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[Kaladin] gets his arm and various things cut with shardblades a couple times… and he regrows his soul more-or-less. Is that a function of his being a free Radiant or is that from being able to absorb Stormlight?
It is by being a Radiant. Which allows him to absorb Stormlight so--
...Really?
Yup. Most of what you see him doing, Renarin did in the original outline, much more awkwardly.
Did you keep him in for longer because he has an important part to play?
Yes. remember, this is the draft I did in 2002, things were very different. Like in that draft Kaladin took the Shardblade and became a Shardbearer and stuff like this, and so it was a very different book, very different themes. I beefed up Adolin's part when I was doing this and eventually he developed into a stronger character. I need Adolin because Adolin is the guy who is not gaining all the magical powers and flying in the air and stuff. I need the guy who is more normal. As normal as the prince of Alethkar can be. I needed him and I really liked where he went after doing that, so.
Is there anything more to learn about why Helaran was on the battlefield that day when Kaladin killed him?
Yes, but you already know the basics of that story...
Like it was definitely him on the battlefield, he was with the Skybreakers, his target was Amaram...
He nods, and says the 'more information' is more about the Davar family in general.
I had asked whether it was that Helaran was looking for Radiants, I had suspected maybe he would have struck at Amaram again if he was determined to kill him? Maybe he thought Amaram was a Radiant and taking the Shardblade disproved that?
No, the Skybreakers knew about the Sons of Honor, they had a good opportunity to strike at the organization and they took it.
I was wondering if an aluminum Feruchemist, if he stores up Spiritual Identity, could he survive a hit from a Shardblade?
I'll RAFO that. Identity is not the right place to go for that. Exact mechanics are RAFO, but that's kinda along the wrong path.
The in-world explanation for the safehand is that some men found an old book that said, "masculine arts are two-handed, feminine arts are one-handed," and used it to keep women from getting Shardblades. The women retaliated by not letting men write.
In The Way of Kings, when Shallan zones out and draws a picture of a dead noble at a dinner table, was she drawing her own father after she killed him with her Shardblade?
Ooh, good question! You will want to read Words of Radiance, where her flashbacks may indeed involve this scene that she drew.
Loved Way of Kings; can you say where Shardblades go when not summoned or is it a RAFO?
It is RAFO, but one that will be answered for sure.
I love, love Brandon Sanderson but I feel like every time he needs a "magic word" he just takes two regular words and jams them together.
Dreamshard, Shardblade, Shardplate, Lightweaving, Mistborn, Coinshot, Pewterarm, Coppercloud, Surgebinder, Soulcaster, etc etc etc
Sorry u/Mistborn I still love you
It's done intentionally. Let's look at our options.
I can create all-out fantasy words for terms like this. (Lait or crem from Stormlight are examples.) Problem is, the more you do this, the more you pile a difficult linguistics on top of a reader. The more words like this they have to learn, the more difficult it is to get into a story. If you were doing it, perhaps you'd go this direction. I feel that overloading on these terms is dangerous. Already, the main reason new readers put down my books is that they feel overwhelmed by the worldbuilding.
So we have the second option. Use a latin, germatic, or greek root and create a word that FEELS right, has some mental connection for the reader, but which isn't a real word. Allomancy/Feruchemy/Hemalurgy. Veristitalian. To a lesser extent, Elantris.
This so called "Harry Potter Spells" method gives some familiarity to the naming, makes them stick a little better in people's heads, which makes the books a little easier to get into. But they're also distracting to some readers who say, "Wait. There's no Latin in this world, so where did Latin root words come from?" And for others (particularly in translation) those roots mean nothing, and so these all end up lumped into the first group.
The final method is the pure Germanic method--creating compound words. It works in English very well because of our Germanic roots--and is one of the main ways (other than turning nouns into verbs or the other direction) that we create new words. Supermarket. Masterpiece. Newspaper. Thunderstorm. Footprint. Firework. Heartbeat. Yourself. None of those look odd to you because they are words that are "meant" to go together in your head.
I use some of batch one, some of batch two, but I do favor batch three--it does what I want it to. Works in the language, has an "otherworld" feel but is also very quickly understood by someone new to the series. There are arguments for all three methods, however.
You can also just go the route of using an English word despite it clearly not being accurate.
"He tied a ribbon around his horse's third antennae, and patted its chitinous flank."
Agreed. Re-contextualizing English words can work too--I find it particularly useful to do what I mentioned above. Take a verb and make it a noun or vice versa. Or use a verb in a way that you normally don't. (Awakeners or Lashings are examples from my work, though Spice from Dune is one of the grand-daddy examples of this. As it is for a lot of fantastical linguistics.)
Was Sword-nimi based on its creator replicating a Living blade, Shardblade or Honorblade?
I plan to answer this in the text of the books eventually...so RAFO. :)
I'm pretty sure it's a case of me just forgetting that I read such a part, but where in the book does Shallan find out about Kaladin's abilities? I know once Adolin confronts Shallan for the first time about her powers, he then asks if she can fly like 'him (Kaladin)', and she just goes yeah, as if she knew for some time now about Kaladin's abilities.
It's such a small thing but it's been grinding away at me. I know Shallan revealed to Kaladin by summoning her Shardblade over his shoulder in the chasm, but how did Kaladin reveal himself to Shallan?
If you re-read that scene, I believe she's confused by the question about her being able to fly, as so far as she knows, Radiants don't fly. (She only knows about herself and Jasnah.) She finds out about Kaladin sometime around when most everyone else finds out about him, I believe. I'd have to look back specifically to see if I noted it, but by the end of that battle, everyone will be talking about it and so she will know.
How did Pattern actually become a Shardblade even though he hadn't been fully pulled into the Physical Realm?
He had been pulled into the Physical Realm before when Shallan was younger, and she almost broke her bond. And in so doing . . .
But he didn't go mad.
She didn't completely break the bond. She didn't reject him completely. But it was dangerous there for a while.
Can "modern" (as in Adolin's) Shardplate be summoned similar to how "dead" Shardblades (as in Oathbringer) can be?
RAFO.
In Stormlight with the way the Radiant's armor works, is it going to be similar to in Aether of Night where it grows? Or do they summon it like the Shardblades?
Mmmm, someone's read Aether of Night! RAFO! You should find out before too much longer. I've been working very hard to keep that mechanism hidden until we can have some things like this happen on screen. But it's getting increasingly hard.
You told us more than a year ago that you wanted to save the mystery of the Order Dalinar's Plate was from until after ROW. What is it?
Well, the main reason I wanted to do that is I did not want to talk too much about armors. I did not want to talk about where armor came from. And I'm going to say Isaac is working very hard on the concept arts of all of these and canonizing all of them and we know which armor Dalinar's is, but I am not going to tell you right now, because I don't want to tie his hands, because what he's doing is he's finding the consistent types of ways they would look and categorizing all the armors into certain ones as we had done in the past for Shardblades, and we're doing some cool things. It's been really fun lately.
So, one of the things that was teased at the Dragonsteel Minicon is that we are going to be doing some minis soon, with Brotherwise, who are fantastic. And one of the things we wanted to have done before we could do minis was just have really solid concept art guidelines for characters and worldbuilding elements and things like that. Often, with the books, we'll just give artists a lot of leeway and freedom, and we still like doing that. But at the same time we do need to have more strong sort of "here is what Brandon sees these things looking like." Which is not how I've normally done things, right? Like, I like fan art. I don't like to be too strict and be like "oh, the fan art's wrong for this reason," or things like that. I like artists to be able to do their thing.
But as we move into doing merchandise, like these and minis and stuff like that, I acknowledge that I can't take that tactic anymore. And so one of the things we're doing is we're making sure we have canon versions of, "Here's what characters look like, here is what the armors look like, here is what these Orders look like, here is what listeners and singers look like," and things like that, so that we can be more aligned on all these things. It's been very fun; Isaac's been putting a ton of work into this and doing a really good job with it. But let's pass on that question until Isaac is able to reveal some of these things to people.
One common theme in magic systems across fantasy is the use of artifacts to focus, increase or do something specific with the magic. Inclusion of artifacts is something you have avoided in your magic systems (although I will say I haven't missed them). Is there a reason for this? How has your writing changed with the 'forced' introduction of artifacts (i.e. finishing the Wheel of Time)? Do you plan on using artifacts in your own works after you finish the Wheel of Time?
I've not done artifacts for the same reason I've not yet done a lot of things—not because I don't want to, but because I like to keep the focus in a given book or books. There wasn't room for yet another extrapolation in that direction when writing the Mistborn books, and the magic system didn't really allow for it.
However, I think there is a lot of room to explore magic artifacts. I've long been wanting to do something that refines magic and uses technology based on it, in kind of a magic-punk sort of way. Kings, for instance, does use artifacts and magical items—very specific kinds, mind you, that are built into the framework of the magic system. But they're there. One of the big elements of this world will be the existence of Shardplate (magically enhanced, powered plate armor) and Shardblades (large, summonable swords designed to cut through steel and stone.)
This isn't really because of the WoT—I wrote the original draft of this book long before I was published, let alone working on the WoT—but I have always lilked the use of artifacts in the WoT world, and it has been fun to use some of them in that setting.
How did Kaladin heal his Shardblade wound without the power of Regrowth?
That's partially a RAFO. Remember that healing in the cosmere usually has to do with how you view yourself. And as long as there is some outpouring of Investiture you are usually capable of healing. More the weird thing is not that Kaladin healed it's that Szeth couldn't.
Hello, I was hoping to find out whether some stuff I found vague in RoW was supposed to be vague or not.
In part one, Navani says that some of the fabrials they found in Urithiru worked in ways they understood, but had "spren trapped in Shadesmar" (which by the end we know refers to spren that have manifested as a fabrial), with Soulcasters being the only ones that confuse her.
Is the intent here supposed to be for us to make the connection that the older fabrials they found use the different types of metals used in modern fabrials? Or is it supposed to be vague how exactly they compare for now?
The confusion here is that Navani didn't realize that Soulcasters were a version of something like a Shardblade. She thought that by seeing spren in Shadesmar, it meant that the soulcasters had somehow trapped a spren--but they didn't seem to be trapped in a gemstone anywhere in the physical realm. This is what bugged her.
It's less about the metal, and more about "where is the trapped spren? I know it's there--I can see it in Shadesmar."
Does this mean that all the old manifested spren fabrials, like the attractors and conjoiners they found in Urithiru and were able to improve, had weird metals like Soulcasters and it was just their identifiable functions that kept them from being confusing?
Yes, that is correct. (This was regarding old manifested fabrials having weird metals as part of them.)
Is there any relation between the smoke that is emitted when a Shardblade cuts somebody and the smoke that Nightblood emits in Warbreaker?
Yes, there is.
Are there any female Shardbearers? Or would they be considered immodest for not covering their safehands?
Eshonai, who is Parshendi, is female. (You saw her fight Dalinar in Book One.) There are others. (One is in the WoR prologue, for example.) It is easy to hide that you have a Shardblade. Historically there were many more than there are currently.
Syl always sees Shardblades as dead spren, these terrible things. But she never mentions the same of Shardplate. Is Shardplate made of non-sentient spren?
RAFO
What would happen if you tried to soulcast a shardblade-wounded limb back to regular flesh with a heliodor? Would it regain function?
That's a partial RAFO, I'm afraid. Soulcasting to flesh is complicated, and the level you're asking for is well outside the skills of any living soulcaster. Most likely, you'd end up with a lump of nondescript meat instead of an arm.
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.
In Shallan, in the beginning and middle of the book it's 10 heartbeats, and in the end of the book it's none...?
The 10 heartbeats is required to revive a dead Shardblade.
But he wasn't dead the whole time.
He wasn't. But perception-- all magic systems in the Cosmere are based on perception-what you think you can do. For instance, Kaladin can't get healed because he sees himself as having a wounded forehead with the scars and that can't vanish because his perception is in the way.
I know that you are very meticulous in developing your stories. Were the shardblades, shardplate, mistborn cloaks, or even Nightblood from Warbreaker developed in a similar fashion, or is it a more organic process to making cool weapons and armor? How do you blur the line between what makes sense, and what is just plain fun?
There are connections in the things you mentioned above, though I don't want to speak of specifics yet for risk of spoiling future revelations.
As for blurring the line between what makes sense and what is fun...I err on the side of the fun. However, part of my meticulous planning is about how to make the fun make sense. I feel that is part of what makes this genre interesting. I decided I wanted to do a story about the Knights Radiant, with the Plate and Blades. From there, I spent a long time thinking about what would make those kinds of weapons reasonable and important to a society.
You can do anything, but do try to focus on laying your groundwork and being consistent.
Could a Seeker detect a Shardbearer? For example, could Vin detect Adolin's Shardblade?
That detects Kinetic Investiture, Investiture that's being used actively, so in the summoning process, you'd probably get a blip on that, but not just looking at someone and seeing it.
If Shardblades were spren, then what is Shardplate?
Good question. It's a great question.
And you're not going to say are you?
I'm not going to answer you.
I assume I'm going to learn a lot more about this in Stormlight 3 but Nightblood, is he more dangerous or less dangerous now that he-- obviously he needs Investiture that is why *audio obscured* any Investiture?
I'd say more dangerous, a little bit easier to get the Stormlight.
I assumed I'd learn a lot more about him...
You will, and he's pretty dangerous, but he is also less dangerous because other people have Shardblades, if that makes sense.
What you can tell me about Investiture?
That is the word for someone or something which has gained a portion of the magic of Adonalsium, so the original whatever-it-is. Like a Shardblade is an Invested object, and people if they draw in the Stormlight, they're drawing in the magic--they're Invested.
Was the Shin invasion a cover for gathering lots of Shardblades and hiding them away?
RAFO.
I'm rereading Oathbringer right now, and I'm in chapter 36 (a Dalinar flashback). While reading through it, I noticed Dalinar commenting on a particular flamespren that seemed odd to him.
Dalinar narrowed his eyes at the flamespren. That one did have a sword. A miniature Shardblade.
Knowing that it's almost never a coincidence when we encounter a strange spren, it got me wondering; we don't know what a Dustbringer spren looks like, but it feels like it would make perfect sense if Ashspren looked like flamespren. This led me down a really interesting line of thought:
Would the Blackthorn have been a Dustbringer?
Now that we know that Dustbringers are all about self-mastery and channeling their incredible power, wouldn't that be a really interesting path for one of the most dangerous (even before he could surgebind) men on Roshar? That idea is just terrifying.
Maybe his visit to the Nightwatcher disrupted his progress towards becoming a Dustbringer and led him down a different path?
RAFO. :)
Shallan has two spren. I assume the Shardblade she is using in Words of Radiance is Pattern. But had she sworn the Third Ideal at that point?
I will get this whole timeline explained for you. It's really intricate, though.
Objects used for awakening turn gray. A limb cut with a shardblade turns gray. You mentioned earlier in this thread that the color of gemstones on Roshar is important. Is there a connection between these?
Between those two things? Yes.
If a Shardblade were to cut a Feruchemist's limb and turn it grey, could the Feruchemist still tap a metalmind below the cut?
What a great question, I've never thought that. I'm going to say they could not. That's a really good question. We'll see if I go back on that, if it ever happens in the series.
How did people-- So apparently Zahel... who is teaching Kaladin Shardblade stuff... He's Warbreaker?
He is Warbreaker.
How did people figure that out?
The color metaphors. He displays BioChromatic Breath. It's not that great because I didn't put a lot of color metaphors into the book, even though I wish I had, I've gotten better about adding flavor to books. But really he notices when Kaladin is coming to knock on his door before Kaladin gets there. That's one of the big clues that people got.
We've seen what Shardblades look like in Shadesmar. What do spikes look like?
Like, Hemalurgic spikes? That's a RAFO. You will see eventually.
Why does Szeth's spren not help him as a [Shardblade] even though he has said the Third Ideal?
Yeah, RAFO.
Let's just say that the highspren are perhaps a little bit different from other spren.
The history of Nightblood, we know that it's created by knowledge of the Shardblades. Would you say that Vasher's first trip to Roshar coincided with a certain individual that tried to take over all of Roshar?
You're talking about Sadees?
The Sunmaker?
...I'd have to look at the timeline, but it was not-- it is not something I have present in my mind. It could have overlapped. So, it might overlap, but there's not a cause-and-effect there.
So, Sunmaker and Vasher are sep--
Are not the same people, good question. Sunmaker is legitimately Dalinar's ancestor.
Can I ask about the wrong decision in the beginning of the original The Way of Kings?
In the original [The] Way of Kings Kaladin wins and Shardblade and Plate and keeps it.
The thing about women eating sweeter foods, and how sharp the gender divide was and-- I just found that worldbuilding really interesting, so how do you get inspired by that?
So I noticed that a lot of cultures have these really stark gender disparities. And I think in America we don't—like even around the world we still have a lot of them—in America we kind of-- I'm glad we don't because I think it is actual progress to not [have these disparities]. But at the same time that's a really big part of so many different cultures that I wanted to play with that idea.
And I loved in The Wheel of Time how Robert Jordan had the magic word differently [...] and so I was looking for a long time for something I can do that plays with the idea of gender roles, and that's kind of what rose out of it. It actually came from when I was working on the history and the moment when the men kind of seized control of the Shardblades. You know about this?
Yeah, I read about it online.
So that moment I'm like "alright, there's a divergence there. How do they strictly define the gender roles to maintain the power of these weapons?" And I think that's-- and I just kind of built from there.
It's really interesting though that women in a way are actually the creative minds-- they're actually not suppressed, but they're repressed in a different area.
It is, right. It's this weird repression where you can't do what you want, but they're actually in many ways the most powerful ones in society, but they're constrained by it.
Yeah, they're the ones that are creative because men don't even read because they're not supposed to. I guess that's what's really interesting to me.
It was sooo much fun to figure some of these things out because it plays with expectations a little bit but also plays into them in really interesting ways.
Are there any clues or easter eggs in Roshar/the cosmere that have not been discovered yet?
Yeah, but they're not ones that you should be able to discover. They'll just be things that you'll able to look back at. We embed some things here and there in the art, like the lastclap that was in foreshadowed in the margins of one of the art pieces in the first book, with someone catching a Shardblade. For instance, a lot of the little circles for characters at the start of the stories represent things that will happen much later in the series, but most of them are intentionally zoomed in of what the shot would be so that you can't tell right now, because these are not things that you're supposed to be able to figure out. Most things that I intended for you to figure out, you did, and some that I didn't intend you to figure out, you also did. So people can feel very proud of that. Yes, there are a bunch of easter eggs, there are a ton of them, but there is no way you can figure out what they are.
So what would Wayne do with a Shardblade?
Hehehe... He would have way too much fun.
If you had a Shardblade, what would yours manifest as?
Ka, the Windrunner, hers manifests as a pen. I’d probably end up with a pen.
Does anyone understand what [Brandon] means in saying that dead Shardblades cannot heal the soul, whereas living ones can?
It seems like it's been a while since I've read WoR, and I can't make out how the original scene demonstrates this? Is he talking about Kaladin's soul or Szeth's?
I don't understand it myself, except that two Orders can use Regrowth. But that might not be what Brandon is talking about.
The man who calls himself Taln had his Blade swapped with another. Presumably, the people (or person) doing so thought he had an Honorblade.
Would the people who did the swap have known if Taln did not in fact actually have an Honorblade? Could they have been taking a chance and in fact ended up with a regular Shardblade?
This is possible. Assuming they knew just what they were trying to grab, they'd probably have figured it out very quickly.
You've said before that Soulcasting can't create atium or lerasium which makes sense since they're made of Investiture from other Shards. But could a Soulcaster, perhaps in the proximity of Dalinar's perpendicularity, provide enough Stormlight to Soulcast something into Honor's Godmetal (tanavastium)? What about Cultivation's metal, or an alloy of both, like Shardblade metal?
So, creating a God Metal is not something that's done easily in the Cosmere. HOWEVER, it is possible. You'd need a ton of Investiture, and being near Dalinar's perpendicularity is unlikely to be enough. I'd say Soulcasting, or something akin to it, has the means to do this if it could obtain the proper power charge.
1) How simple is it to bond an Honorblade? Is it just a matter of willing it? Shardblades need gemstones, but it seems like Honorblades might not even need those.
2) Do you need to be bonded to an Honorblade to Surgebind? Or is just holding it in your hand sufficient?
3) Do you need to be bonded to an Honorblade for it to change your eye color? Or would holding it in your hand be sufficient to do the eye color trick?
RAFO.
I was wondering if, at the Recreance, the Radiant were deliberately trying to put Shardblades in the hands of non-Radiants? Since they left them all outside a military base.
RAFO.
In the end of Words of Radiance, Syl is turning into a Shardblade as well as other different weapons, and Kaladin has a whole bunch of windspren around him. I am wondering if that is a precursor to Shardplate?
I think you are a very smart man and you are asking wise questions.
What’s the difference between a Dawnshard and a Shardblade?
They’re actually, they… You will find out. (laughter) I can’t really reveal that right now, because that’s a RAFO.
The guards that are used on the Shardblades, that people are able to work with them safely, are those made of aluminum?
[...] This is an excellent question that is well asked, and people are thinking along the right lines. I haven't answered 100%, but people are thinking the right way.
