Questioner
I was wondering if you were planning on doing another collaboration with your fellow podcasters, like you did with--
Brandon Sanderson
Shadows Beneath? Yes, there will be something more like that eventually.
I was wondering if you were planning on doing another collaboration with your fellow podcasters, like you did with--
Shadows Beneath? Yes, there will be something more like that eventually.
In Herdazian, is there no personal pronoun, and that's why Lopen always refers to himself as "The Lopen"?
No, that is his personal thing. In Rock's language, most nouns are gendered, masculine, which is why you always see him flipping-- screwing that up. But Lopen, just his thing. Just his thing.
Glyphpairs, or glyphs, for the specific Surges. Are they supposed to be slightly different? Or are they perfectly symmetrical?
It depends on who paints them and how. Most of them are supposed to be symmetrical.
Because I got the Progression tattoo, and my tattoo artist noticed that it was slightly different on both sides, where there was a curve instead of having a square. And he said, is it not supposed to be perfectly squared off? Because then it would be--
Some people draw them that way, depends on what they're writing, and things like that. So, I would ask Isaac. Write an email to [email protected] and ask him about it, because he designs all those. I just give him general directions, he's the one that can actually write them.
Cultivation *inaudible* Nightwatcher?
No, but good question, they are separate and you'll find out in [Oathbringer], kind of, in what ways.
If Nightblood was to be used by a Scadrian, would that person have to be an Investiture ferring?
No, you could be burning any metal, and Nightblood would co-opt it and feed off that.
Title of the next Stormlight book? I have decided I'm not gonna answer that yet. Still working on it.
Is the Warbreaker sequel gonna have Susebron and Siri?
It's Vivenna and Vasher. And new characters. You'll get an update in it, if I ever do it, what's going on, but it won't be focused on them.
What is your favorite magic system that you made?
Allomancy.
How big are the beads from Shadesmar?
...Bean-size, not as big as spheres.
Spheres are the size of your thumbnail, right?
Spheres are a little bigger than that. They're like a big marble. Not quite as big as a shooter.
Would all the different powers, or magic. Would they all work on the other--
Almost all of them will. AonDor, and the ones from Sel, are very hard to get to work elsewhere, because of certain things, but others are much easier. For instance, if you can get Breaths to another world, you can just use them, you don't need to do anything special.
The drawers with the infused gemstones. Is that the Stormlight Archive?
No. That is not the Stormlight Archive.
Is there a Stormlight Archive?
Yes. But... it means the books. The archive of books that are all named after in-world books. The Archive is a pun on archived collection of books.
Syl asks Kaladin if he had <problems> *inaudible*. Is that just a phrase she picked up? Or is it something connected *inaudible*?
Um... there is nothing special you're supposed to read into that other than Syl personality and interactions and stuff.
Which creature is your favorite from any of your series?
Which creature? Chasmfiend.
For Jasnah, it seems like maybe a couple times it's been hinted that maybe she prefers women *inaudible*
Let's just have you Read on And Find Out on that one. There is-- Her book isn't 'til, like-- at the earliest, Book Eight. So, we've got a long ways to go before we're digging into Jasnah some more.
Why are [Cognitive] Shadows so much more prevalent on Threnody?
That's a good question. Which is a RAFO. Sorry.
I know that Dalinar's story is definitely one you were looking forward to, but of the remaining Stormlight Archive books, whose story are you looking the most forward to?
Umm... Taln's.
Are there historical figures that were inspirations for Elhokar?
Dalinar is based very slightly on Subutai, the great Mongol general. Elhokar, no one specific. I thought of him when I was a kid, when I was, like, fourteen, I wanted to do a story about a weak king and his uncle who's a really strong figure, and that interplay, and that's where he came from.
Please write something new and interesting about Nebrask?
It is not the only portal to the chalkling world.
Could an Awakened toupee be commanded to act like real hair?
...Totally! Absolutely, yes!
Would it be convincing?
Would it be convincing? Yeah, I think that it would be. It depends.
It depends on the number of Breaths?
Yeah, it depends on factors, but I totally think that could be very convincing. Yes, yes, yes.
Could it also be given enough Breath to Command "Protect me?"
Yes, it could. That would be really weird. But yes.
What does chull meat taste like? Surf, turf, or both?
I would go both on that. Definitely both. A little bit of each.
How did you come up with Shardpools and travel between the worlds?
...So, what happened is (close as I can remember; it's been a long time now), close as I can remember, I wrote Elantris in, like, 1998 or 1999, and I, at that point, didn't really have the cosmere in place. I knew I wanted to do some sort of grand epic, I knew I wanted to do some sort of thing, but I just wrote that book-- Elantris is mostly a discovery-written book, rather than an outlined book. And I wrote this book, and that's when I started a lot of these ideas. I stepped away from it, and I started writing a book called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I kinda got into the dark age where I was trying to be George R.R. Martin for a while. And then when I came out of that, I wrote The Way of Kings [Prime]. And during those days, I was really looking for these tying agents. When I put the first Shardpool in, I had-- I'm just like "Here's a well of power. I don't know what this does." I was discovery-writing the book. By the time I sold Mistborn and Elantris, I sold those two in a deal in 2003, that's when I'm like, "All right, now I'm gonna do this for real." I've had all this trial run-- I'd written thirteen novels at this point, and I'd sold #6 and #14, Mistborn not being written yet... So, I sat down with Elantris, and I built out the cosmere, and I built out these things, like "Why do I have this pool of power? What am I gonna do with the pool of power in the next book? I want this to be a theme." And I started building out the cosmere from there. So, part of it was organic, part of it was by design.
If a kandra were a Parshendi, would he be able to take the forms?
The Forms? The actual-- To an extent, yes. To an extent, yes, but part of that is the spren bond. You're not gonna get everything. You could look like one, but there'll be certain things you won't be able to do, even with the Form. You couldn't take a form of power... You could pass.
Does any of the Sixteen actually like Hoid anymore?
Yes.
The history of Nightblood, we know that it's created by knowledge of the Shardblades. Would you say that Vasher's first trip to Roshar coincided with a certain individual that tried to take over all of Roshar?
You're talking about Sadees?
The Sunmaker?
...I'd have to look at the timeline, but it was not-- it is not something I have present in my mind. It could have overlapped. So, it might overlap, but there's not a cause-and-effect there.
So, Sunmaker and Vasher are sep--
Are not the same people, good question. Sunmaker is legitimately Dalinar's ancestor.
How do you come up with the David analogies and the metaphors?
Oh, man, this is so much harder than you think it is. For those who haven't read them, the main character is really, really bad at similes. And where it came from is, there's actually a contest every year, where people intentionally try to write bad similes, and submit them. And every year it comes out and makes me laugh. Just-- I love it. And I started writing Reckoners, and-- Normally, you read this things as an author, to watch out for things to not accidentally do. If you read the bad metaphors, you can be like, "Oh, this is why you don't want to do this. You don't want people laughing." You get aware of this sort of thing. It's very good for you as a writer to watch. And, lo and behold, I'm writing a book series, and I wrote a metaphor, and I looked at it, and I'm like "That is really bad." And you do this as an author sometimes, and sometimes they slip in the books, you just write it and they're really bad. And I went to delete it and I'm like, "What if I ran with that?" This is because I tend to discovery-write my characters. So, I outline a lot for my settings, and I outline a lot of my plots, and then I go freewrite who these characters are, and then usually I have to do a lot of rebuilding of my plot after I figure out who's who. And in the Reckoners, I just ran with that, I did the whole sequence, I did the whole first chapter like that, and I'm like, "This is really fun." And then I locked myself into it, and it got so hard. Being bad on purpose is, like, ridiculously difficult. But it was also part of the fun. I would save them up, I'd be walking on the street, I'd think of something, and I'd be like "Ooh, how do I make that bad?" And I'd spend the next fifteen to twenty minutes writing a really bad metaphor. And sticking it in my pocket, because they all have to be bad in different ways. If they're all bad in the same way, then that's not any fun, you get used to it. So they all have to be bad in different ways, too. So, yeah, it was harder than I thought, but it was a blast.
So, most of your magic systems are limited to only a slight portion of the population. Is that a conscious decision? Are there any that are open to anybody?
Certainly, the Warbreaker magic is open to everybody, and that's part of what I was doing, was I wanted to contrast the other ones. And this is just because it makes for good storytelling, honestly. And when I do this, I'm doing it too much, I go the other way. That's why Sixth of the Dusk is open to everyone, that's why different things are done differently in the magics. But, really, when I'm working on the books, I'm like, "Well, we need something dramatic and cool." And I would argue that at least some of them, such as in Stormlight Archive, those are open to anybody if you can convince a spren. And you're sincere, right? And I like going that direction. Certainly, the kind of old standby of "you're born with it" is really easy. It's really, what we call in Sci-Fi/Fantasy "grokkable." You can instantly, kind of, get it. You're like, "All right, this is just like a talent. Some people are born with different talents. Makes sense." It doesn't take a lot of explanation, you don't have to worldbuild a ton up front. Where something like Stormlight, you gotta send a lot of worldbuilding words to explain how it happens, why it happens, things like that. But the trade-off is, it's in many ways more satisfying if you do it the other way. So, I do try to balance those. But sometimes those short-hands are very handy.
Is Forgery?
Forgery is a Selish magic system, so it is birth-based, tied to location.
My fiance and I have been reading through the books, I introduced them to her, she's been reading them in Mandarin. And, so, our question is about what level of enforcement/authority you guys have at Dragonsteel for things like translations, because the atium in the Taiwanese/Mandarin version of the book is translated as "sky gold." Which loses the connection to Ati.
Yeah, it does a little bit.
How does-- has that changed, since you started?
It has changed since we started, definitely. We try to involve-- Those were translated by Lucy, right? We try to stay really in contact with our translators and offer them as much as possible. Who translated that one? ...Oh, no, that's not Lucy, that's-- he contacts us, too, he writes to us. And, we do our best. But sometime we just don't make people aware of things early enough for them to be relevant. Like, they start, they get a book out, and then they're like "Oh, no, this need to be related." We try, and our translators try, and usually are really good at contacting us, but things slip through. I've worked with both of the Chinese translators quite a bit, actually; Peter does most of that. But if there are things that we get wrong, we love to hear about it, we pass along to translators-- the Chinese translator is a big fan of the cosmere. And sought out the project actively to work on it. So... if there are translation issues, just write to us.
Is there a specific mineral deposit around the Purelake? Is there a sacred enclave?
RAFO.
How much is a stone-weight on Roshar?
Uh... that is actually a question for Peter. I actually, often, will just write in brackets "this much," and he comes up with the weights and measures, because I can never be consistent in my first drafts. So, yeah, you ask Peter, he can get that for you. I do the same thing with spheres, right? I'm like, "This costs roughly 100 bucks in our world," and he'll go "All right, fine" and go look up all the things. I used to keep it all in the first book, but since then I just let him do it.
Why so many characters from Warbreaker [in Stormlight]?
'Cause Warbreaker is a prequel to Stormlight. I wrote Stormlight first, and then I actually went and wrote Warbreaker about Kaladin's swordmaster, but then that version of Stormlight didn't get published, and this one did, but they're very interconnected to me.
Can you confirm the identity of Azure.
Yes, I can.
Is it Vivenna?
Yeah.
Nalthians seem to do a really good job of passing as Rosharan. Are they just better as disguising themselves, or do they naturally look like residents of Roshar?
...Nalthians have some innate abilities that allow that.
The hair, of course.
Not just the hair.
Did Adonalsium (or its Vessel) leave a Cognitive Shadow behind? If so, where is it?
RAFO.
In this world, assuming that [Roshar] is as old as it appears to be, wouldn't it be that the creatures that have gemhearts in them, as they die their body would rot away but leaving the gemstone? So wouldn't fossil beds exist with layers of gemstones in them from the passing of the ages?
Yeah, that's why-- yes.
That's how they mine them?
They do mine them. What you've got to remember is, in my opinion these things are going to collect in certain ways in certain places.
Densities and stuff.
Yeah. But yeah. Because there's no tectonic activity on Roshar, so.
Just the buildup of crem over time slowly covers things.
Mmhmm.
Do you think we'll get to see Shallan worldhop onto Nalthis?
RAFO. RAFO. Such a big RAFO. Enormous RAFOs!
So I have a question about surges. So in this book they use this very Spiritual Adhesion. Do all of the surges have applications in each of the different realms?
To an extent yes, but some of them are more focused on it than others, on different levels.
I want to know if we're ever gonna get to see Hoid and Jasnah and the journey back at the ends of Words of Radiance, 'cause I was so hyped to read that and then they didn't interact at all.
I will promise you some interaction in book four but I won't promise you a flashback...
The singer forms of power: Do they utilize fabrial magic?
Um, no. Similar—they're based on the same kind of foundation—but no.
Are we gonna see Hoid on any other planet with his new little friend?
Oh that's a RAFO.
The last Unmade, the one that's hypothesized to Dai-Gonarthis. It looks suspiciously to me like Cusicesh, because of the feeling of being drained, because it's a large spren-- Is there something to that or is the feeling just because Cusicesh is a large spren?
I'm gonna RAFO.
There is an expensive steel chain in the shops in Celebrant. Is there anything significant about that.
*Hands over a RAFO card* That is such a big RAFO. Super-big RAFO.
I actually wanted to get a tattoo of the Truthwatcher symbol. Are there any-- are there narrative reasons you would go against that?
Uhh, no.
Are they-- would they be an order that's about using knowledge to help people?
Yes.
Could I get an Ideal if possible?
Of them? I can't do 'em because I don't want to canonize them yet, I have to do that when I actually write the books.
But it is broadly speaking knowledge and help?
Yes.
So Honorblades: Can they actually be bound? ...Can you bind to an Honorblade or not?
Yeees you can, but it's not exactly the same thing.
It's not exactly the same thing as a regular Shardblade?
Yeah... In some ways they're more powerful in some ways they're a prototype, if that makes sense.
Hoid gets his tooth knocked out while in Kholinar. He prompts somebody else to help him with that. Is that because he has issues hurting not only other people but himself?
Yep.
And then he considers healing that at a later point in time. Which magic system does he consider using to heal that?
A magic system that predates-- predates any of the others.
Is it common knowledge in the cosmere—and on Scadrial—that Ironeyes and the Survivor are brothers?
*Pause* Kind of yes. Yes. I would say yes that is common knowledge.
The Tranquiline Halls: are they real?
They are—well they're a real place... They are actually the planet that's referenced [in Oathbringer]. But whether mythologically they're real or not that's more a debate for scholars.
So my dog's name is Vin. I was wondering if there was any sort of story behind that name and how you thought of it.
Wine in French. Because building the whole region off of French-sounding names—Kelsier and Demoux and things like that. And I just really like... the sound of it. I know it's kind of like a guy's name, but I just really like the sound of it.
What comes first chronologically in the Cosmere series: Mistborn or Stormlight Archive?
Mistborn, for trilogy one.
Will we have to wait until the end of Stormlight Archive to learn about Hoid.
Uh yeeees.
So like a dozen years.
Yes. You'll get little bits and pieces, but you won't get the whole thing until I do his trilogy, which is the next thing after Stormlight.
There's an ardent in Way of Kings who's like described as short and he's at a party and he uses the word "soil". Do we know who he is, is he Nazh?
That is specifically a worldhopper. I don't think I've revealed who he is. But I'm still gonna RAFO just in case that is somebody.