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How does Lumar still have water if the aethers use up any of it (which seems to be most of it) that falls on the aether seas? How does water get back into the system?
I mentioned earlier, water cycle is the weirdest part, even more so than the moons. I will say that, as part of the decomposition of the aethers, the water reenters the system. I'll give you that much.
Ostensibly, all of the magic that we’ve seen in the cosmere ultimately originated from Adonalsium. Ostensibly.
Ostensibly.
Does Adonalsium have a counterpart with equal or comparable power? And if so, have we seen that counterpart’s influence in the cosmere?
This is a matter of personal philosophy. The aethers are said (by themselves) to co-date Adonalsium and to not be derived from Adonalsium’s power. So there is at least one that is theorized to be that way, but it’s going to depend on who you trust and who you talk to.
If a well-studied singer were to become an aetherbound, how would they (with their innate understanding of tones) evaluate the core aethers' claim to be independent of Adonalsium and the Shards?
They would not have enough experience with the cosmere in general to be able to say yes or no.
How about this. If they went to all the different tones and compared them, they would find something different happening with the aethers, I think is what the question is getting at. So there is some evidence cosmereologically for the aethers' claims to be independent of Adonalsium. There are also evidences that arcanists could put forward that say otherwise.
You said that all Investiture got assigned to a Shard when Adonalsium got Shattered, which Investiture do the Dawnshards draw from? What about the aethers?
Dawnshards and aethers both predate the Shattering, and the rules don't apply to them.
Is there any significant relationship between the twelve types of aethers and the ten essences on Roshar, even just in a sense of recurring cosmere-wide patterns?
I would say yes, but it's tenuous.
How much have the aethers changed since Aether of Night?
The big change I made to the aethers, other than adding this other world... A couple things going on with the aethers.
First off, when you finally meet people who bear the aethers (which we're calling aetherbound, currently, and I like that term), you will find that, in order to differentiate them from things like seons and things like spren bonds and things like that, I've decided that one core aether bonds a lot of people, and it's one entity that you are all bonding with. So, if you meet five aetherbound who have bound to the Verdant aether, they are all bound to the same individual, at least on the core aether world. And that just adds a different nuance to it. There is lore and worldbuilding that is different that I will leave. There's a lot that's the same; there's a lot that's different that I'll leave to you to discover. I am working quite a bit on this planet for future projects (which, no, I haven't secretly been writing yet). But that's the big change.
And the other change is that I decided that aethers would be able to... I would have different things happening with them, different strains. In their own lore, they were not... the aethers themselves don't believe they were created by Adonalsium. And so they're, like, a different sort of thing, a different entity, so to speak. And this goes back, even, to way back when I tried to write them into Liar of Partinel, them predating things like the Shattering and what not, and it feels right for how I want to treat them.
Those are a few little tweaks that you will eventually get. But the basic mechanics of how they work is the same as they worked in Aether of Night. I think that one of the things that really worked in Aether of Night was the mechanics of the aethers. I thought they had a lot of interesting storytelling play, I thought that they did different things than some of the other magics that I was writing did. And they have remained solidly a part of my brain for how the Cosmere will proceed. And that's why you see Mraize having a chunk of an aether and things like that in his trophy case.
We know there are multiple planets with aethers, so do both of these worlds exist simultaneously? Or is this one an evolution of The Aether of Night's Vaeria?
They do both exist simultaneously; this one came from that one. The answer to both is "yes."
Are the aethers native to multiple worlds?
Currently, no - but they have spread + they claim to be not from any world.
Is there a "how the sausage is made" reason why there are 16 Shards, instead of 15 or 17?
Yeah, it splits really nice on a table. When I was developing the Cosmere in general, I was looking for... the division of multiples of 2 is just so much fun for designing things like the Allomantic Table. You can do that with 10, you can do that with 15, yes. I find aesthetically pleasing the way that 16, 8, and groups of 4 work, and that's how I arrived at that number.
I also did have some kind of boundaries on myself. I needed it to be a large enough number that it could cover the full group that I wanted to do in Dragonsteel, but it had to be small enough that people could track them all. 16 is a little on the high end for that, but doable, I believe. Particularly since you really only have to track all 16 when I write the Dragonsteel stories. (You'll really have to track 17 because we have Hoid, who did not take one.) But lately, you have at least one of the Shards being combined, and others of the Shards no longer being relevant to the course of stories, and things like that. So you won't actually, in the future, have to track 1.
But it was a nice number for what I wanted to do; not too big, not too small, and I liked how the divisions broke down. And I knew I was going to do 10 with Roshar by that point. If I was gonna pick 10, I would have to use 10 again in Mistborn, which I could do, but I wanted to have different themes. I wanted their tables and math to look a little different visually on the page, since they were two pillars. So 10 and 16 felt like the two good pillars. The Aether world is a 12 world, so we'll have a 12 also. The Aether world does not play into things nearly as much, but it'll depend on how many books I write using the Aethers in the future.
Aether of Night, aethers also show up in Liar of Partinel...
Yeah, that was...
Was that cannibalized...
That was a cannibalization, it's an attempt at repurposing and I didn't like it so it probably won't go forward that way but it was an attempt because it worked so well to mash Allomancy and Feruchemy into the same system and I didn't like how it went but...
Aethers in Tress seem to take over their hosts aggressively, probably without the host's permission, whereas we see in The Lost Metal with TwinSoul it's more willing. Is this related—and how—to the corruption of aethers on Lumar?
Yeah, it is related. You have the main aether planet, which we just named but I can't... so Kalyani named it for me. Well, Kalyani and Rahul. I'm relying on them a lot for this planet, and they actually just sent me a five-thousand-word world guide for it. [...] They could tell us how to pronounce it. "Dhatri" might be how it is?
Regardless. On the main planet. So the idea here is they're very formalized, how you interact with the aethers. But on some other planets (not just Lumar), aethers have gone that are not connected to the main set of them on the main planet, and what's going on on Lumar is directly related to how that separation happened.
So that answer is a long-winded yes.
Are the Aethers from one of the Shards that we know? Or are they of a Shard we haven't learned about?
Right now they are pre-Shattering.
But I will probably change that.
The spores react to water with sudden growth, which is very similar to Dayside lichen. Is the lichen an aether, or significantly related to the aethers?
Read the book. That's a RAFO, but there are some clues in Secret Project One.
Are spores and fabrials affected by God Metals?
Yes, the severity depends on which God Metal.
Mraize's Basement Emporium. Is that more like a trophy room or a "In case of emergencies" room?
Or a bank vault?
Or a weapon's vault?
Or both?
So, yes...
I mean, he can't use the aether, right? ...He can't use the aether, he doesn't have an aether. But the sand, the sand does stuff. So a handful of sand is a really useful amount of sand to have if you're not a sand master. Because sand reacts to Investiture. So if you let it fade and you take it somewhere, as soon as Investiture goes kinetic, it'll turn white again. So you'll be able to use it to tell who's using Inve-- it works just like a Seeker, like bronze pulses...
So having white sand, having sand around is really good. If you can keep the little beasties that are growing on the sand around, they will react to basically the Investiture equivalent of radiation. So that's handy.
Are there any Easter eggs in any previous Cosmere works that are references to any of these secret projects that we will recognize once we’ve read them? Or were these all brand new ideas added to the Cosmere from where it stood before you started writing them?
You will find Easter eggs, but they've all been fairly well documented, of aethers appearing. Tress is on a world that involves the aethers tangentially. It's not the main, core aethers. So yes to that.
It's not really Easter eggs... Secret Project Four is something I've been laying groundwork for. But that's different from Easter eggs. When you read Secret Project Four you'll be like, "Oh, this is what he meant by 'he's been laying the groundwork'." It's a story that I've been preparing to tell and that you are prepped to read. That you can read if you haven't read anything else in the Cosmere, but you will enjoy more if you...
In fact, I am actually going to give you a minor spoiler on this. We are going to be putting this probably in the description so it's going to be spoiled for everyone. So even those who don't want spoilers, this is one that we're probably just going to make part of the thing on Thursday. It is Stormlight-adjacent. I warned you that it's one of the books adjacent. We're just going to go ahead and let people know it's Stormlight-adjacent. I think that will factor in to whether people are interested in digging in or not. Because those that haven't read The Stormlight Archive might not read the spoilers on that one, and those who have might read only the spoilers on that one. So it's like, Easter eggs? No. Full-on building toward? Yes.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter is the one that there are no real seeds for. It's just a story that I conceived and decided to write, on a planet that is connected to another one in ways that are interesting, and that don't play into the major Cosmere in large ways.
I'll release [Dragonsteel Prime] for the Words of Radiance Kickstarter.
Basically there's not a whole lot that's canon in that anymore. The Sho Del are, the dragons are, and the Tamu Keks are. But all the Hoid stuff is not really canon anymore. He'll get a completely new book backstory. I have really done some work lately on the aethers in ways that I really think is working. So I think I can start canonizing aethers, sneaking [them] into the mainline cosmere books. Whether I can ever write the book about the aethers is another question, but you should see more than just little cameo pieces now that I'm sure about some of the ways they work. I made some major breakthroughs in how I wanted that to all connect.
Obviously the Shards are the top dogs in terms of power and stuff, but Hoid seems to be his own level of dangerous. Are there any other characters as sort of rivals to his ambition or power?
Depends on how you want to express it. Some of the dragons from Yolen are as old and are very crafty. You could argue that the aethers, the actual core aethers, are as ancient and potentially powerful. I wouldn't put them by raw power at Shard level, but they would claim that they are. Depends on what you would think there. There are some other individuals of a similar, not as dangerous as Hoid, but on a similar level. Been around for thousands of years, investigated a lot of the magics, and these sorts of things.
Are there still six different types of Aethers in current canon? Or has that changed?
They have expanded. I’m using the Aethers behind the scenes for a lot of space age things. And because I’m doing that, I am adding in a few more Aethers. There’s going to be some limits on this. I’m tweaking which Aethers I’m actually making, ‘cause some of them didn’t work as well as other ones.
There will end up being more, but I won’t canonize the number until I have the Aether book ready to release.
Aether, is that how you say the book? ...Aether of Night? Is that going to get published at some point?
I will probably bring that into the mainline Cosmere. Right now, it's not in continuity because I've changed enough things about the way that Shards work, and things like that. The aethers themselves are in continuity. Mraize has some aether-- some bits of aether, in his little collection. They are in continuity somewhere, but I haven't dropped them into the actual continuity.
Spores are said to eventually overwhelm a ship's silver defenses. Do aether spores ruin silver like the Shades over in Threnody do?
Yes. It'd take a lot, but yeah. Basically, this is how we have a ship that sinks not destroy the whole ocean.
What are the other six types of spores we didn't get to see in the book? Were there any that you really wanted to include, but couldn't?
No. When I've written books, I tend to gravitate toward a couple of the aethers that are really the most dynamic for action scenes and things like that. Some of the other aethers are there for the necessity of the future of the Cosmere. For instance: zephyr, while very useful in this for firing cannons and stuff, is really there so that we can have propellant in space by just-add-water and make yourself some extra propellant. And atmosphere; kind of a low-tech (there's better-tech ways), but a low-tech way to: "hey, we've got zephyr aether, it makes breathable air. And so, if we've got water and a barrel of this stuff, then we'll be able to breathe." So there are some of the aethers that are there for that sort of reason, so that we can have pneumatic weaponry and some easy access to emergency propellant in space, and stuff like that.
But verdant is the one that I just keep coming back to, that one and roseite, as making for the most dynamic storytelling. We'll see what I do with some of the others. I'm not gonna answer what the ones I haven't mentioned are, because I am saving them for future books to be used and to be interesting and engaging with them.
Something I've been curious about: will Liar of Partinel be released as a Sanderson Curiosity eventually? I noticed that in the stream a while back where you listed your unpublished books, you didn't list it among them.
Also, you gave four approximate sort of "quality tiers", of
Which tier would Liar be in?
Liar would be #2, I'd think. Problem is, it's close enough to continuity (having been written after I'd outlined the cosmere) that I wouldn't want to actually release it until after I've done the actual Hoid backstory book. I've changed some dramatic things about how I want to present the story, so it would be bad to release this one.
We've reached a point where Dragonsteel, however, wouldn't be a spoiler. So I'm tempted to release that one in the next kickstarter. I've been kicking around the idea of an actual revision of White Sand, to make it publishable, and release that as an actual canon novel. It's the only one that could happen to.
Does this mean there is no chance of a canon version of Aether of Night ever being published? I really enjoyed it and think a fully polished version would be fantastic.
It is unlikely, but not impossible. Aether could be made canon with only slight changes--but it doesn't fit into the larger cosmere story any longer, so I don't know of how much interest it would be.
To clarify, you're referring to the actual Aether of Night novel, not the future rewritten Aether books that you've mentioned before, right? Or are those not likely anymore either?
Since Aether of Night could be canon with slight changes, I assume the Aethers in the book will be mostly canon as they are, at least in your current outline?
If you were to revise Aether to be canon, would you be replacing Ruin and Preservation with two other Shards, or would you be more likely to just remove Ruin convincing the Twins to imprison Preservation?
Future Aether books are very likely. And the aethers themselves are going to be very like the ones in the book.
If I did try to make it canon, I'd probably remove the whole Shard plot from the book and instead either use another Shard, or not add a new one, since the Aethers (as I have them now in the notes) function without a Shard's involvement, and even predate the shattering. (Note, that's not yet canon.)
Are you going to make any more books with Tress?
My intent is for Tress of the Emerald Sea to remain as a standalone book. And I have no intentions to go back to Tress or her story. I’m sorry. I just do think that it is good to have standalone stories now and then. That doesn’t mean that some people might not appear (most likely being Ulam or Xisis, the people who were already cosmere-aware). But do not plan on a Tress sequel. I know a lot of people are sad about that, but, you know, I am of the opinion that not everything needs a sequel.
Lumar does have some relevance. Access to aether, kind of just raw and unconnected from the main aethers like that, is of value in the cosmere. So Lumar does have interest in the wider cosmere, for that reason. There’s definitely stuff you can do with a bunch of raw aether.
Aether of Night was cannibalized; it's no longer going to be released. Apparently some of the concepts were taken and worked into other books, so it's no longer publishable.
Actually it might be un-cannibalized. Some concepts went into Liar of Partinel, but now that book won't ever happen in that form. So there could still be one or more Aether books in the future. But it would be a ground-up rewrite like happened with Mistborn and Stormlight.
Wait, really? That's pretty big news, even just possibility of it happening. I presume the Shards of the world would change then? Since Decay got reworked to be Ruin and such?
Yeah, Decay is essentially Ruin, so lots of things would change there. But the magic of the Aethers, especially, could get their own book later.
There is a reason that Aethers are already canon. I don't think anyone has figured that out yet. But the backstory Brandon gives them could change in the future, or could end up never materializing.
Now, you're talking about possibly (no promises being made) a revision and an actual release of White Sand. Is that something you would ever consider doing with Dragonsteel Prime or Aether of Night?
No. Main reasons being that they're too far out of continuity. I haven't been considering them in continuity. Like, Aether of Night, they fight Midnight Essence; shows up in Stormlight, shows up in Tress of the Emerald Sea. And we delve into the first appearances of a Shard of Adonalsium, but that Shard's no longer canon. And the worldbuilding of Aether of Night is totally canon; aethers have been showing up since late 2000s in my books. But Aether of Night, there's nothing about that book, of the actual plot and characters, there's nothing about that that is appealing to me or interesting to me. Hopefully, I will eventually write a book set on the aether planet, where the Aethers come from, which is where Aether of Night was. But that planet's completely different, and the story'll be completely different. Those characters aren't relevant to me.
Dragonsteel, I consider lightly canon to the Cosmere in that the events of Dragonsteel happen, mostly, but the worldbuilding's been refined so much that eventually I will write the book that will be called Dragonsteel (or maybe the series), but it'll now be Hoid's story, rather than Jerick's story. And it'll be a completely different type of story. Though little bits of it will be recognizable.
White Sand's the one that's still canon; I've been considering it canon all along. There's no events in White Sand that disrupt that. The characters are still really interesting to me. Khriss has shown up all over the Cosmere, and she's a main character in it. Baon's shown up in Stormlight twice, now (as of the little reading I did recently), so I wanna get a real good canon prose version of White Sand out there for those who don't want the graphic novel, so that it can be in the line. The big question I have, though, is: will I sit down to write it and be like, "I need to start on page one and just do this over?" Or will I be able to revise it and release it?
What research about the aethers is Xisis hoarding?
His biggest interest is how aethers break down, and he's really researching the water cycle, and trying to figure out how the seethe happens, because he's very interested in the decomposition of aethers, which is what's causing the seethe. That's what he is hoarding there. He's got quite the establishment in Silverlight as well. Silverlight was once upon a time a bunch of dragon palaces, they all still have their skyscrapers there, basically. He's taking a little detour for some decades on Lumar, but his home base would be in Silverlight.
That kind of answers my follow up question, that was, is his scholarly seclusion typical of dragons, or just something unique to him?
He's taken a bit of seclusion, but I wouldn't say... There's a whole bunch of different things about dragons. If you've got a Tamu Kek, you can contact them, you can pray to them, and they can actually influence your emotions. They're all kind of like little mini gods. They're not immortal immortal, but they're pretty long lived and functionally immortal. They've been around for a while doing all kinds of stuff, so there's all kinds of things going on with them. Some of them will be secluded. Some of them take their duties very seriously, like Frost takes his duties very very very seriously. Other ones just don't care. You will get some themes with dragons, they do like bargains, they do tend to have their interests, they do tend to collect people and have either followers or corporations or things like that--I don't want to go too cyberpunk on us, but yeah. You'll notice some themes the more you get to know them.
I will warn you, in the cosmere, there are more Anne McCaffrey style dragons, lesser dragons if you want, that do not have a human form. The greater dragons, as well call them, they're basically like amphibians, they have to spend a part of their life cycle in a humanoid form. They give birth in humanoid form, then have a transformation in puberty to dragon form, and then can go back and forth after that. But we've got some Anne McCaffrey style dragons, we've even got some little drakelings on one planet that are not six limbed and stuff like that. We'll eventually have some more dragons, but when I was writing the early books in the cosmere, we were a little dragon flooded with Eragon and How to Train Your Dragon, so I didn't write the dragon stories. But maybe some day.
That's fascinating. And also, that means we got our Tamu Kek, which seems to be a theme with these because we always have a Tamu Kek somewhere.
One of the few ways to have an ansible in the cosmere in the early days, pre technology, if you wanted to communicate between planets, this is one of the only ways. Really handy to get a hold of one of those, or to get some seons. Before we get technological solutions, those were your two main ways to communicate across planets.
Will we see Aether of Night eventually?
I can't promise. You've seen the aethers; Mraize's room of trophies. But I can't absolutely promise I'll work it in... The question is, if I find the time. I just stay consistent on the mainline Cosmere books. If I find the time, I'll get Aether of Night.
Are the aethers the moons? Or just on the moons?
On the moons, good question. They are on the moons. The moons are not 100% aether.
Is Adonalsium a unique being or are—were—there others?
RAFO! The aethers would say that there were lots. That there's like a bunch of aethers and Adonalsium. That they were co-equals. The aethers would say there were lots of them.
I am new to the concept of aethers and understand that they may have been introduced in the story. Can you please provide a broad overview of what the aethers are and the role they play in the Cosmere?
Sure. In a currently not canon but very close to canon book I wrote right before I wrote... There's, like, an era of semi-canon books I wrote. Elantris, Dragonsteel, Aether of Night, and White Sand. These are the four big Cosmere books I wrote before I got published. I guess Way of Kings Prime is in there, too. And so, we have slowly been canonizing versions of those worlds into the Cosmere. White Sand, we were able to take almost one-to-one straight across, with some tweaks, and bring it into the modern Cosmere; 'cause it was designed for the Cosmere. Elantris, obviously, got published in that form. There are a couple of them left. One of them is Dragonsteel, which is Hoid's origin story and the story of the Shattering. That will eventually be written.
And the other big one during that era that I wrote is a book called Aether of Night, which kind of pioneered the idea for me of the bond between a sapient piece of magic and a person. And what would happen in Aether of Night is that people would bond to a piece of some kind of primal substance, and it would bind into their hand, and then that would be a sapient thing that they could interact with, and then they could produce that aether. Like, if it was vines, they're able to produce from their hand an explosion of vines and do cool things with that. That was the core of their abilities. There was one rogue aether called the Aether of Night, which was doing weird things that are very similar to what's happening with the Midnight Mother on Roshar.
There was a story there. The story is OK. It's two decent stories that don't weave together very well, is the big problem with Aether of Night. It's as good as other books that I wrote during that era. Not quite as good as Way of Kings Prime or Elantris; maybe equivalent in quality to White Sand or Dragonsteel. And we let people read this one; I think I let the 17th Shard give this one away. We just gave it to them as a little way to get people involved over there. We will eventually release it, probably as Aether of Night (maybe) Prime; it depends if I name the new book Aether of Night.
But this is how they function. Very similar to the bond between spren and a person on Roshar, but with a different way of accessing their magic. Those are the aethers. And so, since I knew I was eventually going to be bringing them in (because the magic system worked), I have been foreshadowing it for quite a while. Like I said, Mraize has some chunks of aether, and we have people mention the aethers and things like that. They are part of the Cosmere. You will eventually get some books that really dig into what the aethers are and how they work.
Kind of a similar question about the Midnight Essence, now that we have seen that crop up in Tress as well as in Stormlight Archive. Is something similar happening with the Midnight Essence? We have also the nightmares, in Yumi, that appear similar, they're also mimicking things.
So, there's a couple of things getting interwoven here. The actual idea of Midnight Essence is a concept like Lightweaving that predates the Shattering of Adonalsium, that various magic systems are basically "borrowing" a law of the cosmere and creating a parallel effect from the same basis, if that makes any sense.
Yumi is a little distinct from that. It's feeling similar; I would not call it true Midnight Essence. It's an awful lot more like a Lightweaving that has--because Lightweavings can have mass to them, because investiture can have mass to it--so you're looking a little bit more like... imagine a bunch of Stormlight becoming tangible, you can touch it, because of a powerful Lightweaving or something like that. Of course, these things all bleed together because I'm using the same fundamental principles to make them. But, for me, Midnight Essence has this personality that comes prefixed. What the Midnight Mother is making, what you're seeing in the Midnight Sea and things like this, you're gonna get some similar personalities to these things, and not necessarily the same with the nightmares.
So it's more of a autonomous-- a Lightweaving that's become autonomous and has kind of broken down a bit?
Yeah... the problem is it's also got the Cognitive Shadow, right? It's a really invested Cognitive Shadow that is borrowing this Investiture to interact with the world. Because these are their shadows; these are their Cognitive Shadows, all of these people's Cognitive Shadows. But the power is not themselves. Remember, a Cognitive Shadow is a little bit like a fossil, like Vasher describes it. You've got this pattern there, and then the power kind of makes it manifest and be able to interact, and things like that. And, when that personality asserts itself with that power in the right place, you end up with a person that is the shadow running it. But at the same time, you've got this mass of power and energy that the machine is kind of controlling, which pulls back and overrides the personality sometimes. You've got a very weird set of circumstances going on here.
But it was very fun to figure out all the backstory and the behind on it, and get it all working. This one was a little complex, to get these things all working behind the scenes. I like how they turned out. Yumi, if you dig into it, it has both pluses and minuses. The minuses is - from the beta readers and the alpha readers - the ending for non-arcanists was really overwhelming, which is why we have those Hoid scenes where he's like, "Okay, let me explain." It seems pretty obvious, I would expect that this is, like, "Alright, Brandon needs to do better explanations, Hoid's just gonna do it." But, because of all the work I did behind the scenes on Yumi, Yumi matches kind of cosmerological magic system stuff in ways that a lot of the side projects that I do just don't. Yumi is very deeply intertwined and following all of these processes in a way that works really well for me. But it also gets you into where you start to need a master's degree in the cosmere to figure it all out, which is why to make it easier, we have Hoid just spell it out for people. It is a little clunky; I prefer the clunkiness to the previous version where you needed a master's degree in the cosmere to understand even what was going on.
Any news on an Elantris sequel?
No news. I want to do this between Mistborn Era 3 books, is do some Elantris. But I'm gonna have to see how things play out in writing those books. It depends on a lot of factors.
I do plan to do them, still, just like I plan to do one Warbreaker sequel. But I have to balance these things, because I also want to do some new stuff in the cosmere, with new planets. Like, we need to do the Aethers. They're relevant to space-age cosmere, so I need to have at least a book or some novellas to get you used to that magic system, as well.
What are your current thoughts on Silence Divine? The setting and magic are some of my favorite to visualize so I'm always crossing my fingers you'll want to do something with it. It just hits all the right checkboxes for "cool" and with Dawnshard's release, well I was hoping it might be on the radar...
It's on my radar, yes, as are the two other Cosmere novellas I want to write. (A sequel to Emperor's Soul and one to Sixth of the Dusk that I've actually started.)
Problem is, it's hard to find slots for these things. We'll see. Not forgotten, certainly.
I don't know why, (an old WOB?) but I thought we would only be dealing with Sixth in the background from now on, so a sequel is awesome to hear.
The Sixth sequel is him exploring Shadesmar. I have a scene done, but it involves some pretty big spoilers for space age cosmere, as within a few years of the story that happened, there is a lot more going on in relation to other worlds. So I'm not sure if it's wise to continue it at this point.
I know I'm a minority in this, but I love normal humans in a magic world. While Sixth has no investiture, the world is still fantastic and has the air of mystery.
Will we see other cosmere settings where the people don't have magic, but the world does, like in Sixth, and shadows?
Yes, you will see more like this. (Many of the settings that involve Aethers can be like this, for example.)
Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.
What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a one-to-one, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a one-to-one.
But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.
Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.
So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.
