Recent entries

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #301 Copy

    Argent

    If we are looking at very highly Invested beings, we have Yumi, and we are told that she is more Invested than Elantrians, more Invested than Returned. Let's compare Yumi, Elantrians, and Heralds. Who is most Invested, who is least Invested?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Of those, probably Heralds... The thing is, the Heralds varied. How in tune and aligned they are with their oaths, their promise... It wasn't Oaths, but they did promise certain things when they became Heralds. It was pre Knights Radiants, it's not as formalized as Oaths. How in line with the power of Honor, how in line with the kind of natural Investiture of Roshar--which is separate from Honor, Cultivation and Odium--are they, how can they draw upon that. I will call them the least of the three though.

    Argent

    So Heralds on the bottom, and Yumi on top, and Elantrians in the middle?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yumi on top, but Yumi's very close to an Elantrian. They're within the same conversation. And most of the yoki-hijo were traditionally in the past less, they've gained Investiture over time.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #302 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am fully in Stormlight mode, there is not a lot to tease. We will be doing the Words of Radiance Kickstarter, but like you already know, we pushed that back again. I'm not gonna do another Kickstarter when people are still waiting for their Frugal. I think they've all shipped out, but some people still won't even have received those, I'm not gonna start up a Kickstarter, it just seems a little tone deaf. So we'll be doing that in March, we're coming up with all sorts of fun things for that. You will be able to get Horneater there, you will be able to get a new Sanderson Curiosity, we'll be doing Dragonsteel Prime as part of that.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #303 Copy

    Comatose

    Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.

    Brandon Sanderson

    What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a one-to-one, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a one-to-one.

    Comatose

    But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.

    So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #304 Copy

    Comatose

    In Lost Metal, you had Marasi ultimately reject Kelsier’s offer of joining the Ghostbloods, and I think that's a decision we've seen some division on with the fans. So I'm curious, what’s your analysis and thoughts on that? Because it was an interesting and fun character choice.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I'm not surprised there's some division of fans; there was division among the beta readers on this. And there is even—like, I, as I was writing the book, left myself the option to have her join if I wanted her to. I didn't lock myself in in that part of the outline.

    My instinct was this isn't a good place for her. And so why…? And then when I got to the end am like, no, this isn't a good place for her. So, you know, Marasi’s journey through the books has been, "how do I change the world?", "how much am I interested in changing the world?", and "how much do I change the world?". Kind of in conversation with the dreams that she had as a younger person and the reality that she's now living?

    And one of the things I wanted to deal with in this book was this idea that she is kind of worried that she's just— she's becoming a cop, with all that that entails, right? That there's a culture to that and whatnot. And should she be doing more? And all of that. And so that did lead a lot toward the whole Ghostbloods thing, right? And I expected a lot of people to be like, "Oh, yeah, well, here's the easy answer."

    The problem is Kelsier is just such a terrible match to Marasi, right? Like personality-wise, you know, Kelsier is about the shadows. He honestly believes that if all the information were known that it would be worse for the world. He can share it in a small group. And he's got this sort of "I need to take care of people and I need to do it my way" sort of philosophy, which is really antithetical to somebody like Marasi, who, you know, her whole thing is "we need to be better as a society, not as individuals, and we need to be—". And so I at the end decided this is just a really bad place for her, right?

    But she needed a place. Actually, the first draft of the book, I didn't have her make the decision to go into politics. She had rejected politics in the first book, right? She’s like, "I'm not going that way, that’s not that's not for me." And I went double back on that. I'm like, no, this is probably the right route for her, which is nice because like, it it kind of snapped together for me at that point when I did the revision to be like, no, she does need something. If she's going to turn down Kelsier, she needs something.

    You know, you will have some fun in Era 3. Era 3, I don't know…? I warned you I might spoil unwritten books… Have I said this? I might have said this—you guys will know—Era 3’s working title for the series is Ghostbloods, right? And so like you know Mistborn: Ghostbloods is what Era 3 is going to be called, most likely. So if you were sad, well, just remember if Marasi joined the Ghostbloods we're still skipping decades. You would not have been able to see her as a member of the Ghostbloods. But that's what the name of the next series is going to be.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #306 Copy

    Comatose

    I guess this kind of answers this question a bit, that you have more planned for the Ghostbloods in the future, but in followup to that, we were wondering... you also have Shallan reject the Ghostbloods in Rhythm of War, which was published right before. So did that play into the decision at all. Were you trying to approach the same arc from a different angle or was it more just the characters?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, this was just the individual characters and what they need, so no. In my head, Marasi walking away from an offer is very different from Shallan declaring war. There will be lots of fun with that in upcoming books, lets just say that.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #307 Copy

    Comatose

    Kind of a similar question about the Midnight Essence, now that we have seen that crop up in Tress as well as in Stormlight Archive. Is something similar happening with the Midnight Essence? We have also the nightmares, in Yumi, that appear similar, they're also mimicking things.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, there's a couple of things getting interwoven here. The actual idea of Midnight Essence is a concept like Lightweaving that predates the Shattering of Adonalsium, that various magic systems are basically "borrowing" a law of the cosmere and creating a parallel effect from the same basis, if that makes any sense.

    Yumi is a little distinct from that. It's feeling similar; I would not call it true Midnight Essence. It's an awful lot more like a Lightweaving that has--because Lightweavings can have mass to them, because investiture can have mass to it--so you're looking a little bit more like... imagine a bunch of Stormlight becoming tangible, you can touch it, because of a powerful Lightweaving or something like that. Of course, these things all bleed together because I'm using the same fundamental principles to make them. But, for me, Midnight Essence has this personality that comes prefixed. What the Midnight Mother is making, what you're seeing in the Midnight Sea and things like this, you're gonna get some similar personalities to these things, and not necessarily the same with the nightmares.

    Comatose

    So it's more of a autonomous-- a Lightweaving that's become autonomous and has kind of broken down a bit?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah...  the problem is it's also got the Cognitive Shadow, right? It's a really invested Cognitive Shadow that is borrowing this Investiture to interact with the world. Because these are their shadows; these are their Cognitive Shadows, all of these people's Cognitive Shadows. But the power is not themselves. Remember, a Cognitive Shadow is a little bit like a fossil, like Vasher describes it. You've got this pattern there, and then the power kind of makes it manifest and be able to interact, and things like that. And, when that personality asserts itself with that power in the right place, you end up with a person that is the shadow running it. But at the same time, you've got this mass of power and energy that the machine is kind of controlling, which pulls back and overrides the personality sometimes. You've got a very weird set of circumstances going on here.

    But it was very fun to figure out all the backstory and the behind on it, and get it all working. This one was a little complex, to get these things all working behind the scenes. I like how they turned out. Yumi, if you dig into it, it has both pluses and minuses. The minuses is - from the beta readers and the alpha readers - the ending for non-arcanists was really overwhelming, which is why we have those Hoid scenes where he's like, "Okay, let me explain." It seems pretty obvious, I would expect that this is, like, "Alright, Brandon needs to do better explanations, Hoid's just gonna do it." But, because of all the work I did behind the scenes on Yumi, Yumi matches kind of cosmerological magic system stuff in ways that a lot of the side projects that I do just don't. Yumi is very deeply intertwined and following all of these processes in a way that works really well for me. But it also gets you into where you start to need a master's degree in the cosmere to figure it all out, which is why to make it easier, we have Hoid just spell it out for people. It is a little clunky; I prefer the clunkiness to the previous version where you needed a master's degree in the cosmere to understand even what was going on.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #308 Copy

    Cheyenne Sedai

    We only know the people of Komashi as having Investiture from Virtuosity, why does their Investiture seem to be split into the two streams of power known as hion? Is this something unique to Virtuosity as a Shard, or just how it happens to manifest on Komashi?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. This will be a theme you will see wherever Virtuosity is involved. So yeah. hmmmmm interesting. This will be a theme. There is a sub theme to this in the Cosmere. The Push and Pull. The opposites should be echoing through the magic systems. It is more expressed in Virtuosity than the others but do keep in mind that the Yin Yang sort of thing is there in the Cosmere as well in the general magic system, but more pronounced with Virtuosity, shall we say.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #309 Copy

    Cheyenne Sedai

    Given what happens at the end of the book, is Yumi immortal now? If not, does she age?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Her perception is going to influence this. She's going to need a small bit of power to persist, but she is so highly invested that it would take a very long time for that to be noticeable. Particularly because she's not even using that power. There's no out let for it. She's a Cognitive Shadow, much like the Heralds or Vasher, that is more self sustaining because of how highly she is invested. Imagine someone like Vasher with thousands of Breaths. You're just never going to notice. But her perception of herself will cause her to age. Probably not to age to the point that she dies though. Basically the answer is yes. You've got an immortal being running a noodle shop in a backwater corner of the Cosmere.

    Shardcast Interview ()
    #310 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    On all video games and stuff, I usually just do "Zellion" [as a username]. I've always liked that word. Now I'll never be able to get that in any game again, because I have released that there will be a mysterious Zellion figure in the future of the Cosmere. Any time I use a name, suddenly everyone jumps on it.

    Tampa Bay Comic Convention 2023 ()
    #311 (not searchable) Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Jasnah found it difficult to sleep. A part of her wanted to blame this stupid bed. Wit adored plushness; he wanted a mattress that would swallow a person, and he had found her previous one to be unsuitable. So now she swam in stuffing, lying on her side, listening to his breathing. Wit didn’t snore when he slept, but he did occasionally whistle. She turned to her other side–which, since they both tended to sink toward the center of this awful mattress, should have jostled him. He just laid there on his back, whistling softly as he exhaled. Was he even actually asleep? Things he’d said to her indicated that perhaps he went to other places at night around the Cosmere, visiting other worlds, engaging in political machinations at which, even still, she could only guess.

    “You lie to me sometimes,” she whispered to him. “You realized that means it can’t be a true relationship. I can trust someone with secrets—but someone who lies?” If he was aware, despite his sleep, he didn’t say anything.

    She’d caught him so far only in the most mundane of ways. He’d engage with wordplay with her, or toy with puns, and she’d ask him to stop. He’d promise, and seem to have done what he said. But then she’d notice that the games hadn’t stopped; they’d only grown more inscrutable. Wit, twisting the wordplays to a deeper level, another layer of esoteric, more difficult to spot. He seemed to think it would engage her, push her. Instead, it signaled something disturbing. Wit would do what he thought was best for people, not what they wanted from him.

    Despite her efforts, she knew she wasn’t connecting to him physically as much as he’d like. That made him feel anxious, as if he were doing something wrong. He thought if he listened better, tried harder, he’d do something mind-blowing and change the way she felt.

    In turn, though, she wasn’t connecting to him on an emotional level. Something she did want—if only he’d be up front with her. If only he’d tell her.

    She turned back on the other side; a stiff pillow did little to counteract the strange stuffing. The feathers of baby chickens; or perhaps the smallest feathers of adult chickens? She hadn’t been able to parse the way he’d said, but either way, she didn’t like it. A good lavis-husk mattress was far superior, shredded to not have awkward lumps.

    Storms. And this is why it was best to avoid relationships. Nine days until Dalinar confronted Odium, and she was worrying about a relationship? Perhaps this was a way to distract herself; because despite all of her training, all of her learning, all of her preparation, it came down to someone else. She would have no part in the final confrontation; Dalinar had decided he would use no champion.

    She did not dispute that choice. He was a Bondmsith. He had built the Knights Radiant. He’d had dealings with Odium and understood the creature better than, perhaps, any mortal. Jasnah had written out her reasons that he was the best choice, and she still agreed with them.

    Yet… could it have been her? If, instead of hiding what she was, she’d gone out in the open? Told people what she was, what she could do, what she feared? Her life and Dalinar’s life seemed to be very different things. He’d burned a city in the open, and people forgave him. Yet when Jasnah had been honest about what she feared, what she believed, what she discovered… well, condemnation and judgement had chased her like twin headsmen, each looking to get a whipping in before the final execution. She’d barely stayed ahead of them. Because when Jasnah Kholin spoke her mind, people hated her. Perhaps she had learned the wrong lessons from that. But could she be blamed?

    She curled up at that thought, listening to the quiet sounds of Urithiru. Water in the pipes, moving of its own accord. Air whispering as it was pumped through vents. Voices echoing far outside, despite the late hour. Trembling there, she realized, finally, why she hated this mattress so much. It reminded her of the soft restraints they’d given her when she’d been young. When those who loved her had taken away her own freedom for her own good. Those terrible months that basically everyone had forgotten about as an anomaly. Except by Jasnah, who would never forget.

    Wit suddenly sat up in bed. “Oh, hell,” he whispered.

    Jasnah became alert. It wasn’t difficult, considering how far from sleep she’d been. She formed Ivory as a blade—short, stout, basically just a dagger—and called for her armorspren to be ready. She reached for the cover of the bowl of spheres beside the bed, but did not remove the black shroud, lest she ruin her night vision. In a second, she could have Stormlight, but she hesitated on this, too, as the light rising from her skin would highlight her in the darkness.

    Wit sat there, barely visible by moonlight, wearing his silken nightclothes. His hair was immaculate, despite having slept on it. How?

    “What?” she finally hissed at him.

    “Oh, bollocks!” he whispered, leaping from the bed. “The darkest, hairiest, greasiest bollocks on the most unkept nethers of the most wanton demon of the most obscure religion’s damnable hellscape!”

    “Wit?” Jasnah said as he rushed to the counter, searching frantically among his things. “Wit!”

    He looked at her, wild-eyed, then he pulled the shroud off some spheres and washed the room in light.

    She blinked, dismissing her blade. If Wit wasn’t worried about blinding them, then this wasn’t a physical danger. It might just be another of his strange <range of> oddities. Except… the way he looked at her. Eyes like glowing spheres. Lips drawn without even a hint of a smile. Jaw taut, hands clenched, breathing quick. Genuine panic. She felt like summoning her blade again, if only to have something to hold as a chill went through her. “Wit, she said, “please. What’s wrong?”

    “G-give me a moment,” he mumbled, turning back to his things. “I need… I need a moment.” He pulled out a notebook and began writing.

    She rose and, though the air was warm—her mother’s transformations to Urithiru heating the air to unnatural levels for this elevation—she felt cold in only her nightgown. She threw on a robe and leaned over Wit’s shoulder. She couldn’t read what he wrote. The symbols were unfamiliar, one of the many languages he could speak from worlds beyond theirs. It looked like a table, though, not paragraphs. And those notations to the left of each line? The dots and lines? Numbers, perhaps? They repeated far more often than the other symbols did.

    He wrote, increasingly furious, his handwriting growing sloppy. She didn’t miss that he’d gotten out some of the strange, color-changing sand he used sometimes when experimenting with various uses of Stormlight or other, more arcane abilities. And as he did, he seemed to grow more intense.

    The doors began to shake. Jasnah had a sword in hand a second later, but then realized it was him. Nobody was on the other side; it was exerting some kind of strange pressure that made the doors vibrate. The rings in her jewelry box, also on the counter, pushed back and began to spill onto the floor. The shoes by her head scooted across the floor, pulled by their latches. Every bit of metal in the room, save for her sword, reacted to him in some way.

    Then, the sand burst into light with a mother-of-pearl luminescence and hovered above the table. The filmy clothing on Wit’s back began to writhe and contort as if alive. His motions increasingly frantic, in a flash, it seemed like smoke expelled from his body, blown away by some invisible wind. He was another person. Similar, but different. Shorter, with stark white hair and subtly different features making him seem foreign. This is the real him, she realized. A man not from their world; a man who masqueraded as Wit.

    That man turned to her, pencil snapping in his fingers as he grabbed it and broke it across a knuckle. “I’ve been tricked,” he said.

    “How,” she asked.

    The light of the sand went out, and it sprayed back down on the counter. Wit was back as his familiar self in a blink of an eye, and the odd effects stopped with an abrupt immediacy, as if on an order from him. He stood, again taller than she was, and held up what he’d written. “I’m missing,” he said, “three minute and twenty-seven seconds.”

    “I’m not following, Wit,” she said.

    “I’m sorry. I’m trying to parse this, but… Storms, what’s happening? Sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, slumping back onto the seat beside the stone counter, a natural feature of the room that jutted from the wall, as was common in these rooms of Urithiru. “I’ve lived a long time, Jasnah. A long, long time. Longer than any mortal’s memories can track, so I must use other means to maintain myself. I store memories in something called Breath: an easily accessible, if costly, form of Investiture that a person can adopt and, with training, use to expand one’s soul and memory. That part isn’t specifically important; I periodically review memories, deciding on what is vital to keep and what can be jettisoned. It is one of the only ways to remain sane after such a long existence as mine. And in that review just earlier, Jasnah, I found something. Something unexpected. Something terrifying.”

    “Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds?” she whispered, looking again at the notes on his page. As if by force of will, she could decipher them. “Missing. When?”

    “One day ago,” he said.

    “And what were you doing at the time?”

    He let out a long breath, then met her eyes. “I was having a chat with Odium.”

    “A chat?” she said flatly. “With the most ancient enemy of all humankind? The being that seeks to destroy us, to crush my family, to dominate—perhaps weaponize—all of Roshar for his own ends? A chat?”

    “We have a history,” Wit explained. “As I believe I’ve told you.”

    Jasnah pulled a chair over and sank down, feeling a spike of pain. A kind of final spike of pain. “I asked you, Wit,” she whispered. “I asked you to involve me in any dealings you had with him.”

    “I’m telling you now, dear,” he said. “That is technically involving you.”

    She held his eyes and knew. Perhaps he did, too. He will continue to be himself, a man so full of secrets he needed some kind of strange magic to keep them all inside his head. And one, it appeared, had been excised. There would never be a place for her inside of his deepest self, would there? She’d always just be another thing on the outside, maintained as part of his collection. Enjoyed, perhaps even loved, but never confided in.

    In that moment, she knew she’d have to withdraw, for herself. She tucked away feelings of betrayal. She had known what she was getting into with him. One did not court a god lightly.

    “Why?” she asked him. “What were you saying to him?”

    “I…” he shrugged. “I had to gloat a little. It was requisite, Jasnah, considering our history.” His eyes became distant. “I remember feeling odd about the encounter… a sense of repetition? Something happened that day in the lost minutes. He got the better of me and excised the memory from my mind, letting me instead think I had won the exchange. I can find the remnants, now that I look, as it was awkwardly done, as if by one unfamiliar.”

    “This is wrong, isn’t it?” she said.

    “Very wrong. Rayse is a megalomaniac, Jasnah. For all his craftiness, it would hurt him to let me walk away thinking I’d bested him. In this case, he encouraged it.” Wit leaned forward and took her hand. “He’s grown. After ten thousand years, Rayse has actually learned something. That terrifies me. Because I can’t anticipate what he will do.”

    “Then what?”

    “We need to reread the contract between him and Dalinar,” Wit said. “Now.”

    Jasnah had a copy nearby, but before she’d opened her ledger, a pounding on a <nearish> door, real this time, drew her attention. She passed out of the bedroom, through the sitting room, and eased open the outer door to reveal <Hemnid> of the Cobalt Guard. A man with discretion to match his general poise, she trusted him as much as she trusted any, so she wasn’t bothered as he glanced at Wit as he approached. “What?” she said to him, light spilling from the guardroom into her quarters.

    “Radiant Shallan and Highprince Adolin have something to report,” he whispered. [Brandon: I’m gonna cut that out so you have some anticipation for what’s coming.] “Your uncle has called for a meeting immediately, despite the hour.”

    “Tell him I’ll be there shortly,” she said, then closed the door, looking back into the darkened sitting room towards Wit. [Brandon skips another section.]

    “It should be,” Wit said. “I need to study that contract. There might be loopholes.”

    “And if you didn’t see them?” She said. “You didn’t before.”

    “You’re right,” he said. He took a deep breath. “You’re… you’re right. We need an expert, beyond even my considerable knowledge in the area.”

    “Do you know any?”

    “From your world?” he asked. “Only one, but she and I aren’t on speaking terms. I will, instead, see if I can contract an old friend.”

    Tampa Bay Comic Convention 2023 ()
    #312 Copy

    Tomás Amitrano

    So, in Tress's book, the last illustration is Hoid against Riina and Hoid has a very particular shirt with Mare's Flower. Does that indicate that Kelsier has interest in Lumar or was that just artist's inspiration?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, that is a canon shirt that Wit has, but it's Wit's shirt.

    Tomás Amitrano

    So that's a pun against Kelsier?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah.

    Tampa Bay Comic Convention 2023 ()
    #313 Copy

    cosmere_arg

    I'm here as an "ambassador" of Cosmere Argentina, so, we as a community have a question that we'd like to ask. Have you taken inspiration for a character, a place, community, or whatever on a Latin American society?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. So the main Latin American inspiration would be the Herdazians, but the secondary would be: Lift and her people are based on Bolivian indigenous peoples and kind of what is going on down there, so both in the Stormlight Archive is where I've kinda taken my Latin America inspirations.

    So, I mean, Herdazians is more Mexico than South America, but Lift is Bolivia. Kinda looking into some of the Bolivian Indigenous, and what they would look like and things like that. Obviously, I'm not saying they all act like Lift, but Lift is her own person.

    General Reddit 2023 ()
    #314 Copy

    GeneralRane

    I’m pretty sure maipon sticks originated on Sel. Either they use eating implements from off-world, or the Rosharan audience knows them by a name from off-world.

    Brandon Sanderson

    It's the second. Maipon sticks are actually slightly different, but it's a point of reference his audience would know.

    Footnote: The 'audience' refers to the group that Hoid is telling the story of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter to.
    Sources: Reddit
    YouTube Livestream 57 ()
    #315 Copy

    Christopher Williams

    How do you come up with interesting new races? When do you know that you should consider creating a new race, rather than using one that people are familiar with?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I do use one of the standard races (which is dragons). They haven't appeared a lot in my books, but I just think dragons are cool. And so, I actually built one of the ecologies of my early books that didn't get published around the idea of "well, what would lead to dragons? And what other evolutionary strains would be on a planet that had dragons," and kind of built all around that.

    Miscellaneous 2023 ()
    #316 Copy

    Kingsdaughter613

    Do you know if the GB symbol/Marewill developed together/always intended to resemble one another, or was it ascended fanon?

    Ben McSweeney

    When it was decided that we needed to have a marewill design, I immediately pushed for it to resemble the GB icon. I don't think the original linked-diamonds symbol was intended to resemble a flower, but I wasn't the designer on that one.

    It's possible that Brandon intended them to match from the start, and I was just already on the same page when I got the assignment. I honestly don't recall for sure, I just remember that it clicked quickly.

    Miscellaneous 2023 ()
    #317 Copy

    Ben McSweeney

    The early designs of Shardplate helmets had some options with holes instead of slot visors. These were specifically rejected, and thus all helms (in canon art, so far) have some variation on a slot visor.

    I tried getting 'em in there with Plate, but he's got reasons for the slot shape.

    Miscellaneous 2023 ()
    #318 Copy

    Ben McSweeney

    [The Year of Sanderson Soonie Pup plushie is] not a diagetic pup design, i.e. a Soonie Pup as might be given to Wax's kids. But a plushie like that would be, in many respects, just like any other generic stuffed wolf-dog toy. 

    Miscellaneous 2023 ()
    #319 Copy

    Pagerunner

    And I noticed on the Coppermind that we haven't seen any Feruchemical symbols for [the four unknown Allomantic symbols]. So it's got me wondering if you've designed any Feruchemical symbols to go along with these four Allomantic symbols?

    I know these symbols are used to fill out letters in the actual alphabet, and that there are no canon metals assigned to them; that's not what I'm asking about. I'm more curious if the symbols even exist to round out the Coppermind's table.

    Isaac Stewart

    We created Feruchemical symbols for those four metals at one point, and I think this is the latest.

    General Reddit 2023 ()
    #320 Copy

    u/Lobologo3

    How did Hoid get Elantrian powers and access to the AonDor simply through an invite by Riina?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Just a little help for those in this one: new Hoid-centered epilogue to the 10th anniversary Elantris from ten or so years ago is relevant here. It's not going to tell you the specifics, I'm afraid, but what happened here should be seen in the context of that scene.

    Dragonsteel 2022 ()
    #321 Copy

    Questioner

    I'm really inspired by a lot of the worldbuilding you do and especially some of the amazing planets such as Roshar and Teldain and especially how different they are from our own planet. So how do you come up with these sorts of planets and where do you draw inspiration from to make these amazing other worlds?

    Brandon Sanderson

    When I'm worldbuilding there's a few core principles that I follow. One is this idea that a setting should be like a character, full of quirks and flaws and advantages and all these sorts of things, you should almost have a personality for a setting. But at the same time I'm always looking for something this is going to influence the story in interesting way. What are the great visuals, what are the great conflicts that this inspires. Conflicts are the soul of all storytelling, so looking for great conflicts. But at the end of the day it's also just things I've seen, things I've experienced, like Roshar came from a mix of growing up Nebraska with these really powerful rainstorms. I remember sitting on my front porch once and the rain was blowing the right direction, so it didn't hit me and just watching this rain blow sideways. Like that's an amazing experience with lightning crashing every couple of seconds, and then visiting southern Utah and seeing the great slot canyons, things like the Zion Narrows and things like that and Little Wild Horse and just how beautiful and awe inspiring it was to be in this sort of crack in the earth and looking up and the sky seemed so distant, and those inspired Roshar. So I'm always looking, on of my guiding principles is, I talked about it a little bit earlier, fantasy, I think, should be the most imaginative genre. When I started to sell, when my books came out, I made kind of a, sort of a goal to myself that if I was going to be remembered for one thing I wanted to be remembered as someone who pushed the genre forward into different spaces and in one of places I thought I could do that was in some one the worldbuilding. You know we been kind of lock into the medieval-year-up fantast for a long time, there's a lot of fantastic stories told there. I'm like can we push other directions and can we use a little bit more of the science-fiction world-building that you from a lot of the great science-fiction stories but apply it to fantasy, because we can break the laws of physics in ways that they can't, so that is where it came from.

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    Questioner

    They say a lot of writing is autobiographical, are there any of your characters that are very close to being you but in a fantasy world?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have never like put me into a book, not in the same way that Clive Cussler does and Steven King does and I'd never put anyone that is particularly close to me. I often say that the characters that I empathize with is a mix between Sazed and Jasnah. But I don't know, every character has an equal amount of me and an equal amount of not me. Every character is a blend something I want to explore that is not like myself and something that is very like me. I actually have slightly different answer also, Stephen Leeds is very close to me in that sort of middle manager of a whole bunch of voices in my head, and my son is pointing out and my mother would like me to note this, that Alcatraz uses my voice in humor and so she says she reads Alcatraz and is like "Oh, I hear you!", I think I should be afraid of that.

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    Questioner

    I really loved the Skyward series and now the we know that's wrapping up I want to know, is there more stand-alone science-fiction on the way?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Is there more stand-alone science-fiction on the way, alright. So the answer is there will almost certainly, if fact there better be because we signed for them, be more books in the Skyward Universe that I'm writing with Janci, yes. And that is for the forseable future my project in that kinda YA/new adult space that I been playing with The Reckoner and Skyward, that's the plan for there. That is the only plan for non-Cosmere books other than Dark One that we are doing right now. So anything else that I would plan would be tied to the Cosmere, but you never can tell, like I was not planning one of the Secret Projects, I wasn't planning any of the Secret Projects but one of them is, [Secret Project] Two is a stand-alone science-fictiony sort of thing. So you can never tell what will pop out, I have no current plans other than what we announced but it's me, so who know.

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    Dan Wells

    Can you talk about the person you were pitching with, or is that secret? 

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, I can. It was Joe Michael Straczynski. So Joe attached to it. Super cool guy.

    Dan Wells

    He is the guy that did Babylon 5, among other things.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, he attached to it and he and I went and pitched it together, and it got picked up. But then Joe really got excited by certain aspects of the story, not really by my outline. He really loved the idea of this—he had an idea, he wanted to do something that was very close to Castle, where there is an author in the real world writing books. We would write these fantasy novels and the show would be the fantasy novels. The author was like a character who was channeling and releasing them. Some of this was from the original pitch, but it was a video game in the pitch.

    He was really into this and so much of it changed that I called him up and I was like, "Joe this is nothing like my pitch". And he was like, "yeah I know, I got really really excited". I was like "ughh" and he was like "ughh" and I'm like "what if we just separated them" and he said "that's a great idea". So we just hand shook on, he can take his pitch and sell it, he just took Dark One off it 'cause it was changed so much, and mine just went back into the thing. I don't know if he ever got his made. He was very easy to work with, I'll say that. Very very classy in when I called him and said "this is nothing like my pitch", he was like "yeah I know, I'm sorry, I got really excited".

    Dan Wells

    Well and that’s what happens, that’s what happens in Hollywood. It is such a collaborative industry and a collaborative medium that, you know, whoever has the money and/or authority is the one that is most likely to see their vision made. Which is rarely the author!

    Brandon Sanderson

    It got picked up. They commissioned a pilot from him on that thing. Basically, I said "go do your thing, if this takes off come back to me and I can maybe write the fantasy novels in the real world". I'm totally cool with your concept here, we will just take Dark One's name off of it. Obviously it didn't get picked up, because the show never got made—

    Dan Wells

    Yeah, because we have never seen it.

    Brandon Sanderson

    —and he never came back. Anyway, that was Dark One, was my television pitch. It was multimedia in that I planned a couple of epic fantasy novels to tie in, but that was kind of like the television show was the thing.

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    Madness Lemon

    What exactly do the humans that serve Xisis do? He promises that they would have engaging work. But would that just entail maintaining his home beneath the spores? Or assisting in his research?

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were select individuals who assist with the research. And he is studying the water cycle and the decomposition of the spores at the bottom of the ocean and is very, very interested in that. And some of those who work with him are allowed into that work, as well. Some just take care of things. Certain individuals may not be of a temperament to ever do more than that.

    Madness Lemon

    How honest can we assume he was being when talking about how his slaves are treated?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Pretty honest. Dragons on Yolen are deities, and they view themselves as deities. They are generally quite trustworthy in the way that they say things, but they are also quite imperious, as a general rule. Because you are an immortal being that is worshiped as a god, and that gets in your head and does things to you.

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    Lotus

    If you looked at a spore under a microscope, what would it look like? Would it be like an Earth's fungus spore? Or would they look totally different?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I have imagined, depending on the spore, them being different. We'll go with this as a non-canon answer right now. But I've imagined verdant looking a lot like a fungal spore that you would see. Some of the weird bacteria shapes and virus shapes, but larger (obviously) than that. But others, I imagine looking like sand, like pieces of sand. And yet others being more, like, perfect little sphere beads. Like, the Midnight Essence ones, just little tiny perfect dots, and things like that. So it really depends on the spore. They all, I think, will be different.

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    Escovar

    The Iriali left at least three hundred years prior to Tress's story. Xisis was said to have been on Lumar for at least three hundred years, by Crow's book. Is the arrival of Xisis and departure of the Iriali significantly related?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I did that intentionally, yes.

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    Howard Lyon

    At what point when you were writing it [Tress] did you know that you were going to release it?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wasn't sure. I wrote it; I didn't know I was gonna do any others, at this point. All I knew is: I had this really great idea, I wanted to practice Hoid's voice, and I wanted to make a gift for my wife. So I did it, not knowing that there would be any others or anything to it. And not knowing if I would release it in ten years or the next year.

    I had an instinct that I would eventually release it, but only if Emily wanted to. This was a gift for her; I told her, "You can keep this forever and never have it be released, if that's what you would like. Or you can have it as one copy that you only lend to your friends that is bound in one single volume." And she didn't want to do any of those. She did want to share it. But I had no idea when I was writing it.

    It was Secret Project Four that I'm like, "No, this is something I want to do." That was when I'm thinking, "Maybe I'll do a Kickstarter, or something like that." And Secret Project Four, then, was written for the fans, rather than... One and Three are basically the real gifts to my wife. One and Three are ones that are written specifically because of things she said, for her as a person. Two was written a little more for me, even though I gave it to her as a gift, because it's just like, "I wanna do this goofy thing. It's just a thing I wanna do."

    And then Four was written for the fans. Four was, I'm like, "If I'm gonna do a year of Sanderson, I want to have one of the books be a legitimate moving forward of the Cosmere involving some things that they will want to know about," because it's setting up important stuff for later on. I thought a long time about that one. The others were kind of just like, "This is what I feel like writing right now." And that one was, "I want to have a large piece to the puzzle, rather than a small piece to the puzzle." And so Four is for you. And Four is the one that I think is, in that regard, the least general interest. That one, I worry a little bit; it does stand on its own, but it's the only one I worry about, if you haven't read any of my other books, picking up, being like, "What is this?" The rest of them, I feel like you can just pick up and it's a great introduction work. Four, I'm not as certain on.

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    Questioner

    Did you significantly adjust the number of Cosmere references in Tress of the Emerald Sea once your wife suggested you share this book? Was your first draft of Tress more or less Cosmere aware?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It was roughly exactly as it is. The later drafts of Tress fixed the ending. All the pieces were there, but it just wasn't quite clicking. So I rebuilt the ending; that's the biggest thing that I did. Tress was a little more discovery-written than a lot of my books, and if you discovery write, a lot of times your endings need some work. So I spent a lot of revision on that.

    And then polishing the prose was the other thing. Because it's Hoid, writing form his viewpoint's just a little harder than writing a normal viewpoint, and required some extra work to make sure that the prose felt Hoid-ish without being so in-your-face that it ruined the book for too many people.

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    EogelAorist

    We know that, at least as late as Stormlight Archive, Hoid can't physically hurt people. Does Riina not know that? Or did Hoid regain that ability by the time of Tress? Or does she just not want to risk it, in case he can do something to her that wouldn't technically count as harming?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is the last one. Plus, Hoid's very good at doing things to people that do not involve harming them that can get around his particular brand of Torment, and she would fall into being someone that it would be easy to do some of those things to.

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    RShara

    How does Lumar still have water if the aethers use up any of it (which seems to be most of it) that falls on the aether seas? How does water get back into the system?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I mentioned earlier, water cycle is the weirdest part, even more so than the moons. I will say that, as part of the decomposition of the aethers, the water reenters the system. I'll give you that much.

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    Some Anonymous

    Back when Tress was first announced, you said that you were imagining the moons and seas as being arranged like the faces of a d12 die. Did the "scientists" who you asked about this ever figure out a way to make this work? Or are the moons something we just have to accept under the rule of cool?

    Brandon Sanderson

    The moons on Lumar cannot exist without magical intervention. They simply can't. And I'm okay with that; I'm okay, like I said, with some of these planets... We're gonna do other things in the Cosmere that just cannot exist without magical intervention, because otherwise I'd might as well be writing a straight hard science fiction series. And there are lots of great straight hard science fiction series out there that try to extrapolate what things would actually be like. With me, I am trying to create a really interesting environment you haven't seen before, and then ask what that does to the people, realistically, who live there, if that makes sense.

    I do treat it seriously. This is canon; those moons are there. But how are the moons there? Cosmereological phenomenon that is impossible in our universe.

    Some Anonymous

    How high up are the moons away from the planet? Closer to hundreds of miles, like the ISS? Tens of thousands of miles, geosynchronous orbits? If you have that thought out?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We have discussed it, and I think I'm gonna RAFO it for now. I will say: my current impression is, definitely not as close as the ISS. But not so far, like... One of my inspirations, if you didn't pick up on it already, is obviously Anne McAffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books. Which, if you haven't read those, there are two planets that pass very close to each other, and when they do, dangerous environmental hazards pass from one planet to the other, risking extinction on the habited planet. And I've always loved that setup. And this is a little bit inspired by that. And I don't know how far apart those are, but I'm gonna say: I think it's further than the ISS. But who knows?

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    Adam Horne

    When he [Isaac] and I were talking, and he told me that it [the planet name] was Lumar, I was like, "Oh, that's like 'lunar,' just with an 'm.'" Is that something that crossed your mind? Was that intentional? Were you okay with that?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, that's part of why I liked it. But he has some very good rationale for the name, and I'll maybe let him tell that story at some point. But he kind of gave me the explanation.

    He looks out for you guys, because I don't always name the worlds when I write stories like this, because I'm like, "They just call it the world. They don't name their world." Our world is named Earth because earth is dirt, right? Isaac always pushes me and says "all right, let's name this world. Let's name this one." I come up with them sometimes; sometimes, he comes up with them.

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    jofwu

    What does the Cognitive Realm of Lumar look like?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'm gonna RAFO that for now. I've been playing a little bit with the Cognitive Realm on some of these planets, so I will RAFO it for now. Basically, asking, "Do we still have the same inversion going on?" And I'm gonna say it's a little weirder than normal. (And Shadesmar's often a little weird.)

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    Striker EZ

    Is there any chance we could get a map for this world [Lumar] at some point?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's a good idea. We maybe should have done that. The issue is, running that through continuity... We should do it someday. But it's gonna take a little extra work just to make sure on the continuity on that one. So yeah, there is a chance you could get a map on this.

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    Zabeesh

    If the moons are constantly pouring out spores, how do the oceans not fill up? Do they degrade eventually, or is there another method?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, they degrade eventually. I'll be perfectly frank with you: my science on this, I have not gone to all of my normal science routes. The only one of the Secret Projects that we did a lot of the scientific work on is Four, because of how tied into the rest of the Cosmere it is. I have some sort of plausible wiggle room on Book One, because Hoid is telling the story, and he can get some things wrong.

    Where I am right now is: the seethe is partially involved in the way that the spores degrade. And that's part of what causes it; you've got this decomposition of a fantastical sort happening deep down, and that that is causing the seethe. But I have not run the science on this.

    All of my books straddle on this continuum between fully scientific and fully fantastical. And I tend to sit over on this side [scientific], where Stormlight, I'm gonna work out all of these things. But I write fantasy, and once in a while I want to stray into the whimsical. And I purposefully did it on Tress; I'm gonna push the boundaries of what I can do and still have it be reasonable that it could exist with fantastical resources, and go kind of as far whimsical as I feel comfortable doing.

    That isn't to say that you should consider this non-canon; it is absolutely canon. But what it means is, I didn't start with "what's the science of this?" I started with "what is the really interesting story I want to tell, and let's tell the story there." And if it comes down that the science just can't work; well, the answer is: "A wizard did it." I have enough access to fantastical explanations for the things that happen that I can make this work." But it is me pushing the boundaries of that.

    So, know that I've got general impressions. Such as: spores are degrading. The way that they're degrading is actually causing the seethe. Much in a kind of an accelerated version of how methane comes up through decomposition, and that's what we're doing. But the water cycle is really tricky; I have some instincts on how that works, but I'm not even gonna talk about them, because I don't wanna canonize that, 'cause the water cycle's a really tricky thing on this planet, in particular.

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    The Sixth Scholar

    Where does Tress take place in the overall Cosmere timeline? The telling of the story, not the story itself; or both, if you want to answer.

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is a RAFO. My goal right now is to get you a coordinated Cosmere timeline of books by the time I start Stormlight Six. But we will see. I've promised that for years, and I keep pushing it back.

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    Ladder Contact 6814

    What are the other six types of spores we didn't get to see in the book? Were there any that you really wanted to include, but couldn't?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No. When I've written books, I tend to gravitate toward a couple of the aethers that are really the most dynamic for action scenes and things like that. Some of the other aethers are there for the necessity of the future of the Cosmere. For instance: zephyr, while very useful in this for firing cannons and stuff, is really there so that we can have propellant in space by just-add-water and make yourself some extra propellant. And atmosphere; kind of a low-tech (there's better-tech ways), but a low-tech way to: "hey, we've got zephyr aether, it makes breathable air. And so, if we've got water and a barrel of this stuff, then we'll be able to breathe." So there are some of the aethers that are there for that sort of reason, so that we can have pneumatic weaponry and some easy access to emergency propellant in space, and stuff like that.

    But verdant is the one that I just keep coming back to, that one and roseite, as making for the most dynamic storytelling. We'll see what I do with some of the others. I'm not gonna answer what the ones I haven't mentioned are, because I am saving them for future books to be used and to be interesting and engaging with them.

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    Scotch the Piper

    Who is Hoid, as the narrator, telling the story [Tress] to?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That is a RAFO in that I believe it is evident in the books. Well... I believe some of it is evident. Not the specific individuals, but this far enough in the future of the Cosmere that I don't want to talk about individuals he might be speaking to. You can figure out the general tone; and people have. It was very clear, I think, to fans when they started posting. So you can ask on a fan forum, if you want them to give their thoughts; but I'm not gonna speak more than that.

    There's stuff that is relating to all of this that I can't even talk about yet, because it gives too many spoilers. I'll be able to talk about them soon. Give me a couple years, and I can start talking more about timeline and when certain things are happening that I just can't do at the moment because of certain spoilerific reasons.

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    Brandon Sanderson

    With Lost Metal in particular, I brought in a whole thing that we haven't written a book on yet. One of the big worries is: I don't want people to ever pick up one of my books (even still) and feel like they have to have read the whole Cosmere to understand it. And with the gloves off, I still maintain that. I still maintain that if you're gonna read the Wax and Wayne series, you should be able to read and enjoy it without feeling like you're lost because of the Cosmere connections. And I feel like, as a writer, I am skilled enough to say: here is this cool thing that a person is doing, they're from another planet. And introduce it as if it's brand new in a way that's both not boring but also not confusing, and just let it happen in the book. And that's what's happening in Tress with some of the things.

    The aethers are not from her planet; they are somewhere else. And dragon's not from her planet. Some of the stuff that's happening relating to Elantris, not from her planet. But I feel like it works in the context of the story, and it doesn't feel confusing. You don't feel like you're left out. Hopefully. My goal is that, when you read those other books, you're like "oh, that's where this came from," rather than reading this book and feeling lost.

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    Brandon Sanderson

    My goal with the Secret Projects was to be like: this is a self-contained thing. I've gotten myself into trouble in the past by writing a book like Warbreaker and then promising a sequel. And so my goal with these was to write them each so they didn't demand sequels. I had various levels of success, I'll say, on that with them. While you'll probably catch references to this [Tress], I have no plans to do a sequel. I like this one self-contained as it is. And the same for Secret Project Three.

    [Secret Project] Two is not Cosmere, but Dan and I have already brainstormed sequels; I don't know that we'll ever do them. It grew out of the podcast a little bit, that book did, and the whole setting.

    And then Secret Project Four is more deeply tied into the Cosmere in very specific ways. It's most likely... whether there'll be a sequel or not is a question, but the characters involved are deeply involved in the rest of the Cosmere, so you will absolutely see them again.

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    Love That Dog

    Most of your books have an Ars Arcanum at the end, but Tress didn't. Was this a deliberate choice to leave the magic/aethers more open-ended for the future? Or to fit with the fairy tale style?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I kind of want Tress to be a little bit of an in-world artifact. This is Hoid telling this story, and it's supposed to feel like the story that he told to some people that got recorded and written down and published for you. And Khriss (who writes the Ars Arcanums) is not involved in that. And it didn't feel appropriate for any of the Secret Projects to do that. So we replaced that with, kind of, my author's discussion of where the book came from, and things like that.

    So you can kind of imagine: in most of the books, the Ars Arcanum is an in-world artifact stapled to the end of the novel, which is not. This is reversed: the novel's an in-world artifact, and you have stapled to the end something that's not in-world.

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    Ben McSweeney

    There's more than one option out there for fletching, just as there has been historically. It's just that I expect feathers would be unusual (though not unheard of).

    Footnote: This is a comment on a previous quote about arrow fletching on Roshar
    Sources: Reddit
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    Questioner

    We have these moons [on Lumar], they're so very large, you have the seas that look and function so differently. Is it like an atmospheric bubble they're in? How does it work when you cross from one sea to the other. The spores are touching, there's different coloring, how does that section off so distinctly?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So it's kind of interesting, I kind of got some of this, the way I look at these seas, from real world oceans where two wave forms meet, saltwater and non saltwater meeting. And there's actually kind of a weirdly regular line between them that gets maintained. (And obviously, then, they mix, because they're both just water.) But that line was really fascinating to me.

    What's going on in my mind (and I haven't run this past the Arcanists), but the idea is that enough is falling from these spores, that as they're kind of mixing, they're also kind of going down underenath, and you've got the decomposition of the spores (which is part of what's causing the seethe) and all of these sorts of things.

    They do kind of mix. The line, it would look pretty regular from someone standing up on a ship and looking at it. But if you got close, you'd see more spore mixing and even blending pretty far in. But, then those spores are getting pushed underneath by the new spores that are coming, and the new layers, and then those spores are dying off at the bottom of the ocean and things like that.

    That's how I'm doing it in my head, at least how I'm justifying getting that kind of creepy line that you get, even in the real world between different bodies of water meeting. But, again, I haven't run that past the Arcanists. That's how it's working in my head.

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    ADHD Projects

    Do we see Allomancy in this book [Tress of the Emerald Sea]?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I don't believe you do

    Chaotic Forager

    Do we see Allomancy but not Allomancy?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Potentially. This is what I was working on 3 years ago. I am on the Stormlight world right now, writing Szeth flashback scenes. But I don't believe you see any Allomancy in this book. You're talking about emotional Allomancy?

    ADHD Projects

    Yes.

    Brandon Sanderson

    No? Hmm... *hems and haws for a long time*

    The only question mark... So, Hoid is not using emotional Allomancy on anybody, how about that?

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    Brandon Sanderson

    Book One was White Sand.

    Book Two was Star's End.

    Book Three was called Lord Mastrell. It was the sequel to White Sand.

    Book Four was Knight Life.

    Book Five was The Sixth Incarnation of Pandora, the weird cyberpunk think that I did a reading from a while ago.

    Book Six was Elantris.

    Book Seven was Dragonsteel.

    Book Eight was White Sand, rewritten.

    Book Nine was Mythwalker, that I never finished. Fabrials came from Mythwalker. Siri and Vivenna came from Mythwalker. I threw that one to the wood chipper and took a lot of the ideas. It had a really bad magic system that some day I want to fix.

    Then there was Aether of Night, which was the introduction of the aethers. Aethers are still canonical to the cosmere. They will show up.

    And then there was Mistborn Prime and Final Empire Prime, which are the two "I'm gonna be George R. R. Martin for a day" books.

    And then I gave up on that and I wrote Way of Kings Prime.

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    Dan Wells

    I wrote the worst piece of Warhammer fantasy fan fiction and turned it in as a thesis and passed, and it is bound and in the BYU library.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, but it did something really cool: it inspired Jasnah. Because the main character was a historian, and I thought that was so cool, to write a fantasy novel about a historian, that it planted a seed, and I'm like, "I'm gonna do that someday."