Shardcast SP1 WoBs

Pagerunner

At JordanCon, you sharpie’d the aether planet onto my constellation chart and said you couldn’t canonize the planet name until you wrote the book. Having been revealed as a dirty rotten liar to my face, can you now reveal the name of the planet? Has it changed from the prior incarnations of the aether world due to new worldbuilding? 

Brandon Sanderson

This is not the aether planet. Ha ha! There are aethers on this planet.

The planet where the aethers originate is a different planet in the Cosmere. This is a unique and different strain of the aethers that is doing something different. If you have read Aether of Night, the original aethers still act very similar to what's in Aether of Night. But these are different. You'll still see the same things, like roseite and stuff like that. You'll still see that they do the same things, but it's a different take on the same magic system.

Did we come up with a name for this planet yet? 

Isaac Stewart

We're calling it Lumar. 

Brandon Sanderson

The whole twelve moons thing

Regardless, this is not the actual aether planet. So, yes, I'm not a dirty rotten liar about that specific thing.

simonthekillerewok

How much have the aethers changed since Aether of Night? 

Brandon Sanderson

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. 

simonthekillerewok

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? 

Brandon Sanderson

They do both exist simultaneously; this one came from that one. The answer to both is "yes." 

SapphireBombay

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? 

Brandon Sanderson

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.

MoriWillow

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? 

Brandon Sanderson

Read the book. That's a RAFO, but there are some clues in Secret Project One. 

Isaac Stewart

Our endpapers are going to be probably--I'm pushing the artists more toward symbolic rather than illustrations on the endpapers. I'm thinking these books remind me of books from the early 1900's, not the stories themselves, but how we're presenting them so that they're kind of like these classical books that you would see in libraries. And that's kind of what I have in my head, so I think of very kind of classy endpapers. Each artist is going to do something different. So, I've told the artist, "Hey, if you come back to me and say you just want to do four full color illustrations for the endpaper, great." But I have told them sort of the scope of the project too, so we'll see what they'll do. We're in the middle of it, they're reading the books, they're brainstorming, they're sending me ideas.

Isaac Stewart

Howard Lyon is doing the art for this first book [Tress of the Emerald Sea] and designing it. So, we're excited to have him on board.

Reflex Jat

Isaac, do you plan on putting a map in every one of these four books?

Isaac Stewart

I've thought about it when I read them. I thought about, "Okay, we could do maps in these." The truth of the matter is: we've given these to other artists to do what they want with it. And if the artist says "I want to do a map in here," we're going to let them do the map. This is something that I've had to start letting go of, I've been the map guy for so long, and there's just not time to do all the maps, even in the company.

Pagerunner

Will we be seeing an updated Cosmere star chart or system charts for these new words [from Secret Projects]?

Isaac Stewart

I imagine that we'll eventually have a star chart that has these new worlds on it. I don't know when that will be, but it's something that's been in the back of my head.

Brandon Sanderson

Maybe if we ever get around to Arcanum Unbounded 2, but I need to write more short fiction that could go in that before we could do that. One fun thing is: if you look at the Kickstarter page, there's that nice illustration of Hoid--also done by Howard Lyon--and in the background you will see some stars. Hmm? The new ones aren't in there yet.

Isaac Stewart

At least, not labeled yet. For people who don't know, I have a 3D model that a while back we said "okay, how many stars are in the Cosmere, what kind of a cluster is this?" And we talked to Peter and Brandon and we kind of brainstormed some things. So I built a 3D model that helped me create that first star chart and I have the main worlds like Roshar and Scadrial are named in there, but there are other ones that I just put in there in places to look good and try to figure out how would constellations work and things like that. So, we just have to go in there and name some of these if they're in the right spot. Or add them.

Isaac Stewart

Rain on the planet [Lumar]. How does this work?

Brandon Sanderson

It's in the book. That is actually a spoiler for the book, because there is a part where they deal with rain. It is in the book, they do talk about it. I did think about that, if you can believe it.

Very Nice Name 16

Can we expect to know who Hoid is telling the story to, when he's telling it, and roughly when the story is set relative to the rest of the Cosmere by the end of the book?

Brandon Sanderson

You will be able to answer a few of those things. I, right now in my draft, do not have it extraordinarily clear who he's talking to. I intend to make that more clear in revisions, but there is not a frame story device where we pop out and you see him telling the story. I actually sat down and talked with my team and said "do we want to add a frame story just to make this more clear?" And we all felt that the fun of reading it and realizing it was him was better than a frame story would be. And I like the story without the frame story in addition. So, you're not going to get an epilogue where you find out where he's been telling this particular story. You should be able to piece together a rough time period in Cosmere timeline by things that happen in the book.

Chase Landry

You mentioned that the Iriali were once on the planet, but with the twelve moons can we also assume that this is where the Thaylens get their 12-base number system and nautical skills?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. Excellent, excellent question.

PanHeadBolt

Is Hoid telling the story uninterrupted? Or are there interruptions being edited out?

Brandon Sanderson

There are interruptions being edited out, because it'd be about twenty five hours of him talking. Imagine this across the course of several days. That's what I think it would probably be; maybe it's not twenty five. It could be, like, twelve or fifteen hours for a hundred thousand word book. Twelve or fifteen hours is a lot, even for Hoid. I think that there are interruptions, at the very least breaks, and things like that.

Captain M

How far apart on the timeline are the events of Tress of the Emerald Sea and Hoid's retelling of them? Could you give us positions of them relative to other Cosmere works?

Brandon Sanderson

He is telling this story within years or decades of the events, not within centuries.

Where this is in the actual Cosmere timeline, I will leave you to figure out, because I think that will be fun to figure out as you are reading.

College Advice 12

What does the Cognitive Realm of this world [Lumar] look like? Please tell me it is just normal liquid water.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. It's a good guess.

Pundromeda

Are all twelve moons orbiting the planet's equator? Or are they spread out across the planet, perhaps arranged like the vertices of a d20?

Brandon Sanderson

I imagine it more like the vertices of the d20. Good question. Now, I will put the asterisk on this that we just got our work back from our scientists, who are trying to figure out how to make this even possible for me. So I haven't put that into the book yet; I haven't even read what they came up with yet, because I'm just digging in to revising this one. They could have something to say about this. But I have imagined it like the vertices of a d20. (Or a d12, since it's twelve.)

asmodeus

In this book [Tress of the Emerald Sea], there is a mention of a certain people that disappeared. We have seen them elsewhere; were they here before? Or will they come here after?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. Good question.

Hannah

Is there a connection between spores and silver, and shades and silver?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is a good question to ask. There is, indeed, a connection.

LewsTherinTelescope

The proper name for the sea seems to be the Verdant Sea. The title is Tress of the Emerald Sea. Is "Emerald" just being used as an adjective about the color? Or is it a regional thing, where some places call it Verdant and some places call it Emerald, or what?

Brandon Sanderson

It's a little more the latter. Verdant is more the scientific name, because it's the Verdant aether. But you will see, for instance, seas sometimes called "The Midnight Sea" or "The Sea of Night,"  which are two different things. You will also see some things like that. Emerald Sea made a better title, so I went ahead and let them use both terms for all of the seas. Some of them, there's not as much of a use of two terms.

The Fife

How many planets are in the system of Lumar, and could you give us the name of the system?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO and no. We need this to go into the star chart, and Isaac to determine what the system looks like, and we need to place it according to my thoughts on how it relates to the aether system. These are not things we can canonize yet. Glad that you're asking these questions, you will get canon answers eventually. But this is a RAFO in a "We are still making sure to figure this out."

Isaac Stewart

Lot of moving pieces there. Every time there's a new planet or new system, it has to fit canonically within everything else.

Brandon Sanderson

And I just threw three of them at Isaac.

Isaac Stewart

We'll get it figured out.

Laser Wolf 214

When did the idea come for putting this novel in Hoid's voice in order to give it a more Goldman-esque feel? Was it a fairly easy decision? Or was it later on in the process?

Brandon Sanderson

It was an easy decision at the start, though I will say the seed is that I've been looking for ways to expand upon Hoid's voice. When I write Dragonsteel, which will be in his voice, it will not be like this, the tone will be very different. But I've wanted for a while to tell kind of a longer Hoid story. People often ask me, "Hey, can we get a full Wandersail told by Hoid of all of their adventures and what not?" This is a think that I knew people were interested in, and I was really interested in doing it, as well. I wanted to do something different with my prose in this book, in specific. I just felt that there was a place I could do a little leveling up in my prose, and using Hoid's voice as kind of an excuse to do that felt very good.

And The Princess Bride book is just delightful, right? If you haven't read Goldman's book, it's very good. To be honest, another person who has prose like this is J.K Rowling. The early Harry Potter books, in particular, have this same whimsical, fairy tale feel. And then, of course, you all know that my favorite author is Terry Pratchett, and he obviously had... He had a different voice from this, it's less of the fairy tale whimsy. It's just pure Pratchett; it's hard to describe. But I've always wanted to be able to practice something a little more edging toward that. So, watching The Princess Bride again and thinking "No, that's what I want to do; I want to do a voice like that. And I have the perfect person to be giving that voice."

If you go to my reading that I did at the most recent book launch, you'll hear me trying (and failing, in my opinion) to get Hoid's voice right. Kingmaker is an experiment in trying to see what I can do with Hoid's voice and how to do it correctly. And I actually started that after I finished Tress, because I wanted to find a voice for Hoid that I could edge a little away from the fairy tale. I want to use the fairy tale voice. I believe that someday I might write another one from this same voice. But I also wanted to have a voice for Hoid... He can tell different genres, right? He can tell different kinds of stories; they're all not gonna feel the same, and you see this in the books, right? The way he tells Wandersail is different from the way he tells The Dog and the Dragon. Those are two different kinds of stories. So, I tried writing Kingmaker, and I did not like how the voice went in that one. So I backed off on that, and I instead wrote Secret Project Two, which is a non-Cosmere one, just to kind of shake myself out of where I had been and do something very different. (Obviously not told by Hoid; it's not in the Cosmere.) You can see a kind of failed start in there, which is kind of fun. And there are some things I like about that piece that I read from Kingmaker that I like a lot.

Isaac Stewart

That's interesting to me, because of course, when you get to Dragonsteel and he's telling his own story, he's not going to tell it like a fairy tale. It's going to be something entirely different.

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to have a more Kingkiller-esque fell to it. I want to practice a bunch of different ways that Hoid could tell stories.

MoriWillow

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?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say yes, but it's tenuous.

Questioner

Are the places where the spores are disturbed by the moons perpendicularities?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO; an excellent question.

College Advice 12

Did Tress continue to collect cups in the year Charlie was gone?

Brandon Sanderson

She did collect cups, yes. Not as many as normal. She wanted to have something to show him when he got back.

Travis Gafford

Given that you wrote these concurrently with other novels that don't have the same tone, was it ever jarring switching between the novels?

Brandon Sanderson

No, because I would usually be writing only little bits of these at night after I have gotten everything else I want done. I worried that I would be. But the brain space these took was much smaller than the brain space of other things, mostly because of how long and complicated the other things were and how these were kind of lighter, particularly Secret Projects One and Two.

You'll see, as I do more of these, they get more complex and more Cosmere-involved. Three and Four are far more Cosmere-involved than One (and then, obviously, Two is not). And the tone of Three and Four are both different; you can find a kind of gradual shift. So, when you get Secret Project Two, you'll be like, "Oh, this is a little bit fun and a little lighthearted in a very different way from Tress, but it has some of the same things." And then you'll get to Three, and you'll be like, "Oh, this is stepping more toward this." And then you'll get to Four, and you'll be like, "Four just reads like we're back to kind of a more Brandon Sanderson tone for my epic fantasies," if that makes sense.

As I've said, I think that Three is my favorite, but I anticipate Four being most readers' favorite. Just because it's more like things that I've done. And I just wrote the book I wanted to write. But Four is the one that is also the most relevant to the Cosmere, to the point that it's a good book to have read if you're going to be following the Cosmere. The others are whimsical, fun takes; even Three is like, "This is a self-contained story on a world in the Cosmere." Whereas Four, I think you'll be like, "Oh, this is what we're doing. All right." So wait for that one. There's some slight spoiler reveals for you.

SapphireBombay

Does this story [Tress and the Emerald Sea] take place in the Cognitive Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

No, excellent question.

AdelRD

How Cosmere-relevant would you say this story is?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on what you want. There are some characters that will show up that are relevant to the Cosmere. The aethers are very relevant, but these are an offshoot of the aethers. Knowing what's happening with Hoid is relevant, and things like that.

It is one of the less Cosmere-relevant. This planet is a backwater. This is not considered really important. The machinations of Shards are not hugely relevant to this planet. This is a story about these people, and you will see cool things and learn more about the Cosmere, but the goal of this one is to tell a story about these people.

I hope that you will still find it very cool and enjoy the Cosmere references and things. But it is not a keystone of the Cosmere; it is meant to be something you can read completely indifferent to the Cosmere.

thegatorgirl00

Hoid has a line, "a jawline so straight it makes other men question if they are," when describing a character. Is that simply Hoid getting into character and being comfortable acknowledging another man's attractiveness? Or is it an indicator that his sexuality might not be entirely straight?

Brandon Sanderson

I considered it more of the first. And also a really good line that Hoid liked. But you may read it how you desire. I don't get to decide, right? I will write the stories, and then you guys get to decide how you feel that they... we'll just go with that. I did not intend more than kind of some subtle jibes, a good quote, and Hoid kind of indicating some things about society, perhaps.

GreleminShieldHeart

Will we get an Ars Arcanum in each of these [Secret Project] books?

Brandon Sanderson

I haven't written one yet, but it's likely that you will.

Quilty Hill

It sounds like this [Tress and the Emerald Sea] is going to be a bit more romantic than some of your other novels. Were the main characters based off you and your wife? And if so, which one is she?

Brandon Sanderson

My wife definitely has some Tress-like attributes, and I definitely have some Charlie-like attributes. I would say that is not me doing a one to one parallel, but Emily is rather pragmatic, and she is a very good thinker, and also a person who doesn't like to impose. And I would say I got that directly from her. Emily's one of those people who will feel guilty, if she had a wound, that the paramedics had to bother with her. And then there's the guy who does not know when to stop talking and likes telling stories that perhaps, sometimes, go on at length.

You guys will love this. I went, I should write up a little FAQ, to post on Monday or Tuesday. I sit down and write some frequently asked questions and things I'm getting, and I sent it to my team yesterday and it was 7000 words long. And I'm like, Oh, it got so long while I was writing it that what I need to do is write a short version and a long version, so they can post the short version so people can get actual reasonably short answers to the question and then they can link the long version if people want to read me going off forever on tangents, so let's just say there's definitely some me in Charlie.

Praying for Superpower

Do all the moons drop different color spores?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, good question. There are twelve different types of spores that do twelve different things, and they all are at least subtly different in shades.

asmodeus

If the oceans on this planet are all made of dust and sand, will we eventually find out how human-like life got there (without assuming whether earth-like life or dust oceans got here first, or that either came from somewhere else)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I can answer this eventually. I probably won't answer it in the book. But as we talk more about the aethers and their core world and some of these things, I can answer some of this. Good question; actually, excellent question.

Brandon Sanderson

Here's the one [Year of Sanderson swag item] that I want (and I pitched this to them): I wanted to have a nice writing notebook. Probably in the Sanderfan one. A nice writing notebook. But we want to view this swag... Like, I've seen a lot of cheap swag in my days. Because I've gone to a lot of book fairs where people have, like, "You can print your stencil on this thing that someone else made." And I don't wanna be doing that; I don't wanna be having it just be like, "Here is this random object that we have poorly stenciled our symbol on. Look at the cool swag you got!" I used this as an example to my team to say, "This is the sort of thing we should be doing."

So it's going to be a writing notebook, probably with the Cosmere symbol or something like that on it, but it will have, interspersed through it, lines and ideas from my writing notebook, of ideas I haven't written (including some I have that's inspired these stories), and things like that. So you will be able to look through and get a writing prompt directly from me, from my actual writing notebook, of all the ideas I keep that I haven't written stories on. It should be a high-quality notebook, with our symbol on it, so you have a nice Cosmere notebook. But it has that little extra something that means we went the extra mile. We built something for you. I used that to explain, "This is the sort of thing I want to see us doing."