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Phantine

Got a little atium question:

If it's a god metal, and the power is actually coming from the metal, does it have added investiture that makes it harder to push or pull than the same amount of iron?

Or does the iron have an equal amount of investiture, but the investiture that makes it up is half-preservation and half-ruin, so it's 'inert' (so the power making up the iron never gets touched)?

And I guess in general, if all the metals on Scadrial are composed of preservation+ruin power, are they slightly harder to push or pull than metals mined from a random asteroid that's been sitting there untouched?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. :)

Questioner

Did Harmony change the laws of Feruchemy and Allomancy just so that people wouldn't want to do Hemalurgy by making it possible to get those powers otherwise, or was that already...

Brandon Sanderson

No, that wasn't the purpose. It was already built in.

I made the call. I didn't built that Sazed did it, but it's a little bit of a retcon, breaking Feruchemy into its separate powers. I felt that would just be a more interesting narrative.

So, the behind-the-scenes answer is, I just broke those apart. My rationale for myself in-world was that now that the bloodlines were spreading out more, this was a natural effect of the bloodlines mixing.

Questioner

Makes sense. Just Sazed didn't want people looking at Hemalurgy so I figured maybe he retconned it a little bit just so [you?] wouldn't.

Brandon Sanderson

That isn't the answer I came up with. But it sounds rational. I want to be careful not to have too much Sazed retconning going on. But at the same time, it is kind of a retcon, so maybe I should have.

Questioner

If a Mistborn were to burn a metal that's been Forged by a Soulstamp, is there a different effect from another, or?

Brandon Sanderson

So they Forged it from one metal into another metal?

Questioner

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

So once they started to burn it, it would break the Forgery and it would turn back into its original metal. So you'd have just the briefest moment of getting what it said it was and then it would go back to the other and then if you were a Misting of the wrong type, you would get no more from it.

Questioner

What about Feruchemy or Hemalurgy?

Brandon Sanderson

So Feruchemy and Hemalurgy. You would have a lot of trouble Investing it because it's already Invested. So you would run into troubles right away trying to Invest it, because it's already got all the Investiture messing with it. You could theoretically make it happen, but it would take enough work and conniving that it just wouldn't be worth it.

Questioner

My question is for both of you: regarding the translation process, is word-for-word translation more important or do you go with the feeling and how much communication is done with Brandon during the process?

Translator

When I was at university, I had two lecturers. One said: "The original is sacred. You mustn't do anything too original. It's so important, you have to remember/take everything." and the other when I went fifteen minutes later to another class it was "Oh dear. It should read well. Forget the original, it should read well". So I think I found a kind of balance between those two stances.

Brandon Sanderson

And I always tell translators to err on the side of reading well rather than preserving the exact words. Particularly because, some of the languages we're translating into, you can't preserve exact words.

When Anna wrote to us I sent her to my assistant Peter, who is an editor and continuity editor and I let him interface with all of the translators because I would probably just ask him anyway to look the details up in our wiki. We do occasionally have to answer new questions, though, because for instance -- as Anna pointed out to me -- Polish has a lot of gendered words that aren't gendered in English and sometimes I'd use a phrase and would have to say whether this person was male or female.

Questioner

In a battle versus a Feruchemist and a Windrunner, if the Feruchemist were lashed directly upward, would increasing his weight cancel that lashing out?

Brandon Sanderson

The way that lashings work are by rewriting your body's interaction with gravity. That's very weird. It's very, very weird. The way that Feruchemy works, it is kind of the same way. I play loose and free with this one (this is the one that drives everybody else mad). It is actually changing, so would it... what would it do?

So, part of me wants to say you would fall upward faster. But that's not how gravity works, so that wouldn't happen. But would it counteract the lashing? I think that the lashing would incorporate it, and nothing would change. That is my best guess, but your lashing, then, probably runs out faster. That's my off-the-cuff answer; I'd have to really look at the mechanics of that. But you can take that for now. I'll have to consult with the arcanists to make sure I'm not going crazy on that.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Five

Vivenna and the Mercenaries Attack the Salt Merchant's Shop

A very quick and efficient way to hurt the future Hallandren war. Denth doesn't mention that there are ways of preserving meat (drying and smoking) that don't require salt—but even in most jerky methods, one uses a brine solution, so his argument is reasonably satisfactory.

WeiryWriter

Could you explain a little more about Cognitive Shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive Shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an [entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavast’s and not Honor’s). The second however really doesn’t make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasn’t verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a “ghost”? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruin’s prison counts as “death” in this situation?)

Brandon Sanderson

On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a Cognitive Shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive Shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.

WeiryWriter

Is the mist /spirit/ a Cognitive Shadow then?

Brandon Sanderson

The mist spirit is a little more complicated than that. That was actually Leras, kind of. He was in the process of dying. But other things are involved there that, unfortunately, must be RAFOd.

MiToRo94

When Dalinar first goes to meet the Nightwatcher and he sees Cultivation as well, presumably.

Brandon Sanderson

He does.

MiToRo94

They are surrounded by a green mist. So is that mist comparable to Preservation's mist on Scadrial? Would that be like "Cultivationlight?"

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is in the same sort of vein. 

Questioner

There is a Mistborn pen & paper RPG, Dungeons & Dragons style RPG does it give more information on the world?

Brandon Sanderson

It does.

Though I oversaw that I let them go-- They wanted to do more than I felt comfortable doing myself for my timing, so I let them go pretty crazy. So I say that it is canon until I contradict it. And some of it I will end up contradicting because they needed to be able to make the game the best way they could and I didn’t feel comfortable telling them all the stuff that was coming up because I didn’t want that to sneak into there.

For those who don’t know the Mistborn books, I’m going to do across the period of many centuries of writing—no, of in-world time.

*laughter*

The initial pitch to my editor was past, present, future. So the Mistborn books, we still haven’t hit present yet. We will eventually hit-- Present for these is going to be 1980’s level spy thriller, Tom Clancy-esque Mistborn with Allomancy. Yeah, it’s going to be really cool. The main character, she’s a code monkey who gets involved in all of this. It is really cool. And then we are going to go forward from there to the point where we get to a space opera and epic-- science-fiction space opera where Allomancy and Feruchemy have become the means by which space travel is possible. So that’s coming [...] I’m six books into what's going to be many, many. So just anticipate that with excitement.

Questioner

Can lerasium alloys grant Feruchemy?

Brandon Sanderson

It c--RAFO, we'll RAFO that.

Josh

Is Preservation is a force of stability?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it's unchangingness. It's the opposite of Ruin.

Comatose

I also wondered if you could explain that circle in the cave some more, I didn't quite get it.

I was sure Vin was the hero right up until the end, even though originally before I read the book, I was sure it would be Elend or Sazed. But then the epilogue author started naming people off, so I knew it wasn't them. But it only mentions Vin as 'she,' when talking about how she got her spike. I was sure one of the epigraphs was going to be: "And that girl is me."

The Sazed thing totally made sense in hindsight, I can't believe I didn't figure it out. And we were right about the "on the arms," bit being the part Brandon was referring to, good find Vintage!

I'm a little sad that the lake doesn't come into it more. But the Mist spirit and the Deepness were BOTH Preservation. That was cool.

Brandon Sanderson

I think I did a post on the circle. The short of it is, that is drawing too much attention. Just because Vin didn't quite understand it doesn't mean it's important. (Though, of course, there are other things she doesn't understand that ARE important.) Also, the lake might be involved more at a later date. See the other posts.

Brandon Sanderson

So one of the things people have been asking about a lot the nature of Identity and its uses for accessing other people's metalminds, and things like this right. And I hedged a little bit when somebody asked me... *inaudible*...send people into spirals of confusion, so I'm gonna clarify it for now. So, someone comes in and says, we need a blank metalmind, anybody can use that. I'm like, yes but, the reason that it's a hedge is that you need to actually be a feruchemist to access it, right, you can't just hold the blank metalmind not being a feruchemist, even though it's somebody else's investiture that's been blanked, right. So people keep kind of missing this thing. I'm hedging in the sort of, you don't quite have it, I've kind of dodged it, but I worry that it's just going to be confusing.

So the issue is, you need two things from one of these. You need something that makes you a feruchemist, and then you need a metalmind that somebody else has filled with blank investiture, ok. Now if you can get pure investiture, that can be used by anybody, regardless, ok, you need it in pure form though. But, so there are some other tricks with this as well that don't make it...so anyway, you've got a couple of things that can go on. So you've got a blank metalmind, right, with nothing. You need either investiture, to be able...like you need to be the right type. There are ways to access that if you are completely blank also, if you were a blank slate, but that is still...kind of hard. It's even harder if you are blank, and the metalmind is not blank, but that's not what they're doing in Mistborn right now. You are tapping investiture, gaining the ability of feruchemy and then you are drawing out a blank metalmind, ok. That's the one you need to be...and everything else I'm hedging on intentionally, and I'm worried I hedged in a way that made it sound confusing, ok. So you know now what they're doing. You know that there are other things possible. But I don't want you to think that you have the explanations for how all those things happen, ok.

mooglefrooglian

You've said previously that the molecular structure of metals serve to act sort of like the Aons in AonDor. Why, then, can mists power Allomancy? Shouldn't the metals themselves be the things causing the powers? And if metals don't cause the effect, how can a non-Feruchemist burn a metalmind that has been 'unlocked' through identity tricks and get a boost of an attribute without Feruchemist sDNA?

Brandon Sanderson

I was trying to figure out how to answer this, and then I realized while driving to get a hair cut that you were regarding this wrong in a fundamental way. Remember, the source of power for Allomancy is EXTERNAL while the source for Feruchemy is INTERNAL. This is a fundamental difference discussed in the series.

When you burn metals, you're drawing power from another place. When you tap a metalmind, you are drawing power that the person has created--a battery developed by themselves, so to speak.

So I think that's going to answer the source of your confusion.

VirtuousTraveller

Have any other Shards--if the Shards were split, for some reason, to I guess protect, why is it that some of them clumped together, like Ruin and Preservation, and Honor and Cultivation?

Brandon Sanderson

Some are more naturally like that, but at the same time they also had personalities driving them, and it’s mostly the personalities.

VirtuousTraveller

Friends would have gotten together in the same place kinda sorta?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, or business associates how are “We can do something cool together”. Before Odium just hunted them done and y’know… But the personalities are driving most of that.

Czanos

Does every metal have a Feruchemical and Hemalurgic property? If not, are there metals which have Feruchemical or Hemalurgic properties which do not have Allomantic ones?

Brandon Sanderson

Every metal has a Feruchemical, an Allomantic, and a Hemalurgic property. The godly metals each also do something else. There are several interesting Feruchemical powers yet to be discovered and revealed in the next series. Feruchemy is less widely understood because there were so few practitioners in the modern era, and a lot of the time they were too afraid of capture to really study and use their powers.

Questioner

When you are burning a Compounded metal are you getting the metal’s effect and the stored power? Can you explain, I’m unclear on the Compounding.

Brandon Sanderson

Compounding is a way to hack the magic system so you can get a Feruchemical attribute out of-- basically powering Feruchemy with Allomancy.  If that makes sense.

Questioner

So you’re not actually burning the metalmind?

Brandon Sanderson

Kind of? There’s a big explanation on Reddit, if you send me an email I can link you to it, that steps you through exactly, easier than explaining it here

Questioner

For the Mistborn series, I'm curious: do you find out the origins of Ruin and Preservation?

Brandon Sanderson

Eventually, eventually. Eventually perhaps you will.

sportsracer48

Did Ruin and Preservation create the humans on worlds besides Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question! No, they did not.

Brutal_murder

How was it that the Lord Ruler was able to speak into the minds of the Terris and ask them if they want to become kandra while he was wielding Preservation?

Brandon Sanderson

Lord Ruler... able to speak with the minds of the kandra...

Brutal_murder

At least TenSoon said in the text that he spoke directly into their minds.

Brandon Sanderson

Send that to me, I want to go to Peter for that one. I think we have an answer for that one, but I want to make sure I'm getting it right.

Brotherwise Games

The Mistborn Deckbuilding Game (and it's possible that will be the final name; the Star Wars deckbuilding game is just called "The Star Wars Deckbuilding Game," so we might end up doing the same), that's a really exciting project, as well.

The game is essentially themed around being a mistborn in training and contending with rival mistborn, and really getting straight into Mistborn duels and battles, while still having some of the intrigue that's a big part of Mistborn books and a big part of the non-physical metals.

Cosmere.es

I think the image you shared was Vin. Is it like you are going to be playing the characters themselves? Or are you going to be playing other mistborns, or...?

Brotherwise Games

The setup is that you are playing one of the named characters. So you're playing as Vin or Kelsier. Or Shan Elarial, an Inquisitor, or Zane is another playable character.

Cosmere.es

Can you be a kandra?

Brotherwise Games

There is a kandra card, but that would be kind of an ally. Same with a lot of the mistings, and things like that. Within the boundaries of a deckbuilding game like this, everybody's gotta have a similar level of capability. I can see us doing a feruchemy expansion in the future, but right now a keeper is just one card.

Everybody's a mistborn, everybody's got access to the eight core metals, and then over the course of the game you can gain access to atium, which has really big effects, often game-winning effects.

Cosmere.es

So we are in Era One, the first books, maybe the first? The Final Empire?

Brotherwise Games

Yeah. The first couple of books, I'd say, is the general time frame here.

If this game does really well, we could always expand into future eras. There's other ways we could adapt the system to handle Era Two stuff or later Era One stuff, but we're starting with what we think are some of the most iconic and recognizable aspects of... being a mistborn, jumping around rooftops, throwing coins at each other, getting into fights, going to balls, convincing people to do things. All those classic aspects that you think of in Mistborn.

Questioner

I have a theory that each one of the Shards is related to a certain number. Preservation really likes 16, Honor likes 10, and Odium likes 9. Am I onto something?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

*reading a personalization request* Name a Shard not--

FirstSelector

Preservation... from the alternate [Well of Ascension] ending.

Brandon Sanderson

Oh! Oh, oh, oh, oh! What do you mean by that?

FirstSelector

I thought that those four were-- the four mist-people--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh the four mist-people that's-- Oh... *sighs* I gotta RAFO that, right?

FirstSelector

Well it's not canon technically.

Brandon Sanderson

No it's not canon... Okay I just have to dig back deep... But there's stuff--

FirstSelector

Star.

Brandon Sanderson

There's a star, just remember the star.

*writes*

"Endowment was there*"

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twenty-Two - Part Two

The Terris religion, and the Keeper's inability to find it, is one of the more interesting–and tragic–elements of the society. I liked this concept of a race that collected and preserved knowledge of the past for those who would come. However, I couldn't have them be experts on their own religion, since that religion hides many of the clues about the nature of what is going on in this series of books.

That necessity gave birth to the idea that they're searching for the most important of religions–their own–yet haven't been able to find it yet. They have everyone else's knowledge memorize, but that which they want the most is still lost to them.

Dalenthas

With all the talk about action and reaction and whatnot, will some force form to counter Sazed's new Ruin/Preservation mix? It seems to me like the whole nature of the world can't stand to have one person unopposed.

Brandon Sanderson

Ruin and Preservation were not the only Shards of Adonalsium, though they are the only ones on Scadrial at the moment. Sazed's ability to be both at once is actually something I drew from Eastern mythology, where it is believed that the ability to contain two opposing forces at the same time represents ultimate harmony. The Buddha, for instance, was said to have performed the miracle of producing both fire and ice from his hands at the same time.

Chaos

Is "Scadrial" the proper name to refer to the Mistborn world?

Brandon Sanderson

Scadrial is indeed the name of the planet

Thadamin

Do Shards need to be based on the same planet to create the interactions that made Feruchemy possible?

If the Parshendi are not originally from Odium and are referred to as the Ancient Ones by spren, then would that make the original Parshendi, bonded to the Splinters that existed before Honor and Cultivation arrived, the Dawnsingers?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

sheesania

You've said before that Kelsier hung around in the Cognitive Realm after dying and continued to interfere with events going on in Scadrial - talking to Spook, using Preservation's power, etc. You've even implied that Kelsier is STILL hanging around and meddling in the Wax & Wayne era. So my question is - did he CHOOSE to stay in the Cognitive Realm instead of passing on? Or is something forcing him to stay there? 

Brandon Sanderson

This will be revealed before too much longer. I've been keeping it under my hat for a long time.

Sylos

I was happy when Elend finally burned duralumin with atium. I was holding my breath hoping that someone would eventually do it. However we didn't really get any info as to what Elend experienced. Does a duralumin-enhanced atium burn allow a person to see significantly farther into the future? If so, being that Elend's army was dying all around him did he get to see into the afterlife? Also if you could tell us what he saw that would be awesome. Did something he saw make him not want to avoid Marshes strike?

On a similar note if someone burned electrum with duralumin would they get to see significantly into their own future?

Brandon Sanderson

There is much here that I can't say, but I'll give as much as I can. Elend saw Preservation's ultimate plan, and Elend's own part in it. What he saw made him realize he didn't want to kill Marsh, and that his own death would actually help save the world. Like a master chess player, he suddenly saw and understand every possible move his enemy could make. He saw that Ruin was check-mated, because there was one thing that Ruin was not willing to do. Something that both Elend and Vin could do, if needed. And it's what they did.

So, in answer to your question, Elend stayed his hand. This is one of the reasons why I changed my mind and decided that Marsh had to live through the end of the book. Elend spared him; I needed to too.

Questioner

Kaladin is now learning how to counsel people on how to balance what they've had to do which is destroying things, and their desire to protect or preserve things. Will he be of some benefit to another individual who is trying to balance those two things together?

Brandon Sanderson

Someone he's been teamed up with? He could potentially be of help, depending on whether or not this individual wants help.

Questioner

Specifically is Harmony...?

Brandon Sanderson

I thought you were talking about Szeth. Could he be of use to Harmony? Maybe, in a theoretical world, I think the more people Harmony had to talk to, the better. I would say yes, but I was thinking Szeth.

Brandon Sanderson

A Couple of Small Notes

Yes, Demoux survives, as I promised to Micah. Also, Ruin—like Preservation—dropped a body when he died. This is important, but I can't give you a decent explanation of why that is at the moment.

Firerust

How did Preservation create the Terris prophecies in the first place, to make them known to people?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna RAFO that, just because it gets really sticky when I have to explain this exactly, and I'm gonna shy away from that right now.

Volratho (paraphrased)

Humans on Scadrial have Investiture of both Preservation and Ruin inside of them.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Volratho (paraphrased)

Feruchemically, does storing Investiture in Nicrosil store this connection to Ruin/Preservation/Harmony?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You are on the right track, and asking the right questions but RAFO.

Questioner

Do you have master-copies of all of these carved in metal so Ruin and Preservation can't...

Brandon Sanderson

*laughs* Well they're gone, Harmony is around. I don't mind if he reads'em.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eleven

OreSeur

If I ever do any short stories in the Mistborn world, one I would like to write would be from OreSeur's viewpoint near the end of the events of book one.

He was a complex individual, a true kandra in many ways—but also a rebel. It was no accident that he was assigned to Kelsier's team, who were planning to overthrow the empire. OreSeur was one of the only kandra willing to take that Contract, and he came out of a long retirement in the Homeland to accept it.

His motivations were his own, and I'd like to explore them. What would a kandra think, joining a movement to overthrow the Father of his own religion? What would he think when that movement actually succeeded? How would he react to, then, being assigned to care for the woman who had held the spear that killed the Lord Ruler?

Many of the Third Generation, TenSoon and OreSeur included, weren't as devout in their dedication to the Lord Ruler as many others. OreSeur himself had seen what the Lord Ruler had done to the world and the people in it. And yet, fighting against the man who was revered by his people in such a holy light?

Anyway, it would make for a good story. I can't tell it here, unfortunately, but maybe somewhere else I will.

Eventually, I'll explain why the kandra think that they are of Preservation, when the other races are of Ruin. We'll get to that, don't worry. Just watch for it in the text of the book.

MoriWillow

Is that tone and rhythm stuff universal to the Shards and Investiture elsewhere?

Brandon Sanderson

The tones can be expanded to other Shards and Invested Arts around the cosmere.

dIvorrap

Are the Allomantic pulses a Seeker hears (like drum beats) related to the tones of Preservation, then?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they are.

Brandon Sanderson

Sazed speaks to Wax

So, if it matters to you, this is actually Sazed talking to Wax here. It's not just Wax's imaginings.

I'm not sure what readers are going to think of this. My goal with the original Mistborn trilogy was to set up a mythology for the world, one in which real characters were playing a part. Sazed is, essentially, God now. Maybe a lowercase g would be better on that word, but regardless, he's the one watching over the world and making sure things go as they should. At this point, he's working hard to discover what's going on with the other Shards and to keep another disaster from coming Scadrial's way.

I've spoken before on my fascination with religion, and this aspect is a particularly interesting one for me. I've played with the ideas of men being treated like gods in Elantris and Warbreaker—but they didn't really deserve it. Here, however, we have Sazed who is approaching more of what a god would be. Should he be prayed to? Why or why not?

You should know that holding two opposed Shards of Adonalsium has made Sazed more . . . zen, if you will. Not inactive. However, he has taken a belief that both Ruin and Preservation are important in people's lives, and doesn't feel that interfering is something he should often be doing. He sees his primary role being to encourage people to be better, to keep an eye on the other Shards, and to make sure the world keeps working as it should.

LazerWulf (paraphrased)

You've said that Seons and Skaze contain splinters of Devotion and Dominion. Were these splinters created when Odium killed the shardholders and Splintered their shards? Or are they more similar to how Endowment splinters himself (herself?) to make divine breaths? What is the difference between the two?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

First, he said that it was a very good question. Then he said that those splinters weren't supposed to be there, and they were indeed created when Odium splintered the shards. He said that the difference lies in how each magical system works. Endowment's splinters are more similar to how Preservation invested a little bit of her shard into each human on Scadrial.

Questioner

Has Wax seen the influence of a Shard other than Preservation, Ruin, Harmony--

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

--i.e., like Autonomy?

Brandon Sanderson

He has seen the influence of another Shard.

Questioner

Might that Shard be Autonomy?

Brandon Sanderson

It might!

Ben McSweeney

*giggles*

Questioner

Now that Sazed is both Ruin and Preservation can he not see metal too?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's the same thing for him.

Chaos (paraphrased)

In the future when atium is rare again and we have a good Table of Allomantic Metals, which metal steals Allomantic Temporal powers?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It will be on the table when Brandon brings them out. Feruchemy is the next poster to come out. Until then RAFO.

LewsTherinTelescope

What it is that determines how skilled a Shard is at reading the future? For example, why is Ruin so bad at it, and why are Odium and Preservation both so good at it despite being so different?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twelve

The group investigates the railroad tracks and canal

So, let's talk about the realities of speed bubbles. I did research on this, and got different answers from people on what really should happen if you could slow time like this. One of the issues is that light doesn't change speeds based on this sort of issue, so there was discussion of what things would look like inside looking out or outside looking in. It seems likely that there'd be some sort of red shift, and also that things might grow more dim inside a speed bubble. This is all really very theoretical, however, and so, in the end, I decided that there was enough disagreement among scientists with whom I spoke that it wouldn't be glaringly irregular if I just had the shimmer at the borders and stayed away from dealing with speed of light issues.

There's a much larger issue dealing with slowed time that rarely gets addressed by this type of fiction. I considered using it, and it's this: conservation of energy. Inside the speed bubble, Wax and Wayne are moving far more quickly, and therefore have a ton of kinetic energy compared to those outside of it. And so, a coin tossed from inside the bubble going outside would suddenly move with a proportional increase in speed (proportional to how much slower things were outside).

In essence, speed bubble = railgun.

This is dangerous for narrative reasons. I've often said that the limitations of a power are more interesting than the powers themselves. (It's Sanderson’s Second Law of Magics: Limitations > Powers.) One of the reasons for removing Mistborn and Full Feruchemists from the setting was so that we could focus in on the usefulness of the individual powers in Allomancy and Feruchemy. That falls by the wayside if any of the individual powers become too strong on their own.

I didn't want Wayne to be able to slow time, then sit inside his bubble and leisurely pick off enemies one at a time. And so, I had to place strong limitations on the speed bubbles. (Much stronger limitations than on other aspects of Allomancy. Pushing and Pulling, for example, have their limitations based in solid science. With speed bubbles, I eventually decided that solid science made them way too powerful. So I had to change things.) Therefore, the rules became: No shooting/throwing things out of speed bubbles, no moving speed bubbles, and a required couple second cool-down between creating different speed bubbles. The first rule broke required objects to be deflected when leaving the bubble and that we have the bubble absorb excess kinetic energy when something leaves it.

Disappointing for the scientists, I know, but it makes for a stronger story.

Lindel (paraphrased)

There's that trick with Feruchemy that lets you make metalminds that others can tap. Could you do something similar with Self-Awakening?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Oh yeah, there are all sorts of tricks that you can do. You could use other peoples Breaths, make it seem like you don't have any Breath-

Lindel (paraphrased)

Awaken an object so that others could access its Breaths?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Questioner

This is purely hypothetical, but if Dalinar was to become the Vessel for multiple Shards, would he have had more difficulty with Preservation separately if Harmony was involved? Because that's the only of the Shards I can't see him holding onto particularly well.

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm. I can say yes on that. I think that's a good theory... you phrased [that] very well.

Questioner

Dalinar's visions are the memories of Honor, correct?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Yes, they are things specifically created by Honor...

Questioner

Does that mean that the Recreance happened before Honor's death... since Dalinar sees it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. But Honor's death, like Preservation's death, is a protracted event.

Questioner

Mistborn, the broadsheet hints that there's a continent or whatever on the other side of the Mistborn planet. Would that also be connected to Allomancy and Feruchemy and all that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it will be. The Southern Continent does have interactions with the three Metallic Arts, but they use them in very different ways.

Questioner

Can an Allomancer burn any god metal? Or is it specifically Preservation and Ruin?

Brandon Sanderson

That is actually a RAFO. There's some funkyness going on there.

Brandon Sanderson

Hey, all. Brandon here. With the release of this book, there have been some minor updates to continuity that I think some of you will find relevant.The big one has to do with Hoid's visit to Terris in The Well of Ascension. For those unfamiliar with the backstory, this little behind-the-scenes action has been a source of some consistent problems. The outline, and original draft, of Well had Vin and Elend traveling up to Terris, then into the mountains, to find the Well itself.

This was a huge momentum killer in the story. Having your cityscape-focused book suddenly turn into a traveling quest fantasy for a few chapters felt very out of place, and required too much strange time-jumping to make it work. In revisions, I set about finding a way to repair this, and to overlap the Well of Ascension discovery with Vin's return to Luthadel.

The end result worked much better, but I was forced to cut Hoid's cameo. (In the form of footsteps in the snow and frost leading to the Well, hinting that someone had been there just before her.) I knew where Hoid was, and added in the cameo of him with the Terris people—with the plan still being that he visited the Well sometime during the days after Vin's return to the city.

Well, in working on Secret History, I found that this had a problem with it. Hoid had to already know where the Well is, because after the destruction of the Pits, he'd need to use the Well to return to Scadrial after leaving in the middle of book one to attend to certain other events.

If you've read the story, you know this is how I proceeded. Official continuity is that Hoid went up to Terris after visiting the Well, as he had things to do there. He did not go looking for the Well. This doesn't change continuity for any of the books, though it does render one of the annotations for Well obsolete.

Otherwise, I'm quite pleased about this novella. I wasn't certain how it would go, writing something using threads I'd left dangling ten years ago. (You should thank the beta readers, who are all Sharders I believe, for their continuity help. They made me aware of several things I needed to make much more clear from the original draft, so that canon would be more crisp.)

I know there has been a lot of discussion regarding which times when someone appears to hear Kelsier's voice were actually Kelsier. The story offers the official canon for this as well.

It's nice to finally be able to give the answers to some longtime fan questions, such as what spooked Vin during her inspection of Hoid and what was up with Preservation and the Mist Spirit. It's entirely possible that, despite our efforts, we slipped up and made some continuity error here or there. If so, I'm terribly sorry! This one has been particularly challenging to do.

Dovienya

Regarding the ending of the Mistborn Trilogy: What was up with Ruin having red hair? Is that significant? Does it mean that Ruin was originally a human who gained his powers somehow? My friend thought that Ruin was actually another red-haired character in the series, though I don't remember his name. I think he was a minor captain or something.

Brandon Sanderson

I try to make all of the cosmere stuff "bonus material" so to speak. I don't think it's essential to understanding Mistborn to know Ruin's origin. Those who want expanded information can find it, and theorize upon it. However, I intend to warn people up-front before writing any book where you have to know this to understand it.

Within the realm of Mistborn only, all you really need to know is that someone was holding this power--and that the 'individuals' of Ruin and Preservation were people, changed by the power they held. It holds to the theme of the story, with what happens regarding Sazed and other characters.

Questioner

In terms of discussing Identity, I know that in Emperor's Soul, they talk about Identity, and the Parshendi talk about losing their Identity, and then I was just rereading Bands of Mourning, and one of the kandra talks about how the spikes are their Identity. Are all of those things connected somehow or are they different forms of Identity?

Brandon Sanderson

They are connected, although the Parshendi losing their identity is a little more metaphorical. But yeah, the idea of these things-- Identity is an innate attribute in the cosmere that is related to your soul, your spirit, and it is one of the things that Hemalurgy can fiddle with and Feruchemy can fiddle with. It's kind of important to how the [Metallic] Arts play out, but it's important to all the magics...

Identity is involved in why you can't use another person's metalminds, right, that kind of thing. And those are all related. The Parshendi is more metaphorical. 

Questioner

I wondered because it's always capitalized, in the book.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep, and it's done intentionally. Peter always asks, "Are you sure this one is capitalized?" "Yeah."