Questioner
Can a Shardblade, dead or alive, become a Hemalurgic spike?
Brandon Sanderson
It's already too strongly Invested for this. It couldn't hold anymore charge.
Can a Shardblade, dead or alive, become a Hemalurgic spike?
It's already too strongly Invested for this. It couldn't hold anymore charge.
Would tapping Feruchemical speed cause you to burn metals faster as your whole body speeds up?
Yeah. I think it probably would. I don't know if we've gotten to that interaction yet, but it probably would. Good question. If it's speeding up... Yeah, I think it would. Good question. If you're in a speed bubble and doing it, it's totally going to do it, and there's some analogies there.
Could Kaladin rip limbs from people using Lashings?
Yeah. This is theoretically possible.
If Taravangian became a Vessel, would he still have smart and stupid days?
RAFO
I remember there being something mentioned, the Thousand Eyes of Trell, somewhere in Mistborn, is that a real thing?
Yeah.
There's something behind that?
Yeah.
This is a line in Way of Kings where it kind of sounds like my homeboy Nephi. Was that on purpose?
I'm not sure if that one's on purpose. You'd have to tell me which quote it is.
Taravangian who's like "better for one man to sin than a whole nation perish?"
That is probably unintentional. I don't know if that was intentional or not.
Are there intentional ones in there?
Yeah. The Nohadon Way of Kings is directly influenced by king Benjamin's speech and Mosiah. That one is intentional. Most others will probably be unintentional though, of course, what I read a lot and what is important to me ends up in the books one way or another.
Do you plan on writing Stormlight Archive where you have to be Cosmere aware?
I intend Stormlight to always be its own story. The Cosmere will start influencing a little more here and there, but I never intend you to have to know anything about the Cosmere. Who knows how I'll be at the later books if I'll change my mind, but I intend it to be no more than it's really been now.
Are we going to see more of Kaladin with his baby brother?
Yeah. You will see more of his baby brother.
Hemalurgy. If I stab someone with an icicle but it had iron traces in it, would that still work?
That iron would not hold much of a charge, so it's probably not going to work. You're probably just not going to be able to get enough iron there to really charge it.
But it's plausible that you could make it work. Like, you could get enough iron in there theoretically. I'm going to say most of the time, no. Plus, the structure of it's going to disintegrate so fast that you're just not going to be able to make any use of it.
Is the current Shin societal structure based on whatever caused the fall of the Shin invasions.
Not 100 percent. Certainly it was influenced, but it's not a direct one-to-one correlation.
In the Cosmere, are we going to get any more worlds or is like what we have enough?
No. If I can get myself to do it, I have some other worlds that we'll show. They'll be short story stuff though. They are not major players in the actual Cosmere other than Yolen which you haven't seen yet but that's where Hoid's from and that's where the Shattering happened. That's a major one but yeah.
Is Kaladin ever going to get like a wife or a girlfriend?
Here's your RAFO card. There's your RAFO card.
If you had to guess, which gender would be Doomslug?
Spensa thinks Doomslug's a she, and so I would go with that.
The way she looks kind of looks like a boy but the way she talks kind of just sounds like a girl so it gets confusing.
Telling gender on the slugs is not terribly easy.
What was your inspiration for making Doomslug? It's a very fun character.
You know, it was basically me wanting to have a pet sea slug and it just not being something you can do in real life. And I knew I wanted a creature that had some import to the worldbuilding and I settled on something that I thought would look cute.
If an Awakener were to use a gemstone as a color source, will that affect its Soulcasting properties?
Yes.
How do Lashings affect fluids like water or air?
Hard to Lash a fluid. It works poorly. How about that?
You can make it work best with the Reverse Lashing which would make sense I assume, but you can't Full Lash onto air or really a liquid. And a Gravitational Lashing, you could maybe do it on a liquid but it would disrupt real fast.
Have many magic systems does Sel have?
It depends on how you define it. I would say over a dozen if you're dividing AonDor versus Forging as different magic systems. They have over a dozen. It depends on what you kind of circumscribe in the same style of magic system with just different ways to access it. It just depends on your definition.
I'm sensing a subtle metaphor between all of the Radiants, where it seems like their lives have caused them to be pressurized gems and now they get the cut from their Oaths.
Nice job. Yeah.
They're holding Stormlight better when they do that, right?
They are indeed.
My friend and I always argue. He's like, "Amaram and Jasnah are the same age." Are they really?
Amaram is a little older, I believe, but they are around the same age.
Like 24ish?
Oh, no. Jasnah's like in her mid to late thirties. Mid thirties. I get it mixed up which one's Earth age and which one's Rosharan age. Whatever I say in there, it's about 10 percent more for our age. But yeah, Jasnah's not...
She's not a spring chicken.
She's not a spring chicken.
But Amaram's older?
Yeah. I think Amaram's like a year or two older, but they're around the same age.
I was just going to ask if we're going to hear any more from First of the Sun.
I actually started writing a sequel story but it gives a lot away about Era 4 of Mistborn. I'm like, "I don't know if I can do this."
So we'll just wait a little bit.
Yeah. We'll see if Peter thinks I'm giving away too many things. Like I don't want to give away endings of like the Stormlight Archive in the short story and so I have to be careful about those things.
When the Shards all Ascended, did they all have roughly the same power level?
Yes.
If Nightblood was to attack one [a Shard] and decided it was evil, could he destroy enough of that Shard to seriously weaken it compared to other Shards or not really?
I mean it would be such a drop in the bucket. To actually weaken the Shard. Like, there is so much out there. This would be hard to do. I won't completely nix it, but let's just say there's a lot that Nightblood would have to...
A while back I asked about, have you developed your equivalency system for Breath to...
No. We're still working on that. I actually have some people. I just got some physicists and mathematicians and said, "I'm gonna have you guys do this, and then you'll keep me honest." That's where we are right now.
And they're like, "It is such a big job." And I'm like, "I know. That's why I'm paying you to do this, so that I don't have to do it. So do your best, it's okay."
What was the name of a Shard that you choose not to use? Like the Shardic intent you decided not to use?
I can't confirm those because I still might use them. Mostly, the things I've discarded are names that are too simple, or too on the nose.
Maybe I'm not not... People are like "oh they're just synonyms, hatred and odium are synonyms" but I see more nuance to Odium. So like it feels more deep.
Yeah. If it's got a different history as a word.
But I haven't 100 percent eliminated any of them. Like, some of them are similar enough that at the end of the day, I might be like "you know what, this is better as this name instead of this name" and that would change the intents.
So you have...
I have a list of all 16 but I haven't settled on the actual name for each of them.
Oh! I decided not to do the Shard Levity. I did move away from that completely.
Your languages in Stormlight, do you have a way you do names and such?
Usually there's two different ways that I approach it. If I'm going to spend a lot of time in the linguistics, I'll look for linguistic themes like in Stormlight it's names that are symmetrical or things like that. If I need to shortcut, I'm going to look for an Earth culture and I'm going to use the language kind of based on more themes from that culture and the sounds they have and try to replicate that but not using the actual words from that culture.
Are you still planning on Death by Pizza after...
So Death by Pizza is now called Death without Pizza. It's actually called Songs of the Dead. I've been working on that with Peter Orullian who's a singer in a metal band. Some parts of it are really working, some parts aren't, so we're doing another draft. Basically, I did the outline and the world, he's writing the book. The first revision, there were some things that needed to be done in the first draft. So, we'll see how it goes. It's an experiment for both of us. Neither of us have co-written a book before.
So Iyatil, is she from Scadrial?
Her heritage is Scadrian but she actually wasn't born on Scadrial. But yes and no in that way.
So she has a relation to the Hunters then?
Yes, that's her heritage but she's actually from a city in the Cognitive Realm.
Was Adolin and Shallan always the endgame, or did you ever shift to Kaladin?
I did shift, back and forth. So, what I do with a lot of my relationships is, I don't usually plan them out. A lot of characterization, I have to leave the characters kind of their own volition. So I write my way into relationships and I write my way into the character elements. I plot my world, my setting, and my plot out ahead of time but I let the characters go where they're going to go. I know some people would rather she made a different decision, but that is the decision that felt right to me going forward.
I've just validated all the Shallarin people on the internet saying, "Aw, he changed his mind!"
Is "Trell" Odium?
That's a RAFO. I'm sorry. The cheeky thing for me to respond would be, "Which Trell," but the answer is just it's a RAFO.
Which Trell, huh?
Yeah. The name Trell has shown up multiple times in the Cosmere. But the Trell specifically you're asking about is the one who is invading Scadrial during the second Era.
Is that the same one in Era 1?
So that's a RAFO also but there's also a Trell mentioned on Taldain so the name has shown up multiple times.
Is the landmass the stretches from Shinovar to Alethkar the only continent on that planet?
It's the only continent. It's not the only land but it's the only large landmass.
Hoid's ability to hurt Kelsier, is that due to his perceptions and beliefs or those of an external entity?
It's going to be a bit of both but more his perceptions and beliefs. This is how a lot of things work in the Cosmere, particularly if you're where they were.
If you take a coppermind that has stores and you take a zincmind that has stores and you melt them together to form brass, what happens?
It's mostly going to destroy your ability to recover any of it, unfortunately.
Are you going to be able to store any more?
You're probably going to end up, if it was already full, with it being full but you not being able to access it. So it would not be very handy to do. Not be very useful for you.
Are all the planets on the same timeline? Is the time the same on all of them? Like a thousand years on Roshar is a thousand years on Scadrial?
They aren't. The years on Roshar are longer. They're different. So the way they count them is different. Basically, if you took a clock that was set, the time would pass at the same speed on most of them, but the time that it is a year on different ones are different.
I was just curious if like Anno Domini was the same for all of them like year 1 is year 1 on...
Nope. They are not. The calendars are all different. And Roshar for instance, if I say someone is 20 in the Stormlight books, they'd be 22 in Earth years and Scadrial uses a very-close-to-Earth year so they'd be 22 in Scadrian years. I keep them mostly very similar just for the reasons of trying not to be super confusing.
Is M-Bot intelligent and sentient?
Yes. M-Bot is, I would say, above animal intelligence but not quite human level intelligence. Oh no, M-Bot? I thought you were saying Doomslug. I would say M-Bot is above human intelligence and is sapient, is sentient.
Does gender play a role in how a spren chooses a Radiant?
It does but it is not a strict... It's just spren are going to have preferences like people have preferences and that does play into it but there's not really any sort of strict...
If you want to know narratively, behind the scenes, it tends to work to pair opposite genders together, because it just makes for better conversations and things like that. And it makes the cast fill out a little bit better with a little more variety. So that's why you see the writer side of me doing it, but in-world my kind of explanation is they have preferences.
I have a question about Shadesmar. What inspired the beads where everything in the actual reality is a bead in Shadesmar?
If I were being truthful, it probably goes all the way back to a Michael Whelan painting I saw when I was a teenager. But at the end of the day, I thought it was a really interesting image and a good reflection. I want things to reflect the real world—the Physical Realm—but in a different sort of way. So I like the kind of crystalline nature of it and things like that.
Is "Doomslug" Doomslug's real name?
"Doomslug" is not Doomslug's real name but Doomslug will accept that name from Spensa. Doomslug would have a name in Doomslug language.
Are you going to try and pronounce that for us?
No.
In your underground lair, will you have a secret room that has another secret?
*Laughs* We should. We will have a secret door so we should have a secret door that has a secret in it. Good suggestion. If we do that, then you can say you inspired it.
You have a Twinborn. It doesn't matter what Allomancer he'd be. The aluminum Ferring. They've stored up a lot of aluminum before all this happens.
Well, aluminum was really hard to come by.
I know. Theoretically, and they've filled it up and then they become a savant.
Hard to do without being a [Compounder].
I'm saying Twinborn in the other metal they become a savant. Then they tapped the aluminum.
Yeah. I could see that having some very weird effects.
Basically my thought is, is it a toggle switch?
So I'm going to RAFO that for now. You're theorizing around really cool lines, but I'm not going to answer it yet because I have plans for what I'm going to want to do and I don't want reveal it yet.
I was reading Starsight and then I remembered you wrote the novelette Defending Elysium a while ago.
I did.
So when you wrote that, were you expecting to make a series based off it?
I had plans for where it would go with the series. It did not involve Spensa in them. It involved some of the evolutions that ended up in this book. Particularly early in my career, everything I wrote, I planned, if it was the thing that took off, where I would go with it if I were doing sequels. So I had a whole bunch of ideas but it's been 15, almost 20 years since I wrote that. So when I sat down to do Starsight, there were something that were from those original plans and some things that weren't.
With Jason, he was blind and stuff?
Yeah.
Is Spensa going to develop those powers?
So what I've been kind of doing is, I'm kind of taking a lot of the different powers that Jason had and I'm kind of moving them into specialties that different people could have. So you could theorize that someone could learn them all but more likely you're going to see people specializing.
So, like her grandmother has like the sensing power.
Mhm. Just read the new book and see what happens there.
If I have a Hemalurgic spike, can a Shardblade steal my soul? Don't the spikes ground your soul?
They basically staple pieces of things on your soul that can still be cut. No they couldn't steal it but they could still cut it.
You describe the mistcloak as being a hundred tassels from the shoulder down and yet there are pockets.
Yeah. You could put a pockets right up in there and plus different people have different designs on their mistcloaks. It's not modern era. They're not mass produced. You go and you get yours made how you want it to be. A lot of people put there's down here when they're actually making them and trying them on. They find it works better.
So on the cover for Alloy of Law, is it Wayne standing next to Wax?
Yes and Wayne has a gun. So, we saw that. We didn't think it was worth changing. We recognize that that's the way it is but it's mostly just because the covers aren't meant to be an illustration of the book; they're meant to be evoking the feeling of the book and we liked the feeling of the book. We didn't want to have to go back to do reshoots because that's an actually photography shoot. All of those books, he has actors dress up and do the shoots and then Photoshops it.
It wasn't bad enough to make us say, "Ooh you have to go reshoot this whole thing." But Wayne has just not realized he's holding a gun yet and dropped it. Someone handed it to him and he's like, "What? Oh!" but they got the shot right before.
Has Hemalurgy been used outside of Scadrial that we've already seen?
You haven't seen someone using it, but there are effects of it that you have seen, I believe.
What if you had a Twinborn who had atium for both and he burned atium that was stored?
So, I'll RAFO that. I believe I've RAFO'd that in the past so I'll RAFO it again.
What philosophies do you feel like inspired you the most? Philosophies, or mysticisms, religions?
I like a lot of different things. You'll see a lot of things in Way of Kings of Pantheism. You see all the old Greek dudes. You'll see some Cartesian stuff. It's kind of everything. You'll see a lot of Shinto. Yeah, probably the most has been Shinto or actually more of the kind of Buddhist and Jainism sort of idea.
You know, Taravangian I feel like is embodiment of compassion versus seeing the world for what it really is.
Yeah. Right. And then there's the whole Utilitarianism versus altruism and I just find all of that stuff fascinating. I don't know if there's any one. Shinto, that idea of animism, the idea of everything having a soul, is probably... Yeah.
Do you have the endings of all of your books already pre-planned or does that kind of evolve as you go along?
I have the ending of Stormlight 10. I have the ending of the Mistborn series. But I don't have all the endings of all books.
The main core line of the Cosmere, I do have, but those are subject to change as I go. I don't necessarily have the ending of the Threnody book. Like, that I would have to outline and sit down.
I was just curious about how time works for worldhoppers.
So worldhoppers' time is going to pass normally unless they can stay near to large collections of Investiture. They can warp time in the same way that gravity, large masses, can warp time.
Phenax, which Shard do you think he is most like?
God of Deception. I don't know. I'd have to think about that. I'm not 100% sure. It might be one I haven't revealed yet which...
Obviously that's the whole RAFO deal.
Yeah. Phenax is an interesting character in the lore. I like all of their gods of the underworld that they do.
So the Parshendi Rhythms. They talk a lot about them as like music. So do you imagine them as rhythms where they talk like this or is their a melodic quality to it?
That is what they're doing. There's not very much melodic quality to it. They set songs to the Rhythms. The way I have it in the books, in my mind, and the canon, is there is Connection between them and the songs of Roshar. That they can pick up a Rhythm when there's actually not enough of it, even in a sentence, because of the intent of the Rhythm and what the other person's hearing. So they can hear a Rhythm even if it's only a couple words being said, that you couldn't learn, if you were just a human listening. No matter how good you were. Some you wouldn't be able to pick up because there is not enough information there.
So they're just like kind of complex rhythmic things that you could write out musically.
You could. You definitely could write them out.