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Are spren molecules and atoms that rearrange in our minds to create them?
A good question, are spren molecules and atoms that rearrange in our mind to create things. No, they're not. Spren are entities from the Cognitive Realm, who have gotten pulled through in Roshar. It is something that doesn't exist on Earth, the Cognitive Realm, pulled through by human intervention. The way we think about things and personify things.
For spren, when the Oaths are broken I’m kind of envisioning the mind of the spren gets trapped in that person’s Spiritweb somehow. Is that along the right lines or not along the right lines?
Ehhh, in between those two answers.
On Roshar, certain people seem to be able to always see spren (Rock comes to mind). Are there people who can never see them? Similarly, can people from other worlds see them?
Those with Listener blood are more likely to be able to interact with spren who aren't currently trying to manifest.
If they appear on the physical realm, then they're visible to all who can see.
I name my computers and smartphones after spren. But I am out of names. Is there a name you wouldn't mind revealing?
Well, do you need good spren? Or is the occasional evil spren acceptable?
Your call! And evil spren would be fantastic for my new phone.
Ulim. (Also, the Unmade count as spren. You could look those up.)
I didn't think spren could be good or evil??
Most spren are neither. Sapient spren (capable of making choices) can be either one.
In Words of Radiance we find that Pattern is very literal-minded (at least until Shallan corrupted him), and mathematically-inclined. Even his real name is just a mathematical construct. And his head is a fractal. When I think of Pattern, I think "logic" and "truth", not "art" and "lies".
If all Cryptics are like this, then I wonder why they (and not artistic spren like Wyndle) are the ones attracted to the artistic Lightweavers. Is this just a matter of "opposites attract"? Are spren naturally drawn to people with personal qualities they themselves do not have? I am reminded of the Divine Attributes, and it seems like Shallan has the "Creative" side while Pattern has the "Honest" side. Is that a coincidence?
These things are not coincidences.
I have some very interesting rationals why certain spren are involved with certain orders. I never wanted it to be so straightforward as, "Oh, you control pressure? Here's a spren dedicated to that power." I feel there is more intricacy, and honesty, to a system that isn't so "on the nose" as we say in writing.
Just remembered another physics-related question that has been in the back of my mind since forever! (And this one is no RAFO-candidate, in my mind at least)
The scene in question is that interlude on SA where two scholars measure the size of spren, and they find that the size oscillates until measured, and then it remains fixed at the measured value. This is totally equivalent to projective measurements in quantum physics, was that your inspiration on this one?
Yes, quantum physics plays a role in the way the cosmere works, and this was partially intended to display that. However, we do take a different route, as thinking about something can directly influence it in the cosmere. So it's more a fantastical version of quantum physics.
You mentioned that half(-ish) Shards are whole at-- during Shadows of Self. Is that counting Splinters?
Okay, one more time.
You mentioned that half-- like I think it was at the Bands of Mourning release party-- you said that "half-ish Shards are whole" during Shadows of Self.
"Half-ish Shards are whole?"
Yeah, you didn't want to do the math, because it was-- *interrupted*
Oh, I get it. You're saying-- Okay, so I'm sorry. I'm trying to think of Shards that are half-powered. That's not what you're saying. Half of the existing Shards.
Yes, yes.
Okay, got it. Yeah.
And does that-- is that counting Splinters? Splintered Shards?
Um, no. I mean, a-- Splintered is one of the ways that they are not considered whole.
Like completely Splintered as in Dominion and Devotion.
Yeah. That's what-- That's the opposite of whole.
But having a Splinter, like Endowment...
Because I-- I was kind of going with "Shattered" <and> "Splintered". So Shattered would be kind of what I was going with Devotion and Dominion.
Okay.
And then Splintered would be more like... You mentioned that Honor kind of Splintered himself off to create the spren before--
Oh, and that's mentioned isn't it?
Right, but you've got to keep in mind that-- um... So in Scadrial, Ruin and Preservation did the same thing. Their bodies are part of the world. They-- if their exist-- like, the things on the Spiritual Realm don't matter where they are in relation to each other and things like this. All those <piece> spren are still Honor, when he was alive. Does that make sense? Like, yes those are little Splinters of Honor, but they are still Honor. It's not like he's diminished, because his whole essence is the world, right? There is no diminishing that. And so that thing is we're talking about the fracturing of the mind and the killing of the Shard. That's the distinction between whole and not whole as I was making it for you there.
I also asked about the connection between the spren and Surgebinder, such that the spren turns into what the Surgebinder wants. Like in Edgedancer, [Wyndle] turns into a bar of metal and into a Shardfork. Wyndle himself isn't "in tune" with Lift, so his turning into something that she needs with no prior warning...
Yeah, they actually mix. When the bonding is happening, what's happening is that the gaps in the souls are being filled with the spren's <essence>. And they are actually melding into one
*inaudible*
And they are actually melding into one individual *inaudible*.
<And the minds are separate?>
Yeah, mhm.
Shallan berates the book merchant
The timid nature is a result of the problems in her past (see book two's flashbacks). I see the moments of flaring passion as being far more “her.”
Shallan's father has an infamous temper; it's buried deep within her as well. If she'd been allowed to grow up more naturally, without the oppressive darkness that her family suffered, she would have turned out as a very different person. Still, the person she could become is buried inside her. In my mind, this is one of the big connections between her as a character and Kaladin. It is also part of why both attract a certain type of spren…
It says that it's dangerous to travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Why?
It has to do with the Dor and the lack of an entity controlling much of the power Odium left in his wake on Sel.
Woah, that's interesting. I had no idea Odium left little bits of his power on Sel... I guess it kinda makes sense for evil monks to be powered by pure hate, though.
Odium did not leave his power behind, one should note. He left several other powers which are now, to a large extent, mindless...
If you wouldn't mind answering, does Roshar have a similar problem, with Honor being Splintered?
No, Roshar does not have the same problem. There are some differences going on. One reason being that the spren are far more extensive on Roshar, and provide something of a "release valve." The seons and the skaze on Sel are not numerous enough to fulfill a similar function. Though, of course, that's only one part of the puzzle. Raw power is dangerous.
It's one reason everyone should be thankful Kelsier was around on Scadrial.
Can Odium influence people the same way that Ruin can?
Well, you see, the kandra and the koloss have a "hole" in them that allows Ruin to come in and take over. The Parshendi naturally are protected from this, but when they expose themselves to the storms, and the spren come in, many of these spren have that kind of "hole" in them, and that's what allows Odium to take control of them.
No, I'm talking about how Ruin was able to push people, place things in their minds, stuff like that. Can Odium do the same thing?
Well, Odium wasn't around when those people were created, so it's a little different for him than Ruin. So if he influences people in that way, it's through the Unmade.
And were I minded to, could I kill Kaladin with a Hemalurgic spike and steal his Windrunning? (I don't want to kill Kaladin)
You can steal most things with Hemalugy, but Surgebindings are tricky because of the spren. Requires some non-standard workings.
I was reading Elantris, with my passive work being Jorge Luis Borges "Book of Imaginary Beings". The chapters are encyclopedic and short, and are meant to have a kaleidoscope style of reading. With Cosmere on my mind, I can across a really interesting entry:
Sylphs For each of the four roots or elements into which the Greeks divided matter there was a corresponding spirit. In the words of Paracelsus, the sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist and physician, we find four elementary spirits: the Gnomes of the earth, the Nymphs of water, the Salamanders of fire, and the Sylphs or Sylphides of air. The words are Greek origin. Litre has sought the etymology of "sylph" in the Celtic tongues, but it is most unlikely that Paracelsus would have known, or even suspected the existence of, those languages. Today, no one believes in Sylphs, but the phrase "a syphlike figure" is still applied to slender women, as a somewhat cliched compliment. The Sylphs occupy a place between that of material beings and that of immaterial beings. Romantic poetry and the ballet find them useful.
I don't think it is a far stretch or much of projection when I say that reminds me of a certain Spren. Either way, it made my day to come across this while reading.
If you poke around a bit, you can probably find where the names of some other spren (like Notum) come from. In a lot of their names, I'm looking for something similar to what I did with Syl. My rationale is that if you heard her name in-world (which might not actually be the exact sounds Syl) you'd have the benefit of local traditions, word roots, and mythologies. You'd hear it and say, "Huh, that sounds like a word for wind." So, when the books are "translated" to English, the translator creates names in English that evoke the same feel in readers here.
Can Dalinar permanently bring someone back from the Spiritual Realm?
No. In fact, whether or not the voices he is hearing are legitimately voices from Beyond the Spiritual Realm, or if they're a manifestation much like the visions that the Stormfather creates, where Dalinar's desire for certain things is basically creating... So when Dalinar goes into the visions, what's going on there is: these are not people with autonomy that he is interacting with. These are Investiture manifesting a basic AI that is able to adapt, cause Investiture kind of can do this.
Dalinar would argue, "Yes, that's the case except for when I actually met Nohadon. That character felt different, that felt like the real Nohadon stretching through the Spiritual Realm and actually interacting." Jasnah would say, "No, that's because, Dalinar, you have such, in your mind, a hope and desire to see Nohadon, he's this mythological figure in your head, that basically the Stormfather's knowledge of who he actually was was creating this much more animated puppet that was more like actually how Nohadon was, but was based on knowledge of the spren and the Investiture that you're interacting with." And Dalinar would say, "I heard Evi's voice." Jasnah would say, "You heard the Investiture coming to life and speaking with her voice the things you needed to hear. And it wasn't that the Stormfather was like, 'He needs to hear this, I'm going to create this fake.' But it's instead your relationship with this magical force that does take on life of its own, manifesting this thing." Which one it is, I do not answer. Both are, I consider, equally valid interpretations of the text, and equally valid interpretations of the magic system.
Once someone is passed into the Beyond, there is no force that can bring them back, according to people's understanding of the magic system. There is even the argument that Cognitive Shadows are not the person. That the Cognitive Shadow is indeed a spren with the memories and an imprint of the person's personality that becomes self aware and continued on living that person. It's kind of the same question that arises in Star Trek. When you are ripped apart and rebuilt piece by piece with the transporter, some people in Star Trek do not believe you are becoming the same person again. You are then a different individual who has been cloned from the person and had the memories attached. Functionally, in the narrative, for the reader, it's the same. Is it the same soul or not? That question is answered differently by different people in the Cosmere. There are equally valid interpretations from the reader. You get to decide, basically. You get to decide, just like if there's a story where a person's brain is uploaded to a computer, you get to decide: is that the same person? Because we can't do that, we don't know. Is that the exact same individual, or is that a computer simulation of that person, where the person has died? That's what a Cognitive Shadow essentially is, but using Cosmere physics instead of theoretical science fiction physics.
Adolin and his sword that wants to kind of wake up a little bit. Most of the Knights Radiant have some sort of break in their mind, mental <a little> problem. Where Adolin appears to be the person in Stormlight that's most comfortable with himself. Is that going to cause a problem, or is maybe the fact that he, at least in his mind, murdered Sadeas, going to help bring that to fruition or give us a way towards something like that?
Let's, first off, say I'm not going to repeat this one because it's super spoilery. So let's try to talk around the spoilers.
In the Stormlight Archive, there is a tradition among the Knights Radiant that certain traumas and/or psychological handicaps are effective in drawing the attention of a spren. I haven't actually said if that is true or if that's [just] a tradition of theirs. But there is a tradition among the Knights Radiant. that they have noticed something consistent.
Does it mean that you have to in order to be a Knight Radiant? Well, there is somebody that I would call extremely psychologically well-adjusted, that by the end of the third book is well on the way to Knighthood.
There is something going on there, they are noticing something true. But it might not be as exclusionary as they think it is.
What Radiant Order would Khriss be in?
Khriss could fit into several different Radiant Orders. She's most obviously Elsecaller, but I don't want Elsecallers to be the only scholar Order. That's the thing to keep in mind; in fact, there could be a scholar in basically any Order.
The thing about the Orders is, I don't necessarily want the Knights Radiant Orders to be too restrictive. I don't want them to be Harry Potter houses, in other words. What do I mean by that? I don't want them to be too exclusive to anyone who would want to be in them. The number one thing that's going to determine what Order you would be in is what Order you would want to be in and whether you jive with the spren of that Order in the right way. And it's possible that you won't be able to just jive with the spren, and it wouldn't work out, but it's not like "All the brave ones go into this Order, and all the nerdy ones go into this Order." That's not how I want to run it. I want to kind of run these based on the Truths that you're speaking, the Oaths that you're speaking, what those mean to you, what you're trying to do. And some of those aren't going to be archetypal: the whole idea of protecting, or things like that.
I could make a pretty good argument for Khriss in Lightweaver. I could make a pretty good argument for Khriss in Truthwatcher. You could make good arguments for a good half the Orders for any given character, and that's how I want it to be.
So, I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase 'sick burn' and what it means. Assuming for a moment that it became a phrase on Roshar that fell into widespread use for a long enough time, could the phrase become strongly associated enough with the idea of fire that it actually has an effect on when flamespren can manifest? Could insulting someone harshly enough draw flamespren?
Unlikely, because when people say "sick burn" fire doesn't appear in their imagination--they're not personifying fire. Just like the name Smith doesn't bring to mind a blacksmith unless one thinks about it specifically, sick burn has taken on its own meaning.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
So there's only one Honorspren that got power, and does that mean that no more can get out and are there only *inaudible* Cryptic?
Syl disobeyed what she was supposed to do. However, at the same time, she blazed a trail so there might be others. The Cryptics, on the other hand, they are totally fine with what's happening but Pattern was the one who was nominated, he lobbied for it, to go and be the guinea pig. So the Cryptics are totally all over doing this, they are eager for more. But a lot of them think it is a death sentence, but they're weird, they don't mind it that much.
How did you decide to turn Taravangian into Odium?
How did I decide to do that? There are a couple reasons I decided to do that. This was one of the things didn't have to go this way. It is actually a good one I can talk about because I had multiple options here. Even until I was turning in this outline to my team and saying "Alright, it's time to sink or swim, do we like this or not?", I was going back and forth on it. Really until I had written the scenes and given them to my alpha readers and said, "alright, are you guys ready for me to pull the trigger on this?" because there are costs. The major cost is that Odium is a better ancient unknowable evil. Odium was filling the role in the books of Sauron. Ancient thing, very dangerous, very strange, very powerful and whatnot.
The thing is, my books aren't really about that. I will write books dealing with some of that sort of stuff, but that's not the sort of thing that is as exciting. It's not really as much a theme of my stories, the ancient unknowable evil. The whole purpose of Mistborn—one of them, it's not the purpose—is that even the Lord Ruler you've got to know. Even Ruin became a character that you understood. It is a cost, I will admit. It wasn't as strong for me as it might have been somewhere else. I do know that some people would prefer that, and I can understand why. Sauron makes a pretty great bad guy. Ancient, powerful, unknowable, evil forces—but I feel like I get that in the Shard itself. One of the things that I plan to play up more as the Cosmere goes forward is that these powers have some sort of primal sense to them. That's always in my mind been the bigger danger than than Rayse is that.
That is, the negatives were not that big of negatives. And what are the positives? In Oathbringer, Dalinar did not fall to Odium. That is a huge blow to Odium, Rayse-Odium. The fact that at the end of book three he was defeated in a major way, and in book four he gets defeated again, this time by Kaladin. We have proven that two of our primary viewpoint protagonists of the Stormlight Archive are able to resist and defeat him. My opinion was that by that point in the Stormlight Archive, Odium would no longer, Odium-Rayse would no longer be a threat. You run into this in lots of long running epic fantasy series. I've talked a lot about how when I was designing Stormlight Archive, the things I had read in other long running fantasy series were a big part of why I designed it the way I did. For instance, in the Wheel of Time it was very difficult—even in the ones I was writing—to maintain a sense of threat for the Forsaken when they had just been defeated right and left every book. They do get their licks in now and then, but it's real hard to keep considering Ba'alzamon from the first one to be a threat when boy, Rand just defeats him and defeats him again and defeats him again and then defeats him again. This is a problem for a lot of media. How threatening is Magneto really when he never wins?
At this point in the series, what I wanted to do was hit you with a left hook from somebody that I considered more frightening, more dangerous, more capable, and who had been growing as an antagonist for a while. And while some of his ploys had not turned out, he is still very threatening. My hope was that this reveal to a portion of the audience—I knew that some would prefer Odium, but to I hoped a larger portion—would be like, "Oh, this just got real."
I've mentioned before that my favorite antagonist is Magneto, I've brought him up before. I like characters who have clashes, antagonists who have clashes of ideology, not just clashes of forces. A reason I'm not excited to write about somebody like Sauron is that, while there are clashes of ideology behind the scenes, on screen for the movies and books it's basically: Sauron wants to rule the world and we don't want him to. That works really well in Lord of the Rings because you have, as I've talked about, part of the brilliance of the Lord of the Rings is both having Sauron, Saruman, and Gollum to represent three different kinds of evil and three different antagonists that work in tandem really well together. It's part of the brilliance of the Lord of the Rings. But I like having a villain like Taravangian. Taravangian, who has a world view that is a certain world view and that is terrifying because of how that world view is. Elevating him to Odium so that you mixed that with the kind of ancient spren of hatred that is still a very big, dominant part of what he's now become—I just thought made for a more compelling and interesting villain for the fact that we have many more books left in the Stormlight Archive and in the Cosmere, and I had done what I wanted to with Rayse-Odium.
There's my answer. It is totally viable to have, viable is the wrong term, totally understandable that some would have preferred me to go a different direction, but my instinct says—and I haven't done any polls or things on this—that the majority of fans are going to like this direction better, and I certainly think the story will turn out better. That's what led me to make that decision, but these were all things I was heavily considering. Adam was there watching those emails go around with me and the team when I was asking if I should pull the trigger on this or not. There are a couple of things that I've made decisions on that have been some of the most difficult or most far-reaching in that regard, but that I think I made the right decision on.
The other one was bringing Kelsier back. Kelsier, so I seeded all the stuff in the original books to bring Kelsier back, but then I backed off on it, and for a while I'm like eh, I don't think I'm going to bring Kelsier back. During that whole thing, oh this is a fun spoiler thing that I don't think I've talked about before: during that time in the outlining—some of you may again have much preferred this—TenSoon was actually going to be Thaidakar, wearing Kelsier's bones. There was a time where I was going to play with a kandra believing they were Kelsier, in this case TenSoon. I was going to go this direction where it's like, I'm the Survivor, I'm picking up the Survivor's heritage and I'm doing all of this sort of stuff—I did warn you all about spoilers—and there was a time in there where I decided no, I'm going to leave Kelsier dead—that I'm going to go this direction. Why did I back off on that one? A couple reasons, number one I feel like I really did a solid job with Lessie in the second of the Wax and Wayne books, which was a similar conflict. I felt like I got that out of my system. I did it well, I think that story has some really heart-wrenching things, but as I wrote that story I felt that it was a one-book story.
One of the things I've come to be aware of as I've written, this stretches back to the days of Elantris where my original ending had too many twists. It's been changed, like I had some weird twist where Hrathen had secretly come to Elantris at some point and had a heritage that made him Aleth—not Alethi—made him Aonic and things like that and it was dumb and it didn't work. It was twisting for twists sake. And part of me worries, and part of me actually doesn't just worry, I think that if I had done that whole thing with TenSoon it would have been less cool than what I just actually wanted to have happen, which was to give a full finished character arc to Kelsier. At that point I went back to what my original plan had been and I picked up those threads, and that's when I wrote Secret History, after I had finally made that decision. And it comes with costs too. Everything comes with costs. Having main character die in such a spectacular way and then not being quite dead yet has certain costs in your narrative. The more you do that less that death is meaningful in the stories, the more it feels like a gotcha and things like that. Yet at the same time on the other side, I don't think the Lord of the Rings is weaker for having brought back Gandalf. I think the Lord of the Rings is stronger, and why is that? Gandalf comes back changed as a different person and makes the story more interesting for having returned. My original plan with Kelsier was just more interesting in the long run. Forcing Kelsier to do these things and fi—he did not complete his character arc, and that's part of why it was so heart-wrenching to lose him, which I understand. Bringing him back in that regard lets me finish his story, and I just think that's going to be more satisfying. I gain more than I lose.
Plus there's the fact that someone comes back from the dead in the first chapter of the very first Cosmere book. Second chances at life is a major theme of the Cosmere. Both Warbreaker and Elantris that's kind of—Warbreaker it's the primary theme: second chance at life. You're doing a different thing with your life than you thought you would do, and let's take a second stab at it. I think that being able to play with that with Kelsier is a stronger narrative thing to do. This was also influenced by my, as I've talked about before, sort of shrinking the timescale a little bit of the Cosmere so that more of the characters from the different books can interact. It just makes better storytelling. I would say that those are the two things that in outline I could have gone different directions when I actually got to the story. When it was time to write Secret History I had to make the call. He had been dead, he had been alive, he had been dead, he had been alive, at least in my head, and I made that call. The same thing actually happened with Taravangian. It had been am I going to pull the trigger, was he going to become Odium or not? I actually vacillated on that and eventually have made the decision I made.
Are you ever going to reveal what the alternate was going to be, kind of like what you just did?
Maybe eventually I will, but for now I will not. It's easier to reveal in Mistborn because it's basically all in the past. It isn't to say that I won't do something else like that, with a kandra. I might, but Lessie's story covered that real well. Who knows what I'll do, but I've backed off on, for those who have read Way of Kings Prime, Taln's original story was the story of am I an angel or am I not? Am I a Herald or am I not? Am I this divine being or am I a normal person? And that actually plays real well in Way of Kings Prime. It is just not a thing I could make work in the actual published version of Way of Kings. It's one of the things that's cool about Way of Kings Prime, is being able to see some of these ideas that I can't express in the actual series. Part of the reason I can't is also, number one I wanted to bring the voidbringers in and all of these things, and you just can't... The more fantastical your book is, the less the reader will be able to suspend disbelief about your character who claims that they're not some mythological legend from lore actually not being that mythological—they walk onstage and are like, "I think that I'm this mythological legend from lore but my powers are gone." Ninety-nine readers out of a hundred are going to be like, "yep, I believe you", even though all the rest of the people in the books are going to be like, "No of course you're not." The reader—because it's just cooler that way. It's very hard to fulfill on good promises by not having that turn out that way. Beyond that, the story I wanted to tell involved Taln and so big surprise, Taln is a Herald!
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?
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.
In Words of Radiance, Shallan draws a picture of someone destroying a statue. If attentive, could that person have been aware of being "observed" at the time?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I need more detail of what you're trying to get at here.
I think he's asking if Shalash(???) could have (or did) felt Shallan observing her.
Looking at it again, I realize I'm asking for more clarity than they'd be able to provide. I do understand the question, but at the same time, my answers can can confirm or deny things that are (sometimes false) assumptions underpinning questions. So when we get into something like this, that has to do with mechanics I haven't explained very well yet, I get very hesitant about answering.
So...I'll probably just RAFO this one. For now. Though look for a scene involving Syl where something similar happens, as they are related.
I was being more vague than necessary, specifically to avoid a "you're making assumptions" RAFO. I'll go ahead and detail my thinking then and let you respond as much or as little as you like. I recognize that I'm poking at mechanisms we don't understand yet, so RAFO is pretty likely.
I am working under the belief that Shallan's depiction of Ash is accurate and (likely) immediate. She could have visualized the scene in several ways: by having some portion of her aspect or of Pattern's travel there, by some connection-at-a-distance mechanism, or by "word-of-mouth" relay via (e.g.) spren.
As we've seen elsewhere, savvy and/or powerful people (like I assume the heralds to be) are able to notice when an aspect of someone pops up looking at them. Similarly, they could possibly notice a remote observer through the connection. In both cases, I presume that the degree to which the observer is present determines how noticable the event is. In contrast, the passive reporting through intermediaries in the third option would probably not trigger the sense of being watched. So my question boils down to whether Shallan is projecting part of herself, part of Pattern, or doing something else entirely. And in the back of my mind I'm wondering how much manipulation (or aggression) could take place at the other end of the connection.
If I understand correctly which scene you are referring to, where Kal was noticed, then you are saying that the two events share a mechanism which answers the original question, but still leaves me wondering about what is being projected across Roshar. (That you reference Syl is interesting.)
Here is a follow-up question, hoping that I haven't already talked myself into a corner or out of an answer: The clairvoyant drawings occur at a particularly verdant lait, with plenty of growth/death/circle-of-life happening. In a mechanistic sense, did this location help enable the clairvoyance?
I'll have to RAFO this, as I don't want to get into the mechanics right now.
One thing that I've enjoyed through your books is the cheeky, sassy sidekick style of character. In the Stormlight Archive, it's usually the spren; or you've got Nightblood in Warbreaker. And, of course, in Skyward, it's M-Bot, and to a lesser extent Doomslug at times. But I feel like, going into Cytonic, the M-Bot storyline and the M-Bot relationship with Spensa is getting a little... I don't wanna say "deeper" to discount the other ones, but it's getting more interesting. Can you talk a bit about what you wanted to do here with M-Bot?
M-Bot is a mystery. M-Bot is a mystery specifically set up to be used in future books. In the first book, M-Bot is a companion, but also kind of a tool. The story is about finding this spaceship and fixing this spaceship and using it to achieve what Spensa wants, which is to become a pilot. And getting a friend out of the deal is like a side benefit that she was not expecting and that we weren't expecting. But that friend comes with a lot of mysteries. What happened? Why is he like his is? And things like that. And that's a Chekov's Gun, that's a gun on the mantle of me promising "look, we're gonna get to this eventually."
And one of the kind of key tenets for my storytelling is to always remind myself that whatever the character, whoever they are, in their heads, they are not the plucky sidekick. They might be a friend, they might know that they are helping someone with a larger story, they might see themselves not necessarily as the central hero of whatever. But they also don't see themselves as a plucky sidekick; they see themselves as a person living a life, and they're the protagonist of their own story. And that's something that I constantly want to keep in my mind, and be giving hints and expansions where it's possible in the narrative. And so these two things are colliding: M-Bot is a mystery, and M-Bot also is a protagonist. But he's a protagonist that doesn't accept that he's one. And this source of tension is what's driving us toward Cytonic, which is much more about M-Bot than the previous two books have been.
Think Dalinar could lift [Mjolnir]?
Hmm... It's a question I hadn't considered. I guess it depends on the criteria. I've never been able to figure out exactly what makes one worthy. Maybe it's more of a feel than specific criteria.
Of my characters, I'd suspect Dalinar is the closest. I'd say yes, depending on circumstances, but I am not 100% sure in the judgement.
Do you think Dalinar may have some problems with the hammer since he's afraid of himself, his powers?
Also I think Dalinar made a mistake when he refused to be a king...He's probably the best choice, but he still follows that promise he made to his brother when he was a young man.
Wouldn't it be better for Dalinar if he stopped being so uncertain of himself?
It would indeed be better for Dalinar if he'd grow a little more confident about himself--but I think he's no more uncertain than Thor in Endgame. So I think he'd have a good shot of at least budging the hammer.
What about Wax? Not that I see him using a hammer...
I wouldn't say Wax could lift it. Doesn't feel right. He resents being Harmony's agent, even still. He's a weapon himself, in many ways.
Thor makes mistakes. Picks the wrong sides, gets tricked into wrong actions. It’s intent I think. It’s the courage to go on when faced with impossible odds. It’s also Odin who puts the requirement on it. It’s not some nebulous spiritual ideal. He needs a warrior and a fighter who can still get up in the morning after what they’ve done for a greater good.
I agree. It's more than just being a good guy--otherwise, Spider-man would be able to hold the hammer. You've got to both have good motives, but also the soul of a fighter.
This prevents someone like, say, Sazed from my books from being able to hold it. But I don't think someone like Kelsier, though shooting for good goals in the end, would be able to lift it. He's too much of an assassin, and a little too concerned with himself. Vin, as someone else pointed out, probably could have done it at the end of the third book. Dalinar. Kaladin wouldn't believe in himself enough, I suspect--but it would depend on the situation.
It's tricky because you don't simply want the magic of the hammer to be about someone with pure motives--you want it, I think, to be someone who fits the spirit and intent of the hammer.
What about Elend? He's the character that immediately came to mind when I heard this question.
Elend, I'd say no. He probably wouldn't want to--more of a Black Widow situation there. "Not interested. Isn't relevant to me."
What about Taln? Could he lift it, assuming he hadn't lost his sanity?
Yes, Taln would be one of the most worthy I could think of in the Cosmere. Less of a question than Dalinar, actually.
Vasher has enough trouble with magical weapons. He wouldn't go near another one.
What about Adolin? He has a good heart, he is compassionate, honorable and he definitely is a fighter.
My gut says no. It's about more than being honorable and a fighter--the fact that Iron Man and Spider-man are both shown being unable to lift the hammer (granted, Spider-Man it was only implied by the hammer towing him away) says it's about more than just being a fighter and being honorable.
It's hard to say specifically, as I don't know the canon reasoning for who can and can't lift the hammer. Tony can't, Peter can't, but Steve can--and so can Thor, even in the new film.
I'd say that Adolin needs to decide what his ideals are. He's in a confusing stage for himself, because deep down, he can't decide what man he wants to be. Is he an inferior version of his father, or is he someone else, who needs to find his own way?
Settling this question is going to be vital to Adolin in coming years.
Are the reasons why you believe Adolin wouldn't be able to lift Mjolnir the same reasons why the sprens skipped him when came the time to turn the Kholin family into Radiants?
In other words, is this why Adolin isn't a Radiant? Because he doesn't know who he is nor who he wants to be?
That's a RAFO, I'm afraid. (Sorry.)
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Old Dalinar. I don't think young Dalinar's motives were right for holding the hammer.
How about Rock? He could probably lift it without even realizing what it means.
I think Mjolnir might have problems with his pacifism.
Hmm. that leads to the hard question: could Hoid lift it? :)
No. Not a chance.
What?!? No seriously… I don't mean Hoid honestly being worthy… but he doesn't do much things honestly anyway.
I think that (assuming that Mjolnir's power level is +- a Honorblade), Hoid could deceive Mjolnir for long enough to be able to use it… wouldn't he?
I think if we're bringing a Marvel item into the equation, we have to play by their rules, not mine. Odin is one of the most powerful beings in the MCU, powerful enough that even Thanos feared him, by my understanding. I think by their rules, it would be difficult to fool the magic.
Hoid would be much more likely to find a being who IS worthy, but who is also dumb enough to be duped, and get them to do what he wanted with the hammer.
I think there's a flaw in my understanding of Cognitive Shadows. I assume that... they would have more visibility into the Cognitive Realm, like a Herald would be able to see spren more easily, that kind of thing. Is that incorrect?
That is incorrect. A Cognitive Shadow simply means a copy of the Cognitive side made by a deep amount of Investiture. And everybody has a Cognitive side. Basically it's a fake soul. Or, fake is the wrong term. Fake is the wrong term. Even in-world they don't know if it's really them or not. It is Investiture has replaced the Investiture that is fleeing from them as they die, or enhancing it in some way to keep it around. So some Cognitive Shadows trapped on the Cognitive Realm are going to be-- have a lot of Cognitive-- I mean, they're there, right? But some Cognitive Shadows inhabiting a body in the same way that your mind inhabits your body, the way the cosmere works... So a Herald is going to feel like they are alive just like-- but their soul has been somehow transformed. It's not really transformed, it's been reproduced or copied by an injection of Investiture...
And I'll say for the purpose of the recordings, I haven't canonized any of that terminology that I just used about Cognitive Shadows. I'm just talking about it, I'm not necessarily saying that this is how you are supposed to refer to it. You can refer to it however you want. I've often used the metaphor of how fossils get made. When a fossil is made there is a pattern and it is slowly replaced with another substance that is stronger and more endurant, and has the shape of it, but is it still the bone? When you have a fossil bone is it the dinosaur bone? In most cases no, but yes. It's the ship of Theseus sort of thing again. Is this the bone or is it not? Is this the soul? Is this the person or is it not? That's the same sort of thing is happening with Cognitive Shadows. And it's happening on all three Realms to an extent, though of course the body is not. The body stays. It's happening on two Realms. It's happening Spiritually, mostly Cognitively.
