Kaladin's fight with the [Pursuer], his eyes are described glowing a color not quite the same as usual for corrupted Investiture. Is this supposed to be that he's burning a different Light?
No, it’s more he's on the border of some dangerous stuff.
If there was an aluminum Misting that convinced themselves that aluminum outside their body was inside their body, could they burn it?
No. Perception can affect a lot of things, that's not a case where it would.
If somebody were to generate enough of an anti-Light like anti-Stormlight or anti-Voidlight, could they create an anti-Shard, or if not, could they create an anti-Light nuke?
There you go, RAFO.
Is there any meaning behind the name "Adonalsium", that we could know in the moment or find out?
Other than the fact that I look to real world languages for inspirations in order to evoke the right feelings... If we technically go into how these names were in the cosmere, they may not actually be those names. I'm picking names that evoke the right things to people in our world.
Nicrosil and chromium, do those have any interaction with people using Feruchemy, or other Investiture in general? Leechers or Nicrobursts.
Could you use those on Feruchemists? You should be able to, yes.
Would that only work while they're tapping it?
If it's active Investiture, probably yes. You'd probably need it to be kinetic Investiture in order for them to do anything about it.
Would Jasnah be able to handle Odium's power with her experience handling strong emotions?
She would be a good candidate.
Will she become Odium?
Oh come on, now you're just fishing for RAFO cards!
Has Kelsier held a gun?
Yes.
Aww man, ok.
Yes. He is not Batman, he’s not above holding a gun. He would call them an “inelegant weapon”, or whatever it is Obi-Wan said. “So uncivilized”, yes.
Either way, I'm scared.
Close to the end of Rhythm of War, Dalinar Connects Kaladin to something, which gives him the vision of Tien. Did he Connect him to Tien's dead soul, and if so, does Dalinar know what he did?
There are two prevailing theories on what happened here among cosmerenauts, in-world Arcanists. You would get two different answers. The most common answer is, Dalinar attached himself to the Spiritual Realm, pulled out possibilities, and showed one of those to Kaladin.
If so, where did the horse come from?
Either pure coincidence, or some sort of matching of Fortune to the moment, that ended up leading Kaladin to the place he needed to be, which is the way a lot of Fortune works. Fortune would be like, "You should go here," and you don't even know why. That's what the Arcanist answer would be, it would be the most common answer. Some people would say he reached into the Beyond and connected Tien to Kaladin via Tien's actual soul. I will leave these both as equally valid theories. As I've said many times, I'm not gonna say whether there is an actual afterlife in the cosmere because it is too foundational to too many characters' beliefs, or lack of beliefs, or worldview in-world to have the author contradict them either way.
You've said before that Tien was on the track to becoming a Lightweaver, before he, you know. What lie was he telling that was attracting a Cryptic?
That's a very good question. Tien was hiding a lot of belief that he was not a good person. That people didn't want to be around him, and things like this. He was hiding a lot of that, and he knew that people saw him as a burst of sunshine, and he didn't ever want them to not see him that way. That was really hard on him, as it is on a lot of people who are like Tien.
But did he like rocks?
He really liked rocks. The fact that he never got to meet Rock is... and throw a bucket of water on him!
When the Inquisitors were trying to track down Vin, it said they actually followed Reen's scent. How did they do that, and why didn't they follow Vin's scent, because she was the Mistborn?
I believe when I was using "scent" there, I'm using it like, they knew what was going on with Reen, so they were tracking down Reen. Yes, they were trying to find Vin, but their lead was Reen. So what I believe I'm talking about there is, they wanted to get to her through him, and they had a lead on how to find him. But I'm gonna have to look at the specific context of that one, I'm afraid.
A Spiritweb is composed of a bunch of chunks that are added based on certain circumstances. Could you manufacture Spiritweb patterns out of raw Investiture in such a way that, instead of cutting something from someone and grafting it to someone else, actually manufacture the chunk desired from Investiture and put it on the person?
Yes. They don't know how, but you could. Synthetic meat, synthetic souls, possible.
Can Wax talk to Harmony with his earring from another planet, or from another system?
This is theoretically possible, yes.
What would a kandra look like in Shadesmar, and do they have any special abilities in the Cognitive or Spiritual Realm?
Not sure if I want to canonize what they would look like. I will RAFO what they look like. There is nothing that they would have as a special power over a human being in the Cognitive Realm, except for the fact that they are trained to think of themselves in certain ways. They have mental training, someone else could learn this, but they have over many centuries, this ability. And your ability to perceive yourself in certain ways is very powerful in the cosmere, and the kandra are very good at this.
So it would less limiting than in the Physical Realm, where they have to adopt the bones and persona?
Here's the thing, if they went to the Cognitive Realm, they'd go there Physically, so they'd be under the same rules. There's a theoretical whatever out there that maybe, if they got killed, and their soul, and things like this, but in most cases, a kandra would go like a human would, and they'd be following the same rules. So if you got a kandra who somehow persisted as a Cognitive Shadow, they would have certain advantages over people who had not trained in perception the way they have.
Will Harmony make Mistborn to continue the power legacy?
There's your RAFO.
Are the colors of Shards an indication of how they or their magic systems interact with Investiture? Like Ruin, Hemalurgy, Nightblood steals Investiture...
Not really, vaguely.
Can you compare the kinds of compulsion that are caused by being an Epic with the kinds of compulsion caused by being a Vessel?
Hmm, crossing the streams here. I'd say that the compulsion of being a Shard is much much stronger, but your capacity as an individual is increased, so your ability to learn how to deal with it is also equally increased.
Does Demoux know that Kelsier is still around? If so, does he know about the Ghostbloods, and does he still idolize Kelsier?
I will RAFO that. I will say, you can assume that if he did know, he would not be as idolizing. It would only take getting to know him to destroy some of the way that Demoux views, does that make sense?
Kaladin is now learning how to counsel people on how to balance what they've had to do which is destroying things, and their desire to protect or preserve things. Will he be of some benefit to another individual who is trying to balance those two things together?
Someone he's been teamed up with? He could potentially be of help, depending on whether or not this individual wants help.
Specifically is Harmony...?
I thought you were talking about Szeth. Could he be of use to Harmony? Maybe, in a theoretical world, I think the more people Harmony had to talk to, the better. I would say yes, but I was thinking Szeth.
Obviously the Shards are the top dogs in terms of power and stuff, but Hoid seems to be his own level of dangerous. Are there any other characters as sort of rivals to his ambition or power?
Depends on how you want to express it. Some of the dragons from Yolen are as old and are very crafty. You could argue that the aethers, the actual core aethers, are as ancient and potentially powerful. I wouldn't put them by raw power at Shard level, but they would claim that they are. Depends on what you would think there. There are some other individuals of a similar, not as dangerous as Hoid, but on a similar level. Been around for thousands of years, investigated a lot of the magics, and these sorts of things.
How does duralumin affect speed bubbles?
RAFO.
If one were to Riot or Soothe out of a cadmium bubble or a bendalloy bubble, would the emotional Allomancy be effectual? If so, how would it be affected by the speed bubble, and how would that work in reverse?
If you were to... Someone's inside a bubble, and you're shooting Allomancy into it from outside, would it have an effect? The answer to that would be yes. Shooting out of it should work also. It is going to be affected though. I think depending on the speed of it, you're gonna end up with a stretching or condensing of it. If you're doing it from inside a bubble, you could probably effectively get something like a duralumin hit. And if you're doing it from outside in, and they're moving very fast, you're gonna have a lesser effect.
Would it have some randomness, like a bullet?
You probably wouldn't be able to target... No, you would be able to. You would be fine. You can do kind of a cone, and things like that. It might be hard to hit the specific individual, but it wouldn't be as much trouble as a bullet.
What about with duralumin?
The thing about duralumin is, if you wanted to extra duralumin it, what you'd have to do is eat some within a speed bubble, use it, then eat some more, then use it. You could therefore kind of multiply up, but yeah. So yes, you could do that, but you'd have to do it multiple times.
Just to confirm, is that a fast bubble or slow bubble?
That'd be a fast bubble, cause you're piling it up. More time is passing for you than people outside. Basically, you're doing five times duralumin push in one burst. It could probably get pretty dangerous, some people's emotions.
Will we see the fate of Adonalsium's Cognitive Shadow?
RAFO. I won't even establish if there is one. Good question, but I will not say yes or no to even if one exists.
I believe Trell is a vessel [avatar] of Autonomy, due to there being a character named Trell in White Sand, and Autonomy being there. I believe Kelsier gets the idea from Trell to use [avatars], and that's what he goes on to use as the leader of the Ghostbloods.
I think you're theorizing in interesting directions, and I would not squish that theory.
Is Nightblood more or less susceptible to damage and/or death when he's satiated on Investiture?
Satiated, he's much less dangerous. More susceptible, I would say by technicality, yes. When he's full, it's gonna be harder for him to pull in things, so all sorts of things could happen. So yes. But it's not that he's weaker, it's not like the metal is easier to break or bend, it's more that he's not as likely to suck your soul.
So he behaves more like a regular sword.
Yeah, a little bit more. Still, for human levels of Investiture, still really dangerous to touch him. He's satiated, but if he's at 100%, and the amount of you he could eat represents 0.001%, the moment a little of that wears off, you're gone. So still would not be picking him up in most cases, just out of that, "Oh! He got a little hungry again!" But in terms of larger, grand scale Shard stuff, much safer to handle.
Shards can't break oaths, and new Vessels have to follow previous Shards' deals. Ruin and Preservation made a deal. Does Harmony have to follow that deal?
The Ruin and Preservation deal is considered fulfilled. There's a lot of things going on in here. The way that oaths work, perception is still important. And Shards can break deals, it gives others a way to get at them. Odium could break his deal, but if he did, that's very dangerous to those who would seek to have advantage against him. I think fulfilled is the wrong term, the deal between Ruin and Preservation is broken, and no longer in force because it was broken. This does leave Ruin with more advantage in this situation, but they're the same individual, so I'm sure that's just fine! No problems at all! Everybody's doing just great.
Is Vasher aware of Vivenna's sword?
Vasher is aware of Vivenna's sword by now.
And does he approve of it?
Vasher needs more information. I'm going to say his initial response is, "That's stupid, never do things like that." But I haven't written the Nightblood book yet, so when I write the book, it might turn out that I need to accelerate some of that, so he might actually have known by then. Right now, in the timelines, he didn't know, it happened after. Big asterisk on book that's not written yet, that the outlines could change on.
Most of the time, for Nightblood, from the point of view he is seen as male. But for the short time when Lift is talking to him, it says "she". Is that important, or is that up to perception?
It is up to the perception of the individual, and Lift perceived Nightblood as a she, and Nightblood doesn't care.
Why didn't TenSoon and Vin ever meet up before she died?
I just could not get it into the story. I did consider trying to make it happen, and there are just too many things narratively that I was doing, and it just didn't end up working out. I don't feel terribly bad about that, because in some ways loss requires... you don't always know, and things like that. I do regret not being able to get Mat and Perrin and Rand back together, one last time in the book series. That's one I think I should've tried to stretch. I tried to go to Team Jordan and be like, "Hey we could do it like this," and they said you just can't do that logistically. But I think if I'd pushed harder, I could've found a way to make it happen. So that's one of my regrets there. I don't think I would change TenSoon and Vin, because of the nature of loss for those books, and I did try, and artistically I felt it didn't work.
Teft is one of my husband's and my favorite characters.
I'm sorry.
I was wondering if we would get to see him again.
Well, you can read the books again! If I write the Lopen story that's supposed to go between books 1 and 2, then he would appear in that book. So it is possible that you will see more of Teft, but you are not going to see, you know.
Have you turned a person's theory into something in the book?
I'm sure that I have at some point... No, I know that I have. Someone asked me, for instance, they were getting some bisexual vibes from Shallan. They asked me on Twitter. I'm like "You know, I feel like I'm writing that without realizing it." So yes, I leaned into that a little bit more in the more recent book, because it felt really realistic and natural to her character. Sometimes people will ask me things like that, and I'll be like "I feel like I am doing that, or that's a direction I am going", and it happens with plots and things too. Yeah, fan interactions do influence the books, on occasion.
In the first epigraphs in Rhythm of War, we get Navani's lecture on the different metals, and it talks about how the different metals can do different things to fabrials. Have all of the 16 metals in Allomancy been tried in relation to fabrials?
No.
Have they discovered any others with different effects?
Any others that she didn't talk about? I don't know. I'm gonna say no, but it's possible that there's one I'm not thinking of. Let's just say that certain people in the cosmere are very aware of this now, and are very quickly experimenting with the metals Navani is not able to get a hold of easily.
So, the Diagram was basically created to help Taravangian figure out if he was having a bad day or a good day, kind of?
That's not one of the reasons they were founded, but that is certainly one of their duties.
And we found out it was because Odium helped Taravangian figure out the Diagram. Now that Todium exists, will he still have to use the Diagram and go forth with the Diagram? And how will that shape what this contest of champions is gonna be?
I won't tell you how it's gonna shape, but he now has access to what Odium could do, which is limited ability to see the future, and a little bit better than a lot of the Shards are at that. He could see what the Diagram was an inferior version of making, in a lot of ways. In other words, the physical print thing, the Diagram, is no longer necessary to him.
Now that it's Todium, will he have problems with having his good days and bad days?
RAFO.
We have this WoB that says you can split ettmetal into atium and lerasium, but not through normal means. In Rhythm of War, we see Navani changing the forms of Light by removing the Connection to other Shards and introducing new ones. Is that the same way that you would turn ettmetal into atium and lerasium, or similar means?
That sort of science would possibly lead to the proper method. It is a good way to be going, but it's not exactly... Let's say there are multiple ways to do this. Some are less dangerous than others. The way you're theorizing could lead to a less dangerous way.
If you were to do that to a live, living Shardblade, which you said could be called Honor's God Metal, what would that do to the spren?
If what happened to... Oh, remove the Connection for a Blade like that?
And like, gave it Ruin's connections?
You would have a really hard time doing that, because it's an actual individual. It'd be the same as cutting off a person, which is possible, but you're talking about stuff like what a Shardblade does to a soul. So you'd have a hard time, and it would have not-happy effects on a living individual that that happened to.
There are two Shards that aren't confirmed. One I call "Concealment", which we haven't figured out about because it conceals itself from the rest of the cosmere. The other one I call Unity, that might be two different Shards later, like Harmony, that Dalinar gets. Do either of these Shards exist, or will they exist?
Plausible existence of one of the Shards you have talked about. The ways you are theorizing, in some of the things you're saying here, are intentional on my part, and you're following correct paths.
Are the Ghostbloods on Roshar the same organization as the Set on Scadrial? And if not, is the--
*immediately hands him RAFO card*
I will tell you this. The Lord of Scars is Kelsier. Not hiding something there. I'm not being tricksy like I was with the Sovereign. You can trust that. More about that will be forthcoming in a book that might be released about one year from now!
Szeth references birds other than chickens. When he's training with the Skybreakers, he uses an analogy that they scattered like sparrows before a hawk. So there are other non-chickens in Shinovar. Are they going to end up... Probably not being like Aviar, but are we going to see more of them in book 5?
You will see birds in book 5, most likely. Whether or not they are like Aviar or the weird fish, I will leave as a RAFO. But the two Aviar you have seen are not native.
Nightblood has more Investiture than any other being, right?
Not every other being, but definitely one of the most highly Invested individuals that we have seen.
So Nightblood, he was used to wound Odium. Is Odium now weaker than he was before?
Not in a relevant way. Technically, yes. Not in a relevant way. The amount taken, compared to how much there is, is pretty small. And a whole bunch of what happened there was focused on the Vessel, not on Odium itself.
Could Nightblood consume Odium?
Nightblood would get full before consuming even the smallest fraction amount of Odium. As you saw, Nightblood kind of got full in that instance. Actually, it was with the perpendicularity, it would be similar to that. So for those who are wondering, no, you can't stab Nightblood into the planet and absorb the planet. Nightblood is really dangerous, as we've seen, but we're not talking "absorb planets" dangerous.
If there's a Forger like Shai who plausibly had an opportunity to ingest lerasium and become Mistborn, but she passed it up, could she create a stamp that makes her temporarily a Mistborn?
She would have to have access to enough Investiture to make that happen. The stamp saying, "Hey, I'm a Mistborn!" doesn't actually give her the Investiture to do that. She could rewrite her past so that she took that bead. She would not actually be able to use the power, until she got an infusion of Investiture, which could be done with a stamp in the right manner, but most of the time you're gonna have to have some external source. Basically you're gonna have to take a hit of Investiture, a large amount of it, and then use the stamp, and then it will feed on that to change you into basically any of the other magics.
Stormlight?
If you could get a hit of Stormlight, that'd work. The problem is, Stormlight's not easy to get off of Roshar, and it still is technically keyed. You could get it a lot more easily-- Stormlight would work fairly well, but what you really want is some pure, unkeyed Dor. That stuff, you could do all kinds of things with. But, you know, it's kinda dangerous. But that's the stuff you're gonna want, or something like unto it.
My question is about squires. You've confirmed that Bondsmiths, Windrunners, Skybreakers, Dustbringers, and Lightweavers all have squires. You've also said that not every Order will have them. Could you confirm whether or not another Order has them?
Does another Order have squires? Is there an Order we have seen that we don't know-- Yes, there is another Order that has squires.
You can't get more specific?
Yes, the Stonewards do have squires, usually.
What phrase did Vivenna use to Awaken her sword?
Oh yeah, RAFO!
At the end of Oathbringer, Taravangian makes a deal with Odium about defending Kharbranth, can you please spare Kharbranth. At the end of Rhythm of War, is that still relevant? Does he still have a pact with himself?
RAFO. Excellent question, I like the way you guys are thinking.
Aimians and honorspren have a lot in common. They can change their appearance, they are blue, they don't seem to die. Are those Aimians descendants of humans and honorspren?
No, good question though! The reasons they can change shape are similarly related. Excellent question.
What gave you the inspiration for cytonic slugs?
The cytonic slugs came into existence when I started writing a short story I called The Eyes. This was a much later derivation of Defending Elysium, where I wanted to tell a story about human refugees in space who were fixing a hyperdrive that turned out to be a living thing. And most people didn't understand that the hyperdrive was a living thing, it was a secret.
I started writing this short story, and the lore was not clicking quite right. In that one, they were these glowing things. They looked like a power source, so people didn't know they were alive. The whole story didn't work, it wasn't the right rebuild of things from Defending Elysium. So I shelved that story. Sometime I'll let you guys read it. I may have put it out, I can't remember, but if I haven't I'll-- I only got two or three pages into it.
But that idea kept going in the back of my head. And eventually, when I was writing and building Skyward, I knew what I wanted was something that would look innocent, that Spensa would mistake for being the ship's hyperdrive. That would just look like it was something that's there, I like to hide things in plain sight. So putting a cute slug in... Why a slug? I don't know. I like underwater sea slugs, that just look cool. That's a cute thing I'd like to have as a pet. They're really something you can't, in our world, have as a pet. You could have it in a fish tank, but you can't get it out and play with it. What if you had one you could? So I built that as the hyperdrive and started having her teleport around, so that when you found out about the hyperdrives, you're like "it's been there all along, that makes sense!" The only thing I had to tweak from my original draft is, I realized eventually M-Bot was gonna have to have been crashed there for a long long time, so Doomslug had to be the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of the hyperdrive for that ship, rather than the actual hyperdrive.
I am about one-third through Defiant, the final book of the main Skyward sequence, the one I’m working on by myself, though there might be other stories to come with Janci.
What are some things you've learned about the screen adaptation process from WoT? What kind of hopes or expectations do you have for if/when your own work is adapted? Have those changed, based on your experiences with WoT and Amazon?
I think if I ever get a television show for Stormlight, I will ask for more than eight episodes. I might have thought that was enough before, but I feel like just two more episodes would have helped this production a lot, letting it breathe a little more in the beginning.
Also, I think I'm getting better and better at understanding screenplays and storytelling for that medium, so I hope that I can have more and more influence over the process. Though I wouldn't want it on this production, as I feel this rightly belongs to others and not me, on my own I would like the right to veto a change as big as the Perrin wife plot.
For the Mistborn film, I have such veto power, notably.
Apparently his wife picks the chapter titles from his list of options. According to the latest livestream.
I reserve a few important ones in each book that I know need specific titles. :)
Are there any genres you haven't published in yet that you would like to try in the future? I would love to see your take on a horror/thriller, maybe even a collab with Dan Wells.
I actually outlined (briefly; it's, like, one-page outline) a horror story, a straight-up horror story. A Junji Ito-style horror story, actually. Whether I'll ever have time to write that or not is a completely different thing. So yeah, I totally would love to do a straight-up horror if I can find the time, but it's in that slot of the Brandon what-if universe, so to speak. Where do I find the time? But it's real cool; it's real cool. I think people would love it.
With "cytoverse" being a fan-coined term, are there any other instances of terms from the fandom that you have adopted yourself?
I'm sure there are instances, but I bet the fans are better at picking them out than I am. Not sure. I don't think I was ever called BrandoSando before the fandom got a hold of me, and I know I've used that occasion. But I wouldn't say that I normally think or refer to myself in that regard. But a lot of times, I get things from the fans who are like, "Will you please just canonize this so that the wiki can have a page?" And so occasionally I canonize things because they are bugging me about it. I'm sure there are other ones, I just can't think of it.
Starsight introduced us to several interesting alien species, the figments being among the most outlandish of them all. Can we expect more lore about them, especially given their connection to a certain spaceship's tech?
Yes. We are gonna do more about the figments; it may not be in the main-line series. It's probably going to be in future explorations of the setting, where we kind of get into the ideas behind that tech and where it came from and why, and that sort of thing. Doesn't quite fit into this narrative. So, don't expect that in book three or book four. But we are going to probably do more novellas, and things like that.
If I remember correctly, Janci mentioned that guys had wanted her to help with Skyward for a while. Did you approach writing it any differently with the idea someone else might be coming in later in mind?
I really didn't, honestly. I'd like to say that I did, but when I was writing Skyward, it was all hands on deck, we have a problem: Apocalypse Guard has failed, and if I don't turn in a book, it's gonna throw off a whole bunch of scheduling things. And so because of that, I just wrote the best book I could
Now, when I started working on the sequels, I had it in the back of my head, because originally I had talked to Janci years ago about the idea of "what if I wrote the first book and then you wrote the sequels?" And that was kind of the original idea with what I might have been doing with Skyward back then. But this is, again, before I had even an outline. This is back when it was a lot more vague. And I always felt bad that we had talked about doing that, and then I needed to accelerate it; because Skyward was gonna come after Apocalypse Guard, the whole series. And after jettisoning that, everything kind of went crazy. And that's why I went back to her and said, "I knew we talked about this; do you still want to be involved? I've got this idea for novellas." And Janci has been delightful to work with in that regard.
