I've been rereading the earlier Cosmere titles recently, and I was wondering: are we ever likely to see full world maps for these locations?
Yes, probably during next age, or next era. Once we get to modern era, and their mapping technology is to a modern equivalent, you'll start seeing full world maps. I'd love to do globes; I don't know how much interest there is in a Roshar globe, but I've wanted to do that for years.
If Shallan had married into Veden royalty, would she have taken on the family surname?
If she had moved into royalty? I don't think the Vedens take last names. I think that is in the wiki. I don't think that you change your name when you're Veden and you're marrying, regardless. It might be different for the royal family. But my gut says "no." This is not stuff that's in the books, so I'm out on a limb here. If I've just said something that is contradicted by the books, I'm sorry; I don't have Karen looking over my shoulder. But I don't believe Vedens take each other's last names.
What was your inspiration for Dabbid? Is Dabbid based off someone in your life?
Dabbid came from a couple of sources. One is just reading some first-hand accounts of people who have lived life such as him. This is the sort of thing that I look for and love to read, is first-hand accounts of life experience that can help me understand the world and other people better.
All three of my children would not be alive if we did not have modern medicine. All three of them had complications of birth that were not trivial to deal with, even for modern... nothing really bad, but all three of them would have died either during birth or shortly thereafter. So it is something that I think about. And for one of them, the cord was wrapped around his neck. And they only noticed this because, when Emily would push, the baby had a big heart rate change that they're like, "Woah woah woah; stop. Something is really wrong." And without modern medicine, that's Joel, my eldest, would not be alive. And I think about these sorts of things quite a bit. So it's kind of a mix of those two things.
In your most recent Stormlight book, there was a character that came out as ace. Could you talk though that?
This is not a spoiler. I feel like this is there in the text, even though I wasn't 100% sure where I was going or how to pull it off. I think I was laying the groundwork for this character, and I was not completely sold, let's be perfectly honest. The members of the ace community who are fans were suggesting that this was how I was writing the character, and I did not want to canonize it until I had the right scene from this character's eyes to make it work. When I really sat down to do this, I tried the character several ways, and this is the way that felt right to me. I've often said that, until I write from a character's viewpoint, that I don't really know. And I had done viewpoints from this character before; at least one, maybe a couple. But I hadn't talked about their sexuality at all. And I explore the world through the eyes of my characters. And this was an exploration that really worked and kind of helped me understand the world and people in the way that I really like characters to do for me. That's part of why I did it. And I was holding off on talking about this character's sexuality until the right moment, and then I tried multiple different things, and this is the one that just really sang to me. People encouraged me to try it, and I'm glad that they did, because once I did, they were right, and it worked real well. So, thank you to members of the ace community who are fans of the books. I feel like the character locked into place better for me once I understood enough to try writing this way.
Is Jasnah left-handed? If so, did that play a role in her perceptions of how women are treated on Roshar?
Left-handed women become very ambidextrous, kind of are forced to use their non-dominant hand, on Roshar. I will have to give it some thought whether Jasnah was originally left-handed. It seems like it would totally fit her.
And I don't think I've mentioned any lefties; I actually get emails, now and then, from people being like, "Hey, can we know who's a lefty in the Cosmere?" I think that it is something on my radar, to canonize some lefties, but I'm not going to do that now.
At one point, I remember it being said that Roshar, Scadrial, and Sel are the three most important worlds in the cosmere, but I can't remember if that was ever canonized, much less if it's still the case.
I would say that they are the most important, yes. Depends on how you'd count Yolen, where it all started. But I would say those narratives, those book series, are the pillars of how I envisioned the Cosmere. But there's lots of worlds that are important, and there are plenty of them that we haven't gone to, yet. I often talk about the aethers, which are really relevant to the future of the cosmere, but I have not managed to get them in, a book about them, yet. It will happen.
One of the few criticisms of Rhythm of War is that more and more Stormlight Cosmere lore is getting pretty complicated, and it's harder and harder to follow along without understanding the whole Cosmere. Will this trend continue? Will we need a degree in cosmere-ism to read Stormlight Ten?
I try to write these scenes such that, if you want to let your eyes glaze over and read kind of to the end of them, generally people summarize "this is what we need to do." This sort of stuff, honestly, goes back to Elantris. This sort of stuff is going to show up in a lot of the Cosmere books. It is a fundamental tenet of how I'm creating the Cosmere. Rhythm of War was definitely the pendulum further along toward that aspect, with Navani being a main character, than a lot of them will be. But if we do write Khriss stories, you're gonna get a lot in the Khriss stories. All I will say is: don't interpret it as increasing in complexity the more the books are written. Interpret it as: as we get to characters that that is relevant to, their sections are going to involve more of that than others.
I see it increasing in all, a little bit, as we move along, but it really depends on who the characters are, what they're talking about, and things like this. My hope is that no, you do not need to. My hope is that you can (if it really is not your thing) skim those scenes, get an explanation at the end, and still know "okay, we need to do this thing." What I don't want it to be is just technobabble, also, that does not fit into the structure and worldbuilding. It is a fine line to walk, and I would accept... I think that criticism is valid of Rhythm of War, but it's one of those sort of things, like the first book having a steep learning curve, that is an aspect of the story that I'm trying to tell.
I hope not. I hope you will not need one. This is something I am aware of, and we will see. If it gets to be way too much, I think fans will let me know, and beta readers will then pick up on that and start warning me "maybe this is too much, Brandon." We'll see.
Are there any other actors that you currently have in your mind-canon?
People have really converted me to Lance Reddick for Sazed. That was not in my head, but the fans have been persistent, and now it's hard to imagine anyone else.
I really don't have a lot of other people, though. I have never been one who does a lot of fan-casting, even for my own books or for other things, because I believe in the power of... like, there are casting directors. Really good casting directors are amazing. I would not have imagine anyone who ended up doing the new Star Trek movies, but that cast was just so good and so perfect. I like seeing that; people are experts in this. Like, the Lord of the Rings films. People are really good; it's their entire job to figure out how to match actors to roles. And actors, turns out, are really good at being different types of people.
Other than The Rock as Rock, which obviously is too perfect.
Any update on the White Sand omnibus?
I don't know if we have an update. The publisher came through with their plan, and I know that Isaac is making the final, last tweaks he can before it goes to press. So, we are very close, and it is coming. I think you guys are really gonna like it. Isaac has slaved over this to try to bring it more in-line with cosmere continuity and the way that we wanted the visuals to work. And White Sand was a learning experience; the White Sand omnibus is much more of a canon experience. It's almost like, the original White Sands, you supported us in an alpha version of it.
I have no specific update, but I know it's really close.
Any teasing for The Lost Metal?
Did we record me reading the prologue of that? It's on the YouTube channel. There will be another reading of this happening at the Cytonic release, in some form or another, another reading from Wax and Wayne. The trick is finding ones that aren't spoilery to read.
Wax and Wayne Four will be of particular interest to people who enjoy the variety of magics and cultures in the cosmere, not just Scadrial.
What does Dalinar's name mean? Like how Kaladin means "born unto eternity."
That's gonna have to be something that I would need top open on my laptop and double-check, because I need to make sure it fits with continuity; I'm opening up the wiki that Karen has stamped. People ask me this a lot, and I keep forgetting to canonize it for people. We will get you an answer on that one.
We know that "nar" means "like unto," but not much more.
Oh, so I have not canonized that yet, for her. Well, I will do that (because I know what it means), and we'll get it in the wiki and make sure it's not replacing another word that is already canonized as another sound, and then we'll get that out to people.
What noble houses were Kel and Marsh born into? What's their surname?
I can't canonize that, yet. I've got it somewhere. Let's RAFO that, for now. That's the sort of thing that I need to run past continuity, make sure that I haven't contradicted it in later books. We should release that, though. It does make sense that people would want to know.
I imagine living Shardblades represent the people they're bonded with. If the person changed over time, would the design of the Shardblade change? For example, with holiness being symmetrical, and somebody was holy, that's gonna be symmetrical. If they became unholy, would their Blade become unsymmetrical?
It's gonna depend on their perceptions of themselves and their spren's perceptions of them. But yes, it can change over time.
Does Investiture exist without Connection?
Yes, but it's very hard to make. You see them making it in Rhythm of War. Some shows up in the next Wax and Wayne, too. But it's a process to make it.
In The Stormlight Archive, will there ever be a point where we'll get to know what all of the different Orders are and all their abilities?
Yes.
Is that gonna be the fifth book? Or is that gonna be at the very end?
It'll be at the very end. Basically, to preserve some of the excitement and discovery, you'll notice me just kind of cutting away before some of those powers get used, and things. Just so when the books about those people happen, I am more able to explore it on the page and have more fun with it.
Is it gonna be like, after the fifth book, is gonna end those main characters and you're gonna show the next generation?
It's not next generation. It's the same characters throughout them all, but the back five will have different flashback sequences. So, the back five will have flashbacks from Lift, Renarin, Jasnah, Taln, and Ash. Characters from the first five are still gonna be the main characters. But, like you didn't get, in this one, any Jasnah flashbacks; Jasnah's flashbacks are in the back five, and they'll be kind of - yeah. So... does that make sense?
Also, slug types which are not really revealed as a big deal and probably we should have come up with/used them sooner: hyperslug (yellow), boomslug (red), commslug (purple/orange).
The bottom glyph is the sigil for Ardent Benabe (Beneba?).
The rest of the translation is close enough, I think. I also took this (as well as the cutaway for Urithiru) to be an opportunity to semi-subtly include the numbering glyphs 1-10... as such, we can also see that the total length is ~30 [feet].
I noticed some interesting things during my re read of Oathbringer after Rhythm of War and I am not sure if they are mistakes or not.
First thing is voices in Dalinar's head. In previous books he could hear Honor's voice (assuming this is indeed Honor) only in visions.
Because obviously Honor is dead and cannot talk to Dalinar for real. In Oathbringer Dalinar suddenly starts to hear this voice even outside of the visions and it's not the Stormfather.
Second thing is warm light that comes from a place beyond. Dalinar always says this light comes from a distant place, but in the final scene of Oathbringer (Dalinar rejects Odium) he can feel this light inside of himself.
So the question is: is this a mistake or was it done intentionally?
And the last thing I notice - Dalinar exhibits aspects of all three shards and he's been literally touched by all of them. Is it important?
The first one is intentional. Read into that what you will. Though I don't know if you're completely interpreting it right.
This second one is also intentional, and you are reading it correctly.
And yes, Dalinar exhibiting aspects of all three aspects of all three shards is important.
So one thing I was wondering about the slug genders, do you know what gender Boomslug is? Boomslug is always described as “it” in the book as far as I can tell, while the others are referred to as “he” or “she” at one point or another.
From what I can tell the characters basically guess/label the slugs as they see fit. I think FM thinks about how Spensa calls Doomslug she but it seemed to be an arbitrary call on Spensa’s part ... I don’t know how close the slugs are to real slugs, but irl slugs are actually hermaphrodites.
They are making it up.
Slug sexuality is not canon, but in my mind they are hermaphroditic, like banana slugs.
Which means they would all be both genders, technically.
Boomslug is tagged male at some point, but I don't remember when.
In Danish "herr" means "mister", though it's almost always shortened to hr. and "frue" means "missus".There's a slight caveat though, since "herr" is a honorific, while "frue" is a noun. The noun version of "herr" would be "herre", and the honorific version of "frue" would be "fru".
It would be interesting to know, if the names were intentionally taken from Danish, or if it's a very fitting coincidence.
I'm not aware that it was intentional.
There seems to be a lot of influence from Taoism/Daoism in Mistborn. Is this deliberate?
Yes, it is. I really like philosophy. I really like world philosophy. I really like religion. I really like the intersections between religion and philosophy that you get in Taoism. These sorts of things you'll see popping up all over the place. It is kind of interesting, because a lot of the cultures of Mistborn are more European-influenced, but a lot of the philosophy is a little more Taoist. But in Stormlight, a lot of the cultures are a little bit more Asian-influenced, but the philosophy that's popping up is a little bit more European, a lot of the time. And that's just because it matched the narratives and what the characters, I thought, would actually be interested in talking about. Though there is the whole Shintoism influence on the worldbuilding of Stormlight, as well. Anyway, yes there is definitely some Taosim sneaking around thorough Mistborn, and that is intentional.
If shard plate is made up of spren, what is Maya’s opinion on Adolin taking a dump in his?
She is a soldier. She understands you do waht you need to.
But also, humans are gross.
Does anyone other than Lift use "starving" as a swear word or did she make it up?
Heh, she made it up. That is just Lift being Lift. There are a lot of things in these books that are just Lift things and that's one of them.
Before the Shattering, the original 16 Vessels, how Cosmere-aware were they and were any of them worldhoppers?
In the current continuity, they were not worldhoppers. Well... the dragons were the most Cosmere-aware. They might have been off-world. Might have.
Have you ever thought about making the Steelheart series a graphic novel?
You know, we thought about it for a while. And then what we eventually decided is that we wanted to focus our graphic novel efforts on things that hadn't been published yet. There is actually a mini graphic novel of Mitosis, the short story, but that's the only one. That was when we were experimenting with it. It's not impossible that someday we will.
This is hypothetical, it probably wouldn't actually happen. If a Knight Radiant goes to Nalthis, dies, gets Returned...
It could happen.
Would they retain their spren bond?
Probably not, would be my guess. I've never had that question before, but I'm gonna say no.
Why the number four, for Bridge Four? Is there a reason for...?
Nope, it just is what appealed to me. There is no greater significance, other than I wanted to do it, and it just felt right.
We always wondered if it was because it's like bad luck in Asia.
It is bad luck, but I didn't pick it for that reason specifically.
We want to know if Adolin is the hottest character.
If Adolin's the hottest character in the entire...?
In the cosmere.
I don't know, Blushweaver's pretty hot. Adolin's pretty hot.
I thought you might go with a Returned.
But the Returned are supernaturally hot, and Adolin is only naturally hot.
With a Returned it's almost unfair.
It is unfair. If you're gonna go without any magical enhancements, Adolin's gonna be up there. He's got personality hotness and physical hotness, so yeah.
Could a coppermind be able to memorize physical memory?
Ooh, never been asked that before. I am going to RAFO that, but in an "I need to think about it more" sort of way, cause I have actually never been asked that. My gut instinct says no, but maybe. I'm gonna have to really ponder on physical memory and the cosmere, and how that all works. Good question. Not often I get stumped by one like that.
Is there gonna be a sequel to Warbreaker?
Someday, yes. I can't promise when because it's kind of a side project thing, but I've got it outlined, which is step number one.
Are there any plans to revisit Threnody or some of the other worlds that were mentioned in Arcanum Unbounded?
Yes. I have a novel on Threnody I want to write, and I have a short story and a novel I want to write on First of the Sun. We'll see if I can get to any of those.
Is Adonalsium's God Metal aluminum?
RAFO.
My RAFO question will probably be, will an Allomancer or a Mistborn take that chip of Honorblade that fell off and burn it?
*hands RAFO card*
Will you give us a spoiler without context for the next Stormlight book?
Let's see if I can think of one. This is usually pretty hard for me. Let's see... Wit's very annoyed. He often is.
Is there a metal that's the opposite to aluminum, that can store pure Investiture rather than blocking it? And is that metal dragonsteel?
Innately store it? RAFO! Not Feruchemically? Good question.
Is Thaidakar a Cognitive Shadow?
Yes he is. Have you finished Rhythm of War?
I have, yeah.
So you know who Thaidakar is, right?
No. Does it say in the book?
No, but it calls him... It's Kelsier. They call him the Lord of Scars, someone else confirmed it, it's Kelsier.
The "Lord of Scars" thing is what had us thinking, but we weren't sure if it was true.
It is Kelsier. He's been doing some stuff.
Shallan has two spren. I assume the Shardblade she is using in Words of Radiance is Pattern. But had she sworn the Third Ideal at that point?
I will get this whole timeline explained for you. It's really intricate, though.
When's the next book coming out?
Next book is Cytonic. Book after that is Wax and Wayne 4, book after that is Stormlight 5.
When you were writing Elantris and you introduced Hoid, did you already have planned for him to be what he is now?
Hoid started appearing in books I was reading when I was fifteen; I would imagine him in other people's books. By then, I already had this character in my head that had been worldhopping between Anne McCaffrey's books, and David Eddings' books, and all those things. So I did know what I was gonna be doing. I didn't know where it would all go. I didn't have the whole cosmere built, but I did have him. He was my first D&D character. I'm being recorded; I don't even know if they know that, that I used Topaz (is what he was called back then) as my first D&D character. He's in my first book that I tried writing when I was fourteen.
If you were in a Rithmatic battle, what would your defense be?
It would probably be a Knight or Shardbearer, even though it's a little harder... I don't know if you were talking about chalklings, or which defense I would use?
Yeah.
I don't know. See, I name them all after my friends, so... I'd probably pick the Eskridge defense. That makes me pick one of my friends over another, but you know.
On Threnody, is it possible for non-intelligent creatures to become shades?
It is possible, it doesn't happen natively.
Is it possible to turn Breaths into... how does Awakening work on Roshar and Shadesmar?
You can still use it normally, as you would expect it, as the magic works. People are trying to figure out how to turn one type of Investiture into another, and it it is harder than it seems. They haven't cracked it yet.
So they always have to bring their own form of Investiture?
A Returned can feed off of other Investiture, just like Nightblood can. One of the reasons to move to Roshar is: it's easier to get Stormlight than it is Breaths.
That makes sense why Zahel, then.
That explains Zahel, right.
Which is your favorite Unmade?
RAFO. We'll see, I don't know if I have a favorite yet.
Is Sja-anat going to join the Knights Radiant?
RAFO.
Are there other objects that we've encountered like Nightblood?
Nothing quite like Nightblood, though Azure's sword is Invested.
How did Nale bring Szeth back to life?
Szeth's spirit had not moved onto the Beyond. It was basically Rosharan CPR. He repaired the body, and Szeth was not dead dead. His heart had stopped, but when his body came back together, it started beating again.
Is Khriss going to make her appearance on Roshar?
So far, she's had Nazh do that, but she is in Shadesmar, or has been in Shadesmar at various points. So it's entirely possible. She lets Nazh do the hard jobs.
What shattered the Shattered Plains?
RAFO.
What color are Spensa's eyes?
I don't have a specific color in mind.
They're purple on the cover.
So we'll just go with violet.
Could a mindblade break a Shardblade? Could a mindblade stop a Shardblade, or would a Shardblade stop a mindblade?
I think that a Shardblade would stop a mindblade. And whether the mindblade could stop the Shardblade or not would depend on the power of the cytonic and how strong their mind is.
