Chaos
(paraphrased)
Long, long ago when Hero of Ages came out you listed four Shards other than Ruin and Preservation. You said we interacted with two directly. One is a tough call, we've never met the Shard itself but have seen its power. The other one we've not met directly but have seen its influence. My questions:
-Is the Dor the "tough call" one?
-Do you count Hoid in this list of four shards? It makes a difference for the theories, Brandon! You don't even need to say if he is bound to a shard, rather just if you consider him in this list.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO, and no, Hoid is not included in the list.
Questioner 1
Will the character of Stick ever make a reappearance?
Brandon Sanderson
Stick is unlikely to make a reappearance.
Questioner 2
Aww. You wrote an essay about it
Brandon Sanderson
Yes, I know. I know people really like Stick.
Questioner 2
It was a good essay. It was a good essay.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Is Endowment linked to the ocean in Warbreaker?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Is Endowment blind to the words spoken by Awakeners? Is he blind to art?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Are Shards all paired? Does Endowment have a counterpart?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO. Also, yes and no. Not all Shards have perfect counterparts like Ruin and Preservation.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
Why were Ruin and Preservation linked together?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Because they're such perfect opposites. Basically it's just an opposites attract thing.
Questioner
Hoid seems to have an unability to be able to harm people *inaudible*. Why is that?
Brandon Sanderson
That is a RAFO. That's a read and find out.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Why are specific focuses chosen for specific Shards? Why metals for Ruin and Preservation and not Commands like Endowment?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Is Edgli Endowment's real name?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
RAFO, however the flowers are related to Endowment somehow...
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Since the dawn of Scadrial, why was Feruchemy isolated in a single distinct population in the world, namely the Terrismen? Allomancy, while rare within the population of Scadrial, at least was not isolated to one population, it was spread evenly, it seems. What is special about the Terrismen that only they get the power of Feruchemy? Does it have something to do with the previous Ascensions before Rashek, with the guardian keeping the power for a time?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
It's all in the spiritual DNA, which is passed on like normal DNA. However, they are a separate people. They've kept themselves isolated, similar to the Jews in our world. When I asked he said there have been some Feruchemical-mistings [Ferrings] in the past, but they are very rare.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Why is there such an imbalance between the amount of atium and the amount of lerasium in the world? Also, why are atium and lerasium very imbalanced in Allomantic power (Lerasium is far more useful than atium, really)?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
There isn't. Leras is just spread out further. He is in the mists, in the Well, and in the lerasium. Ruin's power however is condensed strictly in atium.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
What would have happened if Ruin did get the atium? Yeah, the world is destroyed, but how does Ruin "absorb" the atium so he can utilize the power?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
He would metabolize it, just like the normal people have to do. However, if he did get it he would then be able to destroy the world.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
Why did the Well of Ascension refill every thousand years rather than 500 or 200, etc.?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
It's actually every 1024 years. The Lord Ruler just befuddled the information a bit.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
In the most recent Hero of Ages annotation, you said that Preservation chose Vin to be the recipient of the power, just as Preservation had chosen Alendi previously (thus, this was why Ruin had manipulated the Prophecies). Was Alendi also chosen precisely sixteen years before the Well of Ascension's power returned?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yes. He was chosen exactly sixteen years before, but he was a bit older then Vin when he was chosen.
Questioner
Will we get more information like that about planets and stuff like that in the Ars.. *interrupted* ?
Brandon Sanderson
The Arcanum Unbound[ed] is... Yes, the cosmere collection. There will be little essays from Khriss on each of the planets. There will be stuff like that. You're going to have to wait until the science in-world approaches more of our science before I can get into some of the things you would want to know specifically. But, I mean, we are starting to get to an era where they can talk intelligently about these things. So yes, but it's-- Arcanum Unbound[ed] is kind of weird because I had to pick a date for her to be writing these essays, and the date that she wrote the essays is before some of the stories. For instance, Sixth of the Dusk, right? And so for that planet she's just like, "Hey, here's this place that something weird might be happening with. We don't know a lot about it, but it's got this one weird attribute that we're studying." The story hasn't happened yet. So you get a little bit of that. It's not all from the far future, when like Sixth of the Dusk is happening, because otherwise there would be way too many spoilers for what's coming in the future. So yes, there will be lots of cool little tidbits. The essays are meant for people who ask questions like that, and like this one, but I'm not answering everything.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
As it turns out, there is an error in the Feruchemical table when Brandon put it in Mistborn 2. If you look closely, Determination (electrum) doesn't belong in its group. The group that it is in is obviously more physical powers. Determination was supposed to be a mental metal, and Warmth was supposed to be in that Physical group. He just made a mistake originally. But it turns out that Feruchemy obeys different rules than Allomancy, so Brandon isn't retconning it, but saying that Feruchemy works differently now. Apparently there was going to be a table of Feruchemy at the end of Alloy of Law, but it wasn't ready because Isaac kept thinking like an Allomancer. Feruchemy has its own rules (for example, Brandon confirmed that pewter does steal Feruchemical health, probably because that second group of physical Feruchemical powers are also "physical", so pewter can steal them.) Hemalurgy also obeys different rules.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
One does not have to kill someone with Hemalurgy to charge a spike, but it rips off a large part of the soul. The person would not be the same.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
There is a way to get a non-powered person to access a metalmind.
Comatose
(Paraphrased) Can you tell us something about the Lord Ruler that we do not already know?
Brandon Sanderson
*Written* The Lord Ruler once gave up + tried to end the F.E.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Feruchemy is about multipliers. The more the Lord Ruler aged, the less "multiplier" he could store in his metalmind. And the more he aged the more he would need to Compound to stay alive. There could exist an upper bound to the amount of time the Lord Ruler could survive off this trick.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Allomantic pewter strength can be stored in a metalmind, but it's probably easier to just Compound.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
The Shaod is an effect of Elantris.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
What happens to seons during the Reod is that the Reod messes with the seon's spirit.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Shardblades can be willed down. We see this with Dalinar slamming the Shardblade down into the stone at the end of the Way of Kings.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Lerasium overwrites Spiritual DNA. It can do some interesting things, and can overwrite your Spiritual DNA in different ways if you do it right. If a Surgebinder ate lerasium, he would become an Allomancer, but Brandon implied other things could be done.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
For people really into the obscure workings of the politics of the Final Empire, we asked about the legality of assassinations.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
It turns out that you have to ask the obligators' permission to assassinate someone--and permission, of course, means bribe in this context. The Steel Ministry can say yes or no. Presumably more high level people would cost more money to be killed. Of course, if the Ministry says no, you can always risk it and assassinate illegally, but you'd have to be very careful not to get caught. Even with legal killings you need to keep things quiet. Brandon said the Steel Ministry has much more corruption than governments in our world. Corruption which we would abhor is commonplace in the Final Empire.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Ketchup does not exist in the Final Empire, since it is from a fruit, which are flowering plants. The Lord Ruler did not engineer fruit. Mostly people eat vegetables and roots.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
If you are Smoked, you can't Seek.
KChan
(paraphrased)
[Brandon] told me that because burning copper creates an Allomantic dead zone, so to speak, everything inside it is effectively silenced. This prevents pulses from reaching Seekers who are outside the cloud, but it also prevents anyone inside the cloud from receiving any pulses whatsoever. The reason Vin could do this is because of her earring.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
We asked if it was possible to use bronze to Seek Feruchemy.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
He said it could be possible. If it were to happen, it was very hard, because the Inquisitors would desperately like to be able to find Feruchemists that way, and it was implied they had not discovered this power. So, it is a freaking hard technique to learn, if possible at all.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
I continued to ask about the Lord Ruler and his Allomantic strength.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
There's an upper bound to the amount of power you can get from being a savant. Brandon said that, obviously, the Lord Ruler wasn't using duralumin and Elend could only get that powerful in Soothing using duralumin. He implied that there was a way to Compound to enhance Allomancy.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
We asked some questions about the Lord Ruler, like if he knew about chromium and nicrosil.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Brandon said he knew about those metals, and then also said "The Lord Ruler knew a lot of things that no one knows."
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Seons are remnants of a dead Shard.
Questioner
Will we ever get an explanation about the cosmological feasibility of the world [Taldain]?
Brandon Sanderson
Oh, the cosmological feasibility of a tidally locked planet between two stars?
Questioner
We have one of those in our solar system, and it's not very habitable.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, *crowd laughs* the nice thing about the cosmere is I can do planets that would not work in a large scale way because I can hang something and say, "This orbit will degrade in two million years, but it was created and placed there," right? Which allows me to create planets that on a geologic timescale are not stable, but are stable on a rise and fall of human civilizations scale. And that's one of the advantages of being in fantasy, is I can go back to that. Like I try to be rule based when I can, but I also have magic and things that can interfere. So the answer is that. *crowd laughs* We know it's-- I mean, I don't think Roshar's moons are stable on a geologic timescale either. I think they're too close. There's a bunch of stuff in the cosmere that is not stable if you look at tens of millions of years, but it's just fine for a million or two years.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Brandon said offhandedly, "It is not random who got which Shard." Also, Shards very rarely change hands. Brandon emphasized the "very" there.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Odium wants to be the only Shard. Odium could pick up other Shards if he wants to, but, he doesn't want to. His Shard is a good match for his personality and he doesn't want to be influenced by another Shard.
Chaos
(paraphrased)
I don't remember what prompted me to write this, or what impression I had that made me write this, but I wrote: Anyone can take up a Shard. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I would not have written this if it was not crystal clear to me that this is what Brandon meant.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Sazed is a Shard. Just like a king of two countries is still a king, a holder of two Shards is a Shard.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Sazed's two Shards do not "cancel out", as Brandon said that it would like being pulled by two huge gravitational tides. You can get to a way that you aren't instantly ripped apart, but that doesn't mean you don't feel it. (When asked what effect the Shards would have on Sazed, Brandon said, "Read Alloy of Law to find out".)
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Shards and Shard intents: Holding a Shard is a contest of willpower against the Shard that, over time, is very hard to resist.
Shards affect you over time, but your mind will not leave a permanent effect on the Shard. A holder's [Vessel's] personality, however, does get to filter the Shard's intent, so to speak. However, if that holder [Vessel] no longer held that Shard, the Shard will not continue to be filtered by that person.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Inquisitors knowing how to Compound: some may have figured it out at some point. I [Chaos] got the impression it was not a technique the Lord Ruler taught them.
little wilson
(paraphrased)
Brandon confirmed that "the element" is the bead of lerasium. Which confirms both this theory, and the theory that Hoid wrote the letter.
When I asked the question, I also thought the element and the lerasium were different. I asked it as a "Hoid clearly has a habit for taking important items. He has the bead of lerasium and the element. What other items does he have that we should know about?"
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Brandon's response was that the bead and the element are the same. And that he has many items he should not have.
BlairJ
(paraphrased)
I did ask about Mistborn: Birthright.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Apparently it is going to make it's way to the next generation of consoles, so it should be a very nice representation. I did find out that Brandon is still writing 100% of the dialogue (there were some rumors a while back that he wouldn't be) and that it is well underway.
TheOneKEA
(paraphrased)
I also referenced the recent Q&A and this post, and speculated that the reason why the original poster thought Wax's sister was a duralumin ferring was because of Wax's comment that he did not feel any strong emotions as a result of her death. I told Brandon that the poster must have thought that she was deliberately suppressing her Connection with Wax by using Feruchemy. I said that I didn't need a yes or no answer from him.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
He replied that he would neither confirm nor deny my statement and would only agree that it was very interesting.
TheOneKEA
(paraphrased)
I asked him if it was possible to enter or exit Shadesmar in interplanetary space.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
He laughed nervously for several seconds with a look that suggested "Uh-oh!" and replied (as best as I can remember):
I would say no. The Cognitive Realm does exist there, but Shadesmar is a special case.
Ecuadorable
I asked for a clue about Rysn or Axies, and I got this!
Brandon Sanderson
Axies is one of two races from Aimia, but they are not related.
AndrewStirlingMacDonald
(paraphrased)
Is it possible for a kandra to use Invested material to form a true body?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yes, that's a possibility.
AndrewStirlingMacDonald
(paraphrased)
Could they use Shardplate?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
They absolutely could.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
Has anyone figured out what the secret in the map was, in Words of Radiance?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yeah, they have. That it's modeled after the Julia Set. Which is meant to indicate that Roshar was designed specifically.
AndrewStirlingMacDonald
(paraphrased)
Did it happen through crem buildup?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
No.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
Who is your favorite living author?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Favorites right now, writing. Probably my favorite right now is Guy Gavriel Kay. It was Terry Pratchet until he passed away. And it was Robert Jordan until he passed away. So I hope Guy stays safe. Because getting picked as my favorite author is apparently a death sentence.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
Does double copper give you perfect memory?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Good question. I haven't answered that one yet.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
I've been listening to the audiobooks of Stormlight. There are some really great character voices. Have you told him how to do the characters?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
I have not told him how to do characters. I leave that to him. I give him pronunciations.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
So the Australian Lopen is all him.
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Yeah, the Australian is all him. Which is weird, because they're, they're based off of Hispanic cultures, so, hearing the Australian... but at the same time, they're not Hispanic, because there are no Hispanics on Roshar, so an Australian's probably just as accurate as anything else. But yes, I intended the Herdazians to have a Hispanic flair to them.
Questioner
(paraphrased)
How does the density of Roshar compare to the density of Earth?
Brandon Sanderson
(paraphrased)
Roshar's density? So, Roshar is less dense than Earth. As well as being a bit smaller. I mean, we're at .7 gravity, so you can run the numbers. I'm sure the people on here *nods at smartphone* will. And they'll figure that out.
