Questioner
Is Wayne sick?
Brandon Sanderson
Is Wayne sick? In what way?
Questioner
Like, terminally ill kind of thing?
Brandon Sanderson
No. Good question.
Questioner
Who will be the monarch of Idris during Nightblood?
Brandon Sanderson
...I will RAFO that. Just not-- not for any real secretive reason. But more because, when I write that book, it's possible, you know, that I will change things and whatnot, so--
It's likely to not change.
Brandon Sanderson
I once--don't do this--I once lit a book on fire. Because I was reading at night, and my mom kept turning my light off so I got out a candle and I was reading by candlelight. And the book started on fire. Yeah, so don't do that.
Questioner
Is Adolin unkilling Maya? RAFO?
Brandon Sanderson
I'll give you a [RAFO] card.
Questioner
I was wondering, with resonance. Is that a sort of constructive interference?
Brandon Sanderson
Constructed? No. Resonance is more about the way-- It's more of a natural interference.
Questioner
So what I mean like, you have two waves, right? And if their troughs, you know--
Brandon Sanderson
Okay, is that the formal term? For the constructed.-- Oh constructive? I thought you had said-- yeah. So yes, I would say that that is an accurate phrase. I mean obviously it's not exactly the same thing. But yeah, that's what I was looking at when I was building it, was kinda things like this with waveform patterns and whatnot. So yes. At least, it was inspired by this kind of idea.
Questioner
For the Thrill, did you get the idea for that from Ether in the Book of Mormon?
Brandon Sanderson
No, not specifically. But I mean, I've read Ether so many times, it's got-- Yeah, that seems like a very natural connection.
Questioner
So Voidbinding is-- one part of Voidbinding is seeing the future. And atium is also seeing the future. And I notice annotations for Elantris, you said something about seeing the future could go weird-- sends assassins. Is that a running--
Brandon Sanderson
It is a running theme in the cosmere. And it's-- Whatever path you take to do it is dangerous in the cosmere. It's kind of a sign of-- You are in dangerous territory, and drawing upon a Shard that is--
Questioner
Potentially...
Brandon Sanderson
Potentially-- Yes. I mean to say-- Dangerous territory.
Questioner
So Roshar is pretty small on the map. Are there other species on the planet that we don't know about?
Brandon Sanderson
Roshar is primarily the one continent. There are no other continents.
Questioner
No other continents?
Brandon Sanderson
No other continents... There are no other major landmasses on the planet.
Questioner
Is Spook still around as of Alloy of Law?
Brandon Sanderson
As of Alloy of Law-- Yeah I'm gonna have to RAFO you on that.
Questioner
In our universe, mass and energy curve space. I was wondering if Investiture does the same or something similar.
Brandon Sanderson
It does something similar. It draws the three Realms together. So it's got like-- Imagine a gravitational pull piercing Realms. Right? Of kind of--
Questioner
And that's how a perpendicularity works?
Brandon Sanderson
That's not the only way a perpendicularity works, but one surefire way to create a perpendicularity is a massive collection of Investiture in the Cognitive or mostly Physical realm. But Cognitive's weird, doesn't always work the right way. But there are ways to do it that way too.
Questioner
So I've always wondered, the Bands of Mourning, the actual spearhead that Wax uses. Was that made by the Lord Ruler or the Sovereign, or--
Brandon Sanderson
No. It was not made by the Lord Ruler. The Sovereign was involved.
Chaos
When Nightblood killed the Fused, are those Fused souls retrievable?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Chaos
So Sleepless have held Surges. Have they been Radiants before?
Brandon Sanderson
RAFO.
Chaos
Did Unmade exist in the First Desolation?
Brandon Sanderson
Which definition of First Desolation are we using?
Chaos
...Prior to the Heralds being made?
Brandon Sanderson
We'll go RAFO.
Questioner
Do you have-- Or have you determined an equivalency between how much Breath it takes to make a certain gem's worth of Stormlight?
Brandon Sanderson
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.
Questioner
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--
Brandon Sanderson
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.
Chaos
Math is hard!
Brandon Sanderson
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.
Brandon Sanderson
Karen's the one who runs into all the trouble now. Because she has to make the timeline work with the highstorms. She wrote that whole blog post. You guys read that. She had lots of fun with that.
Questioner
Speaking of Rosharan calendar-- So seventeen year old Kaladin, is he the equivalent of a seventeen year old Earthling?
Brandon Sanderson
It's 1.1, I think is what is it. Right, they're 10% older than their accounting system. So no.
Questioner
So Adolin is 27, true?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah.
Questioner
So then a year is obviously a lot more than 1.1 but--
Brandon Sanderson
Well no. The years are 500 days, but they're 20 hour days. Keep that in mind. So when you run the calculations kinda together, you end up with around 1.1.
Chaos
Is atium Invested?
Brandon Sanderson
Is atium Invested? Atium is Investiture distilled into the Physical Realm, right? So is electricity electric? Or is it--
Chaos
Well I think the question Sharders had was if it's Invested, how can people Push and Pull on it. That was the struggle.
Brandon Sanderson
Atium breaks a lot of rules, in the same way that you will see other things break rules. Atium plays weirdly. When you get distilled Investiture, you're starting like-- My kind of rule for myself is it's kind of like when you start going on the quantum level, the rules just start playing weirdly. Because it's like, what Realm does atium exist in-- is another thing. Because-- Pure Investiture like that is like a mini black hole, right? It's like existing in three Realms at once. Kind of, and things like that... There's lots of weirdness.
The writerly answer is there is lots of weirdness because when I built atium, I didn't have the rest of the cosmere built, right? And so it breaks a lot of rules that I later set up that everything else has to follow, right? So the writerly answer is we just have to accept that atium and lerasium and some of these other distilled Investiture things are going to play very weirdly with the magic systems. But that's okay. Nightblood will too, and some of these things that were built even after the cosmere was coming together.
Questioner
When Marsh and Sazed go to the Conventical of Seran, Marsh kind of tells Sazed, "You go do whatever you want, I gotta go do something, I'll be back." What was Marsh's purpose there? Why was he there?
Brandon Sanderson
I intend to do some Marsh stuff, from his viewpoint, eventually. I don't know if I'll ever get to it. There is actually something there. There is something that I intended to leave a place for me to play later on with. So the answer is a RAFO, but a legitimate RAFO. Not a "I'm trying to lead you on," or a "I don't feel like answering this right now."
Chaos
So, at the Forbidden Planet signing you said that when Adonalsium was Shattered, all Investiture in the cosmere was associated to one of the Shards... So, what happened with Adonalsium's spren on Roshar? Were those associated to Honor and Cultivation? What happened with them?
Brandon Sanderson
So they were very-- They were already associated to certain parts of Adonalsium and they went with those associations. There's a lot of Cultivation in all of the spren, particularly the natural spren.
Questioner
I was wondering if Sleepless-- the Dysian Aimians-- if they could hold a Shard?
Brandon Sanderson
Could the Sleepless hold a Shard? Could they be a Vessel? Is what you're asking?
*hems and haws* There is nothing innate about the Shards that prevents any one with a-- I have to phrase this very carefully...
Non-humans can be Vessels. Non-humans have been vessels. Certain sapient creatures in the cosmere, could not be. But that's an asterisk, not the rule.
Chaos
Is Uli Da a Sho Del?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah.
Chaos
Can we post that?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah you can go ahead and post that. That's fine.
Chaos
I figured that from the...
Brandon Sanderson
Right, the naming convention makes it really obvious.
Chaos
But that's not posted on the Dragonsteel sample so...
Brandon Sanderson
Right. But that's canon. It's pretty obvious to me... And so it's fine with me canonizing it. I mean, I've been coy with it for years. But when I say there are Shards that aren't human. There are three races on Yolen... Adding the math together is going to get you a pretty obvious answer.
Chaos
If you could take a Shard, what would be the one that you would want? If you were forced to take a Shard, you couldn't refuse?
Brandon Sanderson
*Mmmmms for a time*
Chaos
Feel free to name another one if you want to...
Brandon Sanderson
I've only got a few left that you guys don't know about.
Chaos
There's six.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah okay. So I haven't said-- yhm. *laughter* I would take one that I haven't talked about, probably. But, of the ones I've talked about--
I don't know-- What one would be the most fun? Endowment would be pretty fun. Autonomy? No, probably not that much fun. A lot of them aren't very fun. Let's go with--
Chaos
You mean Autonomy isn't fun? Splitting into different aspects?
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, that is fun, I suppose. Yeah. *unenthusiastic* Yeah...
Chaos (paraphrased)
Did you mean to imply that Autonomy wrote the second letter in Oathbringer back there, with the aspects thing?
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Yeah, I did.
(He did imply that it was supposed to be fairly obvious.)
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Any Shard can make aspects [avatars].