Questioner (paraphrased)
Is it possible to steal Stormlight?
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
It's theoretically possible.
Found 58 entries in 0.196 seconds.
Is it possible to steal Stormlight?
It's theoretically possible.
If an Awakener went to Roshar and bled color from a gem, would this gem still hold Stormlight?
If an Awakener bled-- No it would-- Oh wait yes it would because a colorless gem could still hold Stormlight. It just would not have--
Would not have the properties of the original color.
Yeah, the color is integral to what's going on because molecularly some of these gems are the same except for the different coloring. The coloring is kind of what--
What defines what magic.
Yeah. It has to with fabrials and some of the effects, and that relates directly to the spren and what spren-- anyway.
Why did Kaladin's forehead scars never heal?
Stormlight healing has a lot to do with how one sees oneself.
When Kaladin is Invested Stormlight specifically rises from his skin. When he is Lashed to a wall, what direction does it travel? Up to him, or to the world?
When he is Lashed to a wall where does the Stormlight go. So when it's puffing off him, and he's Lashed to a wall it will asc-- I think it will puff-- It will escape and go up.
Typical up.
Yeah, typical up.
Can Vasher use Stormlight to Awaken things?
No, all it does is keep him alive. But he has tried and has not figured out how to Awaken things.
Can Stormlight give enough extra strength that a humanoid could use a Shardbow w/out Plate?
Not normally.
Can a Mistborn use the Investiture from a Highstorm?
It takes some effort to convert the Investiture. They can burn metals from other planets, though.
Is healing a universal Stormlight power than?
Yes, within reason. Some are better at it. But it is a universal power.
In Mistborn, Allomancy tends to get a little addictive, is that something that's going to happen with Stormlight—holding it just because it feels good?
You are noticing a similarity. That is intentional.
Is there a significant connection between Stormlight and spren?
Yes.
What is the extent of that, I guess? Is that a Read And Find Out?
That's a RAFO.
Stormlight production by Bondsmiths. Is this a Dalinar-only thing, or a Bondsmith thing? Has it been used historically? Or am I getting RAFOd?
You're getting RAFOd... I'm gonna RAFO it. You should know the answer to that eventually. But not yet.
So, if Nightblood is on Roshar, is he using Stormlight instead of Breaths?
Right now, if you are Invested with Stormlight, he will feed off of that instead of Breaths.
Would it be possible for someone to store Stormlight in a nicrosil metalmind?
I will RAFO that for now, but you're thinking the way I want you to be thinking.
Would setting Stormlight lanterns around a wounded person make them heal any faster?
No. Not your average person.
And regarding that healing thing, I’m going to have to back up on that one just a little bit because there would be nominal effects in the same way that if you’re sick and you go sit in the sunlight. That makes you feel--Stormlight has, not the same effect but it would have a nominally similar effect…Does that make sense? Or a similarly nominal.
I'm going through Hero of Ages...again and I noticed...when Vin takes the power of Preservation into herself the descriptions remind me a lot of someone who has been Invested with Stormlight--
Yes.
--are those powers very similar--
Yes.
--in how they operate?
Ye-- Definitely some similarities. You will see a lot of mist in Stormlight if you are looking. So yeah.
It like puffs out like mist.
How difficult is it to transfer Investiture from one magic system to another, is it even possible?
How difficult is it to transfer Investiture from one magic system to another. It is possible. It is more difficult with different magic systems. Breaths are easy. Stormlight is fairly easy. Others from there on get pretty hard.
The Heralds, back before Honor died, were they directly powered by Honor?
Yes. You’ll find out more about that, but the Shardblades [pretty sure he means Honorblades here] were pieces of Honor’s soul that he gave them and direct access to his essence.
Like Vin and Elend?
Yeah, a little like that. That’s why Honorblades don’t work like Shardblades do, like Radiants do.
The second part of the question is, what would happen if they were directly powered by Honor and they were holding Nightblood?
RAFO
Why does Stormlight make things cold?
It’s not the Stormlight, it’s condensation because something is going directly from a gas into a solid. The coldness is caused by that, it’s not necessarily that the Stormlight is making things cold, but that the Shardblade is condensing.
Is Stormlight an infinite resource or a finite one?
Stormlight is a renewing resource.
If I'm a Mistborn and I change planet-- if I go over to Roshar, do I have to bring metal from Scadrial with me?
No, you do not.
Could I use Stormlight, and just have the same power?
Not-- not-- It would take some work.
Yeah, okay. Okay, but I could use steel from Roshar, and you can-- Okay, thank you sir.
So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?
There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.
Implying that some are actually immortal? :D
Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.
Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)
Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)
Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)
Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)
Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)
Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)
Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)
And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.
Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.
Heals from wounds, but still ages.
Would Bloodmaker Ferrings exist in this category as well? If not, what about someone Compounding Gold?
Yes, you are correct.
As a Bloodmaker ages, what keeps them from healing the damage and carrying on as a very old, but very healthy person? Do they come to a point where they can't store enough health to stave off the aches, pains, diseases, and other things that come with old age?
This makes sense for traditional Feruchemy as it is end-neutral, so storing health becomes a zero sum game - eventually, you're going to get sick and you're not going to be able to overcome it with your natural healing ability no matter how much you manipulate it with a goldmind.
...Unless you've got a supply of Identity-less goldminds lying around. Would a Bloodmaker with a sufficient source of Identity-less goldminds (or the ability to compound, thus bypassing the end-neutral part of Feruchemy) eventually just die from being too old?
Basically, yes. They can heal their body to match their spiritual ideal, but some things (like some genetic diseases, and age-related illnesses) are seen as part of the ideal. Depends on several factors.
Do bigger gems store more Stormlight for longer than smaller gems? So a broam would hold it for twenty hours where a chip might hold it for six hours or something.
The cut of the gem and how flawless the gem is has more to do with how long the Stormlight stays than size.
Squires and people wielding Honorblades use more Stormlight than a regular Radiant. Who uses more?
The further you progress, the more efficient you become at consuming Stormlight. They're never as efficient as the Voidbringers, since humans leak too much.
I want to know if there was Stormlight before Honor.
So before Honor arrived there was a proto-version of the storms and a version of Stormlight. Yes.
Okay, but it was different?
It-- Things were different.
I want to know if there is a toxic level for Stormlight? If you're in the storm, can you get to the point where you have too much?
No, it doesn't quite work that way. Good question, though.
You said there was one person, I guess it was the Soulcasters, who were starting to change because of that?
That's more the magic changing their soul over time. It's not necessarily a function of the storms.
When Kaladin and Shallan and the others are in Shadesmar, it talks about broams of Stormlight. How do they measure that? Because you could have partially depleted spheres.
A broam's worth of Stormlight is just a full sphere. Newly infused. Behind the scenes, there are actual units of measurement for Investiture that a broam would correlate with, but you would need to be measuring that using instruments that measure Investiture that they don't quite have on Roshar yet. They could make them, but they don't quite have them yet. They're close.
So, you've mentioned-- you have an idea of how the Cosmere's going to go. The ending of the Cosmere, considering you have seven more Stormlight books to write and years to go, does the ending of the Cosmere hang over your head?
Does the ending of the Cosmere hang over my head 'cause I've got a ways to go-- Yeah, it's starting to loom a bit! You know, when I was in my twenties and thirties doing this, "Ah! I can write every story, I've got plenty of time!", but now that I'm in my forties I'm-- let's make sure we focus and keep going on this. So one of my goals has been to try to learn to write novellas so that the random ideas that pop in my head became novellas and not novels, because the way I work, I can't stay on one thing between books I find that it burns me out really fast if I don't have something new to work on, but if that new thing to work on can be a novella like one of the Legion books, or like Perfect State, or Snapshot or something like that and then I can jump back on the kind of mainline book I can reset myself quickly. And that why you see me practice that and things like that.
My goal is kind of closing things off faster than I open them. This is why Legion got finished this year, why Alcatraz will probably get finished next year. Those of you waiting for a Rithmatist sequel *sighs* eventually. I need to get those other two closed off first. For those of you waiting for Reckoners, I consider Reckoners to be done. If I eventually fix and release Apocalypse Guard, that might answer some of the questions you have about the end of that series. Elantris and Warbreaker are both part of the Cosmere arc, what I'll probably do is I'll write Stormlight 4 and 5 and the last Wax & Wayne book over the next few years-- five years, next five years probably. *laughter* And then I'll probably stop and do Mistborn Era 3, which is the 1980s Mistborn, and maybe some Elantris sequels. And then I'll come back and do Stormlight 6-10 which take place about 10 years in-world after Stormlight 5. Same characters, at least the ones that survive. *eruption of laughter* That might be all of them! No spoilers there. But Stormlight is ten books. The way Stormlight will go is Book 4 is Eshonai, Book 5 is Szeth, 6 is Lift, 7 is Renarin, 8 is Ash, 9 is Taln and 10 is Jasnah. That doesn't mean that the person survives, it means that it's a flashback sequence. *nervous laughter* Just keep that in mind. So if your sequel wasn't on that list then don't hold your breath.
If a Radiant brought some infused gems into Shadesmar, could they transfer that Stormlight into the black glass substance that seems to compose Shadesmar?
I'll RAFO that one.
Awakening and Surgebinding, Stormlight and Breath seem really similar in some aspects--
Yes.
--except Breaths seem to stick to things better--
They do.
--than Stormlight. So when you are holding the Breath it doesn't expire when you put it in something it doesn't go away. Can you tell me something about why that's happening?
Part of this is kind of inherent to the Shard and the power it's coming from. I mean the power of Endowment is just going to stick, that's part of the nature of its magic. Does that make sense? But it also kind of has to do with how the ecosystems are working. For instance the Stormlight is essential to the ecosystem of Roshar, it needs to be expended, it needs to get out and-- It's like evaporation, does that make sense?
Recycling? Not the recycling but the cycle of--
Yeah, yeah like the cycle of water. And so just part of the way the nature of it works, it has to get out, it has to leak out, it has to run out. I mean it leaks even from spheres, right?
And when you lash things it's temporary--
Yep. And even though Szeth says that he thought Voidbringers could hold it they can't. Like it is just not the way that it works.
Can they just hold it better?
They can hold it better. It's not permanent. Now there are things that can do it permanently but--
Like the black sphere for example?
Well we are not going to... The black sphere is something different. You guys have guessed what the black sphere is, right?
Well we have some ideas. I support that it holds an Unmade. Am I wrong?
I'm not going to answer that.
But you said--
I'm just curious what the theories are. Book 3 the black sphere is-- Everyone who reads the books will know what the black sphere is by the end of Book 3.
Does being filled with Stormlight make your skin glow, or are they just leaking mist which is glowing and not glowing themselves?
The glowing is from the Stormlight, which leaks from the skin. Even any glowing you think is coming from the skin is actually from the Stormlight leaking out.
So if a kandra Radiant were to go transparent, but had little bubbles of skin under their surface, would the bubbles of skin inside them leak Stormlight and light up, or does Stormlight only leak from outside surfaces?
Honestly, while what you say is plausible, I'm not sure I want to start down this path and the directions it might end up leading...
Does Stormlight drain faster in a vacuum?
No. Good question, I haven't been asked that before.
Have your ever thought about how your magic systems would affect a pregnant woman?
I have given thought to it.
...Which system would you say would be safest as a pregnant woman?
I think Stormlight-- being Invested with Stormlight would be very safe. You would probably be better off than not. Hemalurgy would be very bad.
So we already know that Vasher was Kaladin's trainer with a Shardblade, 'cause you told me that last time I asked you. So does Vasher just have a large mass of Biochromatic Breaths and that's how he's surviving, or is he somehow feeding off Stormlight while he is there?
He is feeding off of Stormlight, which is the primary reason why he came to Roshar. Investiture is easy to access in plentiful amounts.
How did he know how to use Shardblades so well when he got there, is that related to how they created Nightblood
Yes, he has experience with Roshar from hundreds of years ago.
What is Stormlight?
I don't want to answer this, but I'll just say "Investiture."
Could a double-nicrosil Twinborn compound Breath or Stormlight?
Uh, you’re getting a RAFO card on that. You're getting SUCH a RAFO card on that!
So assuming you have mentioned that it is technically possible to be able to use one magic system on another planet from a different one...
Yes.
Is it possible to fuel that... Like, say could you fuel Awakening using Stormlight, or do you have to bring Breaths?
Yes, you could!
Okay.
Excellent question. Now it's-- there are tricks to making it happen on each world. Some are easier than others, but yes you can.
So could that allow a loophole to maybe... convert from one form of power to another? Or like from Stormlight to Breath?
Yes. In fact, that's part of why Vasher--
Vasher. I wondered that.
--is on Roshar, is because it's a lot easier to get Stormlight than Breath.
How much Stormlight equals one Breath? Do you have an actual ratio?
I have a ratio. It's not on me.
Okay, that's a Peter question again.
Yeah, well, I may not answer it even then.
My question has to do with the color of Shallan's eyes currently, because we've noticed over the books that Kaladin's eyes, as he's continued to use his Surge, changed to lighter and lighter blue. Whereas one could argue that Shallan is farther in her Ideals than Kaladin is, yet her eyes have not changed at all.
Right, 'cause they were already light.
'Cause they were already light? So it only affects lightness or darkness in the eyes, not necessarily any other color?
It's not like it is-- It's not like it's saying "Light minus 50%".
It's not like Honor is blue and--
No. It is not. It is just kind of the way that the changes the Stormlight is making the body and certain people are already descended from people who had repeated, over time, changes by the body which stopped physically... That's not to say that all lighteyes that's where they came from. There are some that are natural mutations.
Does Stormlight go into the Cognitive Realm during a highstorm?
RAFO.
How many diamond chips does Zahel require to survive?
RAFO. We will actually be releasing this pretty soon. But I actually have used my prerogative as a famous author to force some others to actually do the number crunching and the math of it. And so we will have a straight up unit measurement for you of various things coming up pretty soon. Once the number crunchers are done, you will know.
I know that there's three sorts of forms that magic presents itself in, the liquid and the solid and air. What would Breath be?
Breath is definitely like mist, it is in the form of the air.
And is Stormlight the same?
Stormlight is the same.
Would Vasher be able to use Stormlight in the same way that he can get Breath?
That would not be immediately easy, but Stormlight could feed Nightblood.
Which is why Szeth can wield Nightblood?
Eh, you'll have to see if but yes. That could theoretically happen. You can use most of the magics on most of the planets to fuel the other magics, if you know how to do it, it is not easy.
Would empty perfect gemstones left in Shinovar and New Natanatan during a highstorm have different amounts of Stormlight?
Excellent question.
No, they would not. Strength of the storm is not tied directly to the amount of Stormlight invested. (Though there are in-world easterners who would insist otherwise.)
Do Gasper Ferrings and Surgebinders holding their breath use similar mechanisms to hold their breath?
It's not the same, but it is similar.
Do you have-- Or have you determined an equivalency between how much Breath it takes to make a certain gem's worth of Stormlight?
I have recently assigned Peter to this task, and he is feeling overwhelmed by it. It was actually during the writing of Oathbringer where I finally said, "Yeah we need to standardize this, so start working on it." So it was like, "Oh great". Which means he has to read through all the books for references and start figuring it all out. And we're going to need like an equivalent of a jewel or something like this, right? *gestures to a sphere that a fan made* And we've been putting it off because it sounds like an awful lot of work.
So the answer is no, we don't have it yet. It's something I've known for years we're going to need. And on this book, I just started saying, "All right. I'm going to have them do all the stuff they need to do. And then you're going to tell me how many spheres they need to start with." Right? Like, I write the book, and then we retrofit how many spheres they needed to have how much Stormlight, so that we could be consistent with that.
But we haven't done across magic systems calculations, yet.
Do you have, like on-- Like the actual gem inside a Stormlight sphere, do you have an idea of how large it actually is and--
Yes, we do have an idea of that, and how much it can hold, and things like this. And that's all known so that's going to start with the basis. But it's going to take math, it's going to take real math.
Math is hard!
Yeah, math is hard! And we're going to have to look at things like-- Yeah just make stuff up then make Peter shake his head.
Does Vasher have a different way of getting access to Stormlight than everyone else? Given that he has no spren, no honorblade and he isn't a squire?
Yes. He can use Stormlight to stay alive, but it doesn't let him Surgebind.
Could Szeth get access to this method?
Yes
And use it to fuel Nightblood?
Yes he could.
Can you tell me what that method is?
*smiles*
Where does the Stormlight in highstorms come from? Is there like a "rain cycle", but for the Stormlight?
The Stormlight in the highstorm is transferred from the Spiritual realm through the Stormfather into the highstorm.
One quick one: Stormlight breathing. Do you actually need to physically inhale or can you cognitively inhale? Like I can think about inhaling without actually inhaling?
You—this is possible, and—
Okay, like if you're trapped and you can't breathe, but you can think about breathing.
Yeah, yeah. That would be fine.
If you used Stormlight to Awaken, would you drain color or create frost?
You'll have to see if this happens in the future! (Note that mixing the investitures is usually not easy to do.)