Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Reddit AMA 2011 (Verbatim)

How often is a "weeping" in Way of Kings?

Once a year. Opposite it in the year is an extremely powerful highstorm.

eri pl

When, relatively to the events in Way of Kings is/will be the nearest Weeping? (I ask, because I started wondering, if this powerful storm was, coincidentally, the one, during which... you know... the face in the clouds and all that.)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Well, there are ten months in year. If I haven't mentioned dates in the last book (I may or may not have) I am planning to in the next. So a timeline should be possible for fans to figure out...

stormlight archive,

Weller Book Works Signing - Josh & Mi'ch (Verbatim)

So, do the Parshendi need a highstorm to change forms?

They do, good guess! Excellent question.

QUESTION

Do they eat?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Do they eat? Yes.

QUESTION

So, they eat like grains and stuff like that?

BRANDON SANDERSON

You will find out, but they do eat.

parshendi, highstorms, forms, stormlight archive,

WOR Signing Table Q&A (Verbatim)

I was wondering, on Roshar, what sort of plants and animals do they use for fabrics, since they don't have a lot of wooly animals and the plants are different?

Most of them are plant-based. I think I've mentioned one of the plants.

EHyde

They have silk though, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's called sea-silk, they grow it in the water. It comes from the coasts.

EHyde

So they don't have anything like our silk, then?

Brandon Sanderson

If you looked at it, you would call it silk, but it is being produced in a very different way.

EHyde

Our silk comes from insect cocoons, and they have a lot of that there, but they don't use it for fiber at all?

Brandon Sanderson

Insect cocoons on Roshar are either, they melt in water from the highstorm cycle, or they have stone in them, so they don't work really well for textiles. There are certain rockbuds you can shred the inside of the shell to get a textile, there's sea silk that grows out in the ocean, and there are other plants of a similar nature.

EHyde

I was also wondering about the Steel Alphabet in the Mistborn books, each letter aesthetically looks like it's built from a cuff, a spike, and a bead, and was that intentional to reflect the magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Do remember that that writing system was developed by the Final Empire. They actually took the ancient Terris symbols and made them more to their aesthetic over time.

roshar, terris, stormlight archive, mistborn,

WoR Signing Report - Argent (Verbatim)

The ketek in the first book (Above the Silence, the illuminating storms - dying storms - illuminate the silence above), it seems like this refers to Honor's death.

Mmhmm.

Question

What does "Above the Silence" refer to?

Brandon Sanderson

Above a silent land.

Question

And the second ketek, in Words of Radiance, similarly refers to the highstorm and the Everstorm... Is there more to it?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's by Navani about the two.

WOR Signing Report - IronCaf (Paraphrased)

How did you come up with the geography on Roshar?

The geography on Roshar was developed as a natural outgrowth of the highstorm, which was the first concept for Roshar, which was inspired by the storm of Jupiter, which was me wanting to tell a story about a world with a continual magical storm. And then I built the ecology and all of these things up from that. Roshar had to grow up--I had to find a mechanism by which stone was deposited by rain, because I felt that the constant weathering over that long of a time would leave no continents. So the crem was my kind of scientific-with-one-foot-in-magic hack on keeping the continent. So the continent does drift. They don't have plate tectonics. The continent actually moves as it gets weathered on the east and gets pushed that direction over millennia of time.

roshar, weather, geography,

WOR Signing Table Q&A (Verbatim)

What information do Stormwardens use to predict Highstorms?

Um, many things, some of which is necessary to the process and some of which is not. But previous highstorm arrival is a very big part of it, and highstorms from previous years, most recent highstorms, and if they can get when the highstorm left the other side, that's a calculation that will help them, and things like this.

stormwardens, highstorms,

Barnes & Noble (Newnan)

In Mistborn Vin had a set of sapphire jewelry. If Demoux had brought those to Roshar, would become infused in a highstorm?

Yes.

Scadrian gems, infusion,

Shadows of Self-Oak Brook, IL

What happens if you put Shardplate in a highstorm? If you are in Shardplate and you go out into a highstorm... A:

You're pretty well protected, but a boulder flying through the air can still do some major damage to a person in Shardplate.

Tags

Calamity-Seattle

Can Vasher draw Breath from a highstorm?

I will answer that eventually... You know what, yes he can. Not Breath though, he can draw Investiture the way he needs it.

Vasher, breath, investiture, stormlight,

Brandon Sanderson RAFOlympics at JordanCon 8 (Verbatim)

This whole talk of both Roshar and the highstorms, I’m glad that you said they predate the Shattering. There are some people on 17th Shard that believe the entire continent is crem that’s accumulated, one highstorm at a time.

Good. Let me actually squish that one a little bit because there are mineral deposits that have been mentioned that you have to mine, and crem...there is actual ferrous iron that you can smelt on Roshar, you have to know how to get to it and things like that, and there are actual gemstone mines and things like that, but they’re much harder to get to and Soulcasting is a stopgap that’s helped with this a lot, but there are actual deposits and things like that.

roshar, crem, soulcasting, shattering,

BYU Bookstore (Paraphrased)

So, say you have a gold/gold Twinborn and they worldhop to Roshar and they study the magic and do the whole Khriss and Nazh thing for a while so that they know a lot about the magic, but they've also left themselves a lot of options with what they can do. So then they manage to pull up a gold shadow of them having actually become a Surgebinder and then kind of meld themselves with that shadow a bunch, could they change their Cognitive Identity enough so that they could, like, tap a lot of Gold and grow the spren and actually be a Surgebinder?

Unfortunately, no. It's a good question, but no. That won't work for a couple of reasons. One of which is simply creating Investiture is not something that can happen, right?

Djarskublar

They are a gold Twinborn, so they can tap a lot of gold...

Brandon Sanderson

They can tap a whole bunch, that's true, they can do that, but simply having it is not gonna create a spren because the spren is from a different god, right, a different Shard.

Djarskublar

So if they had Regrowth cast on them, would that do it?

Brandon Sanderson

hems and haws for a second.

Djarskublar

A really, really big Regrowth like in the middle of a Highstorm.

Brandon Sanderson

Hmmm, this, you are getting to the realm of plausibility at that point. I still don't think gold is the way to do it. I think you just get all that Investiture. It would become sapient by you sticking a whole bunch of Investiture, and then you can bond to that. But it's not like people gain what you would have done. Does that make sense? That's just what's going to happen, is you're gonna, you can create a, potentially create a spren that way, but you are more likely to end up with something like Nightblood. But you could potentially create a spren, but I mean you're just gonna end up...

Djarskublar

So there are more optimal ways to do that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, go bond a spren. (evil grin of course)

Djarskublar

But you can't easily bond multiple, and if you did this you could maybe get multiple.

Brandon Sanderson

Nyeaaahhh... The spren still has to choose. If you want to be a Surgebinder, the choice is being made. You can't fake your way into it. Decision and Honor are too much a part of Surgebinding for you to be able to fake your way into that. Other magics you might be able to do that. Other magics that don't require, like, Surgebinding works because a piece of Honor or Cultivation or a mix has chosen you specifically. There is will from the actual Investiture involved in it in Roshar.

Djarskublar

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

So it's not something you can cheat your way into, right. But cheating your way into Breath might be easier, right.

twinborn, gold, worldhopping, roshar, spren, identity,

La Dimension Fantastique

Question about the stormlight itself : a highstorm, full of stormlight, fills the spheres. Then, the KR use the stormlight or the stormlight evaporates with time. Question : where does the stormlight in highstorms come from ? Is there like a "rain cycle", but for the stormlight ?

the stormlight in the highstorm is transferred from the Spiritual realm through the Stormfather into the highstorm.

stormlight, highstorms, stormfather, investiture, spiritual realm,

Harold Washington Library Center-AU Tour (Paraphrased)

Is it possible that someone could have gotten to the Cognitive Realm on Scadrial without the Well of Ascension?

Yes.