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?
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.
Were you tempted to have Kaladin be taken by Odium?
Yes, I was tempted.
What is it the held you back from doing that?
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.
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?
I do not... I'm gonna say no *pause* for now.
Did Adonalsium have a gemheart?
RAFO, good question.
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?
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.
How much should we be thinking about possible logical groupings of Shards? For instance, as pairs or groups of four.
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.
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?
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.
Is it possible for Heralds to have children?
So yes, asterisk.
Will Steris have her own point of view chapters in The Lost Metal?
Yes she will. I don't have to RAFO that, because I have already written a couple of them. I'm pretty sure she got a couple in Bands of Mourning, she will have more in Lost Metal.
When you write the Warbreaker sequel, will it be more focused on Vivenna, Vasher, and Nightblood, and will we learn why they got separated and how Nale found Nightblood?
That's the plan. It will definitely be Vivenna and Vasher. There will probably be mentions of Siri and Susebron but brief. They won't have--most likely--viewpoints. If they do it'll be like one little something, but I don't even plan that. And then yes, it will at least leave the implication of why what happened happened, if that makes sense. I may not get to the actual events but you will see, you know yeah.
What's the Allomantic effect of any one god metal besides atium and lerasium?
RAFO.
If half of a conjoined ruby were encaged in bendalloy, would moving it cause the other half of the ruby to move much faster than the encaged half or vice versa?
RAFO.
Do we know why Nightblood didn't take up a Shard?
Nightblood didn't take up a Shard, Nightblood was not there... Oh, [they're] probably just asking why Nightblood did not absorb the entire Shard of Odium.
Nightblood cannot hold that much Investiture. At least not at that rate, right? Like, if you drop Nightblood without his sheath... I have to do it this way, because otherwise you drop him on the planet and he would absorb the entire planet, right. This is not a power I want Nightblood to have. I do not want Nightblood... Nightblood is a very dangerous tool without also being the death star.
I did not want... I actually was happy that I had the chance to put that scene in so I kind of put the kabosh on Nightblood being able to absorb the entire Investiture of an entire Shard. Not where I wanted... I didn't want that to be a promise people thought was coming. Now, he can absorb a lot and it's also rate of absorption is a pretty important deal.
...
People are gonna quote me on this in ten years and things like that and say "but, but, but". Just, you know, understand that there are specific ways that I'm trying to phrase some of these things.
Would a duralumin cage around a fabrial increase the fabrial's power?
RAFO
Is the guy in Lasting Integrity named Sixteen a worldhopper? (The kandra worldhopper, perhaps?)
He is a worldhopper, but I won't reveal anything more than that currently.
But let’s talk about Cytonic. For a long time I called this book Nowhere. Why did the title change? Well, I always had that as a working title. And in YA in particular I really like to let my publisher have a lot to say with the titles because it’s a genre that I don’t publish in as much and don’t follow quite as much. I do read a decent amount of YA, but I don’t follow the marketing trends. And one of the reasons I use a publisher is to rely upon their expertise. And they really felt that Nowhere as a title was off-putting for a certain demographic of the audience. And so we went back to the drawing board. This book is really about Spensa and her powers, and I thought, “You know what? This is going to make for a good title.” So we went with that one.
I also wanted to get back to you on the results of the poll from last week [about the complexity level of a potential Stormlight board game], which I really appreciate you guys, again, responding. This is something we had that was kind of a conundrum for us. I don’t have another poll or anything for you today. I just want to talk about this one.
This one was tighter of a poll than the previous one we’d done. This one, our results were mid-30% being the winner for a medium-sized game. And if you want to go look at the previous post, we kind of defined what that means. So that’s what we’re going to move forward with. We’re going to be looking at companies and ideas. Again, this is a long, multi-year process, and we’re only probably going to work on one of these at a time. I don’t think that any of you want us to release five Stormlight board games in the period of a year or two and be like, “All right, now buy them all.” We’re going to start with this kind of medium-scale one.
The other thing that we will investigate, so lowest on the list was really hardcore game, and very light game, the faster game. Most everyone wanted something kind of more in the middle. And so–. Not everybody. There definitely were people who wanted the very complicated game. And that’s not off the table some time in the future, but we aren’t going to pursue that quite yet. We want to do things right and do things well, and we want to just take these one at a time. And so legacy game and pen and paper RPG both were in the low 20s, kind of neck and neck. I think maybe legacy game won by a percentage point. However, we don’t want to have two board games in the mix at the same time. So I will probably investigate doing a pen and paper RPG also, because I think that’s distinctive enough. And so those are the two things that we’re going to start working on.
Last time I asked you what you guys were most interested in regarding art books for the Stormlight Archive. And 66% of you prefer the guidebook style. You can look last week if you want to know. This is what I thought you would say. It’s the one that I thought would be most interesting, an in-world guidebook that features a lot of art but also is kind of like a coffee table book you can put out that you can give to a friend who hasn’t read the Stormlight Archive and they’re like, “What’s it about?” Well, here is some cool artwork with some in-world descriptions.
I kicked around some ideas with Isaac on this. We’ll probably start working on this. Again, this is probably not for four years or so. But we will start working on this. It looks like you guys are excited. We did get 20,000 responses from you, so that’s really good. And the overwhelming majority of you, 76% of you, said that we would buy all three if we put them together. And I chatted with Isaac, and right now we’re going to take the first two on this list, because we think that we can make the coffee table art book and the guidebook kind of combined into one. But what we can’t really combine in that is the encyclopedia-style book, which we’d actually want to be alphabetized, and things like that.
And so what we’re going to do is we are going to start kind of working on these two things together but as separate books that we would sell together and sell separately. But probably do a Kickstarter for the two of them together, and then later on you can just buy them individually. So like, a larger art book/guidebook as one, and then an encyclopedia-style sort of companion book, and things like that. I really think these will work well matching the first five books, because we will probably have to do separate ones after book 10 that would cover that era of Stormlight, the 6 through 10.
When I first read through the books I thought of mistcloaks like normal cloaks with strips of fabric sown into like how a normal ghillie suit is not the shredded cloak style it actually is. Did anybody else think this?
There’s some variety in mistcloaks, depending on Noble House and the Era involved. They all have tassels or strips, but some are interwoven and some are layered, some start above the shoulders while others split below, sometimes they have hoods and sometimes they don’t.
There’s room for other types.
I was wondering why the male peak spren is built with a lot of muscles but the female isn't? Is there a specific reason for it?
The appearnce of Highspren is as varied as the humans that imagine them. There can be skinny peakspren and fat peakspren as well, I think... these two are just some examples that Shallan has seen in her travels.
The dog and the dragon release date? I think Brandon mentioned something about turning this into it's own children book at some point. Has he mentioned when he would release it?
Yeah the first publisher he reached out to wanted too much creative control I think.
This, they wanted to turn it into something Brandon wasn't comfortable with.
Now i'm morbidly curious whether u/mistborn has considered it [cadmium poisoning] while writing his books.
I have, actually. Though I had to consider it for other metals first. I decided that allomancers are immune to these kinds of effects--they're just physiologically different in that regard.
I remember a while back you mentioned providing lore and learning about writing for a game, is this [Kelsier in Fortnite] what you were referencing? If not, are we gonna hear about that within the year?
This is not actually that.
I don't get to choose when the game I'm working on gets announced officially, I'm afraid. I don't think they even know when it will be announced, as it's not close to alpha yet. So...I can't really say.
I was wondering if Thaidakar (during the SA front half era) would approve of Miles’ motives?
Probably not, but it depends on the specifics you're talking about.
Do you know which book is gonna be the Final book released in the Cosmere? Chronological/Release Date
Almost 100% certain it will be the final book of the space-age Mistborn trilogy. (Right now, that is Era Four--but it's not impossible that I'll slip another smaller era, like the W&W era books, in as a Mistborn cyberpunk story while working on the back five Stormlight books.)
He wrote two books based on Infinity Blade (though they're currently out of print)
Working on getting those back in print somehow, but there is red tape that so far I haven't had the brainspace to get cut.
The problem here is that they discontinued the games--and so they, by nature, took down all related materials. They said that the novellas could go back up, but this was happening when it was "all hands on deck" to support Fortnite as a huge surprise hit--and there was a lot of trouble getting them to pay attention to anything else. (They needed to sign a document letting me put the novellas back up.)
I could probably push that through now, but it's tough, because you really need to have played the games to get the stories. I kind of want some kind of "Summary of the game stories" put into it, and to release them both as a single ebook, but we'll see if if it can happen.
Some are talking about the title [of Cytonic]. Why would I not overrule my publisher, and insist on the title Nowhere? Well, if I ignore their expertise, then why am I using a publisher?
In this case, I expect that my core audience (those who are already invested in the series) will buy the book regardless of title. So if I have a publisher with a lot of experience in what titles work for their core demographic, then it makes sense for me to listen to them. If I really wanted to overrule them, I could. I have that status as a writer. But Beverly and Krista--who head my team over at RH--know their stuff. I won't trust them on every decision, but this felt like a good place to do so.
Hello, all! After far too long, and with many apologies, I'm finally at work on your book. The Lost Metal (this will be the final title; I have more say over my titles with Tor than I do with Random House) is in progress. So far, I have around 10k words, and I'm anticipating a book somewhere in the 120k-150k range. (The progress bar on my website is set for 150k, where it was set at 100k for previous W&W books.)
A mini reminder for those who are wondering, "Why four books?" I wrote the first book as an experiment during the Wheel of Time days, when I worried about the cosmere (and Mistborn in particular) languishing while I saw to the needs of Randland.
The book turned out well--and I liked the characters so much that I outlined a trilogy to follow up Alloy of Law. Hence the four books--and this WILL be the final one.
My current plan is to try to finish this one by August 1st, with a Christmas 2022 publication date. (Skyward 3 being this year, and Skyward 4 being somewhere early 2023.) It will be followed by the fifth Stormlight book in Christmas 2023. After that, the good news is that I plan to write Era Three (three books long, 200-250k each like the original trilogy) all in a row. I'll need a few years on that project, so goal is tentatively to see those start being published in 2025 or so--with one a year for three years after that, followed by Stormlight 6 in 2028.
That's an ambitious schedule, so we'll see. Fortunately, the schedule for W&W four is not ambitious. If I finish by August, we'll be ahead for like the first time in ten years, giving my team a solid 14 months for editing and the like. (Which will make everyone very happy.)
Right now, everything is looking great for the book. Writing Group started on the prologue last week, and will be reading the first few chapters this week. Outline was well received by my team, and it feels really great to be writing Wax, Steris, Marasi, and Wayne again.
I will try to remember to give you an update here in a couple of months somewhere around the 50% mark to let you know how it's developing. (Though note, I've started doing short, weekly updates on YouTube so you can follow along there if the progress bar isn't enough.) Book will have a slightly more complex narrative than previous W&W books, but my goal is still for it to be fast paced and snappy.
As always, I'll be turning OFF replies to inbox for this thread--so my apologies if your reply or question doesn't get seen. And, as always, thank you for humoring my style of jumping between books and series.
Does White Sand take place before the Way of Kings Kalak Prelude?
Not in the current timeline, but most of that isn't in the books explicitly yet, so we allow it to remain fluid until canonized by in-book events.
Have any decisions you've made been controversial within your team?
...Yes. Famously, Peter Ahlstrom doesn't like Dreamer, which is my goofy little short story, that's his least favourite Brandon Sanderson story. I don't know that that counts though, deciding to write that story… What's been controversial among us?
I have one, but I think it's hard to say without spoiling a future property.
You can tell me what that one is after… You probably want to talk about Cytonic, right? Is that the one? There are some things we did with Cytonic, and I don't want to talk about that either, because it's spoilery, but when Cytonic's out we can talk about some decisions I made which were controversial. But they were more controversial with my editor and my agent, the actual Dragonsteel team was onboard with changes. The vibe, like… Peter, and the team, the editorial side here, we vibe really well together—decisions I make are rarely unpopular because the team…
Well, this might even be more of a question for me, where sometimes when you've given us outlines of what you think you're going to do I might have some reservations, but every time you do it, you do it so well that you've built up a huge amount of trust, and I'm sure I'm speaking for a lot of the people watching right now so, it's hard to have reservations when you deliver every time.
We get controversial feedback among the beta readers.
Oh yeah, beta readers all the time.
*Jokingly* Yeah, but we don't care about them.
No we do care about them, and I like that they disagree. I make a lot of decisions that the beta readers… I would say there are very few that I make that the overwhelming majority of beta readers don't like, but the beta readers get split fifty-fifty quite a bit on things. It's one of the interesting things, you know, the beta readers hating or loving something is interesting to read.
Within the team though? Hmm… I mean, probably… this is going to be funny to people, but probably… So, the way that I describe the front of the Fourth Bridge airship coming down and the art for it—Peter pointed out “this art does not match the description as well as I would like it to”, and Isaac and I were like “eh, it's close enough. We're close to the deadline, we're just gonna go with it”, that was a pretty controversial choice because Peter was like “but it doesn't actually match”, and Peter's job is to be detail oriented on letting us know “this is a continuity error, you are introducing a continuity error, and you know it”, but at the same time, getting another draft drawn on that piece was not something we just had the time to do. And so I just said to Peter, “eh, it was an early draft of the plans that Navani drew, and it actually ended up being a little different”.
You know stuff like that, that can be controversial, because we have some very detail oriented people in the team who's job is to be very detail oriented, and anticipate what the fans are going to complain about, and sometimes we don't have the bandwidth to actually make those changes. It's like when Moshe wanted me to change “podium” and “lectern”, and we went the rounds on that. Those are more controversial than other things like this, which is kinda funny.
If Roshar progressed and industrialized, would caffeinespren come to existence with the advent of soda?
Yeah, I bet they would, absolutely. I mean if you're getting alcoholspren, you're gonna get caffeinespren. They probably wouldn't be called that, you would probably call them like alertnessspren or something like that when you are alert beyond, you know… maybe not even alert. It'd be like a term for when you should be sleeping, but you can't because of stimulants. Stimulantspren? Wiredspren? Hyperspren?
What is brollin? Slowswift mentioned them in the same breath as spren and shades.
Ah, RAFO!
If Adolin originally didn't have a significant role, was there another character that you planned to have a larger role, but changed your mind?
No. There's nobody whose role has been diminished. I mean, part of the reason the books are longer than I thought they would be is… Everyone likes to throw ( justifiably so) the quote of me where I'm l like “I think book one is going to be the longest,” right? I'm like “I don't think the others are going to be this long.” Well, turns out that adding another main character is one of the things that makes books go longer. When I'm like, “well I need to give a nice arc to Adolin in every book now,” and suddenly giving a nice arc to Adolin in every book means that we got tens of thousands of more words that we gotta write in every book. That's not the only reason, but that is one of the reasons why the entire series is longer, is because I did that.
Nobody's been diminished. I've only found room to expand, which I knew would happen. That's why I built the interludes the way I did, and why I moved things like Horneater to novellas—I do not want the side stories to overcome the main story. It's part of the reason we've got two bricks of five books, rather than one ten book arc—I worried that at that length, it would involve spinning of heels, rather than coming to actual conclusions and climaxes.
Has a Shard's Vessel had a child after Ascension? If so, have we seen them? Will one become important to the Stormlight Archive plot?
Do you consider all of the people on Scadrial to be children of Preservation? I would count them all as children of Preservation and Ruin, I mean they created them together. I don't know what other way you can interpret that, because the first ones of them would've had no other parents.
So, yes to that, but it's not what you're asking. Otherwise, RAFO.
What does Taravangian, as the Vessel of Odium, think of Autonomy?
I will RAFO this, because it's going to be relevant.
Did Ironsides mean to refer Spensa's pin as the pin of a traitor so early in the book?
Yes? I feel like she did. I'm not sure why she wouldn't have, because by that point everyone knows that Spensa's… Unless they're asking maybe if Ironsides didn't... shouldn't have known that that pin was Spensa's father's pin, she could've thought it was given to her by somebody else, but yeah.
Do you have a favourite type of Investiture?
Favourite type? They are all like my children. So... I don't know. That one's a RAFO, but a “I'm never going to answer it”, so just “Read and Don't Find Out”?
Who's cleverer, Kelsier or Hoid?
It depends on the situation and what you even mean by clever. Hoid thinks he's cleverer, so…
He has a lot of practice, too.
He has a lot of practice, yeah. Kelsier would lose patience with Hoid before Hoid loses patience with Kelsier.
How would a dinner party between Kelsier, Hoid, and Harmony go down, and who else would be invited?
Alright, Kelsier, Hoid, and Harmony? Hoid and Kelsier squabble the entire time, and Harmony tries to get them to stop.
Could you have trapped the mists from Scadrial in a gemstone.
Theoretically possible.
At the end of Rhythm of War, is the coin that Hoid had before meeting Odium a metalmind?
Oh, RAFO.
Vin “sucked in the mists” with a deep breath, also the mist was “leaking” from her arms. Is that similar to Stormlight?
Yes it is. One hundred percent. In fact, you should notice that when Shardblades form they take a certain shape... substance.
Oh jeez, yeah...
Did you never notice that?
No, I did, but you know… you don't think about it.
Before they solidify, yeah.
Do the Terris prophecies only refer to the Hero of Ages on Scadrial, or could they also apply to a person or people in other systems? Are there “Heroes” for other systems?
That theology was only talking about Scadrial. Doesn't mean that there aren't people in the Cosmere who would interpret that and take it and run with it, but they were talking about Scadrial.
Do you know the frequencies for the pure tones of Roshar, and if so, what are the frequencies for the pure tones of Roshar?
RAFO.
Does “Light” in a vacuum become unkeyed until exposed to a vibration upon leaving, and what happens if that vibration isn't actually a pure tone?
It can be overridden and things like that. You can unkey that vibration and then kind of separate it. Whether it's even fully unkeyed, to be perfectly honest, I can't even say. Like, you are dampening it, and then overriding it with something else.
This is kind of outside the world, they wouldn't be able to measure it—but I don't even think it's completely unkeyed, like Navani thinks it is, before she rekeys it. The mental component on her part is pretty important to what's happening.
Will every Death Rattle have a canonized point of reference at some point in a coming novel?
I don't intend them all to. I intend most of them to, but I don't intend them all to. Some of them happened, but were not relevant to the story on screen, is what I've decided.
Since Teft is dead, may he rest in peace, could you tell us what his fourth Ideal would have been if he had spoken it before Vyre killed him?
Hmmm... Fourth Ideal for Teft. I would like to give that more thought, rather than be on the spot for it here, so it's a RAFO, but not a promise that I'll answer you. There are things I would want to consider before I answer that. It's a great question. That's the one I'm saddest not to be able to answer, but I don't think I can answer that on the spot, while I'm doing other things right now. It deserves more consideration than an off the cuff answer.
Who can consume more Investiture, Nightblood or Chiri-Chiri?
Nightblood. Chiri-Chiri would get full a lot faster.
Does Hoid have a favourite color?
Sure, I've actually answered this before and I can't remember what I've said. We're gonna say black, right now.
Where did you get the idea to have multiple moons on Roshar?
I have no idea, it's gone back so far. I mean... Yeah, no idea. I like doing weird things with the cosmology and with planets and things like that. For the 2010 version, looking at the moons, I wanted to subtly indicate the presence of three gods and kind of subtly give some color scheme indications of them and things like that, but they aren't one to one. Just that idea, because everything was based around ten, I wanted some threes hanging around in the world building as well.
