That first chasmfiend hunt, in Way of Kings, did not go as planned. Was that sheer bad luck? Or was someone or something making that happen?
Excellent question. Sheer bad luck. Sometimes bad luck is just bad luck. There were no mysterious people pulling the strings behind the scenes on that one. It just went as it went.
Good question, though. I'm always glad when I can appropriately dispel one of those so that people don't have to theorize too much.
Does ice cream and popcorn exist on Roshar?
Unfortunately, neither of them do. You can go to Scadrial and get some, right? But Roshar... so, they do get cheese and things on Roshar from sow's milk and things like this, but they are just not as milk-based as some cuisines on Earth. Ice cream is just not a thing. Also, like, ice is not a thing that they're really doing a lot with. And popcorn, y'know, requires maize, which...
But you said lavis is the corn?
Yes, it is the corn, but if you pop it it's gonna pop a lot more like barley. It's not gonna be the same, right? That's what lavis is gonna be like. So it is the corn, but more in the idea that it's, uh... It's probably more similar to a barley.
The Seventeenth Shard was looking for a certain individual on Roshar. Have they found him yet? Or, what are they doing?
They never managed to find him. He is tricksy, as you might imagine, he is a tricksy hobbit. And so they have never managed to find him. They think they got close a couple times, but they actually didn't. And by the point of Rhythm of War, they have given up and left planet, because he kind of went behind their backs and was talking to people and things like that.
We will catch up to those three at some point, I hope, and find out what they've been up to. They kept looking in the wrong countries.
On Roshar, it's kind of tradition men eat spicy foods, women more sweeter. Could it be possible that a sort of euphemism for gay men or gay women is, "Does he eat sweet food? Does she eat spicy food?"
I could see people saying that, yes.
Investiture in the Cosmere when used goes to the Spiritual Realm, except in one place. What determines which Realm Investiture returns to when it's being used?
Too many factors for me to actually say right here, Evgeni, so I'm gonna RAFO this one. There are lots of reasons that it could go in different ways and different places.
How many of those reasons are rule of cool?
Rule of Cool is definitely a reason. I think he's trying to get at why on Sel things are weird, and I have not explained why things are weird on Sel yet.
With regards to certain experiments, would it be fair to say Ishar and a certain Scadrian have similar goals?
*hesitation noises* I don't know that I would say that 100%. The certain Scadrian you reference has been able to achieve the goals that he wants. Let's see if I can circumlocute this: there's a certain set of bones floating around that already has a Connection to this individual, which was useful in achieving what he wanted to do, which is not a luxury that Ishar has.
Is there a significance between Harmony and Discord being musical terms? And would they be considered different Investiture tones?
Yes and no. So what's going on here is that... it is significant, I chose those two terms very specifically. Not gonna tell you a lot about Discord or things like that, but the idea is that idea of Harmony is in... the sounds are in harmony, they are working together. In Discord they are not. I wouldn't call them Investiture tones, more the way the two tones are responding to each other.
(Disclaimers so that you can't say, like, "well if a Shard...") If a regular Awakener, just a mundane Awakener with nothing more than a few hundred Breaths and not any other outside influences, is there some Command they could give a blanket to get the blanket to turn warm? Generate heat; is that a normal thing you can Command?
Not in just a normal situation. I mean, technically, you could tell the blanket "start rubbing one part against another part" or something like that, or "set yourself on fire," right? But that's not what you're asking. For Awakening to work, you have to work within the intrinsic properties of the matter you're making, except it can move around a bit and with a few little other things it can do.
It's not outside the realm of possibility you could activate those Breaths as Investiture to do something else, but you would need more than just the simple magic system of Awakening.
The third Mistborn series will be the 1980s, and the fourth one will be the space opera one.
Yep, unless I do a cyberpunk in between.
Do we ever see... I know in [The Bands of Mourning] is when we see the Allomantic grenades. Is that a setup to use, like, Allomantic engines for space travel at the end?
Yep. So, that is a setup for various uses of mechanical Allomancy and Feruchemy, is where we are pushing the technology. We're not there yet, but you should be able to extrapolate from some of those things for the future.
And so we had a brainstorming meeting and said, okay, "Ais should be a woman rather than a man. We need more gender balance in the story."
And one thing that a couple of us thought about and talked about ahead of time was the very ending, because the conflict between Kenton and Drile was: are we gonna sell our services as mercenaries and betray our independence? Or are we gonna keep going the way we always did?
And over the course of the book, Kenton says, "Okay, we're going to sell you ourr services and we're going to sell you our services, and we're going to sell you our services." And so by the end, when he realizes that Drile is not the bad guy, having him die in that battle just seemed wrong. So that's why we had him survive and had Kenton say, "Okay, you had a good idea, and I didn't like the way you went about it, but having your input in that can be a very valuable thing."
That was that was one of the big changes that got made. And when we talked to Brandon about it in that meeting, he was like, "Oh yeah, you guys are totally right. Over time, you guys got better story instincts than I had when I wrote it in the first place."
Some of those big changes were kind of a group brainstorming thing. And that was a fun process to do.
I asked Isaac to personalize my cosmere system chart set with snarky comments from Nazh complaining about every planet.
He said that they were not canon, but he would write them. For several, he made interesting comments about them.
Threnody: "Would love to get back here, if you'd just loan me that thing." This is the one that's the least canon of all of them. Isaac has some ideas about what the "thing" might be that Nazh wants, but he hasn't run any of them past Brandon yet.
Taldain: "Darkside parties are the best!" After he wrote it, Isaac noticed that it wasn't a complaint, but he said that it was true and that we'd see why.
Sel: "I cannot tell you how much I hate Sel. Yet you keep sending me back, you sadist." Before he wrote it, isaac said that Nazh had been stuck on Sel before, so he had a special dislike for this planet.
Nalthis: "Too colorful. It makes me sick... Shadows!"
Drominad: "Do not skinny dip on First... just warning you!"
Scadrial: "This place just hasn't been the same since the change in management."
Roshar: "Aggh... This place again? It smells like fish."
South Scadrians have low natural body temperature. This is related to their cold intolerance.
You previously said that there's a Shard that has decided to go into hiding, looking to survive.
Yes.
It's sort of practicing the art of not being seen.
Yes.
Is that Shard the same Shard as Autonomy, or is it a different Shard?
I like the way you worded that; no, it's not the same Shard as Autonomy.
The other Shard, have we seen it on screen?
RAFO.
Have we seen it "practicing the art of not being seen" on screen?
RAFO.
I got this from Isaac regarding the Steel Alphabet:
I has a dot on top of tin; E is under
There is no C, just a K
Q is written KW
An alternate version of the Allomantic alphabet was created, but not used. Isaac may now repurpose it for a typewriter font.
He also mentioned that he may release a handwritten version of the alphabet soon.
Is the Ghostblood symbol a stylized marewill flower?
RAFO! No, actually that’s WAFO - wait and find out.
Chull toes is good, but you're missing the hollow spaces in the boulder portion of the shell, that the chull tucks its legs into when at rest.
Pixels are murder on long lines, but I'm missing those antennae. They grow in pace with the shell, so that the chull can sense out spaces to determine if they're large enough to pass through (much like a cat's whiskers).
That’s super cool! I feel like chulls could do with some more in-book world building lol, though i cant see it fitting in anywhere. That one page describing chull breeding is probably my favorite piece of art in the SA xD
I do draw quite a lot of things with antennae. I still haven’t found a way to draw them well, i wanna work on it though.
Really thought the legs were more like spikes like a crab or spider has. Guess I better go look back at the depictions of them in the book.
Nope, big flat trunk feet like an elephant. You can see in some of the early development sketches that we started out with spiky crab feet, and Brandon vetoed those specifically in favor of something heavier.
Kelsier would say he is good. Sazed would say he is conflicted. Kelsier will be walking that line [between good and evil] for a while yet.
Naming a child for Kelsier is not safe, but is also not a bad idea. If you're okay with Kell’s actions in TFE, you will probably be okay with them going forward.
He [my husband] wanted to know what's going on with Bastille.
Bastille is written, art is being done. I'm hoping next year, Tor's been a little dodgy on when those come out. We wanted them this year, and they promised they'd have it out by next year, so we'll see if they keep that promise.
Considering the philosophy on Roshar, someone's probably come up with the concept of Occam's razor. He [DM of my RPG] wants to know what it's called and who it's named for on Roshar.
I have not come up with that, so it's named for him. What's his name?
I only know his name on the Shard, which is Peace.
Peace? It's Peace's Theorem.
Who would you think would make a better Amyrlin, Jasnah or Navani?
Navani. It depends on the era though. Near the end, probably Jasnah.
I was wondering about the spirit behind "strength before weakness." It's one that, the more I think about it practically, the more I think I'm missing it.
So there are several sort of ways that I interpret it, and like all of them, I want to interpret them differently through the books. Rhythm of War digs into the "strength before weakness" a little bit more. Like the other two, there is a natural sort of sense of it. We are strong and everyone will be weak. And the idea is that you are strong for the weak when the weak cannot be strong, because someone will need to be there for you to be strong when you are weak. Is like the core concept of it. Everybody is weak sometimes; everybody is strong sometimes, and we need each other. And that's kind of the philosophy behind "strength before weakness."
If a tree falls in the Forests of Hell and no one is around to hear it, do the shades still get angry?
Hah hah, the tree in the cosmere is self-aware to a very small extent, so it's impossible for a tree to fall with nobody being there.
The Lord Ruler used a lot of metal for shielding and stuff. But if he had had an aluminum helmet himself, would it have protected him from Ruin's influence at all, or would the spikes overcome that?
Aluminum helmet would help in that situation. Aluminum could very well have been something useful for resisting, yeah.
If you used a Lifeless body, would a Lifeless be able to access an untapped metalmind...
An unkeyed type of metalmind?
Thank you, I could not think of that word. Would they be able to access an unkeyed metalmind if the intent when the Lifeless was created, if the intent was that they could...
Right, I see what you're getting at. Yes, they could. As they could access and use any tool that is appropriate for what they're Commanded to do, they could indeed access a metalmind in the same way.
In fact, doing so may, depending on the metalmind, be dangerous for keeping your Lifeless a Lifeless.
Another friend, the one who needed to eat a shoe because Eshonai died, is obsessed with direforms, the Regal forms, and would love to know their ability set.
You can tell her, or him, or them, that the ability set will be decided upon as they are relevant to the nature of the story.
I was wondering if there is a written Shallan and Adolin wedding scene?
There is not a written one. Sorry, sorry. If it was written, I would release it for you, but there isn't one. Maybe I'll need to write one. I do get this request decently often. I thought people would be tired of wedding scenes, we already had a wedding scene. I'm like, "Ah, we could skip this one. "
That was like different. That was like a "you just need to get married," there wasn't like a love, a whole experience with the scene.
Yeah, yes. Maybe I need to write that at some point
You can just blame it on me, everybody else does.
Why is that?
Because it's the beta readers' fault you didn't write that scene.
Is that what they think?
We apparently told you to take it out of the book.
Ohhhh, ok. So there's mythology associated with it. Now I can write it and put Kellyn in, and they can be, like, making fun of you, and then they'll think that I cut it because it was unflattering to you
In the Syl interlude in Rhythm of War, she is speaking with Dalinar about his powers and the things those powers have done in the past. And what she says is "a Bondsmith bound other Surges". First of all, what other Surges?
One potential interpretation for you on this, remember they use Surge and spren sometimes interchangeably in-world. Just making you aware of that.
Yeah I'm aware of that. Bound other Surges....
That might be what she's talking about. I'm not guaranteeing it.
Then the term Bondsmith. To me it seems like she's talking about Ishar and the Ashyn stuff. So would they use Bondsmith to describe him in that place?
So one other thing to keep aware of in the cosmere - for instance they call "Lightweaving" any illusion-based magic working on the same fundamentals. And so you could argue - and people will use it that way in-world - that Bondsmithing is both an order [of Knights Radiant] and a power that exists outside the order.
And that would be maybe the power of Connection, the way Lightweaving is the power of illusion?
Yes. And for instance, there were not Elsecallers to get people between Ashyn and Roshar, but on Roshar they would explain what happened there as Elsecalling. Does that make sense?
I mean, as much as these things make sense, yes.
Could a retired Radiant actually have just like, passed their bond to their kid or to a squire or something?
So this is tricky because the spren's involved, and the person's own disposition and things like... you can't just pass it on, they would have to be saying the oaths, they would have to be right for the Order, the spren would have to be on-board. I would say there is a better chance that a family member would than a random person, but it's not guaranteed.
Can Radiants have kids?
Yes.
Can they heal their kids?
Can they heal their kids?
Like, during the process.
During... like, in-utero?
Yes.
Yes.
I've been trying to figure out how the Fused and the Regals get their Voidlight. Heavenly Ones seem to be able to levitate indefinitely unless they heal, which presumably expends their Light. But then the Pursuer needs to go get spheres. And then there's the Song of Prayer, which I don't understand at all.
All of the Fused have an active and an inactive way to use their Voidlight. For some of them, one is way more dramatic than the other. So you should be watching for the different brands of Fused to each have that. If they don't use it actively, they get a passive effect. And if they do use it actively, it runs out. So watch for that with them.
They each only have one power, as opposed to Knights Radiant, but they have the staying power of consistency depending on what they are.
The Song of Prayer. Let's just say that Odium likes his Fused being reliant upon him. Does that make sense?
I think it does. My assumption has been that anyone can just sing the song and ask for Investiture.
Yes, this is true, because most of the time he's not going to be paying direct attention, and it's just going to... yeah.
Hero of Ages, Harmony in the epigraphs says that brass and copper Allomancers can become savants and never even notice. I know that generally savantism is supposed to have really extreme effects, so how does that work that they do not notice?
So, most savanthoods have extreme effects, some of them it's just not as noticeable. It can warp your soul without you really even paying that much attention to it. I kind of have a push and pull on how debilitating it is in some ways versus others. In this case, those are two that you can become that it would not be very debilitating in your life.
What effects would that have for that?
I'll RAFO that.
Are they [Wax and Steris] gonna have kids?
Spoiler, but yes.
It seems to me like the Shards each have a color associated with them. Honor I think is blue, Odium is gold... My first question would be, what colors would be associated with Preservation and Ruin?
So, I have always associated white and black with Preservation and Ruin.
Would that have changed for Harmony?
It will have changed for Harmony. But I won't say what it is.
Any chance for a sequel [to Elantris]?
The chance for a sequel to this is pretty decent. I hope to get to it. My goal is to write them after Stormlight 5, but we will see.
Rysn, why can't she bond a spren? Is it just to help her travel quicker, since it's difficult to travel with a spren? Or is there another reason?
There is another reason why she is forbidden from bonding a spren.
Forbidden or impossible?
Forbidden. It's not impossible. It is forbidden of her.
Has there ever been a Radiant besides a Bondsmith that has used Lifelight before Lift?
RAFO.
Is what happened on Roshar similar to what happened in Arelon, of being thematically broken due to something...?
*Hesitant noise* Yes, you are correct.
The warrior monks in Elantris, are they a non-genetic magic system?
So here's the thing in Elantris. On Sel, you most usually need to be born in a certain location for the magic to work on you from that region. So, it's not genetic, meaning if you move there, your children count, right? Regardless of what your genetic heritage and things like that is. But it is regional.
For Dakhor monks, wasn't it that they went to monasteries and trained over time and then they're...?
So they do have something done to them that does this. But where they're from is directly related to how that works, how powerful it is, and these sorts of things.
Has Wit's bonding a Cryptic bound him to Roshar tighter?
Yes, asterisk.
The reason for the asterisk on Wit is, you've seen him offworld since then. So just be aware there is an issue there, but yes, it's very similar.
Dalinar had two really weird visions. Was that Connection-y stuff like he did with Kaladin and Tien?
Which ones are you talking about?
End of Words of Radiance, and in Oathbringer with Nohadon.
Yes, that would be the same sort of weirdness that's happening with Tien. Yes, so you have basically multiple different ways of interpreting this. One is just--what Dalinar wants is directly... he is starting to change the visions specifically, and some might argue he is pulling from the Beyond. Others would argue that what Dalinar wants, feels things in his past, he is actually enforcing upon the vision, and is changing and altering the visions. And that is absolutely going on. It's whether the other thing is happening or not, depends on your personal religious beliefs. But Dalinar is starting, the Bondsmithing is starting to shape the visions.
The Five Scholars traveled from Nalthis to Roshar. And Intent is very important across all of the Cosmere. But also, Sel is actually closer than it is to Roshar. And from everything we know right now, when it comes to Intent, the Intent of using the Aons mirrors sort of Awakening. So did they travel to Sel as well, and has that influenced the way Nalthians learned to Awaken?
That is a RAFO for right now. Let's just say that the things that happened on Sel that prevented travel were not in place several thousand years ago.
What I sidestepped is whether the Scholars had been to Sel, I heavily implied people from Nalthis had been to Sel. Don't take that as canon, that it's specifically the Scholars. That part is a RAFO.
Did Shallan change her last name when she got married?
You do not change your last names if you are...
In Jah Keved?
Yes, so she did not change her last name. She is still Shallan Davar.
And there's also some... there's some weirdness there in line of succession stuff as well, which wouldn't be the case if she had been from Alethkar, and of certain, proper, you know... But the fact that she is not, she would keep her original name and would not be in succession for the throne.
Do you anticipate Dalinar having a larger page count in SA5?
Yes.
The Inquisitors keep spikes in jars to stop the Hemalurgic decay. Is that clotted blood? Like, does it just work with clotted blood?
It will. So what's going here is the spikes have to - this is a weird Cosmere thing - the spikes have to think they're in a body and you gotta trick them. You don't need to use blood but that's the easiest thing that they could do to make it work. You could also leave it in a piece of meat.
You can put the stake in the steak!
You can put a stake in a steak. But there are plenty of ways to do this without doing that. But yes, it's pretty gross.
Not that I think they have consciousness very much, but I imagine that they're a bit stupid if they think that clotted blood is the same as a human body.
Yes. You're just tricking the stupid piece of metal that has a little bit of extra Investiture and has become slightly self-aware, and so it keeps its charge and doesn't... yeah. There are much better modern ways of doing this that have started to be used.
Do Sazed and Kelsier still like each other?
*Very drawn out and with a "but" nearly audibly hanging in the air* Yes.
Thinking of him as Thaidakar, I have to wonder like, he can't be doing things that Sazed would approve of, right?
No. He definitely is doing things Sazed does not approve of. That's an astute observation. They do understand each other, though, right?
So then Sazed knows what he's doing?
He knows some of it, yeah. A decent amount. You will find out more in upcoming books.
Let's say that the relationship between Sazed and Kell is... complicated and strained. But they would still consider themselves friends, would be what I would say.
Would an Xavier-Magneto relationship be a little...?
Yes. Not quite so antagonistic, but yes.
The specific word "ralkalest," it appears on multiple worlds. Why did you use that instead of just saying "aluminum"?
This is mostly us just being cheeky. I like fantasy names for star metal, and I came up with ralkalest because... I go back and forth sometimes about how much I just want to call something what it is in translation, and how much I want to call... In this case, I decided ralkalest sounds cool, it evokes the feeling of the people in world viewing this metal, where they have this view of it as this mythical, magical sort of thing. And simply calling it "aluminum" doesn't convey that in the same way, the mythology associated with it. So I use both, but it's like there's two different languages, and when I'm using "ralkalest," it's more evoking their view of this metal.
On Sel, Shai says one word, and Raboniel says another word, neither of them are saying aluminum? Neither of them are saying some other word that doesn't exist in English?
Right, they are both saying, ralkalest would be a transliteration of the actual word in world.
But which language, which transliteration?
Oh, which language does ralkalest come from? I think ralkalest is probably original Yolish, but I haven't actually sat down and written that down. But that's what I would say now, that we're looking for kind of a mythological level. And a lot of times if you're gonna get a mythological term that's gonna transfer across worlds, it's gonna go back to what it was called on Yolen, right? Some of the words from Yolen are kind of like the way that we use Old English, or even... Latin's weird in English, so it's not really Latin. Latin and Greek have both been incorporated into scientific terms for things. But ancient terms, maybe more like Hebrew. Sometimes there's just some words that feel mythological. Some Yolish terms, because of that, kind of flow through the cosmere.
If a Cognitive Shadow or a Splinter gained Connection to the Physical Realm, could they just transition through a perpendicularity to manifest a physical form, or is something else required?
Something else would be required, because you're... But that would take you a long way. It's going to depend on the situation, right?
Because Ishar was doing something where like he was Connecting spren...
Yes, Ishar was doing something, and so for instance, spren are gonna be played a little differently than a Cognitive Shadow would be played. Like, Cognitive Shadows, that's just not gonna be enough. But spren is much closer. This has to do with how much Investiture's involved and how they're Connected and things like this, but it's not quite enough. In most cases.
So Ishar was doing something in addition to just Connecting the spren to the Physical Realm?
Yes. He was indeed doing something more.
What's the source of rubber on Roshar?
It's not very exciting, it is a tree. It's not an actual rubber tree, it is a Rosharan version of the tree. I actually had to think about this, cause silk doesn't come from the same place that silk comes from. And then, I'm just going too far. Silk I can at least talk about and I can name it seasilk, but for rubber I'm just like, it's a rubber tree. We'll just make it rubber. It's not petroleum based. That's gonna be a hangup on Roshar, that they don't have petroleum reserves in the same way. They are a planet that has only been around for 12,000, 13,000 years. And beyond that, there's the whole crem thing. They do have some sources of petroleum that are biological, or I guess it's all biological, but it's not, yeah. That's gonna be a problem for them, let's just say. Access to large petroleum reserves is not a thing you will find there.
Was Kelsier directly involved in causing the showdown with Bloody Tan that ended up with Lessie...
No. As I have it written right now, no. Indirectly involved, possibly, but this is not an outcome he wanted, it's not something he influenced, and not something I would even say that he was aware was happening. I haven't written Secret History 2, so that's totally possible that... But I don't have it planned for him to be involved right now.
