How do spren get to the place where they're supposed to be, where an emotion being expressed? Are there just so many of them that they just happen to have enough density that they're there or they travel really fast?
Most of the time what's happening is they are congregating around human population centers anyway. And so it's like birds. Like you walk out there are birds around, right? It's kind of the same thing as spren. So it's more the density thing.
Was it relevant that Ruin mentioned Passion to Vin?
Yes.
In the chapter about the Wandersail, when Hoid is telling the story, is he using Lightweaving?
It is not completely natural what you are seeing.
Is the smoke in any way related to Rosharan magic systems?
In any way related, yes? I'm good at wiggling out of these. It's a part RAFO, it's not completely natural. I'll leave it at that. I can't say too much, otherwise I'll give away all my secrets.
My favorite character is Nazh... I just want anything about him, even if he's just his favorite food.
Isaac. Give us a favorite food...
So, he likes, and Brandon will have to confirm this, but he likes a plant-- fried-- it would be considered an eggplant almost.
Fried eggplant. We're good on that.
It's not-- It looks like an eggplant, it's native to Threnody.
Can Honor be revived like with... Preservation?
RAFO.
What abilities, if any, does a double aluminum Twinborn have?
RAFO.
Can a Mistborn burn any physical form of Investiture?
No. Well-- possible with work, but naturally, no.
In Secret History, Nazh briefly mentioned that there's requirements or conditions to become a Cognitive Shadow. Can you tell us one of those?
Uh, lots of Investiture. Is one way. As a certain person discovered.
If that person were to not have entered Preservation's pool, it still would have given the same result?
If they had not, they would be gone.
I wasn't clear. If they had done a different pool, not Preservation's.
Oh, if they had been able to Invest themselves heavily, then they could have stuck around, yes. That wasn't Preservation's pool, that was more a function of--dipping themselves, pulling an Achilles inside of a Shardpool when you are dead, turned out to work. It's not the only way, not everyone on... Threnody, for instance, is heavily Invested.
Could a kandra imitating a human have a child with the human?
So, I kinda go back and forth on this. So-- 'Cause I think about it, then I tweak the magic, and I think "no this isn't possible," and then I go back, and I'm like, "but..." So it kinda comes down to a lot of things, such as, would I want a DNA test to be able to determine if a kandra is real or not. And I haven't canonized that yet, so your answer is, Read And Find Out, once I decide. I go back and forth on that one so much.
Roshar... Is that the whole world, just kinda flattened out? Or is there something on the other side?
There's something on the other side, but mostly just empty ocean.
Mostly just empty ocean? Something else? RAFO?
There's your card!
Are you ever gonna write a pregnant woman in your books?
So, I kinda got my fill of it in Wheel of Time. Because Elayne, which is such-- there's just so much pregnancy. So, like-- I've actually thought about this before, and I think, I just read those books so many times I'm like--
You're just full of it.
Yeah. But that's not a good reason! But I'm pretty sure that's my reason.
If you were to somehow use a receptacle to gather some part of the Dor, say there was a way of doing that. And you were to do one on both extremes of the planet. Would it be the same thing?
...Say, you have a container than can contain part of this plasma? ...Theoretically? You do that, taking one part of the planet, say Elantris, seal it up. And then you were to take another one, and fill it up in MaiPon and compare them, would it be the same Investiture?
Yes, it would.
Quesion about Selish magic systems. So, you've described, in the past, the Dor in the Cognitive Realm as being almost like magma. Is that just in consistency, or also does that also include in its temperature?
No, it's more temperature than consistency. Plasma-ish is maybe even a better way of putting it.
Does [the Ishikk interlude in Way of Kings] indicate that White Sand, Mistborn Era 1, and Elantris all take place in about the same period of time? Or are worldhoppers also timehoppers?
Some of them are also timehoppers. They're not as close as you would think.
Is it a coincidence that, when Michael Kramer was reading... Stormlight Archive and Wax&Wayne, Wayne sounds curiously like Lopen.
It's a cute coincidence. Lopen would have a very different accent from Wayne.
The amount of Heralds that we have seen so far. Two? I had thought Wit was one.
Wit is not one, but you've seen Ash, you've seen Taln, you've seen Jezrien and Kalak in the prelude, you've seen Nale. Yeah, he was chasing Lift, among other things. You've heard of several others, but the others are going to start getting more and more obscure from there. I don't think there's any others.
Could the mantle of Herald be passed to another person. Could they--
Read And Find Out, I'm afraid.
I envision the Bondsmiths as, like, walking catapult. Is that viable, or is it different?
You'll have to wait and see. We'll RAFO that.
We see, in Secret History, all the people going Beyond after they die. Do all the victims go there? Or just people? Just sentients? Would a Ryshadium go the Beyond, if it died.
Um-- Yes.
What about, like, a rockbud, or a chasmfiend?
Um, that, you're gonna have to ask the philosophers about. Because, if it happens, it happens really fast, so they have trouble spotting it.
Is there a significant connection between Stormlight and spren?
Yes.
What is the extent of that, I guess? Is that a Read And Find Out?
That's a RAFO.
Does everyone meet the Nightwatcher when they die?
No.
As you look at the Double Eye, is there a pattern for Honor and Cultivation's disparate influences on each Surge or Order?
There are philosophers who think that there are, but-- it is more straightforward than those philosophers think it is.
Is it fair to say that Honor is focused on the past, and Cultivation is focused on the future? Or nostalgia.
No. Nope, not fair to say that. But it is an interesting theory. They would disagree with you, but you could make the argument.
Is Hoid somebody I should be rooting for?
Depends on-- Depends... There's a big, uh, "depends" attached to that.
Is that something we're gonna see in Stormlight Archive?
You will see some of it in Stormlight. It's not the main place you're gonna see it.
If you had a Shardblade, what would it look like?
Hm... it would have lots of glyphs on it.
So, we know that things can be Soulcast into aluminum. But can aluminum itself be Soulcast into something else?
It resists all forms of Investiture trying to change it to things.
An Elantrian, can they use an unkeyed nicrosilmind to-- as a substitute for the Dor?
...This is theoretically possible. Again, the Selish magic systems do not play well with the other magics, but that is theoretically possible to make happen.
Could you build Aons or something similar to Aons off of the natural landforms on Roshar, like the Dawncities and the other cities that are sort of symmetrical?
The Elantrian magic system, the Selish magic systems, are the ones that don't work very well-- don't interact very well with other worlds... Other ones are a lot more easy to interact between worlds.
If an Elantrian has a child, is that child an Elantrian?
Not necessarily.
...Like, two Elantrians have a child, it's possible that it's just a normal human?
...It is indeed.
[Question written down, unknown]
They can communicate with each other. So, there's at least one answer-- with the spren-- Yeah, but it's not-- you don't really communicate with spren in the same way.
Can they get, like, Odium- or Cultivation- or Honor-oriented spren to kinda animate them?
No, that's not quite how it works.
The intelligence in the eye of the chasmfiend, I was wondering. Or on the santhid rescuing her.
It's more, like, does a flower communicate with a bee. That's a similar sort of thing we're looking at here.
If people from Scadrial were to colonize, like, Nalthis, and not intermarry with the people there, would their children continue to have the Scadrial Investiture, or would they have the Nalthis Investiture? In the sense that, is it genetic, or is it planetary?
Scadrial is more genetic.
Than Nalthis, where they have the Breaths?
Yes.
So, would their children continue to--
Their children would continue, for a while, to have Scadrian Investiture.
For a while. Could you say, like, how many generations?
I cannot.
The respect for lighteyes seems to come from Radiants and their-- Is there a reason that the Makabaki and Iriali don't seem to care as much.
Yeah. That will become a little more evident as the books progress.
So, November is the National Writer's month. Have you ever participated in the NaNoWriMo challenge?
I have!
Awesome! How did that go?
It went pretty well. I'm a pretty compulsive writer, so-- I don't do it as much anymore, 'cause I'm almost always on tour during it or something. But during the early days when I was trying to break in, I did it all the time. I actually wrote a big chunk of the first draft of Way of Kings in 2002, in NaNoWriMo.
When people ask you who your favorite character is, you say they're all your children. And I always have the same thought: even Amaram?
Well, let's say, my favorites are all of the viewpoint characters who are not slimeballs... Yeah, he's definitely one of the exceptions to that.
What other exceptions?
Oh, I don't know. I'd have to think about it.
In Way of Kings, the Death Rattles, it say that the person who said it reported seeing strange dreams during the highstorms for the past two years. What do you have to say about that, I guess?
Highstorms. You often see strange things during the highstorms.
That's not a real answer.
It totally is a real answer! That person saw some weird stuff. Weird stuff happens. Dalinar sees weird things walking along throwing rocks at people, so. Who knows.
Can a Surgebinder use Breath like they can Stormlight?
This is possible and not really that hard to make work.
How would Nightblood react to Hoid?
Nightblood would probably try to be very friendly to Hoid, and then-- But Nightblood tries to be friendly to everybody. He's a very friendly, uh, demonic terrible sword that sucks your soul.
If you were gonna pick a thing to be, like, an Edgedancer, or a Windrunner, what would you be?
Probably a Bondsmith is what's natural to me. If I could pick any, I'd probably be Windrunner, but I don't think I'd fit Windrunner.
Does, like, Steelheart universe included in the cosmere?
It doesn't. Good question.
Do koloss have hair?
...It depends on the form. Some do, some don't. But, in general, they do. But it's not-- Here's the thing, it's not quite hair. They're not mammalian.
What are they if they're not mammalian?
They are their own-- uh, yeah.
Are there any fain or formerly fain holders of a Shard of Adonalsium?
What an excellent question! It's a card, it's a RAFO card.
Any clues on where we see Hemalurgy elsewhere in the cosmere?
No, we'll RAFO that for now.
How does rewriting the Spiritual aspect work?
...So, it has ramifications through the other two Realms. It can happen. You've seen it happen.
That's what happens with kandra, right?
Yes, to an extent, yes.
With the koloss?
Yeah, both of them. Hemalurgy is, like, sticking a piece of someone's spirit to another person's spirit and creating a Frankenstein's monster of spirits.
Can you tell me why Jasnah wanted to potentially assassinate her sister-in-law, the queen?
She felt that the queen was seeking to usurp power, for one thing, and was reckless for another. And so Jasnah was worried about the safety of the throne.
So, in Warbreaker, Awakened items have to emulate humans. Why is that?
It's a matter of perception on the people using the magic. And there are ramifications on the fact that the Shards themselves were all once humanoid.
So, Renarin. Is there anything special about him, like regarding him being able to see the future, or, like, Rock not being able to see his spren? So he's different than other Truthwatchers?
Read [Oathbringer]. Then come back and ask.
I had a question regarding the sixteen Shards... If they are, or when they are reformed to Adonalsium, will it have to be one person holding all sixteen Shards?
That's a RAFO. I'm gonna RAFO that partially because there's not even-- who knows if it can all be recombined.
Would you care if I took what we have on, like, Aonic, and sort of rolled it into a conlang?
Yeah, that'd be fine. Aonic is the one that, like, in some ways the least useful.
It has the most words that I've found for it.
If you're interested in conlangs, go talk to Peter, and maybe we'll sic you on something. Maybe we can get you working on something officially. I've tried to get Peter to do something... Go talk to him. Talk nerd stuff with him.
What is the most fully-developed you've made any of the languages in the books? Or do you just come up with the sounds and just sort of stop?
It depends on which ones. Like, the further we go in the books, the more developed they become. Peter is a linguist, was a linguistics major, so I lean on him heavily for some of these things. Korean gets used all the time. Because I speak Korean and did my mission in Korea...
What new series are you planning for the cosmere? Do you have any?
I really wanna do at least a book set on the same world as Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell.
