Recent entries

Questioner

Does the dead body of a Shard pull at time and space, thus causing time to pass slower in that place of the cosmere, almost like a black hole?

Brandon Sanderson

It could go either way in the Cosmere, depending. But the answer is yes. A large amount, like a deific amount of Investiture will... any amount of Investiture will cause a bit of time dilation, but the amount you're getting from even a Shardpool is not enough to be noticeable. I mean, it is, you can notice it even on our planet if you take a jet that goes fast enough, so it is noticeable but not relevantly noticeable. We're talking about a slippage of a day or so in a year even off of a Shardpool (don't canonize me on that one, I don't have the actual numbers). But that's what we're talking about. There are are chunks of Investiture of deific nature that can cause amounts of time dilation that would be virtually impossible in our universe, without you becoming one with a black hole. There's a story I want to tell, and I don't know if I'll ever get around to telling it, about an entire society that rises and falls in several seconds of time dilation to everyone else. I want to be able to tell stories like that, and you couldn't do that in our universe, but that's part of the reason we have the Cosmere!

LewsTherinTelescope

In his letter in Oathbringer, Patji tells Hoid that "You have spoken to one who cannot respond". I had assumed this meant Bavadin, but she seems pretty darn capable of responding in The Lost Metal. What is Patji referring to here?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Joseph Sorenson

Is Adonalsium a God Metal and not a person?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Lot of people... I have been deliberately cagey. So you should assume that if I ever answer a thing where like they're saying Adonalsium - person and stuff like that, I have NOT canonized this and don't intend to canonize it. I try to take people's questions and deal with them and give them a good answer. But you shouldn't take it like, if they ask "When Adonalsium did this was he this?" and I answer it, be like "oh, he's canonizing the HE!" I have not really canonized other than there are plenty of people who refer to Adonalsium that way in the world.

mrbryndan

During an interview recently you said you have been writing down one-liners for Wayne for the last ten years. Are there any one-liners or quips from this cast of characters that didn't make it into the book that you particularly enjoyed or wanted to share?

Brandon Sanderson

Here's one that I didn't end up using, 'cause I thought I was using too many penis jokes. Wayne, after someone says something about a penis, sighs and says "Ah, it's the little things in life that bring us so much happiness."

learhpa

Where is Design during the events of The Lost Metal?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good question, and it will be RAFOed. Because, where is Design? Ooh, excellent question.

Fox

In Edgedancer, Lift refers to Hoid as "Ol' Whitehair". Was Hoid not in disguise at the time? Did Lift and Hoid have any encounters between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War?

Brandon Sanderson

Lift has seen... how about this. Lift knows what Hoid is. Maybe not intellectually, because Lift doesn't know a lot of things intellectually, but she's connected dots that others have not connected and indeed she has seen him without his disguise on. She is another weird one. She pops in places she's not supposed to.

That was done deliberately, I shall say.

KandraAllomancer

Are the men of gold and red from any Shardworld we've seen so far? Do they use any magic system we currently know?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Maybe not only, but yes.

Rocko Toplift

Was a Dawnshard involved in Nightblood's creation, or did a Dawnshard alter it?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Jason

How does Roshar keep its rocky terrains? Wouldn't corrosion and vegetation break down the rocks outside of [Shinovar]?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! Good question. This is why I built the crem from the beginning. That was my first question to myself, and you will actually find that on a geological timescale, that Roshar has drifted! Meaning been worn off on one end and is shrinking a little bit, and then different pieces are growing that way off of different parts. Very slow-scale. The existence of Roshar is not so long that you'd be able to tell much, but you know there've been inches if not feet lost from the eastern portion of Roshar but the dumping of the crem is my perhaps-fantastical science answer to "what happens to erosion". Plants grow, they do crack the stone, they do start to break it down, even Rosharan plants whose roots aren't meant to go deep or things like this, and then crem gets in those cracks, fills it in, sticks the broken pieces back together, and you end up with stone, still. That was my devised answer to having a world that is hit by storms but is also stony. 

This is the same reason coral reefs continue to exist. There's got to be a growth mechanism after things are being weathered a way to make sure that they continue to perpetuate. An above-water coral reef was one of my touchstones for Roshar.

learhpa

Far in the future, after all the people in The Lost Metal are dead and gone, does someone maintain the ritual of changing Wayne's hat every year? Does it become some sort of civic custom like the ceremonial lighting of a Christmas tree?

Brandon Sanderson

*laughter* Absolutely. That's what I imagined.

Pawell2812

Cultivation, Ruin, and Preservation seem like aspects of Adonalsium's cosmic nature rather than personality traits like other Shards. Is there a fourth Shard that is cosmic in nature?

Brandon Sanderson

I think they all are cosmic in nature. Even Honor, like you could say that's a personality trait, I don't think it is, I think it's a cosmic sense of justice and order, if that makes sense. We're phrasing it as a personality trait but that's not really what it is. There are those who would argue that the Shard of Honor is what makes things fall to the ground when you drop them and obey natural laws.

Ben Epic

Assuming the Dawnshards each represent four Shards, and considering their Intents seem to be similar, are Endowment, Cultivation, and Ruin all from the same category? Are they all Change Shards?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I get what you're saying. I'm going to RAFO that for now.

Sethcran

When Kelsier said in The Lost Metal that he couldn't Steelpush over water, do the Ghostbloods think that Kelsier has his Allomantic powers, and is he lying to them about it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they think he has Allomantic powers still.

Laura Burnham

How were Shallan and Sja-anat sending messages to each other in the gap between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, I'll have to go back to my notes on that one.

Steven Peterson

Is Hoid's restriction on not hurting someone living absolute? Could he cause pain for pleasure situations?

Brandon Sanderson

It is not absolute; you've seen at least one loophole. The thing about is, this is Dawnshard-derived, and weird things happen with the Dawnshards.

LettersWords

Now that we know a bit more about the connection between Trell and Autonomy, can you explain who exactly the person named Trell in White Sand is, and how they connect to the Trell, the avatar of Autonomy, that we see in The Lost Metal? Was this Trell just another person who acted as the Trell avatar after being Invested by Autonomy in a similar way to Telsin?

Brandon Sanderson

This is the way I want you theorizing.

R'Shara

Did Honor and Cultivation binding Odium to the Roshar system directly cause the death stroke to Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

*sighs indecisively for a good ten seconds* RAFO. It's fiddly.

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.

Sethcran

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Sethcran

Could a Deception Shard be out there calling itself something else, and none would be the wiser?

Brandon Sanderson

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?

Argent

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.

Brandon Sanderson

I'd rather not right now. So we'll RAFO that.

Nextorl

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?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! Good way to connect the dots. That is exactly what that means.

R'Shara

Brandon, you previously said the kandra on Roshar WAS an agent of Harmony.

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Argent

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Isaac Betzold

Could a Shard be split into smaller Intents, like if Honor were alive and then was split into maybe Integrity and Bravery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible. Very plausible. You ask some weird things sometimes, this one is not that weird, this is very plausible.

Bumtown1

Is Adonalsium a unique being or are—were—there others?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Pedro Enrico

Do all four Dawnshards have the same origin?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

ILikeHats246

Are you still working on Kingmaker and do you have any updates?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Matias_Leibo

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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. 

God

Sixteen. Does he originate from Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Argent

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Adam Horne

People in the chat are saying that Telsin recruited Suit.

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Aquilan_Pen

Were Glys and Tumi deadeyes before being touched by Sja-anat?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Good question.

muh_vehicles

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Andrew Smith

Would a book about kandra be a good Dan candidate?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Nico Bufasassa

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Nextorl

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

PotatoTagger

Will we ever see a story from Mythos?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Christie

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Katie Payne

That's just design. Just the design of the icons.

Brandon Sanderson

The designs... not all of them are symmetrical though. Pointing that out. Some of them are but not all of them are.

CommonWerewolf9265

We know that Hoid has three apprentices. Are all of them human? Is Design one of those apprentices?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

TheWeirdTalesPodcast

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

SpaceCoreIsMyDad

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?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow! What excellent questions! I hope to be able to show this in flashbacks eventually.

Brandon Sanderson

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.

LightPhoenix7000

Are we supposed to be drawing parallels between the Unmade being placed in gems and the gems used against the Heralds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

LewsTherinTelescope

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?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Hunter of the Rain

Could Steel Inquisitors read phone screens?

Brandon Sanderson

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. 

ParshendiOfRhuidean

It's mentioned that Stormlight in gems will flicker slightly. Is this the Rhythm of Honor? 

Brandon Sanderson

Good question, RAFO.

Yayi

Do the Sleepless on non-Rosharan planets have the same goal with the ones on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

No! They tend to divide along family lines, but not always. And some lines don't care about Roshar.

Argent

With all the new avatar lore from The Lost Metal, can and should the Stormfather be considered to be an avatar of Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Dan Wells

That was the big final showdown. Brandon had built this thing that was supposed to be--

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Dan Wells

Wow, a week or two later, and that would have been like [1999]. So it's been waiting a long time in the wings.

Brandon Sanderson

*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.

Aranfan

I thought we had reached a consensus that the Atium we see the characters use was the Electrum Alloy form?

Peter Ahlstrom

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.

/u/ph4mp573r

[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.

/u/sambadaemon

Slightly related: If the Dawnshard let Hoid regrow his entire head, will it eventually give Rysn back the use of her legs?

Peter Ahlstrom

The different dawnshards have different powers.

Information subject to change when it appears in canon.

R'Shara

Can Shards lie anytime they want to other than when bound by oaths and such?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Rangsk

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? 

Brandon Sanderson

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.