Shardcast - Dragonsteel 2023 WoBs Part 2

Feather Writer

Did Renarin figure out on his own that Adolin had killed Sadeas?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, but partial RAFO.

Questioner

You've said previously that the Oathgates don't obey Physical Realm speed of light. Do they obey the speed of light in Shadesmar? Or are they tapping into the Spiritual Realm shenanigans?

Brandon Sanderson

They're tapping into Spiritual Realm shenanigans. An Elsecaller is capable of creating something that can teleport you faster than the speed of light.

Questioner

Wit's dated a dragon; has Wit also dated a Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Wit has dated someone who wasn't a Shard at the point, but at some point in the future became a Vessel for a Shard of Adonalsium.

Lego Mistborn

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Use the Falchion

Have we met the Admiral of the Night Brigade, or the family of said Admiral, before?

Brandon Sanderson

The Admiral of the Night Brigade is the protagonist of the unnamed Threnody novel. You have not met her yet. I didn't say "hero" on purpose, I said "protagonist"! But when I write the Night Brigade novel (it'll probably just be called The Night Brigade), she's the protagonist.

And yeah, Continuity Chains are very involved in that story if I ever get around to writing it.

Questioner

Is Mraize a Sleepless?

Brandon Sanderson

Mraize is not a Sleepless, despite the scar. Sometimes it may be something I use to indicate someone is a Sleepless. It's an excellent question, but I can go ahead and let you know Mraize is not a Sleepless.

I'm glad somebody asked that, because I realize now if I ever give a scar to somebody they're like "oh that means Sleepless," but not always. Sometimes scars just mean you've been in a lot of fights.

Questioner

Is Hoid secretly a dragon?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid is not secretly a dragon, but he did date one once.

Questioner 2

Who is the dragon that Hoid dated?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!

Questioner

Nomad was able to overcome his Torment. Would someone else be able to do something similar using soulstamps?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, this is theoretically possible.

Soulstamps are one of the easiest ways to play with spiritual DNA and spiritwebs and stuff like that, so yeah.

msyverw

So, what's up with Canticle? You've got the sunlight, it appears to be Invested and then the planet's core is trying to suck it up. And you know, where does it go after it does that, and...

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Canticle was built for a very specific purpose by a very powerful being in the Cosmere, that I will someday get to. You're going to see some more stuff like this. Basically, megastructures that imitate planets or other sort of heavenly bodies.

msyverw

So it's not like some avatar of Autonomy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not an avatar of anything, it was built for a specific purpose, yes.

Just wait til I get to the Grand Apparatus, you're gonna love that. What was that voice that talked about a future Cosmere planet? Hmm!

Questioner

I was wondering if the Skybreakers' armor spren... what spren they are?

Brandon Sanderson

Well... Do you have any guesses?

Questioner

Stormspren?

Brandon Sanderson

No, not stormspren, good guess. Any other guesses?

Gravitationspren. We're going with gravitationspren for them. So you should see some little hints of that in future books.

And this isn't too much of a spoiler 'cause we will be releasing all of these when the RPG comes out, 'cause you gotta know how you get your armor when you play the RPG.

Questioner

Suppression fabrials. They don't work above the Fourth Ideal for Radiants, but they work on all Fused. Why?

Brandon Sanderson

Fused have, in general, a smaller amount of Investiture—or access to a smaller amount of Investiture—than a Radiant of those oaths. That's the dividing line that you can use to figure that out.

AllomancerSam (paraphrased)

As of Lost Metal, is Kelsier alive enough that Hoid can't hurt him anymore?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Um, yes. Hoid would have trouble hurting him in his current state.

AllomancerSam (paraphrased)

Is there a shard hiding out in Canticle's core?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

That's a RAFO

Questioner

You talked about how Hoid would never want to go near Nightblood. If he were to be in proximity to Nightblood, would he be, like, Force-pushed away? Like, he wouldn't be able to get close to him?

Brandon Sanderson

No. He would not want to touch him. The thing about Nightblood is... Hoid's one of the few who knows exactly how dangerous this thing is. And beyond that, Hoid depends so much on the memories that he has in his Breaths, and that would be one of the first things that would get sucked out by Nightblood. So if he were to touch Nightblood, he might lose centuries. And this is a big deal to Hoid. So, yes, he could theoretically pick up Nightblood. It would just be a lot more disastrous more quickly for him than it probably would be for others.

Questioner

How many different types of Aviar are there, and what do they all do?

Brandon Sanderson

This is a RAFO because I haven't even decided yet. What I decided is that there are dozens upon dozens of different kinds of Aviar. So what that tells me is, I don't want to nail down what all of them do, because if I do, then I might need one for a story in the future. So, this is kind of how-a-sausage-is-made sort of thing. It is on a magic system like this where I'm saving to maybe talk about more in the future, I don't nail things down. When I need to write an entire series, it's something I often will, nail everything down. But when there are as many Aviar as there potentially are, I'm not gonna do that. So, you may imagine powers that may come to exist in the future, but I'm not gonna tell you what they all are.

Questioner

Is there a reason that the Night Brigade is following Nomad, or can seem to follow him, but can't seem to follow Hoid?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They have a way of tracking who... once they find someone, they can find the chain to the next person. Able to go from Hoid, through the chain, to get to Nomad, and they're trying to find where it went after that.

Questioner

If Hoid took lerasium in Mistborn: Secret History, does that mean his hemalurgic spikes are feruchemical?

Brandon Sanderson

What hemalurgic spikes?

Questioner

Hoid and his magic systems, he had hemalurgic spikes...

Brandon Sanderson

He does hold some. They may not be in him. Does that make sense? Hoid has hemalurgic spikes carried with him. ('Cause the people who asked me if Hoid has hemalurgic spikes didn't say which one.) He does not necessarily have them spiking him. He actually has, like, a little bandolier type thing. Hoid's got one of those with a bunch of spikes. He was gonna use them in one of the books, but it turned out to not be necessary, so I didn't put it in.

Questioner

Does silver break Connection or bonds? If silver does have this effect, does it get used in the creation of unkeyed metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

These are good questions. Silver, as I have it right now, is not capable of that. What silver's doing is is disrupting. It's more like interference. You know how, in White Sand, people can have these columns of sand. If you swiped silver through that, they would fall; but then they would be able to do it again. It's this little nullification for a short time. It's very dangerous to things like shades, and stuff like that. It's more disruptive. If you hit a spren with this, it would be like hitting them with a Shardblade. They're gonna come back together. They're not dead; they're gonna reform eventually, and probably won't take too long. So it's not severing Connection; you're gonna need anti-Investiture to do really destructive stuff. But you can disrupt with some silver. It's specifically bad for Shades for reasons maybe I'll get into someday.

Questioner

We've seen Renarin do some pretty fantastical things both in Oathbringer and in Rhythm of War. Are Truthwatchers able to use aspects of the Progression and Lightweaving surge to have someone or something become a different version of itself?

Brandon Sanderson

They can't make that happen, but they can certainly invite.

Questioner

In Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, Design mentions being a Shardblade. So my question is, what oaths has Hoid swore?

Brandon Sanderson

We'll RAFO how many of them, but he is doing the Lightweaver thing, which was kind of hard for him, honestly; he had to admit some truths he didn't want to.

Strifelover

What is the Grand Apparatus?

Brandon Sanderson

The Grand Apparatus is a reference to a planet in the cosmere you haven't seen yet that is completely... it's very obviously constructed for a certain purpose.

By the way, that's not my canon name for it. It probably will be, but I haven't Googled that to make sure someone else hasn't used it. "Did you not know that Microsoft has a thing called the Grand Apparatus?" That happened to me once; I've got Silverlight, they're like, "Like the Microsoft program?"

Questioner

Is there a relationship between cinderhearts and what happened to Amaram? And if so, what is it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there is a relationship. It just kind of built on some basic, fundamental cosmere principles. This power feeding a little bit on even your own sense of Identity and Connection and things like this, as the power consumes it, and kind of starts to turn you into a spren a little bit, is what's happening there. Drawing it in. They're very similar mechanisms; it's not that they're related magically, like a lineage of magic sort of way. But on the same fundamental principle. And this is what lets the Unmade kind of just take over a person, quickly consume them, and then move on.

Questioner

I have a question about Hoid. If he was previously a Dawnshard that prevented him from hurting himself or others, how could he use a hemalurgic spike on himself?

Brandon Sanderson

We don't know that he has.

Questioner

But would he be able to?

Brandon Sanderson

I think there is a way he could get around that if he needed to. Basically, he has to convince himself that this isn't actually hurting him, it's helping him.

Questioner

Similar to how he could do damage to Cognitive Shadows, because they're not really...

Brandon Sanderson

Yep, exactly.