Jeff Frasier
Was Terion, who gave Vin duralumin, originally a worldhopper? He shows up for a paragraph, invents a new Allomantic metal, and then we never hear of him again.
Brandon Sanderson
Right, right, right. RAFO.
Was Terion, who gave Vin duralumin, originally a worldhopper? He shows up for a paragraph, invents a new Allomantic metal, and then we never hear of him again.
Right, right, right. RAFO.
Who in-world named the Intents of the Shards? Is it possible that they misinterpreted the name in any case, and that the Intent is not fully in line with the name we know?
This is possible. Right, this is absolutely possible. I mean you have context for this with Odium kind of claiming that it's not the right name for Odium. Others would disagree, but Odium has tried, aggressively, to change that name. I will say, you could make the argument, well, Odium just is bucking the trend and this is actually who Odium is. It is possible. Which is why Odium would try to get that name changed. These are imperfect definitions of ideas, as most words are. Those ideas could be misinterpreted.
Could a Deception Shard be out there calling itself something else, and none would be the wiser?
None being the wiser would be real hard. The other Shards knowing but other people not knowing could happen. It would be pretty hard for the Shards to not know, but it is within the realm of possibility. How about that?
We know a bit about the Pathians and the Survivorists in Era 2, but almost nothing about the other major religion of the Basin, Sliverism. Can you share a bit about it and about Marsh's role in it.
I'd rather not right now. So we'll RAFO that.
In The Lost Metal, MeLaan is said to be the first kandra Harmony sent off-world. Does that mean that the kandra on Roshar are not in Harmony's employment?
Yes! Good way to connect the dots. That is exactly what that means.
Brandon, you previously said the kandra on Roshar WAS an agent of Harmony.
Did I? *sounds uncertain* Well... I'm changing my mind. Yeah. No. I... uhh... Nope, not an agent of-
I know exactly who this kandra is and what they're doing and yeah. I'm going to say I don't know why I said that before, but now, no.
We've always understood Elantris to be one of the earliest books in the Cosmere, but we see Kaise as Codenames in The Lost Metal, one of the latest books. Has the timeline contracted significantly, or are we just looking at the typical Shadesmar time dilation tricks?
So, here's thing, Argent. I'm not going to be able to give you strict timelines until I write Elantris 2 and 3. So my plan, originally, which might have been a bad plan, was Elantris 2 to take place some ten or fifteen years after Elantris 1. Maybe a little less than that. But years have passed. It was called Dakhor, in my notes. And then for 3 to be hundreds of years later. I don't know if that's the right move anymore, and if 3 isn't hundreds of years later, then where we slot Elantris in is going to change because of where I need certain characters to be in some of these things, and certain things to happen. We are getting really close to where this is going to be nailed down and locked down, and I'll get locked down. Probably right when we start Era 3 is when all of this is just gonna start... I've promised you guys a timeline. Once we've released that, we don't want to retcon it, does that make sense? So that's why we're waiting to release it.
But Kaise does have some time dilation going on, though. Though I say her name wrong because I'm not from Sel. But yeah, she has time dilation going on, she is... yeah. More time has passed than the ten or so years that... she's like what, 7 in Elantris? And she's like young 20s now, visibly, the age that she appears. I believe, something like that. So yeah, there you go. There's some information for you on that. I'm playing loose and free with this until I really get down to writing these. My loose plan is still write Mistborn Era 3 book 1, Elantris 2, Era 3 book 2, Elantris 3, Era 3 book 3. Five years of writing there that I can't even really think about until I've got Stormlight 5 in Tor's hands, if not your hands.
Could a Shard be split into smaller Intents, like if Honor were alive and then was split into maybe Integrity and Bravery?
This is possible. Very plausible. You ask some weird things sometimes, this one is not that weird, this is very plausible.
Is Adonalsium a unique being or are—were—there others?
RAFO! The aethers would say that there were lots. That there's like a bunch of aethers and Adonalsium. That they were co-equals. The aethers would say there were lots of them.
Do all four Dawnshards have the same origin?
Ooh! Let's RAFO that. There's nothing... no... again, don't read too much into that, this is me saying look, I've got to RAFO stuff from Dragonsteel. Just gotta.
Are you still working on Kingmaker and do you have any updates?
I don't have any updates on Kingmaker. I love that story. I don't know if Hoid's voice is the right voice for Kingmaker. There's a couple of really good lines, but the whole thing - I've tried like three times and it didn't work. So I may have to do it in a third-limited if I want it to work. It's a really fun, interesting story that I would love to write but I'm not currently working on it. I am currently working on Stormlight Five.
Are the Coinshots that helped Steris with getting people out of the flood zone, and who seemed rather concerned with whether she was following the law, actually Skybreakers?
Ah, hehehehehe. So, we'll just leave that one. So, how about this. At this point in continuity, a Skybreaker could not easily get off of Roshar. In fact, by this point in continuity, I believe (you can't hold me to this one too much) the only Radiant who's managed to get off of Roshar and maintain powers is Hoid. I believe that's the case. Hoid is weird. He also has lots of knowledge. He used a specific method to get... yeah, anyway.
Don't hold me to that, but I think by this point he is the first to get out of system. Off-world doesn't really count because you can go to Braize or Ashyn.
Sixteen. Does he originate from Scadrial?
They're asking about the odd character who lives in Lasting Integrity. The answer is yes, this is a Scadrian transplant. It's is one of the people who they think might be Restares but turns out isn't. Yes, it is a character from Scadrial.
It looks like we are done with the Set's and Telsin's stories, so can you share a bit about how the organization started and/or how Telsin joined them?
The Set began, honestly, as a domino effect of things Kelsier was doing on-world. It is his fault. He wouldn't necessarily take responsibility for it. A group of people who knew that things were happening behind the scenes and through various machinations and things like this decided that there was power to be had, from what they didn't quite know was off-world yet, but that they knew there were basically ancient gods. This was a great opportunity for certain individuals and beings around the Cosmere, specific ones, to take over the reins on this. People who begin looking for ancient gods find them, it turns out, in the Cosmere, sometimes.
Telsin was involved from a young age and Wax's parents were not. Wax's uncle was. I don't think he actually recruited her, as I remember. It's been a while since I went through these things. He, being part of it, was part of how she found her way there, if that makes any sense. Telsin's always very ambitious, and always knew... Telsin can be seen as a bit of a model for the Set itself, in that she knew there was more out there that people weren't telling her, and she found it and then it consumed her.
People in the chat are saying that Telsin recruited Suit.
That's right, Telsin did recruit Suit. Yep, Telsin recruited Suit. She was looking for things, she found her way to it, yeah. So there we are. Edwarn, Suit is his title. Yeah, I knew there was something there, but it's been...
Like I said, view Telsin as kind of an example of how the Set itself came to be. And I have to talk around some things because I want to write Secret History sequels but I don't know if I'll be able to. And in them you should be able to see the origins of the Set. It is planned right now to be not... it's not like Kelsier founded it, but the ripple effects of things Kelsier was doing.
Were Glys and Tumi deadeyes before being touched by Sja-anat?
RAFO! Good question.
A while back you said that if you didn't reveal how medallions are made after The Lost Metal, we could bug you for the step-by-step process. Can you tell us now?
So I tried to find my little write-up on this and I can't find it. So I have to re-write it up. You can bug me but I'm not going to get it yet. It needs to be canonized for certain things that are coming up very soon, so I need to write it all out again. Double-check that I run it through continuity, that it is right. The more we do these things the more complicated it gets, and the more like computer programming in a world using physics that don't exist it gets. Which is fun! That's the feature, not the bug, that it gets really finicky how these things work. But it means I have to do that whole writeup again. It was several pages. So I am going to do that again, I have to have it in hand before I can do Era Three. Bug me again when I'm writing Era Three. Sorry.
Would a book about kandra be a good Dan candidate?
Uh, yeah, a book about kandra would be a good Dan candidate. I think the first thing we would do with Dan, though, most likely, is create a brand-new world and a brand-new story that really matches something he's excited about rather than have him start by doing a book in one of the other worlds. That said, he probably will also be doing some short stories in the other worlds, to kind of start easing into... we'll see how he is with character voices of some of the characters I've already done. I really want to see the King Lopen story that I've never been able to write. Something like that. So a Kandra story but as a novel, that's not where we would start, we would start with here's a novel playing into the strengths that Dan writes and how he wants to write, that has worldbuilding and plotting done with my help.
If everyone in the Cosmere begins to understand that there is space travel, does that change the distance needed to travel around in Shadesmar considering it's made up of the beliefs of the people?
What's going to happen is it is going to make the travel distances longer. However, people cannot conceive the immensity of space. The amount different it's going to make it is not going to be so vast that it's insurmountable. It's not going to come one fractional piece of what the actual distance is.
When you kill someone to create a Hemalurgic spike, does their soul appear in the Cognitive Realm when they die or is it trapped in the spike?
Weird, kind of creepy stuff happens. You're not getting the whole soul, you're getting a piece of it. I'll leave you with that.
Will we ever see a story from Mythos?
I would sure like to write one for Mythos, but we'll see. There's a lot of stuff I want to write.
Mythos is a place. That's the colloquial term for the place.
I asked Ben McSweeney via Reddit if Taravangian's chapter icons were intentionally [rotationally] symmetrical, and he said yes, but did not say if this was foreshadowing his Ascension. Is it?
Hehehe. Eeehhh... RAFO.
Why is that a RAFO? I have to talk to Ben. I'm not going to canonize things for Ben that he might have been saying that I don't have the full context on.
That's just design. Just the design of the icons.
The designs... not all of them are symmetrical though. Pointing that out. Some of them are but not all of them are.
We know that Hoid has three apprentices. Are all of them human? Is Design one of those apprentices?
Design is not one, and they are not all human. [...] I've almost written a book about one of them multiple times. In fact, one Secret Project started off about one of them. When I was planning one of the Secret Projects to do, there was a plan to attempt to do one of them. That was the kite magic system. And I never got beyond the design stage in that. The kite magic book would have starred one of Hoid's apprentices who is not human.
In Oathbringer, Dalinar says the third ideal of the Bondsmiths:
"I will take responsibility for my actions, and each time I fail, I will rise again a better man."
He then opens a perpendicularity, saving the battle of Thaylen Field for our heroes. Later, Odium is ranting to Taravangian about how Dalinar wasn't supposed to Ascend, with a capital A.
The question - is Odium's use of the word "Ascend" referring to ascending to the next Ideal of the Bondsmiths, or is there something more going on there?
I used a capital letter there intentionally, and normal saying of oaths would not get a capital letter.
That is in a character's perspective. There's a character using that capital letter, the character uses that capital letter intentionally.
One of the listener chapters mentions that the human language was easier to be understood because remnants of it were preserved in the listener songs. Does this mean there was human help in writing the listener songs? If so, who were these humans helping the listeners reject the forms of power?
Wow! What excellent questions! I hope to be able to show this in flashbacks eventually.
We have a date for the final book of the Skyward series, Defiant: that is November 21, 2023. Which also indicates to you when Dragonsteel 2023 will be: November 20-21, 2023 is our next convention.
Are we supposed to be drawing parallels between the Unmade being placed in gems and the gems used against the Heralds?
Yes.
At the end of The Lost Metal, we learn that Marsh will be using atium from the ettmetal experiments to stay alive going forward. However, Peter recently revealed (and you confirmed) that the atium in Era 1 which stored youth was actually a mix of atium and electrum. How will this continue to work to keep him young?
They're going to have a different term for pure atium and for what has been known as atium--what they're making. It is not hard to get the right mix down for what he needs to stay alive. It is hard to make enough of it to keep him alive. Well, not hard, but definitely not scalable to more than one person, how about that. They are able to do it, you've just got to make an alloy.
I will apologize for this. This is a post-Era-1 retcon where I realized I need all the God Metals to do different things, and this is just one of the aspects that comes down. For those who don't know what's going on: I get done with Era 1, I start really working on the nature of metals in the cosmere. I'm like, "Ehhh... Atium really should be burnable by anybody. It's a God Metal. The way God Metals work is not in line with how I've made atium. So what they call atium has to have trace elements of something else, and then there's a pure form of atium out there that would be the true pure God Metal." That is one of those unfortunate retcons when you're doing all this continuity. And it works just fine in the books, because the way that atium is being made is a pretty complicated little process there in the Pits of Hathsin.
The question is the right question. Sazed is going to get out of this pure atium, which he is going to need to tweak before he gives it to Marsh. Whether Marsh knows he is getting a tweaked version or not is subject to your own interpretation.
For arcanist purposes, if you want to call the other one pure atium and the regular one just atium, I'd recommend something like that for your wikis and things like that.
Could Steel Inquisitors read phone screens?
Oh boy. Phone screens are made out of... there's like a liquid almost, liquid crystal. So could you read a phone screen... or are they just asking cause it's metal? No they're saying there's this blank screen, and it's just changing pixel's colors, so would an Inquisitor not be able to see that because it's going to be indistinguishable according to their steel sight, I think that's what they're getting at. I don't know if the question is "Is the phone going to glow too much because there is too much metal in it" or is it "Because the pixels don't really register to steel sight". I'm gonna say phones are a good way to hide things from an Inquisitor. Yeah, an Inquisitor's not gonna enjoy the move to all digital formats probably.
It's mentioned that Stormlight in gems will flicker slightly. Is this the Rhythm of Honor?
Good question, RAFO.
Do the Sleepless on non-Rosharan planets have the same goal with the ones on Roshar?
No! They tend to divide along family lines, but not always. And some lines don't care about Roshar.
With all the new avatar lore from The Lost Metal, can and should the Stormfather be considered to be an avatar of Honor?
Ooooh, RAFO! What a wonderful question. There's some fertile ground for theorizing, there. I gave you the prologue of that so you could spend a few years theorizing, guys, so go ahead and go forth.
That was the big final showdown. Brandon had built this thing that was supposed to be--
Don't tell this one because I'm actually going to use this in a book. I've been waiting for years to use this in a book so don't say anything. After I use it in a book you can tell the story. You guys are going to love this. It is involved in the ending of Stormlight 5.
Let's just say I came up with one of the best endings for a story that I have ever come up with and because it's roleplaying the PCs did not play along. Ruined it completely. And I'm like, "I'm going to use that someday." And I actually put it right in the outline of Stormlight a week or two later, and it's been waiting all this time to be used.
Wow, a week or two later, and that would have been like [1999]. So it's been waiting a long time in the wings.
*In YouTube comments*
Book five's ending has had literally 20 years to brew in my head, and I've been pushing toward it from book one. When you read it, I think it will recontextualize a ton of important other moments in the series. So I really, really hope it lands right with people. I've been holding this one in reserve for a long while, as I feel it's one of the legitimately best ending ides I've ever come up with for a story. Not to over-hype it. The execution is everything for a story like this, and it's still possible what works in my head will not work as well on the page. I just really hope it will.
I thought myself so clever for coming up with this theory.
At this point I am in a position where I could confirm it or deny it.
However, my position also means that I must do no such thing.
Mwa ha ha ha ha.
[Hoid] was beheaded in Dragonsteel Prime and the Dawnshard is what regrew his head. He makes a crack about always thinking his head would have grown a new body, not vice versa, as he stares at his own severed head.
Slightly related: If the Dawnshard let Hoid regrow his entire head, will it eventually give Rysn back the use of her legs?
The different dawnshards have different powers.
Information subject to change when it appears in canon.
Can Shards lie anytime they want to other than when bound by oaths and such?
Yes. Anytime they want to might be a little... But that caveat you put on there: there are instances where they can't. But you should assume they are able to more often than not. I'm sure we've seen instances of it in multiple places in the books. Their duty to randos, as we might say, is much less than interacting with one another.
Will we ever learn of Ishikk's fate? Did he finally marry Maib? Can you tell us anything about his experiences during the events of the last four books?
Man, there's so many people... I will try to get you Ishikk's fate. I will try to get Ishikk's fate in. He was so much fun to write. I will do my best.
I think what we're gonna do... this is your first warning. It's probably gonna be officially in the State of the Sanderson. I think we're going to push back the Words of Radiance leatherbound Kickstarter. Main reason for this being that I'm just- we've been talking about it in March, planning for March for a long time, but we're all- I called my team together and we're all just a little uncomfortable with the idea of doing another Kickstarter when we haven't fulfilled on, you know, enough of our previous ones.
...
Expect us to be pushing back that Kickstarter. The Words of Radiance one. I would feel a lot more comfortable with it if we have had six months of the Year of Sanderson shipping and if we've had the first of the minis start to go out and we know that the things we're doing people are appreciating and are liking and that we're doing a good job before we ask you to do another one. Expect that announcement in the State of the Sanderson officially, but you get a preview here, on the spoiler stream. Spoiler! For the State of the Sanderson.
Will Wax find out that he is a Mistborn during his lifetime? This is assuming we won't see him again.
Wax suspects it already. There's a piece of him that knows by the end of this book. He will know pretty soon. He's a detective, right?
Wax is used to getting a little extra help from the mists, which is clouding his ability to put his finger exactly on what's happening, but there's a piece of him that expects [suspects]. And you can anticipate that even in the year between, in the prologue [epilogue], soon after his recovery, he went and tested and found out what's going on, and is keeping his lips sealed about what that implies.
In Demoux's Worldhopping as part of the 17th Shard, has he interacted with the Ghostbloods, and if so, does he know Thaidakar is Kelsier?
He has interacted with the Ghostbloods. I don't know if he's made that connection or not, I would have to write some stuff in his viewpoint and see where it falls in the timeline. He knows Iyatil and her brother and where they came from, that's a group from where Demoux currently makes his base of operations.
My understanding is that Brandon thinks it is a plothole that Lerasium can be burned by Scadrian (regardless of if they are mistings/mistborn) but Atium can't.
His solution is to retcon the Pits to naturally produce an Atium/Electrum alloy, presumably by the design of Preservation. Therefore we don't know what pure Atium looks like or does when used in any magic.
We do know what it does. It’s on the Allomancy poster, and the effect appeared one time at the end of Hero of Ages.
Interesting. Do you know if he had already conceived the retcon by the time the poster was written, or if that line about pure atium just turned out to fit really well retroactively?
The retcon is way older than a lot of people assume.
Does this mean he had it in mind by the time Hero of Ages released (since the first public version of the poster dates to 2008), or just that it's old but not sure exactly how old?
Remember that what's in the books is filtered through the understanding of the characters. So even if Brandon planned it from the beginning, if the characters didn't know about it, it's not going to come out in the book.
Why did Shay-I have to draw a map of the Elendel basin, if the jar of Dor was her source of Investiture? Did the map connect her to another source of Investiture?
No, the map didn't, but her magic is still wonky. Selish magic has some wonkiness to it and it needs to be tricked.
We've seen in both Secret History and RoW that a Shard's power has a will of its own and can "reject" a vessel if it's not adequate (like Preservation with Kelsier) and "tempt" if it is (like Odium with Taravangian). Does that mean that the first sixteen that Ascended needed to be fit for their respective shards?
Yes. To an extent, yes. It was a little easier back then, but yes.
*Thinks for a while*
Yes. So, why am I hesitating on this? Not all of the sixteen could've taken any one of the sixteen. So not all the Vessels could take any of the sixteen. But the flexibility of which ones they could've taken, was much greater than you're perhaps anticipating right now. There were certain Shards that they had, they deliberately had a person pick up, that they thought would be a better controller of that Shard, if that makes sense. Rather than picking the person who is the best match. So, there you go.
Where and how did the Set learn about Hemalurgy initially? Hemalurgy did not seem to be common knowledge, at least to Wayne and Marasi when given the book by Marsh, but the Set seems to know all about it anyway.
So, yes, it was not common knowledge. There was some help from Autonomy on this, but it also involved the interrogation of somebody on-world that did not want to be interrogated.
And then a whole lot of experimentation. They had years to play with this. They didn't come right out of the gate knowing exactly how to do it.
In The Lost Metal, it mentions Autonomy having avatars in other worlds. In Shu-Dereth on Sel, Jaddeth speaks directly to Wyrn, who then propagates his will down the hierarchy-
Yes.
Within the religion, ambition is rewarded, but only if it aligns with the orders of the hierarchy. That sounds similar to the philosophy used in the Set, but replacing Jaddeth with Trell. Is Jaddeth an avatar of Autonomy?
*chuckles and points at screen in very satisfied way* RAFO. You're a very smart person.
It's [pronounced] "Yaddeth", by the way. That is also one of the Y-J's. ...
So, I will say this. Here's what I'll canonize. There is something happening, and the people there legitimately believe, and have reason to believe, that their god is going to return. And I have said before, many times, that Book 2 of Elantris begins with the return of their god. 'Cause they've said "God can't come back until everybody converts". But they've found a loophole. They're like "well, except those heretics in Elantris. And also that other little place, that tiny little region that's over in the mountains, where they talk about roses, they don't count either. Because they're, um, not actually part of the planet." Um, so. So that's something to look forward to, if I ever get around to writing Dakhor, is the return of Jaddeth, the god of [Shu-Dereth].
I asked you about [Jasnah] being with Taln in [Way of Kings] Prime and Wit in the published version, and why she had to be with an immortal entity.
I believe my answer was something to the frame of: "it is hard to find people who would be on equal footing with Jasnah."
Is it important that she is with someone? For someone who is so against the idea of marriage, and who is asexual to boot, it feels like there must be very good reason for not leaving her single.
It is more about the idea of conflict and exploration. Remember these are completely separate books, and there's kind of a reason why I didn't have a relationship for Jasnah in the first couple Stormlight books, because no, she doesn't need to be in a relationship. That's not a core need for her character or her personality. But, at the same time, I always try to let relationships arise very organically and naturally in my books, and I don't try to put too much of a thumb on the scale for those. And in this case, it just felt right. It was the right thing to explore for her character. It was the right way to reveal and talk about how she sees the world, and who she is, and when I first thought about it I thought, "Wow, that's a really great and a really terrible match all at the same time," and that's what I'm looking for, in a lot of ways.
Is Wit still capable of producing children, given his situation?
He...*thinks for a long time* What do I wanna say? I will say RAFO. I'll say RAFO. This is one of the RAFOs where I absolutely know the answer, and I'm not going to give it to you yet.
In The Lost Metal, people talked about Autonomy's army as if they know of her unleashing it before. Similarly, they talk of her opening perpendicularities on worlds where she shouldn't be able to. Roughly how many times has this happened before? Once or twice? Somewhere in the tens?
This has happened a handful of times before.
Well, depends on which of the two things you're talking about. Opening perpendicularities where she shouldn't be able to is a consistent thing. Unleashing armies, not so consistent.
Would the Stormfather call Tien or Oroden "Son of Tanavast"?
I see what you're hunting here. I'm gonna say RAFO. Don't read too much into that RAFO. Because the answer is actually "it depends." And that's why I'm RAFOing it.
Was any of the original Vessels of the Shards transgender? Can we expect to have a transgender main character in the future?
You can expect to have a transgender main character in the future. I want to be careful where I place this, and let's say that I'm much... my focus right now is on doing Renarin and Rlain right. But you can expect this in the future.
Is there a connection between the roles of a certain order of Knight Radiant and the singer form associated with their Platespren, such as artistic Lightweavers and artform both having creation spren?
Yes, there is a connection, a deliberate connection on my part there. It's hard to keep all of these things one-to-one because there are way more forms than there are orders of Knights Radiant and things like that, so don't read too far into it, but I do make those connections deliberately where I can.
What, if anything, would happen if you swing a Shardblade through a seon?
So, seon would not like being- a Shardblade swung through them, how about that. A seon would not enjoy that. Spren don't enjoy it either. That isn't necessarily going to kill either of them, but they're not going to like it.
What kind of work did Rlain do during his time as a spy? Did he commit active sabotage against the war effort, or was he merely gathering information?
Very few. There are a couple of key things that he did—I would like to write a Rlain story at some point—but he mostly understood that feeding information back and not being caught—because he felt he was in a pretty tenuous position, and rightly so. There's two big things going on. Number one: he is not in possession of his full mental faculties, which makes it dangerous to try anything, because he's like "can I trust that this is a good idea?" Right? And then number two: how hard would it be for someone to be like "hey, wait, maybe some of these slaves we got are spies for these guys." It's not too hard a leap to make, that one of them might be, and that put him in really dangerous positions.
How did he get information back to his people? Was there a contact?
If you go into the book, you'll find that there are times that they talk about bands of listeners roving in and things like this, and how far they think they got. Some of that was to cover getting people in to talk to spies. They got spotted, so they pretend to burn a bridge, which they still would want to do, but there's this whole cover operation of doing raids as close to the warcamps as they get, and sending people in to—
And I think I remember a line saying something that a Parshendi would never not do anything that he wasn't ordered to do, so he could just walk around? I'm not sure if I'm remembering—
He was much more free. But he wasn't going all the way out into the Plains, like he can't cross in that form—the bridgeless chasms, right—and things like that.