Cheyenne Sedai
What research about the aethers is Xisis hoarding?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
Cheyenne Sedai
That kind of answers my follow up question, that was, is his scholarly seclusion typical of dragons, or just something unique to him?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
Cheyenne Sedai
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.
Brandon Sanderson
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.