Recent entries

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4902 Copy

    yulerule

    Are Inquisitor spikes, kandra Blessings and koloss spikes interchangeable?  Like if you it spiked in a different way--

    Brandon Sanderson

    *Hesitant* You could make that work and it wouldn't be that hard. But just as they are, no.

    yulerule

    Would nothing happen or would weird stuff happen?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Weird stuff would happen

    *pause*

    But that one's not very hard to make work.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4903 Copy

    yulerule

    Can you reuse a spike?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. Uh, yes, technically, but not as easily as that question makes it sound.

    yulerule

    Can you re-use it if it's for the same exact thing or for a different thing? Will that change?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Spikes are going to get keyed by Identity--

    yulerule

    So you can't already spike that person. But if you spike and don't kill them can you spike the same person again?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah and if you can somehow strip the identity of the person or the spike-- So yes you can use them again but it comes into a sort of-- Like, you can't just take that spike and spike somebody else.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4904 Copy

    Argent

    Was the reason the Listeners or the parsh people turned into parshmen, was that because Ba-Ado-Mishram was imprisoned by the Radiants? That she was Connected to all of them?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, yeah, yeah. That plays into what happened there.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4905 Copy

    Argent

    Back in ['14] you referred to Honor's Purposes to me at one point. Is that still a thing in the cosmere?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Honor's purpose?

    Argent

    Honor's purposes. You referred to ten of them. Using the concept of Shardic numbers. But I don't have that on record, I don't know anything about it, it's been a confusing topic ever since.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So that's still a deal. It just plays into the ten names of the Almighty and the ten attributes of the Fools and the ten attributes of the Almighty.

    Argent

    Are Purposes something every shard has?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I wouldn't say-- No. It's playing more into the nature of Honor itself.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4906 Copy

    Questioner

    Rosharans are good with math, because you did the whole... They're aware of the normal distribution and all that. So, do like, complex numbers, imaginary numbers, do they live in the Cognitive Realm? And would prime [numbers] be the brighteyes of the Cognitive Realm?

    Brandon Sanderson

    We will get into this. I would say--I've actually thought about this--that right now, there are spren that kind of represent abstract mathematics but not individual concepts within abstract mathematics. Like when you draw a spren that represents creativity, it's not necessarily divided into, "Painting," even though some of them may edge in that direction. So you could perhaps find a spren where you go, "Oh!"

    Questioner

    I just want to see pi and phi arguing.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4907 Copy

    Ravi

    Does [Nazh] ever have any arguments with Khriss?

    Isaac Stewart

    All the time.

    Ravi

    But, they're basically best friends anyway right?

    Isaac Stewart

    I don't know about that, I'd have to ask Brandon. But I imagine that they get along pretty well and he feels okay being grumpy around her.

    Ravi

    So it's not like Mythbusters where they're only friends on TV but not actually friends in real life?

    Isaac Stewart

    I would imagine it's not like that.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4908 Copy

    Mrs. Jofwu

    At the end of Calamity, I was wondering if the Prof and [David] together repair their relationship. They were kind of built up as a father/son kind of--

    Brandon Sanderson

    If I do any more books in direct sequence, what's going on with Prof would be be a factor in them. So I'm going to RAFO this just because I am planning...

    Apocalypse Guard will not be a straight up follow up, but a sidestep, but I might do one someday.

    Mrs. Jofwu

    ...Does he ever get the chance to build a relationship with Tavi in another reality, similar to how David does with his father?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll give you a RAFO card on all of that.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4909 Copy

    Argent

    ...The reason Odium dealt with the Selish Shards in the way that he did, whether that was primarily because he was inexperienced in Splintering and so he knew that he wanted nobody to take the Shards--

    Brandon Sanderson

    There were better ways he could have done what he did.

    Argent

    And he then learned at least a little bit better?

    Brandon Sanderson

    He learned at least a little bit better.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4910 Copy

    Argent

    How do visions in the cosmere work? And I'm thinking Realmatically.

    Brandon Sanderson

    So almost always [it's] glimpsing into the Spiritual Realm. But you are often seeing it through the Cognitive, and so like a vision that...

    So like the vision that Dalinar sees. What's going on is-- being pulled, and kind of stretched a little bit through the Realms, into the Spiritual Realm.  Where a Cognitive construct is adding a framework to seeds that are set in place.

    Argent

    So that you can kind of comprehend the Spiritual?

    Brandon Sanderson

    You can comprehend-- and also there's a little bit of a life to it. Meaning it can respond to you and things like this, to an extent. So imagine, it kind of works like an AI. Imagine there's some-- You've got that power in the Spiritual Realm and you're adding a framework to it, that it is shining through, and that is giving you the vision. Complicated, I know. Spiritual Realm is supposed to be weird, and we aren't supposed to quite comprehend it, but that's why we've got the Cognitive framework there.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4914 Copy

    Argent

    Do any of the characters in The Stormlight Archive share a familial relationship that we don't know about? Considering that we know about Jezrien and Ash. Not necessarily Heralds but--

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, Yes. No more on that.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4917 Copy

    Argent

    Are mandras gravityspren?

    Brandon Sanderson

    *Very hesitantly* Nooooo? Kind of-- So the actual gravityspren, you're talking about the things Kaladin saw stuck to a wall? Those are not mandras.

    Argent

    Oh no, I was thinking about the ones that appear around dead chasmfiends.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, dead chasmfiends, yes. The arrowheads, yeah.

    Argent

    But you're saying those are not gravityspren? They're mandras?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So the things Kaladin saw stuck to the wall are not gravityspren, right. So I want to make sure.-- So arrowhead spren, that Shallan is philosophizing, theorizing about, are mandras.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4918 Copy

    Argent

    Do Feruchemical metalminds experience physical change such as wear and tear, due to just being used as Feruchemical metalminds

    Brandon Sanderson

    Never thought of it.

    Argent

    Do you want to make up canon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Sure...

    Argent

    Half-canon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let's say half-canon. Wear and tear being used as metalminds, not counting clasping them on and things like that. Simply tapping or taking out? I would say no, but I would really have to think about that. Are we losing any particles to the transfer, the change? I don't think you are, but I don't know. I'd have to really dig into the physics of that. I had not even considered of that. There are ramifications of things-- So I'm going to say no, half-canon.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4920 Copy

    Argent

    How many waves of human populations have migrated to Roshar? So I'm thinking the Ashynites coming from Ashyn, right? Was that just the only humans that ever came as a population?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It depends on if you count the Iriali?

    Argent

    That's specifically the one I'm thinking of.

    Brandon Sanderson

    They came in a separate migration.

    Argent

    Not from Ashyn?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Not from Ashyn.

    Argent

    From whatever the Third Land was.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4921 Copy

    Argent

    Lightsong's personality is very different than Stennimar's. If the Returned are their previous lives--Cognitive Shadows as you've said before, just stapled with Divine Breath--where do their new personalities come from?

    Brandon Sanderson

    My argument there is when I was writing him, getting into a kind of writer-thing, this is the person he would have become... My philosophy there was, the way that the Returned happen, and you losing your memories, it comes down to this nature versus nurture thing for me. The personality-- He is the same person, but with certain life experiences removed. Different circumstances. And in his case, that resulted in, let's say, a secondary mode of personality that had never been encouraged before.

    Just like how, you put me in the right situation I'm an extrovert, but in a lot of situations I'm an introvert. So you remove a lot of the cultural conditioning and that is who he becomes.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4922 Copy

    Argent

    Spren grant control over surges because surges are perceived as fundamental powers on Roshar. Would other Cognitive beings grant different powers based on what they perceive to be fundamental? Such as electromagnetism is on Earth?

    Brandon Sanderson

    It is plausible, although this was set up in a specific way.

    Argent

    By Honor or Adonalsium?

    Brandon Sanderson

    RAFO on that. Set up might be the wrong word. There were seeds that caused this to happen the way it did.

    Argent

    The Surgebinding thing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, specifically... Those influenced what people perceived as fundamental forces.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4925 Copy

    Argent

    Would Aons work even better if they were drawn with a cartographer's or calligrapher's attention to detail? ...If you draw a map of Arelon?

    Brandon Sanderson

    *long pause* Yes and no. The answer really is, it depends. I'm going to say, on average, yes. 

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4926 Copy

    Questioner

    It is said by a spren, Syl, that everything has a spren. Does aluminum have a spren? 

    Brandon Sanderson

    Does aluminum have a spren? This is a good question for philosophers in world. I would say the majority of them would say yes, its just a very isolated and unresponsive spren. There are some who would say no, it is the dead material, that has no spren, but others would argue that a dead material with no spren would just disintegrate to death, so aluminum is kind of a strange duck. 

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4927 Copy

    Argent

    If two Surgebinders are next to each other in the Physical Realm and their spren are with them, chatting or whatever. Would this proximity be reflected in Shadesmar somehow? For example if there's a third Surgebinder in the same physical location, but in Shadesmar. Would they be able to deduce that this is what the physical-

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, theoretically possible. 

    Argent

    Maybe difficult?

    Brandon Sanderson

    I'll dig into the mechanics. Not necessarily though.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4930 Copy

    Argent

    Voidbinding, and what Renarin does, we are still very confused about how much--

    Brandon Sanderson

    I am happy that you are very confused about that, because I haven't explained it very much.

    Argent

    Ok.

    Brandon Sanderson

    And Renarin didn't figure it out very much.

    Argent

    And he hasn't figured out it much, yeah. And we're not even sure whether he's a Voidbinder.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes.

    Argent

    He's probably a Voidbinder, right. Then I'm not going to ask you that, because you're going to say RAFO.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yup.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4931 Copy

    Argent

    Khriss believes that the reason Preservation is experiencing a slow death is because Ruin is not strong enough to Splinter Preservation.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yeah, that is a theory.

    Argent

    Yeah, that's what she thinks. Does she think that this is because of Ruin's trapped power, or because of an inherent difference in the strength levels of Shards?

    Brandon Sanderson

    She thinks it is more along the lines of a matter of leveraging power as the power is-- The things that happen made it harder for him to leverage his power.

    Trapped is a good enough term.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4933 Copy

    yulerule

    Have all the spikes been collected? You have a bunch of dead Inquisitors, you've got the koloss at the end of Mistborn.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Have they all been collected?

    yulerule

    Or are they just lying around, or did they--

    Brandon Sanderson

    There are some that have been lost.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4934 Copy

    Brandon Sanderson

    Let me set up this piece for you. Let me see if I can--I'm gonna look at the file and see when I first started writing this piece-- The master computer, that if you ran away with you would get all of my secrets. *crowd laughs* Nope, it says created when I created this new computer, so that doesn't help me.

    But this is old. This is like 8 years old. Maybe 9 years old? And this is a story that I started writing-- You can date it by-- because you guys have been waiting for it. You can date it by when I told people I had written this thing in interviews. So it may be 2010, I dunno. You'll be able to find out I think by looking through the interview archive.

    I wrote this thing that is very cosmere-aware. It's very kind of inside-- sort of a little bit self indulgent. And I wrote it, I'm like, "I'm gonna post this on my website." And then I thought, "No, this gives away too much. I can't post this on my website, and so I'm not going to finish it. We're going to wait." But now most of the stuff that it gave away then has come out in things like Secret History and stuff like that, so now I can actually read it. So I called this "The Traveler."

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4938 Copy

    Pagerunner

    The cracked stone spren that we saw, we didn't get a name for them, are they the Stoneward spren?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes-- Oh wait, yes.

    Pagerunner

    Do they have a name you can canonize right now?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, I don't.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4940 Copy

    yulerule

    Can you Forge liquids, like-- Does that go into Bloodsealing, can you change their blood type?

    Brandon Sanderson

    OK, can you use Forgery to, say, change someone's blood type? Yes. Can you Forge liquids? A little harder to stamp liquids, so this kind of comes down to, can you--

    yulerule

    Like, if you have a glass of water and you put salt in the water can you Forge it or make it and make it--

    Brandon Sanderson

    This is possible, but it requires a few little workarounds. Obviously you can do it because you Forge somebody, and they're mostly liquid.

    yulerule

    But you're putting in on a hard surface.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes, in the same way that you would with thr liquid you would probably--

    yulerule

    Touch some ice?

    Brandon Sanderson

    No, you would probably take the cup, and make it part of the whole, and if you can-- Remember in the cosmere, it depends on how you view a thing. Is it a whole? Do you view this as a cup of water, or do you view it as a cup and the water? Do you view a person as a vessel and the blood inside them, or together as a person? And that perception really affects your magic. So it's possible, for instance, to Forge a cup of water, Forging just the cup is easier than Forging just the water.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4942 Copy

    Questioner

    Can you Hemalurgy Aviar? 

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes. You could. 

    Questioner

    So you could take a Aviar Hemalurgic spike and put it on a cat and make a Aviar cat?

    Brandon Sanderson

    See, this is where it gets-- you heard the asterisk in my-- These sorts of things-- It wouldn't do what you wanted to. But this is possible. 

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4943 Copy

    Billy Todd

    How closely does Adonalsium map to the gnostic demiurge?

    Brandon Sanderson

    A little bit.

    Billy Todd

    So, not completely? I'm not completely off?

    Brandon Sanderson

    That's not off at all. 

    Billy Todd

    So, not the urge, but the demiurge. 

    Brandon Sanderson

    Oh, well I'll have to go read to make sure what I'm talking about then. Your answer is: I will go read and make sure I know. I thought I knew what I was talking about.

    Billy Todd

    So, there's the creator, which is the urge, which is the creator of the Universe. *large hand gesture* The demiurge is actually God. The demiurge is the one that creates [its] universe, *small hand gesture inside larger gesture* and entities living within the universe need knowledge of that which is beyond what the demiurge has created.

    Brandon Sanderson

    Okay, that matches pretty well.

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4948 Copy

    WinespringBrother

    When Veil went to Mraize's lair, she saw a vial of white sand. Was there a reason that it didn't turn black?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Yes

    WinespringBrother

    Can you tell me that reason?

    Brandon Sanderson

    So, sand will turn white in the presence of certain kinetic usage of Investiture. 

    WinespringBrother

    Okay, so that was what Veil was doing?

    Brandon Sanderson

    Depends on how loud the Investiture is, that sand-- that sand just absorbed some of the Stormlight. I'll just be be clear with you, yeah... It was not the stuff that Veil was doing. 

    JordanCon 2018 ()
    #4950 Copy

    Questioner

    I know that with Harmony, he has difficulty interacting because he holds two Shards. Did Adonalsium, since he had all these other personality traits, also have issues directly interfering? 

    Brandon Sanderson

    A RAFO! Good question. I've never been asked that question before.