Recent entries

    JordanCon 2021 ()
    #1551 Copy

    Pagerunner

    I would like my [cosmere constellations] map to have one more planet on it than everybody else's maps.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a smart idea. I'm on board for that.

    *adds a new planet and writes "here there be Aethers!"*

    Pagerunner

    But no name on it? Just that there there be Aethers?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I can't canonize the name yet until I write the planet, right?

    JordanCon 2021 ()
    #1552 Copy

    thegatorgirl00

    Do spren feel any kind of sexual or romantic attraction?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not as a rule. There are some orders that are more likely to do so. There are a lot of orders that you would call asexual. But it depends on the individual, and it depends on their breed or race of spren. So, it varies.

    JordanCon 2021 ()
    #1555 (not searchable) Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am going to read to you from Wax and Wayne 4.

    It is always a little bit of a trick to figure out what to read, because I also generally don't want to spoil too much for people who have not read the series. But the Wax and Wayne, it's always been fairly easy because the prologues of each of them are flashbacks to the past. Like I do in Stormlight with flashback characters, we get basically one flashback sequence per book in the Wax and Wayne books. So this is actually going to be from the prologue of The Lost Metal, which is from Wayne's viewpoint as a little boy.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Wayne knew what beds were. A few of other kids in the settlement had them. Sounded much better than a mat on the ground, especially one he had to share with his mom when nights were cold because they didn't have any coal.

    Plus, there were monsters under beds. Yeah, he'd heard stories from the other kids in the settlement about mistwraiths. They hid under your bed and stole the faces of people you knew. So beds sounded real nice; soft and squishy on top, with someone underneath you could talk to. Sounded like rustin' heaven!

    The other kids were scared of those things, but Wayne figured those kids just didn't know how to properly negotiate. He could make some friends with something that lived under a bed. You just had to give it something it wanted, like someone else to eat. Maybe he could ask Ma to have a little brother.

    Anyway, no bed for him; no real chairs. They had a table built by uncle Gregor, before he got crushed by a billion rocks in a landslide and mushed up into a bloody pulp what couldn't hit people no more. Wayne kicked the table sometimes, just in case his spirit was watching somewhere, 'cause he'd made that table and maybe it'd make him mad. Rust knew there was nothing else in this little one-windowed home that Uncle Gregor had cared about.

    Best Wayne had for sitting was a stool, so he sat on that and played with his cards, drawings hands and trying to hide cards in his sleeve as he waited. This was a nervous time of day; every day, he thought, maybe she wouldn't come home. Not because she didn't love him; Ma was a burst of sweet spring flowers in this sewage pit of a world, and he'd punch anyone who said otherwise. No, he worried that, one day, Ma wouldn't come home. Pa hadn't come home one day. Uncle Gregor (Wayne kicked the table) hadn't come home one day. So...

    Don't think about that, Wayne thought, bumbling his shuffle and spilling his cards all over the table and floor. And don't look. Not until you see the light.

    He could feel the mine out there. Nobody wanted to live next to it, of course, so Wayne and his Ma did. Just under the window was a pile of laundry that Wayne had done for the day. His Ma's old job, what hadn't paid real well. So he did it, while she pushed mine carts. He didn't mind the work; spent half the day trying on all the different clothes, from ones sent by Gramps to the ones sent by young women, pretending to be them. His Ma had caught him a few times and seemed angry, minding why he did it. That exasperation still baffled him. Why wouldn't you want to try them all on; that's what clothes was for! It wasn't nothin' weird; he just liked it, and what harm did it do? None to nobody. Besides, sometimes folks left stuff in their pockets, like decks of cards.

    He fumbled the shuffle again as he gathered the cards up, and he did not look out the window. Not until he spotted the light. He'd feel it, anyway, though, the mine, that gaping artery, like a hole in someone's neck, red on the inside and spurting out life like blood and fire. They had to go down, dig at the beast's insides, searchin' for metals, then escape its anger. And you could only get lucky so many times.

    Light. With relief, like fire on a frigid night, he glanced out the window and saw someone walking on the path, holding up a lantern to illuminate her way. Wayne scrambled to hide the cards under his mat, then he was certain to lay on his mat with his lamp out, pretending to try to sleep with the door open. She'd have seen his light go out, of course, but she appreciated the effort he put into pretending.

    She settled down on the stool, and Wayne cracked an eye. His Ma wore trousers and a buttoning shirt, her hair up, clothing and face smudged. She sat just staring at the light in the lantern, watching it flicker and dance, and her face seemed more hollow than it had been before, like someone has taken a pickaxe to her cheeks, digging away like rock in the wall. That mine's eatin' her up, he thought. Even if it hasn't gobbled her all whole like it did Pa, it's gnawing on her like rats on a barn wall.

    Ma blinked, then fixated on something: a card he'd left on the table. Ah, hell. She picked it up and looked right at him. He didn't try to pretend to be asleep no more; she'd dump water on him. She'd done it before.

    "Wayne," she said, shifting on the stool to look at him. "Where did you get these cards?"

    "Don't remember."

    "Wayne..."

    "Found 'em," he said.

    She waved her hand toward him, and he reluctantly dug the rest out from under his met and handed them over. She tucked the one she'd found into the box. He knew from experience she'd look all day through the settlement for the one who'd lost them. She didn't have time for things like that; he wouldn't have her losing more sleep on account of him.

    "It's <Tarn Vestingdow>," Wayne mumbled. "It was in a pocket of his overalls.

    "Thank you," she said softly.

    "Ma, I gotta learn cards. See, that way, I can earn a good living for carin' for us."

    "A good living?" she asked. "With cards?"

    "Don't worry," he said quickly. "I'll cheat. Can't make a livin' if you don't win, see?"

    She sighed, rubbing her temples.

    Wayne looked at the cards in the stack. "Tarn," he said. "He's Terris, like Pa was."

    "Yes," she said.

    "Terris people always do what they're told," he said, "so what's wrong with me?"

    "Nothing's wrong with you, love," she said. "You just haven't got a good parent who can help you."

    "Ma," he said, scrambling off the mat. He took her arm. "Don't talk like that, Ma. You're a great ma!"

    She hugged him to her side, but he could feel the tension in her. Ah, hell. What had they found?

    "Wayne," she asked softly, "Did you take <Demmy's> pocketknife?"

    "He talked?!" Wayne said. "Rust that rustin' little bastard!"

    "Wayne, don't swear like that!"

    "Rust that!" he said in a rail worker's accent instead. "The rusting bastard!" He looked at her innocently and was rewarded with a smile she couldn't keep in. Silly voices always made her grin. Pa had been good at them, but Wayne was better, particularly now that Pa was dead and couldn't say them no more, anyway.

    But then, her smile faded. "You can't take things what don't belong to you, Wayne. That's somethin' thieves do."

    "I don't wanna be a thief," Wayne said softly. "I wanna be a good boy. It just... happens!"

    "She hugged him closer. "You are a good boy. You've always been a good boy." When she said it, he believed it. "Do you want a story, love?" she asked.

    "I'm too old for stories," he lied, desperately wishing she'd ignore the objection. "I'm eleven. One more year, and I can drink at the tavern and prove how old I am."

    "What? Who told you that?"

    "Doug."

    "Doug is nine!"

    "Doug knows stuff."

    "Doug. Is. Nine!"

    "So you're sayin' I'll have to snitch booze for him next year, because he can't get it himself yet?"

    He met her eyes, then started snickering as she smiled. He helped her get dinner; cold oatmeal with some beans in it. But at least it wasn't only beans, and there was some oatmeal. Then he snuggled into his blankets on the mat, pretending he was a child again to listen. It was easy to feign that; he still had the clothes, after all.

    "This is the story," she said, "of Blatant Barm, the Unwashed Bandit."

    "Ooooh," Wayne said. "A mean one?"

    His mother grinned, then leaned forward, wagging her spoon toward him as she spoke. "He was the worst of them all, Wayne: baddest, meanest, stinkiest bandit. He never bathed, you see."

    "'Cause it takes too much work to get properly dirty," Wayne said.

    "No, because he... wait, it's work to get dirty?"

    "Gotta roll around in it, you see," Wayne said.

    "Why in Harmony's name would you do that?"

    "To think like the ground."

    She smiled again. "Oh, Wayne. You're so precious."

    "Thanks!" he said. "Why ain't you told me about this Blatant Barm, if he was so bad? Wouldn't he be the first one you'd told stories about?"

    "You were too young," she said, sitting back, "and the story too frightening."

    "Ohhhhhhhh this is gonna be a good one!" Wayne bounced up and down. "Who got him? Was it a lawman?"

    "It was Allomancer Jak."

    "Him?" Wayne said with a groan.

    "What?"

    "Jak brings them in," Wayne complained. "He never shoots a single one.

    "Not this time," Ma said, digging into her oatmeal. "He was young this time. He knew Blatant Barm was the worst killer to the core. Even his two sidekicks, Gug the Killer and No Ways Joe, were ten times worse than any other bandit ever walked the Roughs."

    "Ten times?" Wayne said.

    "Yeah."

    "That's a lot; almost double!"

    His Ma paused, then leaned forward and got back into it. "They robbed the payroll, taking not just the money from the fat men in Elendel, but the wages of the regular folk."

    "Bastards!" Wayne said.

    "Wayne."

    "Fine. Regular old turds, then!"

    Again, she hesitated. "Do you know what the word 'bastard' means?"

    "Yeah, it's a real bad turd. The kind when you really got to go, but you hold it in too long!"

    "And you know that because...?"

    "Doug told me."

    "Of course he did. Well, Jak wouldn't stand for stealing from the common folk of the Roughs. Being a bandit is one thing, but everybody knows you take the money what goes toward the city. The trick is, Blatant Barm, he knew the area real well, so he rode off into the most difficult part of the Roughs to reach, and he left one of his men to guard each of the spots along the way. So Jak, he was gonna have to fight his way through all three."

    "Why's it always three in stories, Ma?" Wayne asked. "Three bandits, three guns, three mines."

    "Well, how high do you think most bandits can count?"

    "Probably not that high," Wayne agreed. Ma always had good answers to such things.

    "Fortunately, Jak was the bravest," she said, "and the strongest."

    "If he was the bravest and the strongest, " Wayne said, "why was he a lawman? He could just be a bandit, and nobody could stop him, right?"

    "Well, what's harder, love?" she said. "Doing what's right? Or doing what's wrong?"

    "The right thing."

    "So who gets stronger? The fellow what does the easy thing, or the fellow what does the hard thing?"

    "Huh." He nodded. "Yeah, I can see that."

    She leaned forward, grinning in the light. "Jak's first test was the River Human, the vast waterway marking the border with what had once been Koloss land, but now was controlled by bandits entirely. The swift waters moved at the speed of a train; the fastest river in the whole dang world! And it was full of rocks. Gug the killer had set up there across the river and watched for lawmen. He had such a good eye and a steady hand with his rifle that he could shoot a fly off a man at three hundred paces!"

    "Why'd you ever wanna do that?" Wayne asked. "Better shoot men right in the fly, right? That's gotta hurt somethin' bad!"

    "Not that kind of fly, love," Ma said.

    "So, what did Jak do? Did he sneak up? Not very lawman-like to sneak. I don't think they ever do that ever. I bet he didn't sneak."

    "Well..." Ma said. Wayne clutched his blanket, waiting. "Jak was an even better shot," she whispered. "When Gug the Killer sighted him, Jak shot him, right across the river."

    "How'd Gug die?" Wayne whispered.

    "... by bullet, love."

    "Right through the eye?"

    "I suppose."

    "And so Gug took sight, and Jak took sight back and shot him right in the eye! Right in the eye, right, Ma?"

    "Uh..."

    "And his head exploded!" Wayne said. "Like a fruit, the crunchy kind, all ripe so the shell is tough but it splats anyways. Is that how it happened?"

    "... yes."

    "Dang, Ma. That's gruesome! You sure you should be tellin' this story to me?"

    "Should I stop?"

    "Hell, no. How'd he get across the water?"

    "He flew," Ma said. She absently set the bowl aside, oatmeal finished, and made a flourish with both hands. "He had powers, Jak did. Allomancy powers. He could fly, and talk to birds, and eat rocks."

    "Woah... eat rocks?"

    "Yep. And he flew right over the river, but the next challenge was even worse. The Canyon of Death."

    "Ohhhh. Bet that place was pretty."

    "Why'd you say that?"

    "'Cause no one is gonna visit a place called Canyon of Death unless it's pretty. But someone visited it, right, because we know the name. So it's pretty, right?"

    "Beautiful," Ma said. "A canyon carved through the middle of a bunch of scattered, crumbling rock spires, the broken peaks lined with colors. But the place was deadly; as deadly as it was beautiful."

    "Yeah," Wayne said, "that figures."

    "But Jak couldn't just fly over this one, for the second of the bandits hid within the canyon: No Ways Joe. He was a master of pistols, and could also fly, and turn into a dragon, and eat rocks. So if Jak tried to sneak past, Joe would shoot him from behind."

    "That's the smartest way to shoot someone," Wayne said, "on account of them not being able to shoot back."

    "True," Ma said. "So Jak didn't let that happen. He had to go right into the canyon. But it was filled with snakes."

    "Bloody hell!"

    "Wayne..."

    "Regular old boring hell, then. How many snakes?"

    "A million snakes."

    "Bloody hell!"

    "But Jak, he was smart," Ma said, "as well as bein' a great shot and able to eat rocks, too. So he thought to bring some snake food."

    "A million bits of snake food?"

    "Nah, just one, but he got the snakes to fight over it, so they mostly killed each other. But the one that was left was the strongest, naturally."

    "Naturally."

    "So Jak talked it into biting No Ways Joe."

    "And Joe turned purple!" Wayne said, "and bled out of his ears, and his bones melted on account of the poison being so bad, so the melty bone juice leaked out his nose while he was bleeding, and he collapsed in a puddle of deflated skin, all while hissing and blubbering 'cause his teeth was meltin' too."

    "Exactly."

    "Dang, Ma. You tell the best stories."

    "Wait," she said softly, leaning down on the stool, their lantern burning low. "Because the ending has a surprise."

    "What surprise?"

    "Wait and see," she said. "Because once Jak was through the canyon, what now smelled like dead snakes and melted bones, he spotted the final challenge: the Lone Mesa. A giant plateau in the center of an otherwise flat plain."

    "That's not much of a challenge," Wayne said. "He could fly over the top."

    "Well, he tried to," she whispered, "but the mesa was Blatant Barm!"

    "What?"

    "That's right! He joined up with the Koloss, the ones that could change into big monsters; not the normal ones, like old Mrs. <Gnaw>. They showed him how to turn into a monster of humongous size, so when Jak tried to land on the mesa, the mesa done gobbled him up."

    Wayne gasped. "And then?" he said. "It mashed him between his teeth? Crunching his bones like--"

    "No," Ma said. "It tried to swallow him. But Jak, he wasn't just a good shot, and he wasn't just smart; he was somethin' else."

    "What?"

    "A big damn pain in the ass!"

    "Ma, that's swearin'!"

    "I meant it in a good way, though, love."

    "Oh, well, that made it all right, then."

    "He," Ma said, "was always goin' about doin' good, helpin' people, makin' life tough for the bad ones. Pokin' his nose into things, askin' questions. He knew exactly how to ruin a bandit's day, he did. He stretched out his legs and pushed and made himself a lump in Blatant Barm's throat what so the monster couldn't breathe. 'Cause monsters like that needs lots of air, you know, and right then Allomancer Jak done choked him from the inside. Then, when the monster was dead on the ground, he sauntered on out down his tongue like it was some fancy mat set down outside the carriage for a rich man."

    "Woah. That's a good story, Ma." She smiled, stepping over and kissing Wayne on the forehead. "Ma," he said, "is the story about the mine?"

    "Well," she said, "I suppose we all gotta walk into the beast's mouth now and then, so maybe, I guess.

    "You're like the lawman, then?"

    "Anyone can be," she said, blowing out the lantern light.

    "Even me?"

    "Especially you." She kissed him on the forehead. "You are my love, Wayne. You are a whatever-you-want. You're the wind, you're the stars, you are all endless things." It was the poem she liked; and he liked it, too, because when she talked, he believed her. Ma didn't swear, and she didn't lie.

    So he snuggled into his blankets and let himself begin to drift off. Because a lot was wrong in the world, but a few things were right. And as long as she was around, stories meant something. They was real.

    Until, one day, there was another collapse at the mine. And that night, his Ma didn't come home.

    Barcelona Virtual Signing ()
    #1557 Copy

    Koajan

    I have a question about the man at the end of Rhythm of War that Kaladin finds, that used to recollect lost objects from the Shattered Plains, such as Rock's razor or even Tien's horse. Will we get to know more about him, or is it just a random man?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, what is happening there is all RAFO material. I'm not gonna answer any specifics about Tien's horse or even about Tien. There are lots of ways you can theorize that this happened, and I'm not gonna canonize which of them it is. One of those includes Hoid and his shenanigans, that's a possibility. One of which is kind of some Fortune being bent around what's going on. Other possibilities are that there's a divine manifestation. I'm not gonna say which of those it is, but there are lots of plausible answers there.

    General Reddit 2021 ()
    #1559 Copy

    the_doughboy

    Its interesting that his most popular female characters all seem to have mental health issues.

    • Steris: Autism Spectrum
    • Shallan: Dissociative Identity Disorder
    • Jasnah: Also Autism Spectrum but not as much as Steris, and was treated for some kind of disorder as a child.

    Peter Ahlstrom

    Hmm, I’m not aware of Jasnah being on the spectrum. Her trauma is something different, though we may not find out until we get her flashbacks.

    All of the Knights Radiant (basically, all of the Cosmere’s Investiture users) have some kind of trauma.

    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
    #1566 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    I was reading the comment section to one of my previous updates, and someone had been a little confused about how I was writing this book. They're like, "Wait, so the entire last third of the book is all Sanderlanche?" Not quite. So, in order to explain it to you, how Wax and Wayne is progressing, this is a mostly spoiler-free visual aid that I have created for you. This is not how it will actually be published; this is how I have been writing it.

    We're gonna start at the bottom here. Part One of the book, which was roughly... The whole book is gonna be 150,000 words; Part One was roughly 30,000 words of that. I write two separate narratives with two characters each. And I wrote those together; I just alternated chapters between the four characters. (The four characters for this book being Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris. And some of those characters get more viewpoints than others; Steris gets fewer viewpoints, generally, than the others.) But the idea is that I kind of just wrote them all together, but they were in two separate storylines.

    That then, as we hit Part Two, I brought everybody together and did it as one big narrative of four different characters, and I was alternating between them. And then I wrote this through.

    And then I hit a point in the middle of the book, right about at the central point (right around 75,000 words) where I realized I was splitting the characters up again, and I wanted to go and write each narrative on its own for a while. What this gets me is: writing-wise, this is where we are, right here [in Part Three]. This is where I've taken the character groupings: one character's off by themselves, two characters are together, and one character's got a short little bit of viewpoints. (That's Steris, who's got a few viewpoints off in a third location.)

    And what's going on here is, it's much easier for to take the book and to write, for instance, all of this [one character, 30K-ish words] because this character is split off from the others and just really drill into this character's character arc and narrative arc. And then, it gets to the end and I get to have a climax section that will be at the end of the book.

    Then, I'll actually go write Steris next, which has a little mini-climactic chapter of her arc.

    And then I'll write these characters right here [two characters, 40K-ish words], which is where I'll end. I will write that all the way through to the climax of their character arcs and narrative arc.

    And then I will weave these all together. This, like I said, gets me some advantages. One is that I get to write the ending, essentially, from three different perspectives three different times, and I really like writing endings. This just makes it more engaging to me as an author. It is less oppressive for me to keep all of this stuff... like, if I were jumping between these three different narratives, it would be much more difficult to keep a tight focus on what's happening with them. This [Part Three] is how I write Stormlight books. This [Parts One and Two] is how I write Skyward books and things like that that have fewer narratives. So this book is half like one of those and half like a Stormlight book in the way I'm approaching just structurally creating the thing.

    What the disadvantage of this is is that the pacing really needs to really be looked at in that part when I then interweave all these viewpoints. Because you'll read them; they won't be split up in chunks. You will read them interwoven, where it's jumping between the different narrative plotlines. And the issue there is, I will naturally create a narrative, for instance, for this character [one character, 30K-ish words] that has its own stops and starts and slowdowns and scenes and sequels, as we sometimes talk about in writing terms. And I'll do the same thing for this one [two characters, 40K-ish words]. And then I' have to weave these together in a way that the pacing feels right. And this is a lot of what the 2.0 revision of a book like this is about, is making sure that it just feels right as you're going through these, jumping between viewpoints and what-not.

    I have just actually finished this part [one character, 30K-ish words]. I wrote the climactic moments of this sequence this week. I'm actually gonna write Steris next, and so that'll be 10K. And then I will do the last portion for the last month that I'll be working on this. We'll see if it goes long or if it goes short. The first viewpoint group ended up being just right smack where I expected it. I am pretty good these days at guessing how many words a given plot arc that I'm planning will take. For instance, Steris's might take a little less than 10K.

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
    #1567 Copy

    LazerWulf (paraphrased)

    You've said that Seons and Skaze contain splinters of Devotion and Dominion. Were these splinters created when Odium killed the shardholders and Splintered their shards? Or are they more similar to how Endowment splinters himself (herself?) to make divine breaths? What is the difference between the two?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    First, he said that it was a very good question. Then he said that those splinters weren't supposed to be there, and they were indeed created when Odium splintered the shards. He said that the difference lies in how each magical system works. Endowment's splinters are more similar to how Preservation invested a little bit of her shard into each human on Scadrial.

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
    #1569 Copy

    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

    We asked if a shardblade or Nightblood could be used as a hemallurgic spike (ie: two different investitures of magic).

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Brandon said that yes, in theory you could do that, but objects have a limit to how much investiture they can hold, and that it could be argued that things like Nightblood and Shardblades are already "full."

    Miscellaneous 2013 ()
    #1571 Copy

    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

    I asked him a question I had been wondering: if there was any connection between The Shattered Plains, the Chasm on Sel, the Pits of Hathsin, and/or the crater valley of the Conventical of Seran.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said yes there was, but didn't elaborate. He let me guess though.

    Herowannabe (paraphrased)

     I guessed they were some sort of shard-impact sites.

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    He said that was a good guess but not it - they aren't that directly connected. As best as I can remember he said it has to do with things like the shardpools and how the shards are connected to the land (as is most obvious on Sel).

    Phoenix Comicon 2013 ()
    #1576 Copy

    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    We know that Hoid has a bead of Lerasium, that he obtained during the events of The Well of Ascension.  As of the most recent Cosmere book chronologically, (The Alloy of Law, I believe,) has it been used?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Well, umm... probably not exactly in the way you're thinking...

    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    OK, specifically, has it been used either by Hoid burning it or by him giving it to someone else to burn?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    Well, Hoid's a very resourceful person, and he finds uses for most of the things he gets ahold of, though they're not always the expected uses.  So yeah, he's found something to do with it, but I'll have to RAFO that one, because it's going to come up in later books and I don't want to spoil things.

    Phoenix Comicon 2013 ()
    #1577 Copy

    Mason Wheeler (paraphrased)

    In Dalinar's visions, he interacted with people in ways that seemed strange and unexpected to those he was interacting with, and they responded appropriately.  Did his actions actually influence the past, or not? For example, did he help influence Nohadon to write The Way of Kings?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    No, they were just projections sent into his mind.

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
    #1581 Copy

    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    In the past we have seen that shards that break oaths are made vulnerable by that. And in Mistborn Era 1, we see that the reason that Preservation was able to be killed was that he tried to shelter humanity against Ruin even though his agreement said that Ruin would be allowed to destroy them eventually. Did Honor have an agreement with Odium or the singers about a potential ceasefire between Desolations that was broken by the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram or other actions taken by humans between Desolations?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    RAFO, but I will say that there was not much of a continuatuion to the fighting after a Desolation. It is similar to if you look at stone age and even modern stone age people. Most of them didn't truly understand war and if they did then they almost never thought to exterminate everyone on the other side. So I don't think that it's likely given how far towards societal destruction they were pushed by each desolation.

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
    #1582 Copy

    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    When it is said that Honor started to go crazy towards the end of the Knights Radiant, were those Knights seeing Honor as he was slowly dying, or were they interacting with a Cognitive Shadow of Honor, like how Preservation left Fuzz behind?

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    RAFO

    Miscellaneous 2021 ()
    #1584 Copy

    Questioner: (paraphrased)

    In RoW was see Kaladin telling Syl that he believes that the Recreance took place not as one event such as fever stone keep, but on an individual basis. This has created many discussions in the fandom about how the spren could have been unaware that they would become deadeye's. Is this because it took people years later to discover how to summon and dismiss shards through an ornementation mishap, and deadeye's weren't seen by the other spren in shadesmar until there was no stopping anyone. 

    Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

    The recreance wasn't something that happened over months, more like days. And the decision was made in the heat of the moment by the spren and their knights.

    Footnote: I don't have the exact wording unfortunately, but he did say 'days not months' and explained that this was something that he hoped to be totally cleared up by the end of book 5. 
    Direct submission by Hexatonix
    YouTube Weekly Updates 2021 ()
    #1585 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    This week we just had go live the cover of Lux, which is the new Reckoners novel. This is an audio original. There will probably be a print edition at some point. But this is right now an audio original. You can only get it on Audible. We’re doing a preorder push for it right now.

    What is going on?

    Well, I sold to Audible three Reckoners novellas that I was co-writing with my friend Steven Boles. And he’s a really great writer. And we’re doing these as part of the Mainframe Project. You can read more, if you’re really interested, in the Mainframe stuff in my State of the Sanderson from last year. This is the second of these that have come up together. And while working on this, Steven and I decided just to make it a full novel. Instead of three novellas, we just did a full-blown Reckoners novel with a new crew of Reckoners.

    So you don’t have to have read any of the other books to jump into this one. It is a new jumping off point. It connects to the other books, but it is a little bit parallel with the other books and then passing them up and continuing on and continuing the story.

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    Brandon Sanderson

    I have actually—I can’t tell you too much, I don’t want to give spoilers—but the last section of this [The Lost Metal], I basically am doing it in chunks, and I’m kind of doing it by character like I kind of do in a Stormlight book, because this is going to be a bit longer than the previous Wax and Wayne books. And so I have been focusing on one of the characters and writing that character all the way through, and so I’m almost to the end. And that’s kind of exciting.

    I like doing that because climactic moments invigorate me as a writer. They’re really exciting to write. I’ve been pushing toward an ending for a long time. I like to do lots of set-ups and payoffs. And this style of writing let’s me have multiple pushes toward the end, so to speak. I get to finish the book basically three or four times, depending on how many viewpoints I’m doing. Sometimes in Stormlight it’s more than that. But I’m pushing toward the ending of one of these viewpoints, which, just like I said, is very exciting. It’s a lot of fun.

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    Cephandrius

    Is there a reason that the last few unknown Shards were kept for the last? Or have they just not come up until now?

    Brandon Sanderson

    More that they haven't come up. If I had started a book on those planets, then I would have canonized them earlier.

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    Rodrigo

    What would be the difference between an aluminum and a chromium grenade, and between nicrosil and duralumin grenades?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We're talking specifically about the Bands of Mourning ones?

    *Matt affirms*

    So, what would be the difference? Aluminum would create a sort of "You can't use Allomancy in this... nearby this" most likely, yeah. Duralumin would do the opposite. You would be able to use it and then enhance someone. I haven't played with the ranges on these things yet, and so that's where we get into kind of the question mark territory. Like, right now, I haven't really given them an area of effect unless the power itself has an area of effect. Does that make sense?

    But, my intent is to get to the point where it's doing things like this, right. Where you could theoretically be an Aluminum Gnat, you could charge this thing up and throw. And hey, you know, you have... the Metalborn nearby are unable to use their talents. That's convenient, right? Like, I want more of the powers to be relevant and these grenades are a way to do that.

    You know, Marasi's power is not the most useful on the planet to have herself. For those who don't know, she can slow down time... well, speed up time? Awkward how... the phrasing of how you do that. But basically she can make a bubble around herself where everyone outside of it moves super fast. That's not terribly useful, right? Unless you want to age, you know, really slowly.

    [...]

    Not really useful in combat, to be able to be like "Yeah, I'm gonna make all my enemies move really, really fast and I can't respond to them". But, she can charge up one of those grenades and toss it, it becomes real handy. For her, the grenades are more useful than the inverse, right, because speeding up someone is useful, but slowing someone down takes someone out of the battle essentially. Or a whole globe of them... globe is the wrong term, but yeah.

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    Argent

    Rlain has a red and black beard whose colors match his marbled skin. Does this mean that the singer hair reflects their skin colors? Does Venli's white and red skin mean her hair strands are also white and red?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is... That's what I have right now. That actually happens very commonly in the animal kingdom, right, that the pattern is on the skin. So yes, the answer is yes. But that's not come up in the books and I don't know if it will.

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    Argent

    With how important or at least unique Autonomy seems in the Cosmere, are we going to see how Taldain is doing in more recent times?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeeees, you will. When? I'm not a hundred percent sure. Shouldn't be tooooo long, but it just depends on multiple things, right. Can I get the Silverlight story written? How do things go with Isaac? And he's kind of playing around with Taldain and doing things there and we're just not sure.

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    Matt

    Were you tempted to have Kaladin be taken by Odium?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, I was tempted.

    Matt

    What is it the held you back from doing that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Kaladin, if I were going to do it, I would have done it with Dalinar. The reason being that Kaladin as a theme represents his triumph over the darker parts of his mind. And Dalinar represents that too, but he also represents in some ways, succumbing to those. Like those are both themes for Dalinar, and for Kaladin it just would not ever have worked--I don't think--reasonably well. And beyond that, Kaladin is not scary as a villain, because Kaladin's strength comes from the people he's trying to protect. Kaladin's really scary to face when he thinks you're going after somebody he's trying to keep safe, that is when Kaladin is dangerous. Or as you saw in Rhythm of War, when you've gone too far, right? But Kaladin as an overarching villain, I don't think would be scary. Dalinar would be; Dalinar would be terrifying in that situation, but I don't think it would just add very much. If I were going to have had one of them, it would have been Dalinar.

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    Auri

    Does a Shardbearer [Vessel] who Ascended from the same world influenced by that Shard have less control over that Shard than a bearer from another world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do not... I'm gonna say no *pause* for now.

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    Jeremy

    If vast amounts of Investiture can distort time in a similar manner as a black hole, [...] does that include Shards? Would time dilation be greater on Roshar than on Nalthis?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, because the Shard is contained almost entirely in the Spiritual Realm. In the Spiritual Realm, time and distance have no meaning. So, what this means is: Large piles of Investiture that somehow make it into the Cognitive Realm or the Physical Realm are going to cause time dilation, but the Spiritual Realm—where it belongs—it's not going to do that.

    That's gonna make some exclamation points raise above the heads of some people.

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    Questioner

    How much should we be thinking about possible logical groupings of Shards? For instance, as pairs or groups of four.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Go ahead, knock yourselves out. This is relevant, but only in a sort of Cosmerenaut sort of way, people who like theorizing on these things and what not. It's not going to be hugely relevant to the narrative, but Dawnshard does indicate that these groupings are a place you can go.

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    Matt

    You'd talked in your last spoiler chat about this, which was that you had kind of gone back and forth with this idea to have [Taravangian] become Odium and basically this idea of Odium was no longer the threat that he should be or was at the time. Is this something that once you made that decision did you have to go redraw the future plotlines and such?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, because the future was drawn both ways in my head and it was which path am I going down, if that makes sense. And yeah that'll have implications when I do the detailed outlines for future books, like the detailed outline for book 5. But this has already been in the works right, and so every outline is in bad shape by the time I get to it, every outline from the beginning, right? Because things just need to change, every book big things need to change. And every book you have dividing points, where you're like, am I going to do this, am I going to do this? I talked about in the last stream also, am I going to bring Kelsier back or not? That's a branching point that changes a lot about the future of the narrative. Which of the two paths am I going to walk? So this is something that I'm just very used to in storytelling.

    There were some of those in The Wheel of Time. They weren't necessarily the same way. I won't give specifics because we're not spoiling, but there were things where I'm like, I think we'll do this, and then I got to the third one and I'm like, no we can't do that, we gotta rebuild this part from scratch because it just no longer works.