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Questioner

What was the metal that Hoid gave Vivenna and her crew to use the fabrial?

Brandon Sanderson

You're asking, what metal it was that let them use the fabrial without the screamers detecting them? So, should be aluminum. I don't think there's anything sneaky about that. The only thing that I've had to change is, I wanted the sheathes that they use with Shardblades to be aluminum, and Peter tells me I just can't do that. It's not in continuity. So we have to have some sort of aluminum... alloy, or something like that. I'm not sure exactly what I wrote that broke the continuity on that, but he is certain that those can't be aluminum. So, those aren't aluminum, but it was aluminum around that. And Hoid's bag has an aluminum lining, too.

Chiberty

What happens if you try to summon a Shardblade, but there is a wall where it would appear? What about liquids in the way, or person, and what if Shardplate is in the way?

Brandon Sanderson

Generally, the Blade isn't going to appear inside of something solid--and will appear (shoving aside) in liquid. It can be hit or miss on people, but generally doesn't work--and Shardplate would stop it from materializing.

Oversleep

I got a question about this and last week's epigraph.

The metals Fused use. How come nobody knows, guesses or even suspects that aluminium and its alloys are Investiture resistant? They know you can Soulcast something into aluminium, so they should also know it's impossible to Soulcast aluminium into something else.

And once they know about metal that cannot be Soulcast, they start experimenting with fabrials - they used that in construction of Fourth Bridge - and then the logical step is to test it against Shardblades.Probably experimenting with alloys of aluminium, too.

Yet the metal Fused use to make weapons resistant to Shardweapons is a mystery to them?

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Brandon Sanderson

They're getting to answers here. Problem is, metallurgy just isn't a big science on Roshar. I feel it's one of those things that is more easy to see externally than internally--and do remember that there are things like god metals (Shardblades, for example) that also behave strangely around investiture. They have far more experience with those than aluminum, which is more of a little historical oddity to them than a big revolutionary part of science. Add to that the fact that some of the metals the fused are using aren't aluminum, and...well, I don't think it's as obvious a leap as you're making it out to be.

ImBuGs

So the Fused's fabrials are not 100% aluminum based? Or they are and they are struggling to reach that conclusion?

Brandon Sanderson

I think what you're asking will be answered in the book, so I'll RAFO for now.

Arcanist

As Dalinar gave his Shardblade to Highprince Sadeas, was his motivation only to free the Brigdemen as "Thank you" for the help? Or did he already plan to build a team from soldiers who are loyal only to him?

Brandon Sanderson

He certainly saw the side benefits. However, his primary motive was to make a statement. Not just as a thank you, but as a way of proclaiming to all of the Alethi "What we have been doing is wrong. This wealth is not worth the lives of men."

Luke Beartline

Along the lines of BioChromatic Breath being akin to a person's soul, how would a Shardblade react to someone who does not have any Breath, would it cut them like an inanimate object?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Remember, one of the things with Breath is I consider Breath to be a part of someone's soul, but it is the extra part that the Cosmere has that non-Cosmere doesn't have. I don't know how far I want to lean into this, but there is definitely a part of me that thinks that Drabs, people who have given up their breath on Nalthis, are just like people from our world. That's what they are, that if we went to the Cosmere we would all be Drabs. Even on planets that aren't Nalthis, where you can't take part of that and give it away and things like that, people are invested. They are invested generally more than here.

Why do I do this? There's a couple reasons. One, it's really convenient for some narrative reasons. A lot of books I'm writing are these kind of action-adventure stories, and can human beings actually take the punishment that is delivered, let's say to Adolin in the end of Oathbringer? *noncommital negative sounds* He doesn't come off well from that, but could a human being really take that? I go back and forth. Humans are capable of some pretty incredible feats, particularly with adrenaline driving them, but my kind of blanket answer is everyone in the Cosmere has got a bit more Investiture; everyone's got something like Breath. Nalthians have something kind of extra special because they can use it in different ways, but everybody's got something like that.

It's leading to the fact that for instance, I highlighted this in the books, this part is canon: There are things about Rosharans that make it so that a lot of diseases have trouble getting a foothold. You do not have the bubonic plague on Roshar. You could maybe say this is because they are not living in close enough proximity to mammals for diseases to hop species as happens on our planet, which is a pretty valid point. Things that affect a horse or a cow (a lot of different diseases from cows come to us), things that affect a cow are much more likely to be able to affect a human than something that affects a chull being able to affect a human. Totally valid, but I also think that there is something more going on here.

This allows me to do fantasy stories where... In Warbreaker we don't have to be worrying about the next outbreak of smallpox, which legitimately they probably would have to be worrying about. It means that, while this is kind of a trope that people, trope is the wrong term, but that people in the past did not have as bad as teeth as we assume that we do because they did not eat the levels of sugars and starches that we do. Investiture also in the Cosmere means that you're not going to... Dalinar probably would not have a full set of teeth, even without being punched in the face and stuff, if he were a human from Earth. But on Roshar he's got just a little bit extra vitality, a little bit extra something, just like everyone on the planet, that is making him a little tougher and making him a little more disease resistant and some of these things. It makes the stories more fun for me to tell and also gives us some suspension of disbelief on some of these things. You do not have to worry about smallpox outbreaks on most planets. You do have to worry about catching the curse of the Elantrian disease and being thrown into a prison city, but smallpox, not as big of a deal.

Adam

Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that too much anymore.

Brandon Sanderson

No, but I'm saying you could have to worry about things like that. Magical diseases, totally on the board, but the big plague they're dealing with in Roshar is the common cold that got brought across by some of the members of Seventeenth Shard, and that's going to die out pretty quickly. They will get over it and their immune system is... The common cold has come over multiple times before for reasons like that, colds just from another planet. Roshar, they've got three Shards. Basically if you want something like this to happen you go to a planet that's not quite as highly Invested where they might have a few more diseases, you pick one up, you bring it, and it spreads a little bit but then it dies off. That sort of thing happens a lot in the Cosmere. You do not have to worry about during the space age that people are going to be bringing lots of diseases across planets.

mycoltbug

Could a Shardblade holder potential drill a hole through the planet by using his Blade like Dalinar?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh... I think that you'd hit the core and that would not be a good thing for you.

Questioner 1

Shardplate thus far has been powered by Stormlight in the spheres. But after-- now that we've got Radiants, is it powered by themselves?

*adds something about "spren" but is spoken over by Brandon*

Brandon Sanderson

Well so far we have not seen Radiants wearing Shardplate.

Questioner 2

Yeah, I was kind of wondering that myself, 'cause-- 'cause they're not spren, because the spren were the... Shards [Shardblades]. So what <are> they?

Brandon Sanderson

So, that's a big ol' "what really is Shardplate?" *hands RAFO card*

Patrick

Over your previous books you've developed a reputation as the 'magic system guy'. Was it therefore a deliberate move to hold back on the magic in The Way of Kings, at least compared to your earlier books?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it was. That's a very astute question. I've written a blog post that I'm not satisfied with, but that I'll probably be revising and posting very soon, that is going to talk about this. When I finished the Mistborn trilogy and Warbreaker, I felt that there were a few things that were becoming Brandon clichés that I needed to deal with. I don't mind being known as the magic system guy. But when I become known ONLY as the magic system guy, that worries me. It isn't that I sat down with this series and said, well, I'm gonna show them, I'm not going to do a magic system. But when I planned this series, it was not appropriate for me to shoehorn in a lot of the magic system in book one. Though my agent suggested that I do just that. He said, look, this is what you're known for, this is what people read you for; if you don't have this it's going to be glaringly obvious. My response was that I would hope that story and character are what carries a book, not any sort of gimmick—well, gimmick is the wrong word.

Something that I pondered and wrote about a lot—just to myself—is that Mistborn was postmodern fantasy. If you look at the trilogy, in each of those books I intentionally took one aspect of the hero's journey and played with it, turned it on its head, and tried very hard to look at it postmodernly, in which I as a writer was aware of the tropes of the genre while writing and expected readers to be aware of them, to be able to grasp the full fun of what I was doing. And that worried me—that was fun with Mistborn, but I didn't want to become known as the postmodern fantasy guy, because inherently you have to rely on the genre conventions in order to tell your story—even if you're not exploiting them in the same way, you're still exploiting them.

For that reason, I didn't want to write The Way of Kings as a postmodern fantasy. Or in other words, I didn't want to change it into one. And I also didn't want to change it into a book that became only about the magic, or at least not to the extent that Warbreaker was. I like Warbreaker; I think it turned out wonderfully. But I wanted to use the magic in this book as an accent. Personally, I think it's still as full of magic as the others, but the magic is happening much more behind the scenes, such as with the spren I've talked about in other interviews, which are all about the magic. We haven't mentioned Shardplate and Shardblades, but those are a very powerful and important part of the magic system, and a more important part of the world. I did intentionally include Szeth's scenes doing what he does with the Lashings to show that there was this magic in the world, but it just wasn't right for this book for that to be the focus. I do wonder what people will say about that. I wonder if that will annoy people who read the book. But again, this is its own book, its own series, and in the end I decided that the book would be as the story demanded, not be what whatever a Brandon Sanderson book should be. As a writer, that's the sort of trap that I don't want to fall into.

Questioner

Which Shardblade is this one? *points at illustration* I actually asked Isaac which one it was, and he told me to ask you.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh. I bet we haven't canonized it yet. Which is why he doesn't want to say. Normally, I let... 'Cause it's not any of the named ones, it's not Adolin's unnamed sword (well, it actually has a name now), it's not Sunraiser, it's not Oathbringer, so it's probably...

The one who has to do that is Ben McSweeney.

Questioner 2

Mark was thinking it was Gavilar's sword.

Brandon Sanderson

It could be Gavilar's sword. Who else has one... Khal only has armor, not a blade. Really, what happens is, we have Ben McSweeney just draw a bunch of these, and then we canonize them as we need them to belong to certain people. But you can write to Ben and ask him to canonize it. And we'll just take what he says. Because it's not one of the ones that we... It's from one of Shallan's illustrations? Yeah. So, she saw it in the training field. So it's gotta be one of the Alethi blades. Could be the King's Blade.

The__Good__Doctor

Hi Brandon! I wanted to talk about the revised ending of Words of Radiance.

So, it looks like Kaladin won't be actually delivering the killing blow to Szeth any more. I think that Kaladin was entirely justified in doing this, since it was a fight to the death, and Kaladin was protecting not only Dalinar but his entire squad below. Kaladin even seems surprised when he lands the blow, expecting Szeth to block it like he had been doing the entire fight. The killing was not done in vengeance or with malice, unlike what Adolin does later. Having the storm kill Szeth seems like an anti-climatic way to end the scene, since it takes away Szeth's decision to die by the sword, and means we no longer have an example of why the spren Shardblades don't immediately kill people.

Brandon Sanderson

I woud be fine having him do it, though I think killing a foe who has given up was against this thematic plot. But what pushed me over the edge to change was the sense that I was pulling too many fast ones on the reader with people coming back to life. I wanted it clear to readers that Szeth was not dead, so this scene wasn't a fake out, which would weaken Jasnah's arrival later.

Dancingedge

Um, Mr. Sanderson, I don't mean to be disrespectful as you probably have the scene better in your head than I do but how is a man without Stormlight falling from a very large hight, while in the middle of two Highstorms coliding and throwing entire platoos in the air expected to survive? Maybe I don't have the right persective on this given that I saw both Jasnah (the body disapearing is just as much a give away as it never being shown in my book) and Syl (Pattern outright said Sprens can be revived) coming but unless you severly change the fight scene I don't see how being stabbed actually matters for Szeth survival chances.

Brandon Sanderson

The idea is that the reader didn't see him die, so there's a psychological trigger--one that says "Ah, I didn't see a body. He's probably not dead."

Yes, Szeth totally died from that fall--just as the young man that Lift revived had died from what he suffered. We know that Stormlight can fix the body and bring back the dead, so long as very little time has passed.

The import of the tweak to me is allowing some question in the reader's mind, so that the return is not a betrayal.

The__Good__Doctor

That is a lot more understandable. Having too many reveals at the end could be problematic. I agree that Jasnah coming back felt like pulling a fast one right at the end. However, I think the suprise of Szeth coming back was really well done, especially with the reveal of Nin (Nale, Nalan? This dude is so old he has three names!) at the very end with his special sword friend. I feel like that was the real zinger that should have closed the book.

I was a little underwhelmed with Jasnah coming back, not because I dislike her, but because I thought she was well and truly dead. She died so early in the book that I was completely accepting of her death by the end, and her coming back in a 'gotcha' moment felt a little hollow. Perhaps this could have happened about a hundred pages into the next book? I don't know the entire story like you do, of course, but as a reader it felt like Szeth and his rebirth should have been the final closing image.

Brandon Sanderson

This all came about, if you're curious, during the detailed plotting of the second book. Originally, the outline did not call for Jasnah to leave, but I was having real trouble getting Shallan into a place--emotionally and experience-wise--where she could do the things she needed to do while Jasnah was around. I determined that Jasnah needed to pull a Gandalf, and let her ward alone for a while, and I'm glad I did it--the book is much, much stronger for it. However, the side effects of the last-minute change in the plot required Jasnah's reappearance, which sent a few waves through the book. (Szeth's death and survival being the main one.)

Walin

If you had a metal plate, and you inscribed into it--with a living Shardblade--the description of a spren, so it's kind of like an Aon for a spren, in a way; if you had an Elsecaller in the Cognitive Realm force Stormlight through the bead for that plate, would it act as a fabrial for that spren? So like, if you drew a spren, like a flamespren onto a metal plate, so you'd make a heat fabrial?

Brandon Sanderson

So you're trying to trap the spren in the [plate]?

Walin

There's not a spren, it's just a drawing of a spren.

Brandon Sanderson

So you're trying to Invest a drawing of a spren, and turn that Investiture into an actual spren, and make it work...I don't think this is going to work. I can see an argument that it would; I would err on "I don't think this is gonna work." But, you know, stranger things have happened, right?

Walin

My purpose for that question was asking whether Sel is the only one that can have Cognitive Investing--er, the one that's best at doing Cognitive Investing.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it is definitely best; it is nothing to do with the Shards themselves, and everything to do with what happened to them.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

So, ideas bounced off of my editor? I needed epigraphs for Part One that increased the tension for the book. Because I was really worried that Part One was very establishing, and I wanted to ramp up the tension. And so, a lot of ideas we bounced off of him. I eventually came up with what to do, but I did a lot of talking on that.

Failing continuity? Keeping track of how many Shardblades the Alethi has, and how many Adolin had won? I just fail continuity at that completely. That's, like, math, or something! So I just let Peter tell me. I'll write, "How many do they have now?" Or, "Does this guy have one yet?" And then, once I write the book, it all goes in the wiki, and I can just look it up. But until then, I kind of need Peter. And, you know, eye color. I don't remember what people's eye color is. But it's really important to the books what color someone's eyes are! So, I fail continuity at those sorts of things. I'm really good with plot arcs and stories, but remembering what someone's eye color is, I just have to look it up. I did the same thing in the Wheel of Time. It gave them so many headaches. Where they're like, "How can you not know what somebody's uncle is?" I'm like, "I don't care what their uncle is! What's their emotional resonance?"

Questioner

What has been your best writing experience?

Brandon Sanderson

What has been my best writing experience? There's a lot of them, I don't know if I can pick a best one. It's just the thing I love is, I spent ten years writing books kind of by myself alone at night working a graveyard shift at a hotel and the fact that I get to do this full time and I don't have to answer the phone and bring people laundry in the middle of writing a cool scene about shardblades. That's really nice. That I don't have to be-- I'm writing the climax and "Ah you would like a wake up call?" and then back to my climax. So being able to share the stories with people, having people who want to read them and support me is really fun.

Questioner

*inaudible*  mention another Shardblade <is gone>.  *inaudible*  Does Nin still have that?  

Brandon Sanderson

I would suspect that. . . yes.  That's a very good question.  

Questioner

What happens when a... spren picks up a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean picks up a Shard? Shardblade or Shard of Adonalsium?

Questioner

Picks up a Shard of Adonalsium.

Brandon Sanderson

A spren is a Shard of Adonalsium so it just--

Questioner

Picks up one of the big ones like could a spren do the same thing that Kelsier's spirit did after he--

Brandon Sanderson

*hesitantly* It's like you're asking if electricity can gain a charge of electricity and get electrified. Does that make sense? I mean-- It's a question that doesn't make a lot of sense.

If a Shard were to somehow-- They would just combine into a bigger Shard and get larger-- if that makes sense?

Questioner

The foundation of that question was I thought that maybe the Stormfather spren was basically doing what Kelsier's spirit did.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, um *sighs* Not really... It's really a not really There's some similarities but it's a not really. It's not quite a RAFO though. more of a--

Questioner

More of a "doesn't quite work that way".

Brandon Sanderson

--doesn't quite work that way but you're thinking along the right lines?

Iceblade44

Something that i've been wondering, you said before that Nightblood was modeled after Shardblades intentionally so my question is, did Vasher create his Phantoms with Shardplate in mind?

Brandon Sanderson

He was aware of Shardplate, but I wouldn't call them a conscious influence.

Phantine

Any sort of influence from the Soulcasting-to-Stone burial customs?

(If Vasher were a little more sneaky I'd think he had created the custom in case he needed a ready supply of Phantom material)

Brandon Sanderson

Let's say that yes, Soulcasting was very interesting to Vasher.

Brandon Sanderson

PART EIGHT: OTHER COOL PROJECTS

Picture Books

One of the things I talked about last year was doing a picture book based on “The Girl who Looked Up” from Oathbringer.

We eventually decided to fold this deal and walk away. The publisher was pleasant, but it became clear we both had different visions of the project, and I wasn’t sure how much control I was going to have over the text and the artwork—something very important to me, especially when it comes to my Cosmere-related works.

Ideally, I’d still like to do a series of picture books using “The Girl who Looked Up,” “The Dog and the Dragon,” and maybe a few of the other stories-within-a-story that show up in the Cosmere novels. To this end, I actually wrote a different picture book, unrelated to the Cosmere, and am currently shopping it.

My philosophy again is that I’d like to know more about the market (like with the first tie-in Mainframe stories) before I commit to something involving Cosmere continuity, even in a tangential way. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell this other picture book and get some experience in the market, and then have a better idea of how/when to approach doing the Cosmere Storybook ones. (Where I’d probably want to start with “The Dog and the Dragon.”)

Board Games and Crafty Updates

This year saw the release of the Stormlight-themed Call to Adventure board game by Brotherwise Games, who have just been fantastic partners in this area. The board game is fun and has great art. Brotherwise are big fans of the series, and their knowledge of the property shows. More information on their website.

Additionally, Nauvoo Games ran a Kickstarter for the Steelslayer expansion to their Reckoners board game. We’ve found that Nauvoo creates quality products, and we appreciate their attention to detail on this one.

Crafty Games also has an expansion coming for their Mistborn: House War board game. This one’s titled Mistborn: The Siege of Luthadel and is currently available for pre-order. Crafty also released some new sets of Mistborn dice this year that are particularly cool, especially the metal ones.

We also partnered with the folks at Forged Foam, who created these amazing shardblade designs! They are currently out of stock but we’re hoping they’ll be available again soon.

If you are getting the Orders of the Knights Radiant and Wit coins from our Way of Kings Kickstarter, perhaps you need a beautiful handcrafted wooden coin display to go with it? Dragon Wood Shop is taking preorders now.

We have a Mistborn card deck in progress with the guys at Kings Wild Project and it is turning out so nicely. We can’t wait for the final product to be out in the world!

The Kaladin art book is moving and shaking with Petar Panev taking on the art direction.

And, as usual, our other vendors continue to offer high-quality Cosmere merchandise! Shire Post Mint produces Mistborn coins from two distinct eras in the series. Badali Jewelry features jewelry and accessories inspired by Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, and Elantris. Worldbuilders Market offers a huge variety of products including posters, phone cases, and more.

Questioner

What kind of spren was the Shardblade Oathbringer?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, partially because Isaac has this somewhere written down, and I can't remember. I should be able to remember that one, but I can't.

Questioner

In book one [of The Stormlight Archive] Dalinar catches a chasmfiend claw, in book two he catches a Shardblade. Is he gonna keep catching things?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, he's pretty good at catching things. I don't know, RAFO?

Oversleep (paraphrased)

I asked about Radiant Surgebinder who would tap his Connection to the spren and would he be able to summon Shardblade even at First Ideal?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

He said it's possible but spren wouldn't like it. IIRC he said something about increasing flow of power (???)

Questioner

Can Shardblades cut Aluminum?

Brandon Sanderson

You're gonna have to... yes they can, well yeah. They can cut aluminum but... yeah.

senick67 (paraphrased)

My question was since Shardblades can sever your soul and turn it gray. In Warbreaker the priest who held Nightblood and lived his hands were gray. so does Nightblood consume your soul.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes since your soul is investiture.

Questioner

How was Dalinar able to bond Taln's Shardblade -- Honorblade?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not Taln's Honorblade.

russki516

Hey, thanks for doing this!

My question is how developed are your ideas of what Spren look like and how they behave? I would love to see some illustrations of them in the future.

Ben McSweeney

There's some early illustrations of them in the original pitch package, where they look very Miyazaki if I say so myself, but my understanding of them has widened considerably in the time since then.

I usually envision (and illustrate) them as ghostly, glowing shapes of infinite variety, a lot like the classical interpretation of a hologram. To the best of my understanding, spren appear to be made of stormlight when they're made apparent at all. Some have more detailed features than others, but I don't think any appear solid unless they actually manifest in the Physical Realm, and the only manifestations we know of are Shardblades (living blades have freedom to reshape though, so who knows what that could mean).

As to their details, if you take the few descriptors that Brandon gives and let your imagination run, you probably can't go wrong... even among the spren, two of the same type might look very different in detail. And an awakened spren has a lot of mutability, Syl is changing shape all the time.

As with all concepts, the text rules. So angerspren is gonna look like blood-red pools boiling up from the ground, and gloryspren will look like tiny translucent globes of golden light. Brandon wrote it, so that's what it is.

But you can translate "blood-red pools [of light] boiling up from the ground" in a few creative ways, and any of them might be equally valid. As the Interlude suggests, the appearance of spren is kinda quantum... fluid until/unless observed. I have a lot of fun seeing how creative I can get with the description while making sure I'm staying true to the text.