
Further, how relevant to this is [it] that if you count four legs plus two wings, dragons have six limbs?
Yep, that is the exact correlation that I would like you to draw! Dragons are fain, if you're wondering. If that's what the question is, yes, dragons are fain.
What would happen if you shot a thug with an aluminum bullet or stabbed him with an aluminum knife?
Ah, that's a good question. The wound would not be able to heal around the aluminum, but once the aluminum came out and was gone from the system, they would be okay.
Wait, is that a Bloodmaker, not a Thug?
Oh, you're talking about Thugs?
It would work similarly, but it really wouldn't have a huge effect on them.
Alright, because Peter was implying that there was some weird aluminum interaction with Thugs.
What was he thinking of...?
There is some weird interaction but...
In the wedding scene, Wax thinks they would have aluminum bullets to deal with Thugs, and I was like, "Oh, that's a typo." And Peter was like, "Oh no it's not..."
No, no. That would just be-- it's like I said: healing it until the bullet is gone, it's just the same as Bloodmakers.
How long do dragons live?
Dragons are functionally immortal, meaning... maybe "functionally" is the wrong term. They stop aging at a certain point. They can die to most normal other things, though they are highly Invested beings. But they do not die of old age.
Are we going to get a star chart when we get to the sci-fi--
Yes, we will do a star chart… Isaac is working on how to design those.
Does Silverlight have a permanent Perpendicularity on it?
Silverlight has weird. So I'm gonna give a RAFO to that.
It's got a physical constellation map. So they've gotta go to the Physical somehow right?
No, no, no. That can be in the Cognitive Realm.
The constellation map can be a picture from the Cognitive?
Well, yeah, I mean, it can be a picture in the Cognitive. That is a picture that exists in Silverlight.
Right, sure, but they need to be somewhere to view those things.
Right, I didn't say that that’s from the perspective Silverlight, but what we say is the picture is hanging there.
So that was a mis-interpretation on our part.
Yeah, the picture is hanging there in Silverlight. Okay?
Is there actually anything on the Physical end of Silverlight?
That is-- That's the RAFO part... That's what I'm not answering. If there's anything Physical. There can't be a Perpen--well, there could be a Perpendicularity, but then you'd have to go someplace in the Physical, and it gets all-- Silverlight is really weird.
I do have a follow-up on the map? All of the constellations-- Or most of the constellations seem fairly straightforward. The one containing Roshar has a Shardbearer or Herald…
Yep, mmhmm. There are a couple--
Yet Sel gets a lamp?
Sel gets a lamp, yes.
Why?
Ask Isaac about that, he came up with the symbolism. And I like all the symbolism. But I would go to him about the symbolism of that. Ask him to write an essay for my website about it, because he has really cool-- Cause again, cause I said to him, "I want a star map" and I wasn't gonna put constellations on it, right? Just, the one in the back cover that doesn't have constellations, that's what I asked for and he came back and said "I did a constellation map with these things, what do you think?" and I'm like "that’s cool! Can you explain these to me?" so I'm just gonna let Isaac go with that, he chose it, he chose the perspective and the point of view, so it's his map, and he's canon on that.
I have a question about Iyatil, can you tell me what world she is from originally.
Originally? That is a question i can dodge pretty easily im afraid. Iyatil is not from a world you have seen.
In Secret History, Hoid says something to Kelsier about him destroying the Pits and destroying an entire mercantile system. Is he talking about literal inter-Realmic trade?
Yes. Interplanetary trade, yes.
Follow-up: Is House Venture involved?
House Venture is not involved. People in House Venture might be.
The guy who--
Here is a RAFO card for your follow-up. House Venture is-- Yes.
Are we going to see Native Americans in the Rithmatist series?
Yes you will. The Native Americans have mostly moved to South America, but there's a Native American main character in the second book.
Yes!
What happened is the– a lot of them got pushed into South America, where the Aztec Empire is alive and well and strong. And so their perspective on what's going on is very different from the perspective happening in Joel's school, so you will see a different perspective on things.
Excellent.
It was already dangerous though, what I'm doing, and I realize this, for those very reasons. Very sensitive issues. Like when I used the Mary Rowlandson account, which is kind of a controversial account as it is, I understood that I was potentially opening a can of worms.
But I mean, I really– I just want to say this, that I really appreciate as a reader that you go into diversity because I know it is a risk, and it means so much to readers to have you writing a different set of characters and people people can relate to.
So you've said that healing is like the Spiritual wants to heal and then it filters through the Cognitive, but how's that work with healing wounds to the soul like Hemalurgy or Shardblades? What do you refer to to heal the soul at that point?
You need to make a patch on the soul with Investiture.
So how's the Investiture know where to go, what to look like?
Well your soul is an ideal. So if you can get it up there, there are ways to do-- to recreate that with um... See I'm getting into stuff for later books.
No, that's okay.
So when Hemalurgy rips something off the soul, is that the ideal soul or some sub-soul?
That is off of your soul, and it can be healed; but what it's going to be doing is creating a patch of new soul. So it will not be your original soul. Does that make sense?
Okay, that- well, not completely, but I think that's your intention.
Yes.
If you do that, is that like Frankenstein's monster, or is it like a graft that's absorb--
Less horrifying- Less horrifying than Frankenstein's monster, but it is a graft that is like-- It is not your original soul.
Yeah, but in modern medicine stuff like that is absorbed-
Yeah, in this you will always have a scar on your soul that something else has patched over.
So Kaladin shouldn't just keep getting his arm chopped?
*ignoring/not-hearing Kurkistan just now* But that is what happens with most forms of Investiture in the first place.
Would [healing] something like a birth defect, would that require somebody to have Regrowth, or can they do it with just Stormlight?
It depends on how they envision themselves.
So is that the same thing with Commands, are there like ideals that are Commands?
This is more of a-- For you to interface with the magic, you need to be able to comprehend it. And so forming a Command-- The same thing happens in Elantris, you know they don't accidentally draw runes, right? The intention is part of interfacing with the magic. So it's like your mind reaching into the Spiritual Realm and you have to like conceive something.
Would Stormlight healing, Progression, or Feruchemical gold healing count as some of the ways that a transgender person could change their body to match their identity?
Yes. Those would work. In fact, that's kind of the main way that you would make that happen. Injections of Investiture making the body match the Spiritual and Cognitive.
I love that book [The Rithmatist], the world, I'm looking forward to those...
The sequel is going to be very fun, it's called "The Aztlanian", it's taking place in South America.
Where in South America?
Well, I've rebuilt South America so it's kind of weird. The Aztek empire, which is the main name the Northerners have for it, they call it something else. The problem is I shrunk the planet, so I had to smash South America and Central America a little bit into each other so the islands that they are is it South America? Central America? What is it?
So is it Spanish-speaking? Or...
No, the Spaniards got fought off, they actually speak Nahautl.
No Portuguese or Spanish? It's all...
There are a couple Portuguese/Spanish islands but-- They grabbed a few of them but the main empire speaks Nahuatl.
One other question, what is the name of the planet that Elantris is on?
Elantris: Sel
Warbreaker: Nalthis
Mistborn: Scadrial
Way of Kings: Roshar
White Sand: Taldain
Dragonsteel: Yolen
There are others, but I haven't talked much about those yet, so I'll leave them off for now.
Would setting Stormlight lanterns around a wounded person make them heal any faster?
No. Not your average person.
And regarding that healing thing, I’m going to have to back up on that one just a little bit because there would be nominal effects in the same way that if you’re sick and you go sit in the sunlight. That makes you feel--Stormlight has, not the same effect but it would have a nominally similar effect…Does that make sense? Or a similarly nominal.
So for Kaladin's depression and Stormlight's healing abilities, does Kaladin remain depressed because of his view of himself, or is it a limitation of Stormlight's abilities to heal, or something else?
Disorders like depression are a part of a person's personality, and thus aren't diseases and cannot be cured. He talked a lot about this, and he talked about how a hyper kid annoys people but that doesn't mean there's something wrong.
Is a Edgli a dragon?
Edgli, oh, from tears of Edgli, uh, RAFO.
Does a more Investiture-poor world make it so its magics are easier to use off-world? Because, you said that Scadrial is really Investiture-poor, and it can be used easily off-world, but Roshar is very Investiture-rich, and how can you get Stormlight off of Roshar?
Yeah. Um, I would say that there is a correlation.
There is a correlation?
Mmhmm.
Are you willing to comment on what it is that provides Frost's longevity, is it something innate to his race or some--
It's racial.
What was your design process for designing all of the star systems for each of the worlds?
I am lucky enough to have on staff one of my good friends, Isaac. He actually introduced me to my wife. He sent me on a blind date with Emily. He was one of my students, my second year teaching the class. He's a really good friend. At the time, he was an illustrator for a video game company who was just interested in fantasy books. And he saw that there was a class at BYU and he was like, "I'm gonna take that."
He now works for me full-time. Though, fun story on this. You know how some people joke that in their marriage there's one person they could cheat with, like a celebrity? When I hired Isaac, he was like, "I will come and do things for you full time. But if Tad Williams ever asks me, I'm doing something for Tad Williams," his favorite book series. This summer, Tad Williams needed a map for the new Osten Ard books. Isaac is like, "So, I do maps for Sanderson." He's like, "Sure, do one for me. Great!" So Isaac's been working on that and it has been a dream come true for him.
Isaac and I, we sit down and we do brainstorming sessions for the art. He's done almost all of the symbols and maps in my books, except the ones that he commissions someone else to do because he wanted to get a different style for it or the first book, Elantris, I did the symbols. That's why the Elantris symbols are not quite as visually interesting as some of Isaac's. They fit the world but I drew those and my artistic chops are... So Isaac and I sit down, we brainstorm and we say, "What do we want this to look like? What's the feel of it?" So I'll outline what the planets and the world are and then he will bring up historical- like he went and got Renaissance star charts and said, "Do any of these work? What do you like?" We kind of narrowed it down to ones that have the right feel but I said, "I want it more like this, more like this." He took that and ran with it and gave me iterations. He's like, "Here's four different versions of a map for Scadrial. Which one do you like?" And then I'll give him that and he'll then do four iterations on that, saying, "Here are different designs of this. Which one of these do you like?" Anyone who's an artist knows that illustrators, that's what they do. So we come up with it and then I say, "This style, go," and then he does all the maps.
Some stars are yellow, while others are red - is that significant?
Yes. There are other colors in there too.
Did people exist on Nalthis prior to Endowment's arrival there?
Some planets had people before the Shattering.