Shardcast - Dragonsteel 2023 WoBs Part 3

thegatorgirl00

How were the people of Komashi able to negotiate the spirits to remain as hion if they didn’t have any yoki-hijo? Was it just a myth that only the yoki-hijo were able to negotiate with them to begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

It wasn’t a complete myth. They were more interested in people with this Investiture and this Connection to them. The yoki-hijo were far, far more effective. But they weren’t the only ones who could theoretically negotiate with them. Plus, after what everybody had been through, some things have changed.

Questioner

Can someone who's not native to Nalthis use other forms of Investiture to Awaken objects?

Brandon Sanderson

Once again, you're getting into this idea of "how do you tell the Investiture what to do?" What you're asking for is possible, it's absolutely possible. But things becoming Awakened like they are on Nalthis is not a natural result. We have a few natural results. You can take a bunch of Investiture, and some things will happen to you that are gonna be shared across the cosmere. And if you put Investiture into something... Investiture getting separated and becoming self-aware, that is natural, that process takes a long time. Awakening itself is a formalized way of doing it, so you have to have a way to tell the Investiture, basically, what you're trying to do with it.

Questioner

When somebody takes up a Shard, do they inherently get knowledge when they get that Shard? For example, does Taravangian know about hemalurgy, now, just because he took up a Shard? Or was that just Ruin's...?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. Taking up a Shard is going to impart a large amount of knowledge, more than even a Shard can process immediately, and it will take some time. And it's going to give you the ability to access a lot of other kinds of knowledge. Shards aren't omnipresent, but they kind of are; they are able to do many things at once, they are able to focus on places and be aware of that location in a lot of instances. But at the same time, they are limited in their ability to... they don't know everything. They might be able to get access to most things, but it takes conscious... like, "I need to know this. I need to find it out. It happens it's written in a book that I can just... it's on this other planet, and I absorb it and immediately know." Assuming it's not written in a way that you can't access, which certain formats make it hard to do.

So, Taravangian, if he cared to think about what hemalurgy is, it's well enough known that he could be like, "I wonder if there's a way to steal... Oh, it's this. This is how it works on this planet." That would be an almost instantaneous thing for him to be able to learn, if he wanted to. But does he hold it in his head right now? That remains to be seen.

Questioner

When the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact, why did they believe they needed to leave their Honorblades behind as they disbanded? Did they know what would happen to their blades after they left them?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a couple things going on here. If you've read Way of Kings Prime, there is built, originally into the Honorblades, the ability to find other Honorblades by using them. This has not been canonized into the cosmere as it exists yet, but it is still a power that's in the back of my mind, it is most likely something you can access with the Honorblades: let you find the others. This is calling back to the old Fred Saberhagen Swords books, which were part of the inspiration for these. So one reason they would leave them behind, the lesser reason, is: they're supposed to go split up, and they don't want to see each other. They want to leave them behind, because it's like: "The others might be able to find me. We're going our separate ways. We are done."

But the greater reason, the canon reason, that you can cite is that idea of: "I am walking away from being a Herald. This was the gift I was given, and a representation of that gift I was given, that represents me standing up for humankind. And I am no longer willing to do that, so I have to give this thing up." And they all knew it. They didn't have to be told it, because they knew what they were doing meant they didn't deserve those anymore. Not in a magical sense, but in a sort of philosophical and moral sense.

Questioner

My question is about Vin's earring. We see later on in the books that hemalurgic spikes lose their charge very rapidly. But Vin leaves her earring in a box. So how does it contain enough charge to still have enough of an effect for her to...?

Brandon Sanderson

I have this on a logarithmic scale. At the beginning, you lose some power pretty quick. And then it evens out. And my answer there is just there was enough left, and it could have, at that point, gone decades without getting to the point that it's a hemalurgic spike in name only. The reason they want to keep... they want to maintain as much power in those as they can. Which is why they talk about this thing. The first day you leave that spike without a host, or without taking certain precautions, you lose the most power that you're ever gonna lose. So those who were aware of this tried very hard not to let that happen. But once it does happen, you end up with something like Vin's earring, which still has a hemalurgic charge, a significant one, enough of one to have a change on the person wearing it. If we didn't do this then, like, koloss spikes, would be meaningless very quickly. I built it into this. It's one of those, like, steep drop off, and then not bad.

Questioner

If a Leecher who also could burn duralumin touched a normal person and then burned both metals at the same time, how bad is that gonna be for you?

Brandon Sanderson

Let me ask you this. What do you think's gonna happen?

Questioner

There is a very short-term, like, "where is my soul" effect? It may or may not be permanent?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna RAFO this one for now, because I'm planning to do some of this in the future. But I'll RAFO it for now. I think you're theorizing in the right direction. Duralumin lets some weird things happen, as you will see in the books.

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

Questioner

Say a Shard is splintered beyond recognition. Would some rather industrious people with something, perhaps like a Dawnshard, be able to change that Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is theoretically possible.

Questioner 2

I wanted to ask about how we were just told you could use a Dawnshard to reshape a shattered Shard, perhaps into something different.

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't actually confirm that. They just said "maybe using a Dawnshard." They were looking "is there a way to do this?" And I'm saying, "There is theoretically a way to do this." Would a Dawnshard have to be involved? That is not something that I'm canonizing.

Questioner

Is this the main reason that the Night Brigade is pursuing Zellion in pursuit of the Dawnshard?

Brandon Sanderson

The main reason that the Night Brigade is chasing Zellion is that the Dawnshards represent one of the most valuable things in the entire cosmere. Why are they that valuable? It's because they are one of the things that... I mean, the Dawnshards Shattered Adonalsium. That's what they did. And the Vessels are all very rightly scared of them. That would be the second main reason. There are other reasons.

Questioner

Given that kandra can replicate human organs, is it possible for a human and a kandra to have a child? And if so, would that child be purely human, or some kind of combination?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a yes, and it would be some kind of combination.

Questioner

In Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, when Yumi is flying out into the Shroud, Hoid makes a comment. He said, "She didn't even have to burn tin." Does that mean that the mists on Scadrial is made of something similar or even the same thing as the dispersed souls on Yumi's planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, something similar. The idea is that being able to see through the Investiture happens when you are kind of aligning to it in certain ways, it stops disrupting as much, and you gain some sort of extrasensory perception, that it doesn't interfere with you as it might with someone else. And it's really nothing more than that; she's aligning with this, and in Mistborn, it's aligning to theirs. It doesn't mean she'd be able to see through the mists.

Questioner

That's kind of the answer to my second question, which was: does that mean that any highly Invested individual could see through Scadrian mist, whether they be using Breath or Stormlight...?

Brandon Sanderson

Not necessarily. There are ways you could do it, but not necessarily.

Questioner

What is the biggest editorial change you have ever made to one of your stories from your arcanists who said, "Oh you can't do this because of *inaudible* or for canon content?"

Brandon Sanderson

I'm not sure if I can come up with the biggest. I can list a couple of them that I did change.

They have a lot of influence over Sunlit Man and my weird little tiny planet, my Little Prince planet, that you're traveling around. Getting me to do that accurately... to the point that, at some points, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm gonna give a magical solution to that." And they're like, "That's fine. Know that physicists will complain." And then they did. But then they got mad... not mad, but they're like, "But there is a magical reason."

I only have a full arcanist team on a couple of books so far. They've been involved in all the Secret Projects. They're working with me on Stormlight Five. This is just me finding the people who ask the questions that make me go, "Huh, I hadn't considered that," and then putting them to work to be doing that on my behalf. Really, most of what they do is not say "no," they say "we would like an explanation; you should make sure that this is included." And once in a while, it makes me pull back on an idea. But they're usually really small things that are gonna cause issues for the future, and things like that. I just met with them on Stormlight Five, for instance, and they gave me a few pointers on things. They'd say, "You probably should explain this. You probably should not use this line, because people are gonna explore that and extrapolate that direction." And I'm like, "you are right."

Most of the cases, they're like, "What is this?" And then I explain it, and they're like, "Great. You have an answer. We can move on." You'd have to ask them, but I'd say that one out of ten times, I don't have an answer. But those one out of ten times are really handy for them to be asking those questions that I don't have answers to. Because I have to go do this for all of you, and I'd better have the answers by then.

Questioner

I have a question about the end of the The Lost Metal, where one character lives and one character dies. That character kind of explicitly talked to Harmony asked if there was a way to not die. Was Harmony lying? And if Harmony was not, *inaudible*?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say that Harmony was not necessarily, but... Harmony's not lying by Harmony's perspective of things. In other words, is there a way to make this not, like... Maybe there is, like... bringing together powers. Is there a theoretical path? Maybe. But not realistically, if that makes sense. I would say Harmony wasn't lying by the way Harmony was seeing things.

Questioner

It seems a little bit like we've seen gold compounding recover from pretty significant things, if he blasts out of the bubble with a duralumin push, and he uses pure Dor to heal, even considering all that?

Brandon Sanderson

Harmony's seeing all that and being like, "None of this is gonna work in this situation."

Questioner

Assuming you have a way to siphon out a Vessel from a Shard, how much hemalurgic metal would be required to contain that Vessel?

Brandon Sanderson

An astronomically large amount. Oh, the Vessel? Or contain a Shard? The Vessel, just a little dude... not that much. Basically, like a decent-sized gemstone would hold an Unmade, and that's more Investiture than we're talking about.

Questioner

Can hemalurgic metal hold around the same amount of an Invested creature as a pure gemstone?

Brandon Sanderson

No, gemstones can do more.

Questioner

Does Shallan unwillingly shapeshift when she is holding Stormlight and an alter takes control? If not, why do her alters' Identities not affect her in the same that other people's Identity does?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, she does shift. Sometimes it's conscious, sometimes it's unconscious, but yes, it does happen.

Questioner

If a shade attacks a non-Threnodite, do they turn into a shade?

Brandon Sanderson

Nope.

Questioner

If I were to visit Canticle in the subastral, what would that look like?

Brandon Sanderson

I think it'd be pretty violent, and a source of constant shaking and tremors.

Questioner

Would it be dangerous?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I think it'd be dangerous.

Questioner

At any given point in the cosmere, would Yolen be more technologically advanced than any other planet or society in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

I think Yolen falls behind because of certain things that they have access to. The point where it is the furthest along is during the early days, when it's, like, Bronze Age and everyone else is, like, Stone Age. So, right at the beginning. I think other planets have passed it by since then consistently. Once the Shards started meddling in things, planets started going faster, and the Shards weren't meddling on Yolen. So Yolen has had a more natural, maybe even slowed technological progression. Where some of the other planets have been super fast.

Questioner

If Mraize took an atium spike and put it through Hoid's chest and then into himself, would he gain different abilities because of Hoid's altered spiritweb?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, he probably would. That's really terrifying to think about.

Tubbs

Auxuiliary and Nomad, the Knight Radiant Bond is kind of flipped around a bit. Is it possible for Adolin and Maya to something similar happen to them?

Brandon Sanderson

There’s something that could happen there. Don’t hold your breath, but possible. I won’t RAFO that; it's possible.