Hoiditthroughthegrapevine
The magical fish in the Purelake, is their magic part of the Old Magic paradigm?
Brandon Sanderson
The magical fish are not of Honor. Not of Honor not in a bad way, but there's something else going on there.
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The magical fish in the Purelake, is their magic part of the Old Magic paradigm?
The magical fish are not of Honor. Not of Honor not in a bad way, but there's something else going on there.
So, are we going to learn more about Cultivation here in book three?
You'll see a bit. You learn a bit. There is a couple if events in Dalinar's life that...
The Old Magic? Alright.
...might be involved in his flashback sequences. No promises.
A girl asked what was up with Taravangian, since it seemed a rough break between the tottering old man and the scheming mastermind that Szeth meets at the end.
Brandon said that Taravangian used the Old Magic, and that he wakes up each day with a different IQ. Sometimes he's a genius, sometimes he's an idiot. So what he does is he writes up math puzzles for himself in the evening, and if he cannot get a certain score in the morning the guards have orders to just take care of him and keep him away from important decisions for that day. That way he keeps his effect under control.
Okay. So The Way of Kings. The question that we had from the forum: Is The Way of Kings the rediscovery of old magic or the invention of new technology? Or maybe a combination of both. Could you elaborate?
That's an excellent question—somebody's been reading my mind. First, I do want to say, thank you, guys, all, for reading the books; thank you for all you're doing supporting me as a writer. With this series, one of things I wanted to approach was...both of those concepts, actually. A lot of fantasy has the feel of magic's going away. Magic is dying. This goes back to Tolkien, with the idea that, you know, the elves are leaving and magic is going to leave the world, and that's always made me a little bit sad, that these books have this theme. And so I did want to write a book about the return of magic. But beyond that, I'm very fascinated with technology, and the development of technology, particularly as it relates to magic. And so this series is about the rediscovery of magic and how magic interacts with science, and the treating of magic in a scientific way on a large scale. You know, you see that in each of my books, with magic being treated scientifically, but I really wanted to do it in a way that changes the lives of everyone. The common people—magic changes their lives as much as technology changed the lives of the common people in the technological revolution we went under. And so that's what I'm going to try to approach in these books.
Is the Old Magic in Shinovar, and is this a result of something to do with Cultivation?
The Old Magic is at The Valley, which is not in Shinovar, which is… If you've got a book, I'll show you where it is.... Let's see where Issac's wonderful map is, the first big one… Right here. So the Valley's right there. So that's where you go in order to visit the Old Magic.
One of your characters wishes for and is given capacity... That is one of my favorite concepts of all the books that I read of yours. Can you talk about the inspiration for that gift of limited and maximum capacity?
To not give spoilers, there is a character in The Stormlight Archive who has asked the Old Magic, which is a force that kind of has references in things like The Monkey's Paw and what-not, a force that doesn't always give you things exactly the way you want them. And I built, by the way, the Old Magic into The Stormlight Archive because I felt that at a certain point, while I love to do these rule-based magic systems, I wanted there to be a contrast to it... It's kinda like this idea that, yes, modern science and things have explained a lot of stuff, but there's something primal, perhaps, in the past, I don't actually know. But that idea that there's a primal magic that doesn't really adhere to the rules, we can't anticipate it, was really, I felt, vital for me to include so that I didn't overexplain everything in the books.
So, there's a person who asked for capacity. It wanted to be, let's say, strong enough to lift (it's not actually strength, but it's more of an emotional thing) what was coming. That, I feel like, is a very real thing to wish for, right? I have frequently, like... people say "What would you wish for," and I say "The ability to fly," because I would love to be able to fly. But really, if I sit and think about it, capacity, ability, the capacity to hold all of this stuff in my head, would probably be the sort of thing that I would wish for. So this character, in some ways, is giving wish fulfillment for me, because that's what I would maybe ask for if given the opportunity, but even that kind of turns on its head because the Old Magic just doesn't get people in the way that people think they should be gotten.
How many magic systems are in The Stormlight Archive, and how many of them haven't been seen?
I would say the only major one you haven’t seen is Voidbinding, it depends on how you count them. I count fabrials as one, Surgebinding as one, and Voidbinding as one. And then the Old Magic is kind of its own weird thing.
I kind of envision the Old Magic working a little bit like Hemalurgy, where some-- takes a part of the Physical DNA of the person and transmutes it onto the Cognitive DNA because everything seems to be a Cognitive shift for the person, am I thinking along the right lines?
You are thinking along very-- Yes you are thinking along the right lines. I won’t tell you exactly but you are thinking along the right lines.
So in The Stormlight Archive series--
The Stormlight Archive? How old are you? *laughter* How old are you?
Nine.
Nine?! You're reading The Stormlight Archive? You are awesome! *cheers*
So the character Lift, for her powers, why does she have to eat food instead of sucking in--
So why does Lift have to eat food instead of sucking in Stormlight. So Lift is a really weird one, she visited the Old Magic and asked something very strange. And the Old Magic didn't know how to treat that and answered with something equally strange. So you will eventually see what happened with Lift and things like that but suffice it to say some really weird things are going on with Lift.
How many magic systems are there on Roshar?
It depends on your definition. Is Windrunning its own magic system, or is it a division of a larger magic system? Are the ten different Surges each their own magic system, or...it's really how...
If you assume the surges are considered one.
Well then you would have Surgebinding, and the Old Magic, those are two at least, and there are things that are not explained in those at all, and how do you count creating fabrials? Is that a science and not a magic? Is that its own magic system?
It's a science, because anyone can do it.
So Awakening is not a magic, then? Awakening's a science? Because anyone can Awaken if they just get the breath.
That's one thing that stood out to me in your magic systems, because in all your other magic systems that we've seen so far there has to be some form of snapping to occur, and that's unique...
Not all of them because, um, let's see...
BioChroma doesn't.
BioChroma does not requires snapping.
Actually wait, is there an active magic system on Threnody?
Threnody has a non Shard-based...it depends on what you call magic. Do spirits coming back to life count as magic? It's science to them, but it's goofy science.
Is there any magic system you consider softer? And any magic system you consider harder than most of the general audience would think they are?
...So, this is gonna dig into definitions of what you consider a soft and a hard magic system. And I don't know that we can come to an agreement on this in such a large crowd. I do think that sometimes Harry Potter gets a bad reputation for being a soft magic system where I feel like Harry Potter's a really good study in how you can have a very rule-based magic system for one book. Though she tends to ignore her own rules book-to-book, but that's okay, because that's what the story is. It's a hybrid, where it's really hard for one book, and the rules set up in that book are then used to great effect, and in the next book we get a new set of rules. Which is, you know, the same way that James Bond does it and things like this. Kind of resetting her magic a little bit between books. Not completely, Harry-Potter-philes, I'm not trying to trash on it. I think it's interesting to look at, because I think people don't understand what she's doing, some of the times, with that magic. But whether something is hard or soft doesn't really matter to me in general. It's the sort of thing I think people expect me to think about a lot. I just want the story to work, right? I don't care if it's a hard magic or a soft magic, if it's low magic, if it's high magic. If the story works, and the magic is in service of the story, I'm gonna like it, regardless of what it is. Even if it's-- like, people will be like, "I bet you hate those elemental magic system, where it's just the same old magic system." I'm like, no! My favorite magic system is probably The Wheel of Time, which is an elemental magic system. Even a step away from that, Jim Butcher's Codex Alera did an elemental magic system really well. It doesn't-- There's nothing that's just, like, "You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that." Tell a good story.
Is the Old Magic a Shard?
Is the Old Magic a Shard? That's a Read And Find Out.
Using Hemalurgy, could you steal the boon from the Old Magic?
Oh, from the Nightwatcher? This is theoretically possible.
Would that take the [curse] with it as well?
*Hesitantly* Yes. Though it's also theoretically possible to split them apart, that would be a lot harder. Getting the boon, if you knew what you were doing, would not be that difficult.
Now, what Cultivation would do to you when she found out that had happened is another thing entirely. Because those are willful grants of Investiture.
Similar to Endowment's with the Returned?
Yeah, things like that. When you get a Shard involved and the Shard has.. power to... Same thing like...it's on a much grander scale what's happening with the spren bond, right?
When Hemalurgy does spread, most Shards will not be happy about this, right?
Yes, that is correct.
So for the Old Magic, in this classification system of end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative, where would that fall under?
So, almost every magic in the cosmere is end-positive, almost every magic is relying upon an external source of Investiture to power it. So that phrasing is mostly more relevant to Scadrial than anywhere else, because that concept is how I'm dealing with things like the laws of thermodynamics, and even what they call end-neutral is relying a little bit on the power of Investiture to facilitate. So even an end-neutral magic system as they define it on Scadrial is actually not end-neutral. What you get put in you get out, but the power is facilitating that transfer… So that phrasing is kind of a... Take that as a science on.. Scadrial that does not extrapolate well, and may not even be 100% accurate.
That would have been a great thing to know before we did the cosmere magic panel. *laughter*
I look at it as, is an Investiture externally powering the magic, and if you look at Allomancy, yes it is. You are drawing that power out. Feruchemy, you are putting Investiture in from your own body, it's your energy transferring to Investiture, which is being stored, which you are then drawing out, and things like that. But that changing forms is facilitated by the magic. Whereas you're stealing stuff with-- So you could look, for instance at the magic on Nalthis, you could look at that one as being-- as kind of working as end-negative, meaning "I am taking it away from someone else", or end-positive depending on if you're the one receiving it or not. So again, it's a phrasing that can be useful as a tool but doesn't scale well to the other magics.
Are the Ashynite magic system, in which micro organisms cause diseases and bestow powers, and the Old Magic related? You could sort of see the powers and the disease as a boon and a curse. If so, does the "Old" part come from that?
Yes, they are related, but the name comes from the magic actually predating spren bonds.
Are Nightwatcher and The Old Magic related?
The Nightwatcher is related to The Old Magic and is related to a Shard.
Which Shard?
RAFO.
In Way of Kings, one of the interludes we see the Purelake--
Yes.
--and I've thought a lot about the fish.
Yes.
He mentions that one of them has healing effects and potentially that's--
The lore of the area states that fish have healing-- some of them--
I was wondering of your thoughts. Is that Investiture in the fish or just local superstition?
Well that is the question of the scene, so that's also a RAFO. I will say that there is still superstition, Roshar in particular. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everything they say is magic is. But there is a good chance.
What's up with those fish in the Purelake?
Haven't you always wanted magic fish?
In the acknowledgements of Firefight you promised that if you ever became an Epic you would go after your alpha, beta, and gamma readers last. What would their best defense be, i.e what would your weakness be?
Mac'n'cheese? Well, No 'cause I like mac'n'cheese too much. Fish sticks. It would be fish sticks.
I thought you disliked fish sticks.
Exactly. That's why they'd be my weakness.
Nazh writes that "spren fishing" is illegal in Ravizadth. What exactly is spren fishing?
It is the act of forcefully attracting spren in Shadesmar for your own purposes. For example, you know how when Adolin is genuinely afraid there, his fear attracts fearspren naturally? That's okay. But if someone were to engineer situations that would attract certain kinds of spren because they wanted to make use of those spren - for study, or other reasons - that would be "fishing". If spren have formal ethics, this would be unethical.
So this has a lot to do with consent? Drawing spren naturally is part of how spren work, but forcing them to come, that's a no-no?
Pretty much.
Are any of the fish in the Purelake Invested?
The fish in the Purelake, like the Ryshadium and other things you will see, are not 100% normal.
I'm actually a big YA reader, and I became a fan of yours through your YA books; I read The Reckoners first. And I actually found-- to put it in a nice way, some resistance from some of your fans because I like your YA stuff better. But I guess my question would be, what would you say to your readers that are really stuck on Stormlight or your older books that are reluctant to read either yours or other teen books?
It's really weird to say "adult fantasy" in this context. I once had a panel where they introduced me as the "adult fantasy guy," and I'm like, "Well, yes?"
...I would say, number one kind of most important thing in this is, "Don't feel bad for liking something and not liking something else." This is a big thing to me. It is okay that I hate fish sticks, and some people in this room love fish sticks. And if we acknowledge that writing is an art, and stories are an art, then I think we have to acknowledge that like or dislike of them must kind of have an inherent subjectiveness to it. Because if we all liked the same sort of art, that would not really be a world I want to live in. So it is okay to try things out and say, "This isn't for me." Whether it's written by me or anyone else, that is perfectly all right.
Though I would also say, if you haven't given a try to a genre just because of-- there's a lot of snobbishness to art, at the same time. Like, I was reading an essay recently about how fiction has existed in this state of feeling snubbed by nonfiction, which was the "true" writing, ever since the novel was invented. But of course, once the novel was invented, we started subsetting into different genres where you could be snobbish against other people in that. And then in the subgenres, you're like, "Science fiction is better than furry fanfic," or whatever. So suddenly, all we do is, we spend time being snobbish about somebody else's art that they love. And you see this a lot in science fiction with-- Someone enters reading Eragon, and they love Eragon, and they go somewhere and say, "Eragon's my favorite book ever." And they're like, "Oh, that's just a bad ripoff of Star Wars and Anne McCaffrey." Instead of being like, "Wow, I'm glad you loved something. Welcome to our community." They're like, "Oh, you don't like the right thing." So, if you kind of let this get to you, and you haven't tried any genre, whether it be one of the YA, or a lot of people in Sci Fi/Fantasy (I won't state the specific genres) like to point and say, "Well, at least we're not as tropey as them." I think you will find, in a lot of variety of places, things that you love and you can learn from. And YA in particular, particularly when I was trying to break in, YA had started doing all the really exciting things in Sci Fi/Fantasy. So if you haven't read some Garth Nix from that era, or if you haven't been reading some of the really cool YA. (I just read the Star Touched Queen, which is amazing.) If you haven't been reading some of this stuff, YA has been doing a lot of really cool explorations of setting and genre and stuff like that, then you are doing yourself a disservice not trying it out. You don't have to like it, but I would suggest that you try it out. So that's what I would say.
Are the "magic fish" of the Purelake the result of symbiotic bonds with spren?
Yes they are. Many creatures on Roshar have such interactions with spren.
Are there any parallels between the fish in the Purelake and the Aviar in Sixth of the Dusk?
Yes.
He clarified that Nazh was caught spren fishing because he was trying to attract a spren to be his stooge and do some work for him. He got in trouble for it because he didn't know that was illegal.
In TWoK, Dalinar mentions that back home Reshi border encroachments grow increasingly bold...according to the map of Roshar, no Reshi islands are directly adjacent to Alethkar. Is this encroachment simply due to Tai-na migrating into Alethi waters and skirmishing with Alethi boats? Or are the Reshi actually sending raiding parties to the mainland?
The Alethi have a long history of skirmishing with the Reshi islands just to the north and northeast of Alethkar. (And at various points, they've just considered Herdaz to be an Alethi province.) The fertile fishing up there makes for some coveted seas.
The number of authors with creative control of films are very small, and sell orders of magnitude more copies than I do. (Sorry ). It is either sell the rights and hope to be involved, or have no film.
It might sound insensitive but....are you not as big as I thought? You, Butcher and Rothfus (or maybe Martin...special mentions to McClellan and Weeks)....I always imagine you three as the BIG names in the genre of the generation. I guess I have the bias of how much I love your books but it seems to me someone so acclaimed could in the figurative sense "name their price"
It's not insensitive. I'm pretty happy to be able to be make a living at all, let lone to be as successful as I've been. I'm certainly "big" for fantasy--the issue isn't that, it's that even popular books just don't make a dent in film numbers. It takes so much to finance a film these days, that it's very rare (and requires a huge, huge fanbase) for anyone to risk putting an author in charge. We're not a known element.
For example, Stephenie Meyer (of Twilight fame) wasn't popular enough to get creative control from a major studio, which resulted in her going to a second string studio to get the power she wanted. And she was orders of magnitude more popular than GRRM is now. The only author I know of to manage it for sure is Rowling.
In answer to your question, last I checked (which was around the end of the year last year) Pat, and Jim, and myself were basically even. Pat sold the least of us three that year, but when he has a new book out, he jumps to the highest of us by a significant margin. Over time, we are pretty even in the US. (Though it should be noted Pat does that with far fewer books than the other two of us.)
George was about five times our numbers, and there weren't any fantasy writers in between him and us that I recall. Dashner (author of Maze Runner, and a friend of mine, so I thought to look) was about seven times our numbers. (Even with Grisham.) Hunger Games was about double us. Big romance/thriller writers hovered at around George's level.
Fifty Shades of Grey (the one book alone, not the series) in its first year sold about 10 times what Pat, Jim, and I sell in a year. So while we might be big sellers for our respective genres, we become small fish when we swim out into romance/thriller waters. The only one who can hold his own out there is George, and maybe Niel Gaiman. (I didn't think to glance at his numbers.)
And even they don't sell enough to name their price with a film studio. These are places with the kind of cash flow that they could buy every single copy of every Sanderson, Rothfuss, AND Butcher book ever printed, misplace them on accident, then shrug and write it off.
Chapter Three
Who To Blame
There are two people you can blame for this book. (No, I’m not one of them. We authors never take responsibility for things like that.) They are Stacy Whitman and Heather Kirby, the women who worked on me for a period of several months to get me to start reading kids’ books. I’d always said that I wanted to get back into YA and middle grade (even if I wasn’t sure on the distinction then. Not sure if I am now, actually…). However, I’d just never gotten around to it.
Well, these two–along with Ms. Fish–just kept recommending books to me. Eventually, I broke down and started reading them. (Though, if I trace it back to the real beginning, it was when my friends Faith and Nathan started reading the Lemony Snicket books to each other while they were engaged. I was the roommate who had to deal with them snuggling on the couch all the time…)
Anyway, back around 2004 I started reading a lot of YA books. I found I liked them, and remembered a lot of the ones I’d enjoyed as a kid. The more I read, the more I realized that a lot of the really exciting fantasy worldbuilding was going on in the kids’ book world. I also realized that you can get away with my kind of humor in kids’ books much more easily than you can in adult books. (I’ve written one other comedy, but something just didn’t work about it. I now think that if I’d shot for a younger audience, it would have been far more successful.)
All of that led to me writing Alcatraz during a short break between Mistborn books two and three. It was a quick write–took me sixteen work days–and was essentially an extended free write, intended to get something out of my system so I could get back to Mistborn. (Though at the same time, Alcatraz made for an excellent break from the Mistborn world, which is rather dark.)
I didn’t expect much from the book. It was fun, but had been done more as a writing exercise than anything else. A way to clear my system of all the kids’ book ideas that came to me during my readings in the genre.
Then Joshua and Steve–my agents–got hold of the book. They sold the heck out of it, and we discovered just how many people loved the concepts in it. We ended up getting a four-book deal from Scholastic, which tickled me pink. Not just because I got paid for a book I didn’t expect to earn a whole lot from–but because it let me write more books in the series! (These are a blast to work on.)
This map,
*Hands Brandon the Part Four Sea of Lost Lights Map*
How much of a hand did you have in this map or did you kind of let Isaac go crazy?
So this one is half and half, I went to Isaac and said put this and this and this and then he added some craziness. One of Isaac's voices in the cosmere is Nazh and almost everything that is written by Nazh is Isaac and he named a bunch of this stuff, he ran it all by me. I actually vetoed a few. He came up with some, I'm like "Ehh" and then I renamed them to things that actually fit.
Okay, why is spren fishing banned here, is that you or Isaac?
That was Isaac...
Does the plague on the Purelake has anything to do with the fact that the magic fish form symbiotic bonds with spren?
No, worldhoppers brought a disease to Roshar that they didn't have before. It's the common cold. Rosharans' Investiture makes it so they're usually a healthy bunch so something like the cold is kind of frightening. "It's a plague of the sniffles."
Another person asked about the plague in the Purelake.
Turns out, that was a pathogen introduced by worldhoppers. People on Roshar normally have greater health than elsewhere in the cosmere because they are more Invested (Stormlight and all that). This plague was what we call… the common cold.
If you were going to make Horneater stew here on Earth, how would you go about it?
If I were going to make Horneater stew, on Earth, how would I go about it. It's going to be a spicy seafood stew. When I think of Horneater stew I'm actually thinking of Yukgaejang which is a Korean dish. Or Haemultang is what I mean. Haemultang is a spicy-- spicy seafood-- it's basically whatever thing from the ocean-- I don't eat things from the ocean personally-- but everything from the ocean they want to throw in there with some spices. They stir it up and give it to you and if you like fish in there and there are like crab claws and full clams in the shells. You're like "Really guys?" But Rock would just be munching those down and being happy.
My question is not really a question, it's more of a theory. How Odium keeps the Fused around is more if he has them tied to his essence, so it's like he's essentially fishing them out of the Spiritual Realm and since their minds are left behind in the Cognitive Realm and their minds are *inaudible* damaged, because their spirits are separated and it just pulls them back.
I'm 100% convinced Nightblood did kill the thunderclast, because Nightblood consumes all investiture, that's something I asked you back at Barnes and Noble a couple years ago, during Christmas and you said your soul is investiture. So my thought is, that thunderclast isn't coming back any time soon.
You are correct on that one.
When I saw that, my thought was, "Yep, It's dead." Other people were like, "I don't know, will it come back?" Nope.
I'll tell you this. They have not run into something like this before, and there will be ramifications of what happened there.
That is fun to know.
If you are used to death having no consequence, and suddenly your friend vanishes forever...
Yeah I, know I already thought of that. They're going to fight over Nightblood.
Mmm.