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I was wondering if you have off the top of your head any one-armed Herdazian jokes to offer?
Only the obvious one.
That being?
How do you get the one-armed Herdazian out of a tree?
How's that?
You wave!
If you feel it would be inappropriate to release the leatherbound book [due to COVID-19] would you still consider releasing TWoK Prime?
Yes, if I don't do the kickstarter, I will find another way to release TWOK prime--it would feel bad to yank it from people.
One of the major post-sale revisions I did to Elantris came at the suggestion of my agent, Joshua Bilmes. He noted that I had several chapters where Hrathen just walked about, thinking to himself. He worried that these sections made the middle of the book drag a bit, and also feared that they would weaken Hrathen's character. So, instead, he suggested that I add Telrii to the book some more, and therefore give Hrathen opportunities to be clever in the way he achieved his goals.
This is the first chapter that shows any major revision in this direction. In the original, Hrathen simply walked along, thinking to himself. I added Telrii to the second half of the chapter, putting some of Hrathen's internal musings into their discussion. I cut some of the more repetitive sections, and then left the others interspersed between lines of dialogue.
The result is, I think, a very strong new section.
It sounds like [Brandon] identified a new shard, Ingenuity, in an interview in Bulgaria. Can you verify this?
That is news to me! Maybe [Isaac] can ask him.
I asked [Brandon]. He said readers can interpret his words how they want.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Vasher Finds Vivenna
I'm torn about this ending. It seems like this last chapter is a little anticlimactic, and yet at the same time, there is still the major conflict of the book to resolve.
Or is it the major conflict of the book? Probably not, as I think about it. This book's major conflicts were character conflicts. Yes, we want to save Idris, and it's important—but what happens with the characters has overshadowed that. Perhaps that's why this chapter feels just a bit tacked on. It's not as bad as the Well of Ascension second ending, however, and I think it's nearly the best way to format this story. That doesn't stop it from feeling a little extraneous, though.
Would the spike that has all four charges, could you actually reuse it and give a different person a different power, or even the same person a different power?
No. When you first spike. . .
It loses all the other ones?
No. Where you place the spike.
Every Newsletter, I like to sit down and write something for you that will be a little different. Something that gives a window into what I’ve been doing lately, or things I’ve been thinking about.
Today, because of the White Sand release, I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between Brandon the writer from the late 90’s (when the book was written) and today. I was 19 when I wrote the first draft of White Sand, and 24 when I wrote the second version (the one that was turned into the graphic novel.) Looking through it again, there is a lot about me and my writing that has changed.
The magic system is one. White Sand has a very cool magic system, where people control sand with their mind. The magic is powered by the water inside the person’s body, which is a neat system. You need to drink a lot in order to have power over the sand--but it’s on a tidally locked planet, where the sun never sets on that side of the world. (In fact, the sun recharges the sand’s power.) So everything is connected in a cool way. Sunlight recharges the sand, a person gives water to the sand (it’s actually a microscopic lichen-like substance living on the sand, and giving it its white color, that creates the magic. The Sand Master gives water to the lichen, fueling its magical life cycle, which in turn releases power that allows the Sand Master to control the sand.) But the sunlight also makes you more likely to dehydrate, which in turn stops you from being able to power the magic.
And then, it has the oddball--Sand Masters ALSO have the power to turn sand into water. I did this because it was cool to my then-writer brain. What if people who lived in a giant desert could make water? Wouldn’t that be useful? I use this to great effect in the story, and yet, it doesn’t fit the narrative. The modern me would never have added this power. It doesn’t fit into the entire system in a cohesive way. The rest makes logical sense; this (though I tried to justify it with worldbuilding behind the scenes) just doesn’t.
But in some ways, the old me was more willing to take chances. This is important to realize as well--I can't become so certain I know the way that things SHOULD be done, that I fall into doing the same thing over and over. I don't think the power to turn sand into water, ultimately, works in the novel. (Let me know what you think, if you read it.) But the fact that I was willing to add screwy, out-of-the-box powers to magic systems back then is a reminder that not everything in life is neat, able to be tied up with a bow. As much as I like playing video games, I don't want my books to feel like a video game--and that's a danger when every piece of the book, magic, and setting fits together to the point that it loses any sense of feeling organic.
A good lesson to learn from my old self.
I find a lot of the things I do in my writing now were there in these older books like White Sand, they just weren’t fully formed yet. I can also see my early self striving very hard not to fall into cliches, or to do just what was safe or expected. One of the book's two main protagonists, for example, is a black woman. I was trying hard to make sure my books weren’t only about white dudes. And yet, I was still young in my understanding of how to make a book feel real and vibrant, full of people who see the world in unique and different ways. For example, while I have a strong female protagonist, in the first draft she was basically the only only major female character. I did this a lot in the past--focused so hard on doing one thing well that I forgot to expand it to the greater story. (As a note, we changed one of the characters in the graphic novel version to be female, to help balance this out. It worked very well, and she's now one of my favorite characters in the whole book.)
It's hard to see past your biases in books though--and this is still something I fight against. I think great fiction somehow expresses the way the world truly is, the way the writer sees the world, and the way that people NOT the writer see the world, all at once. In this book, one of the main protagonists is dark skinned,. And yet, if you read the book, you’ll find that some of the villain groups are stereotypical, faceless, dark-skinned savages. While that same culture has some main characters who have real depth and characterization (thankfully) that didn’t stop me from relying on tropes for some of the broad brush strokes of the story.
Writing is a constant struggle of managing clichés and tropes, and figuring out when they serve you, and when they don’t. And the more you write, the more you become aware of things you lean upon--not just tropes like the ones I mentioned above, but things that are individual. I’ve been wondering a lot about these things with my own writing. At what point does, "Inventive magic system, religious politics, and people faced with difficult moral decisions" become a cliche to me any my writing? How can I push in new areas, doing new things, while preserving what people love about my writing?
Well, I'm still thinking about all these things. I'm very fond of White Sand, and when I was going back through it, I often found myself smiling. remember with great fondness the time I had back then to just write. There were no tours, no interviews, and nothing to distract me. I wouldn’t go back for anything, (I like actually having people read my books!) but there was something pure about that time, when I wasn't writing to deadline, I was just writing whatever I felt like at the moment. That's another thing I try to preserve today, the freedom to do odd projects now and then. Without it, I think I'd get very boring, very quickly.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy White Sand! This book needed far less revision to bring into graphic novel form than I thought it would. The dialogue was snappy, even after all these years, and the world was one of my more inventive. 20-years-ago-me wasn’t nearly as bad a writer as I sometimes pretend he was!
One of the things I really like about your books is the creative and immersive backdrop that the stories take place in. I know you spend a lot of time (and words!) on the background material for these worlds. Will you ever publish your world-building notes?
I'd like to someday. The reason I haven't yet is because many of them contain cosmere-related notes that give huge spoilers for other books. I could just expunge those, but I feel it better to let things grow a little more and then do some worldbooks. The Mistborn RPG coming out this year is half worldbook, though, and has a lot of setting information from my notes.
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.
The science fiction magazine at BYU: do you recommend your students participate in that?
I do. I actually offer extra credit for anyone who goes to the magazine and reads slush. I feel for a new writer, reading slush on a magazine can be really helpful because you see what some of the rookie mistakes are, being made by other people kind of in your same mode, your same skill set, and sometimes, when I did it as an aspiring writer, it taught me so much about what newer writers were doing, and things that I could avoid. It also helps to spend a little time around editors and see what's going through the minds of editors. Certainly a magazine is different from a book publication, but they share a lot of things, and it can be very helpful in teaching, so I suggest if there's a local fanzine—or a local semi-prozine, which is what the BYU magazine is, kind of, what the terminology is for it—go be a part; read some slush, and be part of the community, and see what other writers are doing.
In Allomancy, bad alloys can be detrimental to you, can make you sick and stuff like that. Does it also apply in Feruchemy or generally impurities, do they apply?
Not as strongly.
How would they apply? Is it more like a smaller charge or?
It would just take less of a charge. It wouldn't make you sick.
Was the Shin invasion a cover for gathering lots of Shardblades and hiding them away?
RAFO.
Fantasy is a slow-starting genre. Readers expect this, and hopefully they'll invest enough in the story to keep them reading this long. I love the first half of Elantris—it does what I want a book to do. It presents fun characters in interesting situations, then laces their actions with just enough of a thought-provoking air and an edge of excitement that the reader feels fulfilled. Writing is truth, and it should deal with important topics. However, before that truth must come enjoyment, I believe. If a book isn't, first and foremost, fun to read, then I think the storyteller has failed. After that, he or she hopefully manages to deal with some real issues and questions—this is, in my opinion, what makes characters real.
Anyway, on to section two!
There are three planets in the solar system, are they all in the habitable zone, with the water...at least two of them must be...
When you say three, is it actually three in the solar system, or is it three...
There are three planets with sentient beings on them.
There are more than three planets in the solar system?
There are. With non-sentient beings. There are three planets of importance. So I didn't give you very much, because you wanted something...I could give you something.
Yeah I knew that, I should have said that I knew that before I asked.
You may have...here's one for you alright. You may have heard a reading from one of those planets today.
Also, "The Call of Elantris"—the name of Part Two—is probably the weakest of my three sub-titles. I liked "Shadow" and "Spirit" a lot, and I knew that I had to use something parallel. I named this one "Call" because of the way Hrathen and Sarene both end up getting tossed into the city, then end up using that event to their advantage. Raoden also deals with the "call" of the Dor inside himself during this section, overcoming that particular conflict
What is Brandon going to take his break from this to do?
Fortunately, I have planned it out and what I'm going to do is the Apocalypse Guard. I have to do something new. So I'll probably do Apocalypse Guard and then a sequel to something, either the Rithmatist or to Wax and Wayne will be would I do after. Those are both going to happen pretty soon. Apocalypse Guard is my follow-up to Steelheart, so thank you for the opportunity to pitch this.
So my one sentence pitch on this is, you're having a disaster, you call the justice leage and they're all gone taking care of something more important but you get the intern, who has no powers but she does her best anyway. In the Steelheart universe, people have discovered alternate versions of Earth and what they find is that most of these alternate versions of Earth are undergoing some sort of disaster. Something has happened in the timeline of the multiverse that is causing different varieties of disasters to occur that are planet-ending. So the Apocalypse Guard is formed of a bunch of engineers, scientists, and people with extraordinary powers whose job it is to save the planets. They take like eight months in planning, it's not like they just show up, it's like we put all of our effort into saving planets. Well, a disaster befalls the Apocalypse Guard, something or someone attacks them, and the coffee girl intern gets teleported to one of these worlds they were planning to save with no resources and three weeks until the world is destroyed. And everybody else is too busy dealing with the attack on them. It's her story on a planet that is doomed, trying to figure out either how to get off or maybe how to put the plan into motion that they had come up with. So there you are, coffee girl saves the world.
The Inscription on the Cache's Steel Plate
The Lord Ruler's words here are probably the most altruistic things he wrote in his entire life. Elend worries sometimes that he's becoming like the Lord Ruler, and the truth is that—in part—he is. The difference is that the Lord Ruler started out as a spiteful, petty man and learned through the power he held to be more responsible with it. Elend was a good-hearted, idealistic man—and leadership tempered him into someone a little more realistic.
I guess I'm saying that power doesn't always have to corrupt. In many ways, I think it can change a man for the better.
What else . . . oh, Susebron's taste buds. A couple of people have e-mailed me about this. From my research (which could be wrong), I've come to understand that the old teaching that certain parts of your mouth have taste buds that focus on certain tastes is wrong. The conventional wisdom is that your "sweet" taste buds are on your tongue, and if it is removed, you won't be able to taste sugar. (Which is why people e-mail me.)
That's apparently an urban legend. There are different kinds of taste buds, but each kind appears in clusters alongside the other kinds. And while most of your taste buds are on the tongue, many are on the roof of the mouth too. So Susebron could taste sweets as well as he tastes anything else.
Is "Stormlight Archive" reference to any in-world or in-Cosmere place or item?
No, it's just archive of ten books which all have titles based on inworld books, but no Archive or something like that on world.
About the Sleepless, if and when will I see them again?
You have seen them multiple times already, so you will see them multiple times again.
Okay, I'll have to re-read and look closely.
Watch for cremlings in places that--
If I get a Slider, a Pulser, and a Nicroburst in a rocket with a lot of metal, do I have FTL?
Hehehehe. You're getting closer but you haven't figured it out yet.
Do we have definitive art for the Shardblades
Nothing that's released other than what you find in the books. But we will have definitive art for some of the Blades soon. :)
I'm a Steelheart fan.--
Sweet! I do have a little bit more in the works for that world. Probably some audio originals for Audible, I am working on them right now.
Has Hemalurgy been used outside of Scadrial that we've already seen?
You haven't seen someone using it, but there are effects of it that you have seen, I believe.
Did you write Amaram as an opposite of Dalinar or was he simply a bad guy meant to spur Kaladin?
I meant Amaram to be the representation of the corrupt side of the Alethi. Meaning they are all talk and very little heart. Very little of what they say, to the worst of the Alethi, gets to who they really are. They would rather be known as someone honorable than be actually honorable. And this I consider a major problem with their society, and I needed somebody to represent this. Part of it is, to represent a contrast to Kaladin’s ideals. This belief that lighteyes were these paragons of virtue. But I also needed somebody, you may say an opposite to Dalinar. In a way, he is an opposite to Dalinar, but more he just represents Alethi society. And I did want it to be that he wasn’t just all the way corrupt. When he makes his decision in Book One in the flashbacks, he is making a decision. There is a moment where he is considering. By the time you are seeing him in later books, that decision has taken him down a path that leaves him very far from any sort of redemption. But it was a choice. And he wasn’t just corrupt from the get go. But yeah, he represents what I feel would be bad about Alethi society. A kind of honor society that is more about looking honorable than being.
If Soulcast blood is human blood, does that mean Soulcast meat is people meat?
No.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that, like-- when it has a blood type, and things like that-- I don't know enough about blood. I didn't mean to imply it's human blood. I'm just saying, it has all the attributes of blood, and it could be ascribed to something specific. That's where my mind was going. If they were asking, "Is this human blood?" No, that's not necessarily-- some of it is. Soulcast meat is definitely not. Soulcast blood, probably is most of the time. But it is-- there are, like, certain derivations of it that happen. It's more complicated, in other words, than what I-- than a simple answer can give. So, is Soulcast blood human blood? You could use it for blood transfusions, most if it, unless, in certain instances, you couldn't. Like, it's more-- Those sorts of questions, I have to circumlocute them so much.
Let's just put it this way. You can eat-- The meat is not human meat, but the blood can be used for blood transfusions. Is that enough? Yeah, we'll go with that.
Hey, is Brandon willing to tell us which universe Skyward is in yet? He said a while aback that it was in a universe (not cosmere) that he'd written before.
So, here's the thing--it's a pretty big spoiler. Meaning if you know the novella this is tied to (and it's one of the ones mentioned in this thread) you'll know a moderately large plot point in the book.
It's not the type of spoiler that will ruin a story--I do think some readers would enjoy watching how I lace them together. But do be warned that if you haven't read my science fiction novellas, and you hate spoilers, you might want to wait until Skyward is out to read them.
That said, if you know the terminology of the novellas in question, you'll find your answer in chapter seventeen.
From all of your Cosmere books, do you have anywhere written what the timeframe between the series are?
I haven’t done that officially. We have it ourselves. What I’ve told people is that they are basically in order of being released. I haven’t jumped back. At least if you count the first of each individual series. So they’re roughly in order chronologically. White Sand is out of order because that’s chronologically one of the earliest. And now Stormlight and Wax & Wayne… Wax & Wayne are post-Stormlight, but I’m releasing… You know, it’s a little mixed up now.
Okay, I was almost expecting that in the Arcanum.
Yeah, we will do that eventually. There are just some secrets in there that I’m not sure I want to release, and there are other things I’m not sure I want to canonize because I’m still tweaking the dates a little bit.
Chapter Seven
Avoiding Hints about the Epigraph Author
The epigraph to this chapter, where the epigraph author discusses that he/she is going to refer to each group as "we" is very important, though most readers skip over it. What she/he is saying here is that you aren't going to be able to guess who he/she is simply by looking at which parts of this book she/he discusses. And that's all I'm going to say, because typing he/she all the time is getting very annoying/frustrating.
So the last several books you’ve been bringing the whole cosmere together, has that changed how you are putting your books together? Now that you're tying everything?
Not really, it’s been planned for a while to do that. For instance, Stormlight will still kind of remain its own thing and Mistborn was always going to point that direction. Now I accelerated it a little bit because of the Wax and Wayne books, which I kind of put in as interim stuff.
Do you have any idea what the ratings on the movies are gonna be? Like, is it gonna be R, or...
I will push for PG-13 with the bit of power I have. I mean, they know, like... I don't have power over that. But that's part of the discussion, when I say, "We can't do Game of Thrones with this. It is not appropriate for my books and audience to have content like that in the books." So, like I said, they know. I can't guarantee
What is the most unforgettable frustration ever since you became a writer?
Ah most unforgettable frustration since becoming a writer. Boy. I would say that, as a writer, since being published the number one frustration is sometimes I have to meet a deadline instead of just going off and writing whatever bizarre thing I want. I still do that a lot but once in a while I've got to meet a deadline, and I've been training myself to be like no, I'm writing this book, and I have to be creative and excited about that book. And I can't write until I get creative and excited about it. So it's that trying to get myself to make sure that I'm created and excited about a book, that's very difficult. I would say that touring is also, it gets very exhausting. I was surprised at by how exhausting going on tour a lot can do. We've mitigated that by keeping me from having to get early mornings, when I don't have to have an early morning I'm much more chipper. I'm not a morning person, I'm a night person, and numerous days in a row with not enough sleep can make me a zombie.
Rock is taller than the other bridgemen. When he gets under the bridge, will that make it more difficult for him? Wouldn't he have more load on his shoulders than the guys next to him?
Um, yes, though you will notice that I equalized for height with the pads on the shoulders. And a bridge that will run-- yeah, they will use pads and things like this. And you can customize your bridge over time. The fact that most bridgemen die before that's necessary... um, yes. But it would mean he would end up having to stoop for part of it unless you wanted to carry a lot more of the weight. Being next to Rock would probably be a fun thing. But then there are the pads, and things like that, so. *brief pause* And once they really got it going, they could re-- they could really customize that bridge. Like, you know, take off pieces underneath and things like that so that it fit everyone really well. But in Sadeas's army you don't really get to that point.
Can you shed some light on how you went about designing Roshar's symbol?
We knew that we wanted the Double-eye to be part of the symbol. So it was a matter of finding the right shape for the eye. We went through dozens of ideas of how thick the lines could be, what parts to emphasize, etc. We also knew we wanted swords to be a part of it, so we tried several ways of incorporating those until we wound up with what we currently have. Someday, I'll share the different iterations we went through to land on the current symbol.
Why do Vorin women have to hide their left hand?
Originally, a woman wrote a book about female and male arts, which claimed women could do things like art with one hand while men needed two for their arts, like fighting. Eventually, it evolved and just stuck as a taboo, but it's a cultural thing.
It's similar to how some things are perfectly fine in our Western culture but would be frowned upon in, say, Korea. I wanted to add some weirdness to their culture, something that is pretty normal to them, but strange to us. Taboos usually are strange.
How come on Sel and Scadrial the people get their powers like in a rush either overnight or by snapping, while on Roshar it's very slow and subtle.
On Roshar there is another participant involved, since you're making a bond with a spren, and that has a big effect on it. You also have some very odd things happening on Sel that are causing a lot of oddity in the way that the magic works. I would call it mostly just a flavor of the different styles of magic and what's going on, but the way that flavor works involves the spren and involves how the Dor is on Sel.
Are you gonna try to use superconductors or different alloys in your books?
Yeah, you'll see a lot of interaction with metal. In fact, book four of Stormlight talks a little more about how metals in fabrials work. If you watch very closely, you'll see parallels between that and what's happening in the Mistborn series.
The further we get along, the more important things like superconductors will be, and we'll start explaining why metals work the way they do in the cosmere, and stuff like that. So that's all stuff you can look forward to.
So, as a writer of so many books of epic fantasy, what is your crazy sleep schedule like? And how do you manage your life?
So, my crazy schedule is not as "crazy" as you think, just a little crazy. I go to bed at 4:00, and I get up at noon. I did not become a writer so that I could keep the job that a working stiff would have. My writing schedule is generally, I do one big block from about noon until 5:00. I hang out with my kids and my wife from about 5:00 until 10:00. And then from about 10:00 until 2:00 or 3:00, I do another writing block, and then I take an hour or two off and play video games or something like that. *laughter and cheers* The secret to my productivity is not much of a secret. It is that I work every day, I just get get up and I write. And I don't always publish what I write. Some of what I write doesn't work. But I like writing, I like telling stories. The creative process is really, really engaging to me, it's what I like doing, so I do it every day. And I'm not a really fast writer, I'm just really consistent at my writing.
In Oathbringer it is revealed that the humans who originally came to Roshar were the first ones to be named Voidbringers and that they carried magical powers. The Stormfather also implies that modern Surgebinding didn't exist before the Heralds. Were the original powers that the humans possessed Voidbinding?
So, we're getting into lots of interesting definitional problems here. And also the ways that different entities perceive the definitions of different terms. I will answer this question specifically as we do the flashbacks from Ash and Taln's viewpoints. So you've got a long ways to wait. But understand that definitions are not always-- the way that people define things cannot always be trusted. That said, humans were not using powers from Honor originally.
Dilaf's Backstory
I hope that Dilaf's explanations about his past are suitably creepy. I also hope they give some explanation. He is a man who betrayed his religion when he thought it would save the woman he loved–only to find himself, in turn, betrayed by the Elantrians. His wife became Hoed, and he himself burned her. This would have something of an effect on a man's psyche, I think.
Now, recall that Elantris was at the height of its power when Dilaf took his wife in to be healed. I mentioned her earlier in the book, in a Raoden chapter. He found a story in one of his textbooks about a woman who was improperly-healed, and it turned her into what the Elantrians now are. This is Dilaf's wife. (Go re-read Chapter Twenty-Five for the story.) I find this little item beautifully circular.
Anyway, we now have an explanation for Dilaf's instability and his hatred. I really like how Dilaf, normatively, grows into being the prime villain for this book. He comes to it slowly, kind of stealthily, while the reader is focusing on Hrathen. Yet, Dilaf is there from the first Hrathen chapter, always dangerous, always trying to destroy Elantris, always making his own plans. I worked hard to bring about his rise to power in the book, and I hope that it worked. Puling off the Dilaf/Hrathen reversal was one of my main goals in the story.
What about cameos? Do you have some ideas in your mind?
Cameos for me? I want to die in a different way in every movie. As payment for killing off characters. And so I want to be like the Redshirt or whatever, the person who gets killed in a new creative way. That's my thought.
Ruin Interferes with Communications
Another note on what Ruin is up to here. He figures that keeping supplies from Elend—and not letting him know about the chaos in Luthadel—will make him more likely to attack Fadrex. So, Elend and Vin get it wrong. In this case, Ruin is more successful than when he helped destroy the koloss, and his ploy has the desired effect. By putting the pressure on Elend, Ruin hopes to make the emperor more impulsive and more likely to follow his gut, which is telling him just to attack.
Looks like he is going for that mirroring of titles after all! Very Vorin of him if he can get the last one of the 5 to fit.
(If you take the initials of the books so far, you'd get (t)WoK WoR O RoW, so he's on track for KoW(t) to make the last one fit!)
I've spoken about it. It's something I wanted to do originally for the series, decided against--then decided to go in for again after I changed the second book's title and picked a one-word title for the third book.
That's really cool! So assuming Rhythm of War is the Eshonai/Venli book, the fifth book will be the Szeth book which was tentatively titled Stones Unhallowed. You'll be changing that to something that initializes to KoW?
The title of the final book will change. I was already uncertain about Stones Unhallowed.
You'll notice the quick mention of the Widow's Trial in this chapter. This sub-plot was actually added later in the drafting process, and I had to come back and write these comments into this scene. It will become apparent why later on.
Though, you spoilers already know how it is used. I needed to get Sarene into Elantris somehow, and I wasn't certain how I was going to do it. Somewhere along the way I devised the idea of the Widow's Trial. In the end, it worked quite well, as it provided the means for Raoden to create New Elantris.
Silverlight is... old?
No, Khriss is old. *laughter*
I know Khriss is old--
Let's RAFO Silveright until I set something there. Here's the thing. It's weird.
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.
I just finished reading the 10th anniversary edition of Elantris. I'm... still a LITTLE fuzzy on how the Chasm Line looks, added to the city. Is there any chance you might post a picture of Rao with the chasm line added?
I wish I could, but Elantris artwork is all Isaac's space. I haven't read the 10-year edition yet, but I was hearing it had all-new maps... they're not clearing it up? I'll have to take a look and see what you're seeing.
Are we ever going to get Glyphs that represent the 3 Shards on Roshar?
This is a very intriguing question, one that I've written down for future contemplation. Thanks for the food for thought!
Can any Allomancer burn atium?
Can any Allomancer burn atium? Atium, no. Asterisk but no. There is a reason why. But no, they cannot.
A while ago I was talking with my friend about the presence of isotopes in Mistborn, and we thought surely the metals have ions and isotopes like they do in the real world, otherwise how else would they exist on an atomic level? We wondered if there were radioactive isotopes on Scadrial or even in the Cosmere as a whole, else they would never discover nuclear weaponry and fuels. None of the non-god metals in Mistborn have radioactive components, but that isn't to say that radioactive metals don't exist in the cosmere. Radioactive elements such as uranium (a necessary discovery for the 3rd and 4th Eras of Mistborn if they want to have long term fuel sources/weapons) and radium (necessary discovery in the field of medicine) seem necessary to the advancement of civilization. This also raises the question of where would the god metals, lerasium, atium, and harmonium, fit on the Periodic Table, and would all of their isotopes be stable, would they perhaps have radioactive isotopes that can somehow affect their Allomantic properties?
These are things we'll start answering in the modern day Mistborn novels, so RAFO for now.
