Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

BRANDON SANDERSON

SHECKY X

SHECKY X

BRANDON SANDERSON

LYNN OLIVER

BRANDON SANDERSON

In a recent (May 2009) interview you stated the following:

Q: What do you have planned after you finish Wheel of Time?
A: My next series will be The Way of Kings, which is the start of a big epic for me. I've plotted it as ten books. Fantasy writers, we get into this business because we love the big epics. We grow up reading Brooks and Jordan, and we get to the point where we say, "I want to do this myself."

This should tie you up for a good ten years after you finish The Wheel of Time. Does it mean that you are not going to write anymore one- or three-volume epic fantasy novels?

Can you give us some hints as to what The Way of Kings will be about?

I've told Tor that I want to release Kings on a schedule of two books, followed by one book in another setting, then two more Kings. The series of Kings has been named The Stormlight Archive. (The Way of Kings is the name of the first volume.)

So I should be doing plenty of shorter series in between. We'll see how busy this all keeps me. I think I'd go crazy if I weren't allowed to do new worlds every now and again.

But, then, Kings turned out very, very well. (The first book is complete as of yesterday.) What is it about? Well...I'm struggling to find words to explain it. I could easily give a one or two line pitch on my previous books, but the scope of what I'm trying with this novel is such that it defies my attempts to pin it down.

It happens in a world where hurricane-like storms crash over the land every few days. All of plant life and animal life has had to evolve to deal with this. Plants, for instance, have shells they can withdraw into before a storm. Even trees pull in their leaves and branches. There is no soil, just endless fields of rock.

According to the mythology of the world, mankind used to live in The Tranquiline Halls. Heaven. Well, a group of evil spirits known as the Voidbringers assaulted and captured heaven, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, the world of storms, but the Voidbringers chased them there, trying to push them off of Roshar and into Damnation.

The voidbringers came against man a hundred by a hundred times, trying to destroy them or push them away. To help them cope, the Almighty gave men powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons, known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, men resisted the Voidbringers ten thousand times, finally winning and finding peace.

Or so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world, essentially, is at war with itself—and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.

That's the backstory. Probably too much of it. (Sorry.) The book follows a young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn't understand and doesn't really want to fight. It will deal with the truth of what happened deep in mankind's past. Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?

I've been working on this book for ten years now. Rather than making it easier to describe and explain, that has made it more daunting. I'm sure I'll get better at it as I revise and as people ask me more often. ;)

Yes to both questions. This is not going to be immediately obvious, but the big difficulty was in designing bridges that were mobile but also strong enough to support a cavalry charge. It took a lot of research and talk with my editor, looking at the engineering of it and the physics of the world to actually be able to create these things. I'm sure fans are going to try to diagram them out. That was one aspect of it: how were the bridges going to be set?

I approached this first from a "how would you actually fight on these plains?" direction. But also I wanted to evoke the concept of a terrible siege, with a man running with a ladder toward a wall. And yet that's been done so much. The Shattered Plains came from me wanting to do something new. I liked the idea of battles taking place in a situation that could never exist on our planet, what it would require, what it would take out of the people, and how it would naturally grow. And so I did a lot of reading about siege equipment. I did a lot of reading about weights of various woods, did a lot playing with the length, the span between the chasms, etc. One thing that people should know if they are trying to figure all this out is that Roshar has less gravity than Earth does. This is a natural outgrowth of my requirements both for the bridges and for the size of the creatures that appear in the book—of course they couldn't get that large even with the point-seven gravity that Roshar has, but we also have magical reasons they can grow the size they do. That's one factor to take into account.

Several things. There's a real challenge in this book because I did not want to go the path of The Wheel of Time in which there had been an Age of Legends that had fallen and that the characters were recapturing. Partially because Robert Jordan did it so well, and partially because a lot of fantasy seems to approach that concept. But I did want the idea of a past golden age, and balancing those two concepts was somewhat difficult. I eventually decided I wanted a golden age like existed in our world, such as the golden of Greece and Rome, where we look back at some of the cultural developments etc. and say, "Wow, those were really cool." And yet technologically, if you look at the world back then, it was much less advanced than it is now, though it was a time of very interesting scientific and philosophical growth in some areas. What we have in Roshar is that the Knights Radiant did exist, and were in a way a high point of honor among mankind, but then for various reasons they fell. The mystery of why they did and what happened is part of what makes the book work.

Why is this world appealing to write in? Well, I like writing my worlds like I write my characters, where at the beginning of the book you're not starting at the beginning or the end of the characters' lives; you're starting in the middle. Because when we meet people, their lives don't just start that day. Interesting things have happened before, and interesting things are to come. I want the world to be the same way. Interesting things have happened in the past, and interesting things are to come again. I want there to be a depth and a realism to the history. It's fascinating for me to write at this point because on the one hand, there are things to recapture in the past, but at the same time there are things that the people in the past never understood and could never do. The former heights of scientific reasoning didn't go at all as far as they could have gone. So there are new places to explore and there are things to recapture. In a lot of ways, this plays into my philosophy for storytelling. The greatest stories that I've loved are those that walk the balance between what we call the familiar and the strange. When a reader sits down and there are things that resonate with stories they've read before that they've loved, there's an experience of joy to that. At the same time, you want there to be things that are new to the story, that you're experiencing for the first time. In this world, that's what I'm looking for. There is that resonance from the past, but there's also a long way to go, a lot of interesting things to discover.

The Southwest, particularly. My visits to places like Arches National Park, relatively close to where I live right now, certainly influenced me. More than that—and I've said this in numerous interviews before—I'm a fantasy reader foremost. Before I was a writer I was a reader, and I'm still a reader. As a reader, I grew a little bit annoyed with the generic setting that seemed to recur a lot in fantasy. I won't speak poorly of writers who used it very well—there are certain writers who used it extremely well—and yet a lot of other writers seemed to just take for granted that that's what you did. Which is not the way that I feel it should be done. I think that the genre could go many places it hasn't been before.

When I approached writing the Stormlight Archive—when I approached creating Roshar—I very consciously said, "I want to create something that feels new to me." I'm not the only one who does this, and I'm certainly not the one who does it best, but I wanted a world that was not medieval Europe. At all. I wanted a world that was its own thing. I started with the highstorms and went from there. To a person of our world, Roshar probably does look barren like a wasteland. But to the people living there, it's not a barren wasteland. This is a lush world full of life. It's just that what we equate with lush and full of life is not how that world defines it. In Roshar, a rock wall can be a lush, vibrant, and fertile place. It may look like a wasteland to us, but we're seeing through the eyes of someone who's used to Earth's flora and fauna. I've also said before in interviews that science fiction is very good at giving us new things. I don't see why fantasy shouldn't be as good at doing the same. Perhaps even better. So that's what was driving me to do what I did.

I'm going to reverse-engineer your question. When I wrote Elantris and Mistborn, I intentionally kept the world more sparse. The goal particularly of Mistborn was, "I'm going to take an epic fantasy story and condense it into three novels." The focus for me in those novels was plot. Of course I wanted to have great characters and great magic, but there was more of a plot focus, and I didn't want the world to distract. It was a conscious decision in Mistborn.

When I sat down and wrote The Way of Kings, the plan from the start to do ten books influenced how I approached the world. But really, the world of Roshar is such a big part of the story, and of the history and the mysteries of the series, that I wanted it to be full and immersive. Immersion was one of my main driving forces. With Mistborn, one of my main driving forces was to keep it moving. I hope The Way of Kings still feels fast-paced, but it's a thousand pages long, twice as long as Mistborn. A lot of that extra space is dedicated to fleshing out the world and making it feel like a real place, because that's very important for the series. When I write a book, I look at what the book needs and what is required by the story I'm trying to achieve. Another valid element is that when I wrote Mistborn, I was a newer writer. Writing The Way of Kings, I'm more experienced. I think I'm better at making this sort of decision now, and I felt I could tackle in this book the sorts of things that I couldn't achieve in Mistborn.

Was there any physical inspiration behind the Shattered Plains, which features so prominently in The Way of Kings? Too many visits to the Grand Canyon?

I’ve only been to the Grand Canyon once, but I do live in Utah, which has beautiful red rock formations and this wonderful, windblown stone formations scattered all across southern Utah. I’ve hiked there and spent a decent amount of time there. I would say that Roshar is partially inspired by that.

One very common story in fantasy, ever since Tolkien, is how the magic is going away. In the Stormlight Archive I wanted to write a story about the magic coming back. According to the mythology of the world, mankind used to live in heaven until a group of evil spirits known as the Voidbringers assaulted and captured it, casting out God and men. Men took root on Roshar, a world of storms, but the Voidbringers chased them there, trying to push them off of Roshar and into Damnation. To help men cope, the Almighty gave them powerful suits of armor and mystical weapons known as Shardblades. Led by ten angelic Heralds and ten orders of knights known as Radiants, men resisted the Voidbringers ten thousand times, finally winning and finding peace. Or so the legends say. Today, the only remnants of those supposed battles are the Shardblades, the possession of which makes a man nearly invincible on the battlefield. The entire world, essentially, is at war with itself—and has been for centuries since the Radiants turned against mankind. Kings strive to win more Shardblades, each secretly wishing to be the one who will finally unite all of mankind under a single throne.

That's the backstory. The book follows a young spearman forced into the army of a Shardbearer, led to war against an enemy he doesn't understand and doesn't really want to fight. It will deal with the truth of what happened deep in mankind's past. Why did the Radiants turn against mankind, and what happened to the magic they used to wield?

One other question, what is the name of the planet that Elantris is on?

Elantris: Sel

Warbreaker: Nalthis

Mistborn: Scadrial

Way of Kings: Roshar

White Sand: Taldain

Dragonsteel: Yolen

There are others, but I haven't talked much about those yet, so I'll leave them off for now.

Odium is not native to Roshar.

When will we see a Hoid book?

It’ll be a little while. He’s playing around with things in the Stormlight Archive if you couldn’t tell, he’s decided to—Hoid is fiddling with things, more than he usually does. But Hoid as a major part of things doesn’t really show up till the third Mistborn trilogy, which is the outer space Mistborn, the sci-fi Mistborn.

If you didn’t know, Mistborn was pitched to my editor as a trilogy of trilogies. I told him I wanted to do a trilogy of epic fantasy books, then the same world in a modern setting, which we’re not to yet, but it’s going to be Allomancers in the 21st century-equivalent technology. It’s an urban fantasy series. Then I wanted to do a Science Fiction series in the same world, using the Epic Fantasy world as kind of a mythology to this new world, and the magic system becoming the means of Space Travel.

MEMBER OF AUDIENCE

Whaaa?!

BRANDON SANDERSON

And so that’s how I pitched Mistborn to my editor.

Alloy of Law is actually a deviation from that, because I didn’t want people to forget about Mistborn, I wanted them to keep reading Mistborn, so I wanted them to keep releasing things, and we’ll eventually get to that second trilogy—

Hey there you are Mark! I heard you got number one.

MARK

Yep.

BRANDON SANDERSON

You’re crazy (laughter). You’re awesome though. He even beat the 17thshard people, which is really a hard thing to do. (oohs and aahs) Two hours. Beat them by two hours.

So Alloy of Law I wanted to set up things for the second trilogy. I didn’t want to do the second trilogy yet, because the second trilogy, like the first trilogy is kind of bigger books, with a very involved storyline evolved across three books, and I didn’t want to be releasing that parallel to Stormlight Archive, which is the same sort of thing. Very evolved books where you tie a lot of things together, and so I wanted a series of Mistborn novels that were more independent.

Alloy of Law is intended to be a “read it, have fun.” Eventually I may end up doing more with those characters, but when I do, you won’t have to remember that much about this one. It’s not like you have to remember a cast of 500 characters. You can just keep track of the main characters. They’re more of an episodic adventure. I kind of imagine Alloy of Law being—I’m not totally sure how to describe it. It’s like you have the giant movie that comes out, and then you have a TV show that’s based off of it, and then another big movie series, or something like that, if that makes any sense.

So that’s what Alloy of Law is. So Hoid is very involved in the third Mistborn trilogy, he’s also very involved in Dragonsteel, which is actually the first book in the sequence, long before Elantris happened. So eventually I will tell that story. You can read a draft of it at the BYU library. It’s the only copy that I know of in existence. It’s almost always checked out. It’s my Honors thesis, and it’s not very good. It really is not very good, but basically it’s involving the ideas that eventually will become Dragonsteel once I write it again. But I stole the Shattered Plains and put them in Roshar instead because the fit better there.

How many Shards have existed on Roshar?

Three

You've told us that you took the idea of the Shattered Plains from Dragonsteel into Way of Kings and reading Way of Kings it's hard to imagine the book without them. What did Roshar look like without them? Can you walk us through the process of moving that concept from that series to this one?

Yeah, it looked pretty much like it looks in the books, but Way of Kings Prime takes place mostly in Kholinar and in a location that has not yet been talked about in the books.

Ah...it took place in another location, how about that?

One of the big things with this book is, as I was saying, that I think I started [Way of Kings Prime] in the wrong place. I moved some things back in time and some things forward in time. For instance, if you ever read Way of Kings Prime, the prologue to Way of Kings Prime is now the epilogue to The Ways of Kings. You know, the thing that happens in the epilogue with the thumping on the door and the arrival of a certain individual? That scene is now from Wit's viewpoint which it wasn't before. Pull Wit out of that scene and you'll get almost exactly [what happened] in the [original] prologue. So, the timing has been changed around a lot.

As I was playing with this book I found that, like I said, one of the big things I had a problem with was that I felt that Kaladin had taken the easy route when he needed to take the hard route. I was really looking for a good plot cycle. I needed something to pull this book together. I had characters but I didn't have a plot and I've mentioned before that sometimes things come [to me] in different orders. In this book world and character came to me, in fact character came to me first, world came second and then I was building the plot around it. I knew the plot of the entire epic and the entire series but I needed a much stronger plot for book one. Because of the various things that are happening I wanted to deal with a war.

So I was planning a war away from Alethkar, and I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do with this war. Meanwhile I have Inkthinker, Ben McSweeney, doing concept art for me to use in my pitch to Tom Doherty at Tor and he says, "Hey, I just drew up this sketch of some creature that lives at the bottom of a chasm, what do you think?" And he showed me this.

I told him that we were looking for kind of above water coral reef formations, and he sends me this brain coral, which is essentially the Shattered Plains with a big monster living at the bottom and I'm like, "Wow!" I actually did a book where this was essentially the setting. I looked at that, and that's actually what made me say, "Wait a minute, could I transpose this and would the Shattered Plains actually make more sense on Roshar than they ever did on Yolen?" I started playing with that concept and I absolutely fell in love with the idea. Unfortunately for Dragonsteel, that was the only really good plot cycle from that book.

[You can read Ben's take on this story here. That's also where we got the images, which we've used with permission. —ed]

So, I ripped it out of that book and I put it here, and that means it brought with it a few side characters who no longer live on Yolen because they now live on Roshar. Rock is one of them, though he's been changed. When he came along the Horneaters were born; they had not been in the books before. For those who have read Dragonsteel, he was Ke'Chan [a nationality, not a name. —ed] in that book. I couldn't bring that culture because that culture is extremely vital to [Dragonsteel]. I can bring a plot cycle or a little region, and there's certain things you can pull out of a book without ruining the soul of what the book is. I couldn't take the Ke'Chan out of Dragonsteel; they're just part of what that book is and so Rock had to change nationalities. I had to build him his own nationality, a new culture essentially just for him. And yeah, it worked wonderfully.

Someday I'll let you have that art, and if you remind me to ask Peter you can probably post it with the interview. As you can just see it's not the way that it ended up being because it looks different from how the Shattered Plains turned out, but it was the spark that made me say, "Let's move this over."

17TH SHARD

That's cool, so basically Inkthinker's responsible for the Shattered Plains?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Inkthinker is responsible for them moving to the new book, yes.

17TH SHARD

That's pretty cool.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah.

Just in general, how is Stormlight Archive related to the rest of the cosmere? Or can you say?

I will tell you that one of the novels I skipped is actually set in the same solar system.

17th Shard

Oh...so this is the series that that book shares.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, this is the series that the book shares that I skipped. I was planning to do it first, but now was the time to do the Stormlight Archive. So you will eventually see a book set on a planet in the same solar system. You could just pick out in the sky of Roshar if you were watching when ..., and it may even get mentioned because it's a fairly close planet.

17th Shard

Is that on Divine Silence?

Brandon Sanderson

Silence Divine happens there.

17th Shard

What is the name of that planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Hmm...should I tell you?

17th Shard

Yes!

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, Peter says no.

17th Shard

(laughter)

Brandon Sanderson

You got PAFO'd.

17th Shard

(laughter continues) Go ask Peter and find out.

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's like, Peter and not find out.

17th Shard

(still laughing) PANFO.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, PANFO'd, Peter and not find out. Good.

17th Shard

(more laughter) We just won't leave.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, so, I will tell you the name of that planet once it is out like I've told you the rest of them.

17th Shard

Ok, fair enough.

My burning question for Brandon is did I miss the explanation, world building moment or historical gem that explains why women have a safe hand and why they must keep it covered?

No, you haven't missed it. People have asked about this. There will be more explanation in-world as it comes along, but it's for much the same reason that in some cultures in our world you don't show people the bottoms of your feet, and in other cultures showing the top of your head is offensive. It's part of what has grown out of the Vorin culture, and there are reasons for it. One of them has to do with a famous book written by an artist who claimed that true feminine pursuits and arts were those that could be performed with one hand, while masculine arts were those performed with two hands, in a way associating delicacy with women and brute force with men. Some people in Roshar disagree with this idea, but the custom has grown out of that foundational work on masculine and feminine arts. That's where that came from. One aspect of this is that women began to paint one-handed and do things one-handed in upper, higher society. You'll notice that the lower classes don't pay a lot of attention to it—they'll just wear a glove.

As a student of human nature and of anthropology, it fascinates me how some cultures create one thing as being taboo whereas in another culture, the same thing can be very much not taboo. It's just what we do as people.

There's more to it than that, but that will stand for now.

5. Is Hoid a Herald, or a Shardholder, or something else entirely.

6. Was the letter posted on the top of chapters to Sazed?

7. Barring the Almighty, did we seen a Shardholder (like Sazed) in this book?

5. Hoid is something else entirely.

6. It is written to a character who exists outside of Roshar. I won't yet say who.

7. I think "Shardholder" would get confusing alongside "Shardbearer." Basically, in the Cosmere's terms, when someone holds a Shard of Adonalsium, I call that person a Shard of Adonalsium. They are imbued with the power of that Shard, but they also become the Shard. Fans can use whatever terminology they wish, but this is how I term it.

You did at least see the direct effects of two of the Shards of Adonalsium, but I won't say whether or not you actually saw a Shard of Adonalsium.

Yes and no. The concept of the "Almighty" in Roshar has a lot of meanings, many of them wrong.

ATHEISTCANUCK

But the person who held the Shard Honor was originally named Tanavast?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes. You wiggled it out of me. That was the name of the original holder of the Shard Honor

How many Shardworlds are there? Only seven? (Sel, Nalthis, Scadrial, Roshar, Yolen, Taldain, and whatever planet The Silence Divine is on?)

He said he has a set number in his head but that he didn’t want to say it because he might change his mind. Essentially he doesn’t want to make the number of world’s canon yet.

I made a comment about the role mythology plays in WoT, and if Brandon was planning on using any real world mythological parallels for the Stormlight Archive.

No, he said that while they play a huge role in WoT, that if he were to include mythological parallels in Stormlight, that they would be parallels of Roshar's own mythology. (So perhaps were going to see Kaladin/Dalinar paralleling the Heralds?)

This was all me. In fact, the publisher was kind of skeptical, because it's not something you see in epic fantasy. And publishers, you know, they have this weird sort of mix inside of them—they want to do what's been successful in the past. And yet, unless you innovate a little bit, you won't continue to be successful. And that's a hard balance. And to Tor's credit, they decided that what I was pitching on this book with all these illustrations was in the right direction. That it would be evolving, and it would help with the sense of immersion, rather than fight against it. But they really worried it would feel like a graphic novel. There's nothing wrong with graphic novels, but we don't want the audience to get the wrong opinion of the story.

And one thing I was very careful to do is I don't illustrate the characters. I want the characters to be how you imagine them, and I don't want to give you a picture of them. So these illustrations I really wanted to be in-world illustrations done by someone...done by Shallan. And this was something I've wanted to do for a while, and I felt was integral and important to the book. And that without it, the book wouldn't work as well because Roshar is a pretty weird place. It's got some pretty bizarre feelings to it, and I wanted to give some illustrations to help the reader get a real sense this is a real place. So that was me. I'm glad that people are enjoying them; we did dedicate quite a bit of work making them all come across—there are four illustrators that worked on the book. And so...yeah.

You have said before that all the planets had their names before the arrival of the Shards. Is Roshar the planet's name before the Shards arrived?

Yes.

FIRE ARCADIA

How do the Roshar natives know the name of the Cosmere?

BRANDON SANDERSON

RAFO

You have said previously that the Stormlight Archive will include Lightweaving. Is that still the plan?

Yes.

FIRE ARCADIA

Have we seen a Roshar native in The Way of Kings who can use Lightweaving?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, we have seen someone who has potential.

FIRE ARCADIA

He seemed to be trying to say that they didn't know that they can use it.

Is Cultivation a Shard on Roshar?

Yes, Cultivation is. (very inquisitively) Where did you get that word?

17TH SHARD

It's in the book.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Is it in the book? Okay.

17th Shard

It's mentioned once.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Okay, one of the Shards from Roshar is Cultivation.

Was Kaladin supposed to be Originally with the bridge crew or was that something that just built from while you were writing?

It’s actually built at the planning, it was not originally, in fact I did an entire draft of the Way of Kings, in 2003, so seven years ago, the version of the Way of Kings I wrote then didn’t have him as a member of the bridge crews at all. In fact the Shattered Plains weren’t even in Roshar at that point. They were something I’d been developing for another series and when it came time to do this version of this draft I hadn’t exactly been pleased with the one I wrote in 2003, I wanted to do the book again, actually tossed all that and started from scratch.

I was looking for a really strong visual setting location for Kaladin's story to take place. I was building him separately as the soldier, and the surgeon, with both two sides of him warring within him at this part. This part of this book for me is about the contrast between the sides of, different sides of people, people who have different things pulling on their insides trying to wreck them, so I was looking for a great setting location and the Shattered Plains through various- actually doing artwork, some of the concept art for the world. I was working with an artist, just to give myself a better visual handle on things. The Shattered Plains appealed to me, it worked and so I built it in and it all kinda came together.

Correct.

Zas

People have been thrown by you saying that Odium is not native to Roshar.

Brandon

Odium is not native, that's the thing. Are any of them native? So if you dig the deeper question, are any of them native, ehhh, none of them are native to the planets you've seen so far. What I probably should've said to be more precise is that Honor and Cultivation were there long before Odium showed up.

He is from Roshar.

Herowannabe

Has Hoid taken him to other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

No, Sig hasn't visited any other worlds.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to push/pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Given that we now know that Odium can 'make it possible' for people to use magic that draws on him on other planets, has he done this anywhere besides Roshar?

Odium has been active on all other planets, including several we haven't seen yet.

Kogiopsis

This one I nearly did get RAFO'd, and the answer is basically a non-answer.

All of the keeps in the Mistborn series are based on real structures I've visited. The mists are based on a trip to Idaho, were I drove through a fog bank at high speeds.

Warbreaker's setting was inspired, in part, by a visit to Hawaii.

Much of Roshar is inspired by tidal pools and coral reefs.

My question is in regards to the writing system. In Warbreaker, when Siri is teaching Susebron to read, she mentions the letter "shash," which we now know better as a Glyphair from WoK.

so onto the questions:

Are the two writing systems related, or is this a chance coincidence of names? If they are related, did they stem from the same source? (i.e., do the people of Nalthis and Roshar both descend from a more ancient group of people?) If I haven't gotten a RAFO yet, did the separation from these other people create the legends of being cast out of the Tranquiline Halls?

There are interesting connections around the cosmere between linguistics and some cultures. Though different groups of humans were created on different planets, the Shards all share a single point of origin. However, the Tranquiline Halls legends are not related to a Nalthis/Roshar connection.

If Odium were lured to Scadrial, would his physical body turn into a burnable metal? If so, could Harmony create an Odium-metal legion of Mistings to consume and burn it? Would that weaken him sufficiently enough to be killed or destroyed?

The difficulty here is, again, one of Identity. People born on Scadrial have an Identity tied to it and its magic. Odium would have to do certain things to make them able to use a magic he fuels. He has done these things on Roshar, so it's not impossible for him to manage it on Scadrial.

Can someone use their native world's magic system on a different planet? (Ex. Would Galladon be able to use Aons on Roshar?)

Plausible. Certain things would need to be done.

Several times in Way of Kings, you have characters think of the Shin as having big or round eyes. Do the Shin really have giant eyes, or do all the other peoples of Roshar have an epicanthic fold on their eyes?

It seemed to me that this was very similar to how characters in second world fantasies, like Faile in Wheel of Time, are designated as "Asian" even though there is no Asia in the book. Is this a subversion of that? Are the Shin the only people on Roshar who look Western European?

You are right, actually. Normal eyes on Roshar are those with an epicanthic fold. The Shin do not have this. Note, however, that they wouldn't look "Western European." Roshar races are fairly far off from what we imagine as Earth ones. The people most likely to look Western European to you would be those from Mistborn.

Why does Scadrial, which has two Shards, only have three manifestations of investiture, (Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy) but Sel, also with two Shards, has five manifestations of investiture (AonDor, Dakhor, ChayShan, Forgery, and Bloodsealing)?

Sel's magics are much more regionalized than Scadrial's. Each area has its own manifestation, but they're all actually the same magic. So really there is one magic on Sel—much as Windrunning and Lightweaving on Roshar are kind of different magics, but also kind of the same.

Are Conjoiner fabrials sensitive enough that pairs of them attached to taught membranes could work as telephones (conjoiner-phones?)?

Yes. (Though this is somewhat far off, technologically, for the people on Roshar.)

Discussion of the week: Shadesmar & Truthspren

http://coppermind.net/wiki/Shadesmar

sufficientlyadvanced

It says that it's dangerous to travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Why?

It has to do with the Dor and the lack of an entity controlling much of the power Odium left in his wake on Sel.

Phantine

Woah, that's interesting. I had no idea Odium left little bits of his power on Sel... I guess it kinda makes sense for evil monks to be powered by pure hate, though.

Brandon Sanderson

Odium did not leave his power behind, one should note. He left several other powers which are now, to a large extent, mindless...

Windrunner17

This is an awesome answer!

If you wouldn't mind answering, does Roshar have a similar problem, with Honor being Splintered?

Thanks!

Brandon Sanderson

No, Roshar does not have the same problem. There are some differences going on. (One reason being that the spren are far more extensive on Roshar, and provide something of a "release valve." The Seons and the Skaze on Sel are not numerous enough to fulfill a similar function. Though, of course, that's only one part of the puzzle. Raw power is dangerous.

It's one reason everyone should be thankful Kelsier was around on Scadrial.

Dreamworks has acquired the film rights for The Way of Kings.

In an official PR broadcast today, Dreamworks Studios announced the acquisition of film rights for Brandon Sanderson's NYT best-selling fantasy novel, The Way of Kings.

"We're very excited to bring The Way of Kings to the screen," Dreamworks CEO April Firston says. "We're dedicated to giving this epic story the exposure it deserves, and plan on staying completely true to the book, unlike that hack Peter Jackson."

Initial reports are that the book will be split into seven 4-hour long animated movies, each to be directed by M. Night Shaylaman. Ben McSweeney, interior artist for the original book, is quoted as saying, "Well, they got the rockbuds right, so that's something, I guess." Brandon Sanderson didn't have time to comment, as he's currently working on fifteen additional tie-in novels taking place over a thousand-year time span in eight different interconnecting worlds.

Casting is still underway, but Robert Pattinson is rumored to be in talks to voice Kaladin, and Pauly Shore has expressed interest in Hoid. Eighteen musical numbers will be added, including "Why Can't I Just Die," "What the Hell Are These Symbol Headed Things?" and "Livin' La Vida Roshar."

EDIT: Obviously this was an April Fool's joke. Happy Spring everyone, and stormfather forbid what I've written above should ever come to pass. Thanks to /u/virgiliart and /u/catastrophesnail for brainstorming on ideas.

You got it wrong. I'm not busy because I'm writing other books, I'm working on the licensing deals! Cardboard shardplate! Official Bridge Four loincloths! "There's spren in my poop" toilet paper!

Rutthed

Serious question: are there poopspren, and how would they fare in indoor plumbing situations?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, it depends on how you're defining spren. In the books, they don't make a distinction, but there are several varieties. At the basic level, everything has an identity—a soul, you might say, but more than that. This is based on how it is viewed, and how long it has been viewed that way. Feces would have this, but wouldn't have a very strong cognitive identity because of its transitional nature.

Other types of spren, the type that characters see and interact with, are cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time. These are usually related to forces or emotions, and don't relate to this particular topic.

And that's far more than I ever expected to say on this...

Feruchemy ended up being a balance system, because of how polar Ruin and Preservation were. Any world with at least two Shards will result in a similar phenomenon.

Question

Like Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Like Roshar. There is something like that going on there.

No.

Leiyan

Because I know Braize is the third one, I've heard that, is that true?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm staying closed-lipped about a lot of this.

Leiyan

Can you tell me which is the most massive moon [of Roshar]? Not the biggest, but the most massive.

Brandon Sanderson

I think the biggest is the most massive. All three moons are much closer than our moon is.

Leiyan

And so is that Nomon?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Leiyan

How big is Nomon on the night sky, like compared to our moon?

Brandon Sanderson

Larger than our moon, but not dominating of the sky. [...] I do believe Nomon is bigger, but I had to have Peter run those calculations, so he may come back and say no Brandon, that's not possible, but I do believe it's bigger than our moon in the sky. You're supposed to be able to see moderately well by Nomon.

Leiyan

Brandon Sanderson

So, one more time.

Leiyan

Brandon Sanderson

So, we have figured all this out. It's in the wiki--so me just saying--it's not in the wiki that you can find. I would need to go compare this. All the calculations on things like this--this is stuff where I sat down with Peter, who knows much more astronomy than me and said "here's what I want" and he's like "well it has to be this" and I put that in.

Leiyan

Brandon Sanderson

I believe they do but I'm not 100% sure.

Leiyan

Brandon Sanderson

We had to fudge that because as you said, if there were any it'd be all the time.

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

Hehehe, good question!

Question

Has she already popped up?

Brandon Sanderson

She has not already popped up.

Question

So she's not a Radiant. Or is she?

Brandon Sanderson

You have not seen her on screen yet, other than in her story.

Where did you get the idea of a world ravaged by fierce storms?

The original seed of an idea was the storm of Jupiter, this massive persistent storm. Of course, that's a gas giant. The physics are very different. But I remember one day staring at a picture of Jupiter and thinking about a storm that circled the world that was massively powerful. That was one of those seeds that stuck in my brain. This sort of thing happened over months and years until that seed grew and developed and mixed with other things I was thinking of, and the result was Roshar.

The use of spren are a brilliant idea, what was the inspiration for these creatures?

In part, they stem from the underlying cosmology and overarching rules, the dictates of the magic systems of my shared universe. I was looking for a manifestation of that in Roshar. I also was searching for something that would give Roshar a different feel from things that I'd done before. I wanted this book and this series—and everything about it—to feel different from fantasy worlds in the past. I wanted it to be fantastical, but I wanted it to be unique. I wanted something that could consistently remind the reader, "Oh, I'm in a different place. Wow. Their emotions manifest visibly when they feel them strongly. This place is bizarre." That was one of the main inspirations. Looking in our world, one inspiration is certainly the Eastern concept in Shinto mythology of everything having a soul, every rock and river and tree having something living inside of it that is a manifestation of it. Since I was working with the idea of Platonic realms and the like, I spun that off into the spren.

Building Roshar, I wanted to make sure that I was doing a little extra worldbuilding work. I don't want to say that for something like Mistborn I'm not doing worldbuilding work, but my focus was in other areas. I wanted Mistborn to be accessible, so I made it an Earth analogue.

I consider Roshar my showpiece for worldbuilding, and as such I wanted everything about it to display some of the best of what science fiction and fantasy is capable of: new ecologies, new cultures, cultures that feel real but that at the same time are not just earth analogues. Because of that, I've done a lot of work to individualize and distinctify a lot of the various cultures on Roshar.

Now, that said, creativity is really the recombination of things you've seen before. We as human beings, by our very nature, can't imagine something we've never seen. What we can do is take different things we've seen and combine them in new ways. That's the soul of creativity. It's the unicorn idea—we've seen things with horns, and we've seen horses. We put the two together and create something new, a unicorn.

Because of that, I don't know if it's possible to create a culture in a fantasy book that isn't inspired in some way by various earth cultures. I'm trying not to be as overt about it as The Wheel of Time was, because one of the cool things about The Wheel of Time was its twisting and turning of Earth cultures into Randland cultures.

That's a big preface. What are my inspirations for the Alethi, for all of the different cultures? There's definitely some Korean in there. There's some Semitic cultures in there. The magic system table, the double eye, is based on the idea of the Sefer and the Tree of Life from the Jewish Kabbalah. That's where I can trace the original inspiration of that. I can trace the original inspiration of the safehand to Koreans not showing people the bottom of their feet because they felt that that is an insult—that's not something you do. I can trace the Alethi apparel to various different clothing influences. I'm hoping that a lot of where I get the cultures is based off the interplay between the setting, the histories, the idea of the highstorms, and the metaphor of the desolations. My influences come from all over the place.

Does military service raise one's nahn/dahn?

Let's say somebody from a very low nahn, who is basically a serf, right? I mean, they don't have the freedom of movement. So, what if a man like that rises to a sergeant and serves 25 years with distinction, does he go back to being a serf when/if he retires from the military? Would he be required to return to his village/town of origin? Can something like this be properly controlled, even? I mean, do they check traveling people's papers?/

There's a lot of parts to this. Rising within nahns and dahns happens more easily in Roshar than rising in social status did in most societies that had similar things in our world—for instance India, or even England. To an extent, it is very easy to buy yourself up a rank. What you've got to remember is the very high ranks are harder to attain. By nature, the children of someone of a very high rank sometimes are shuffled down to a lower rank—until they hit a stable rank. There are certain ranks that are stable in that the children born to parents of that rank always have that rank at as well. Your example of the soldier who serves with distinction could very easily be granted a rank up. In fact, it would be very rare for a soldier to not get a level of promotion if they were a very low rank—to not be ranked up immediately. The social structure pushes people toward these stable ranks. For the serf level, if you're able to escape your life of serfdom and go to a city, often getting a job and that sort of thing does require some measure of paperwork listing where you're from and the like. But if you were a serf who was educated, that would be pretty easy to fake. What's keeping most people as serfs is the fact that breaking out of it is hard, and there are much fewer of those ranks than you might assume. The right of travel is kind of an assumed thing. To be lower ranked than that, something has to have gone wrong for your ancestors and that sort of thing. There are many fewer people of that rank than there are of the slightly higher ranks that have the right of travel. It's a natural check and balance against the nobility built into the system. There are a lot of things going on here. Movement between ranks is not as hard as you might expect.

Isilel

Ditto with the lighteyes—does exemplary service raise one’s dahn?

Brandon Sanderson

It's much harder for a lighteyes, but the king and the highprinces can raise someone's dahn if they want to. But it is much harder. In the lower dahns, you can buy yourself up in rank. Or you can be appointed. For instance, if you're appointed as a citylord, that is going to convey a certain dahn, and you could jump two or three dahns just by getting that appointment. Now, if you serve poorly, if a lot of the people who have the right of travel leave—which this doesn't happen very often—if your town gets smaller and you're left with this struggling city, you would be demoted a dahn, most likely. If a lot of the citizens got up and left, that would be a sign. They could take away your set status by leaving. That’s something that’s built into the right of travel. So these things happen.

Isilel

If parents have different nahns/dahn’s, how is child’s position calculated? For instance, if Shallan had married 10-dahner Kabsal, what dahn would their children belong to?

Brandon Sanderson

The highest dahn determines the dahn of the child, though that may not match the dahn of the highest parent. For instance, there are certain dahns that aren't conveyed to anyone except for your direct heir. The other children are a rank below. I believe that third dahn is one of the stable ranks. If you're the king, you're first dahn. Your kid inherits. If you have another kid who doesn't marry a highprince, and is not a highprince, then they're going to be third dahn, not second, because that's the stable rank that they would slip down to, along with highlords and the children of highprinces.

Isilel

Or, and another thing—what happens if a lighteyed child is born to darkeyes or even slaves? Which should happen often enough, given that male nobles seem rather promiscous. Anyway, are such people automatically of tenth dahn?

Brandon Sanderson

The situation is very much taken into account in these sorts of cases. Normally—if there is such a thing as normal with this—one question that's going to come up is are they heterochromatic. Because you can end up with one eye of each color, both eyes light, or both eyes dark. That's going to influence it a lot, what happens here. Do you have any heirs? Was your child born lighteyed? This sort of thing is treated the same way that a lot of societies treated illegitimate children. The question of, do I need this person as an heir? Are they born darkeyed? Can I shuffle them off somewhere? Set them up, declare them to be this certain rank. Are you high enough rank to do that? Are you tenth dahn yourself? What happens with all of these things? There's no single answer to that. The most common thing that's probably going to happen is that they are born heterochromatic. Then you're in this weird place where you're probably declared to be tenth dahn, but you may have way more power and authority than that if one parent is of a very high dahn, just as a bastard child in a royal line would be treated in our world.

Tor.com

I believe that they all do. I don't think that you've seen anyone without innate Investiture yet. [Drabs] do not have innate Investiture. And on Scadrial they have the pieces of Ruin and Preservation in them. And they do have it on Roshar.

Question

Which Shard is that?

Brandon Sanderson

You'll have to RAFO

An event happened long ago which destroyed something called Adonalsium into 16 pieces. And 16 people took up that power.

Question

People?

Brandon Sanderson

I call all intelligent species people. If someone takes up the power and lets go of it, it has the effect much like a balloon that's been stretched and then the air is let out. I call that a Sliver; based off of the Lord Ruler calling himself the "Sliver of Infinity". The Lord Ruler is someone who held the power and then released it. And so, current Slivers are the Lord Ruler, Kelsier, and there may be others around who at one point held the power and let go of it. A Splinter is a term used by certain people in the cosmere for power of Adonalsium which has no person caring for it, no... no person holding it, which has attained self-awareness.

Wetlander

So is that like the mists and the Well? Are they...

Brandon Sanderson

They are not, because they have not attained self-awareness. But, the Seons are self-aware. So, any piece, for instance there were some spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation got there. Those were already Splinters of Adonalsium where he had left power which attained sentience on its own. So, it can be intentional is what I am saying, does that make sense? You have seen other splinters.

Wetlander

Are the highstorms related to the splintering of Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

The highstorms are more related to the mist from Mistborn which terminology we have not discussed yet. You have seen splinters quite a bit on various planets.

You're making assumptions!

(I asked if it's possible that it was Honor's and he said it's possible.)

Both Parshendi and Horneaters are able to see spren ordinary humans can't. Is there a connection between these abilities, or do they come from completely different sources?

Horneaters are human/Parshendi hybrids. (There are several Roshar races that have Parshendi blood in them.)

The "God Surges" you mentioned recently, are they a part of the Way of Kings frontsheet?

You've said that there are three types of Blades in the Stormlight Archive. We've seen "dead" Shardblades, Honorblades—is the third type the "living spren" Shardblades, or is there another type we haven't seen?

Do all Surgebinders breathe Stormlight in, or are there other ways? Is Lift one-of-a-kind in this regard?

All I said regarding this was to tell a fan that it was possible to make an analogy between the god metals on Scadrial and certain powers on Roshar. However, these are not a codified part of the magic system.

Lift is one of a kind.

Nightblood is a very unique kind of Shardblade, but IS a Shardblade.

Which of your worlds, if any at all, have ice cream, or at least, the ability to make ice cream?

Scadrial probably has it already. Roshar is farthest, not having as much in the way of milk products.

On Roshar, do they have an equivalent for cats, like how they have axehounds instead of dogs?

No, they do not. Though there are various domesticated animals fulfilling a similar role across the planet. (Domesticated minks and pigs come to mind.)

In Well of Ascension, it mentions that the language of Terris had a gender neutral pronoun. If you actually constructed the language, what was that pronoun? Or did you just leave it as its English translation of "it"?

I didn't spend a long time on the languages in Scadrial, since most people were speaking the same tongue. I just used "it" in my own writings. Roshar has a lot more detail on the languages, because culture-clash is a bigger part of the theme of the series.

Zahel/Vasher is in Roshar for Nightblood? Will we know in Stormlight Archive why these two were separated? or in the sequel of Warbreaker?

The Warbreaker sequel will give clues about this, but the actual event happened between that and TWoK. So I'm not sure where I'll slip it in.

Hi Brandon. Firstly I would like to say thank you for coming to Manchester last week. I really enjoyed the readings and book signing. I am currently reading The Way of Kings and my question is Do you get inspiration for the settings in your books from anywhere?

Settings are often inspired by something I've seen in our world, then taken to the extreme. The storm on Roshar, the mists on Scadrial...even Elantris was based on my readings about leper colonies.

Are there birds outside of Shinovar in Roshar?

There are, but very few and they are all in the west. So you're not going to find birds in Alethkar for instance. Unless they're chickens that have been brought, or something like that.

Hoid is not a Shard.Question

Or other Shards that are related to Hoid, since they are in the same time period. Would they also be Horneater gods?

Brandon Sanderson

I think that the Horneaters might interpret things very differently from their reality, as they are viewing things...

Question

So would they originally be from Roshar, or would they have traveled from somewhere else?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO, it depends on the person. Hoid is not originally from Roshar.

Yeah. Um, I would say that there is a correlation.

mail-mi

There is a correlation?

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm.

You are mistakenly assuming that Cultivation means Earth-like flora and fauna. Roshar is very bountiful and like it's not a barren land. Roshar is very....

zas678

Thriving?

Brandon Sanderson

It's thriving. Yeah, it just has a different ecology. You're mistakenly assuming that our ecology is the only sort that can be bountiful.

Yes, he's been to a few planets, highly supervised by his babsk.

Question (Paraphrased)

So what planet is she [Iyatil] from?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, that's kind of a hard thing to say. She has three planets she's "from". For example, she's living now on Roshar, but then she's from a different planet, but that's not the planet that her people are from.

Question (Paraphrased)

So there was a mass exodus to that planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Not exactly. If you were to find a Japanese American, where would they say that they are from? Her people did not have a mass exodus.

Question (Paraphrased)

Have we seen mass exoduses before?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there are some in the cosmere. There's a mass exodus that is mentioned in one of the interludes in The Way of Kings.

Yeees, they have their own different sort of layers to them. It depends on the Shard that is there and things like that but yes there are little differences but it is more like the differences between alternating current and direct current, they're both electricity. So if you know how to use them.

Question

'Cause Szeth's not going to be getting any new Breaths on Roshar so I was thinking about that.

Well Nightblood feeds on Investiture, which is the general life-force/magic-force in the cosmere and so he can feed on basically any source of magical energy.

Question

And do other magics work on other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

I've been describing it lately more like you see DC current and AC current, where they're similar things but slightly different. It is possible to make magics work on other planets, some it's easier than others.

Oh!

Question

Not Hoid.

Brandon Sanderson

So what about Taln?

Question

Is there anything you'll tell us about him?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you want to know? Ask me a specific question.

Question

Is he Rosharan?

Brandon Sanderson

Is he Rosharan? Taln is Rosharan.

Question

[audio obscured]

Brandon Sanderson

Define Rosharan, how about that?

Question

Native to Roshar.

Brandon Sanderson

That I have to RAFO.

Question

Are the Heralds...

Brandon Sanderson

The Heralds are from the same place that Taln is from.

*long pause* Your question has a fundamental flaw to it.

Question

And that is?

Brandon Sanderson

That there are multiple planets that have an influence on Roshar.

Question

I thought there were multiple planets in the system that--

Brandon Sanderson

There are, but you said "the other", there are more than one so the phrase, "the other" doesn't make sense.

Question

How much influence do the other planets have?

Brandon Sanderson

A great deal.

He couldn't say for sure without getting out the timeline, but a LONG time.

fletchershair

Has he been on Scadrial or Nalthis?

Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

No, but he is aware of their existence.

The main map of Roshar.

Question

From which book?

Brandon Sanderson

Either book, it's the main one that will go in each copy. It's VERY hard and it won't change a whole lot.

Question

Does it have anything to do with the compass?

Brandon Sanderson

Not the compass.

That was intentional. You are on to something that no one's figured out yet.

Shicaca

I was thinking it could be connected to people being able to manipulate gravity.

Brandon Sanderson

It's not exactly what you think you're on to, but you're getting close to something that they've all wanted to know for a while.

Yes.

Outis

Where did the redstone on Feverstone come from?

Brandon Sanderson

Roshar.

I know, and the Warbreaker fans really get on my case about that. Well, I wrote Words of Radiance, and I got Vasher into it, so that would kindle interest, and make sure that you at least got to see your characters again. But did you hear the story about that? So, I wrote The Way of Kings in 2002, the first version, and in that version Kaladin trained with a swordmaster, and that swordmaster, a guy named Vasher, had a mysterious past. After I finished that book, later on I wrote Warbreaker as a prequel to The Way of Kings, to show Vasher's backstory. But then Warbreaker came out before The Way of Kings, which was a really kind of interesting thing. So in my head, Warbreaker is the prequel, but to everyone else...

Yes, it is a totally different world, different planets, people get around...

Wetlander

So how much of Vasher's backstory do we actually have?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, a huge chunk of it! If you were reading The Way of Kings, you would know nothing, and then you'd read Warbreaker and you'd be like, "Oh, here's a whole past that he had!" That doesn't mean it's all of his past.

You've seen people using Allomancy in Roshar before.

Question

You said that on Roshar the only reason they have aluminum is that they can Soulcast it, right? I think you said something like that … maybe? I was wondering how that would work, if an Allomancer were to--

Brandon Sanderson

Aluminum has some weird properties on all of the magic systems, not just allomancy. It does not have the same effect, but aluminum has some bizarre effects.

Um, yes, but they're also really creepy.

Question

Are they open to manipulation like other sentient non-human humanoids of Roshar? The Parshendi? Or, similar?

Brandon Sanderson

Um, RAFO.

It depends on your definition. Is Windrunning its own magic system, or is it a division of a larger magic system? Are the ten different Surges each their own magic system, or are they all the same one?

Rhandric

If you assume the surges are all one.

Brandon Sanderson

Well then you would have Surgebinding, and the Old Magic, those are two at least, and there are things that are not explained in those at all, and how do you count creating fabrials? Is that a science and not a magic? Is that its own magic system?

Rhandric

It's a science, because anyone can do it.

Brandon Sanderson

So Awakening is not a magic, then? Awakening's a science? Because anyone can Awaken if they get the breath.

Rhandric

That's something that stood out to me, because in all your other magic systems that we've seen so far there has to be some sort of snapping to occur, and that's unique, because- [...] Is there an active magic system on Threnody?

Brandon Sanderson

Threnody has a non Shard-based...it depends on what you call a magic system. Do spirits coming back from the dead count as magic? It's science to them, but, it's goofy science.

I appreciate the time you take to communicate with your fans and your prolific and consistently excellent work.

1. In honor of Sir Tery Pratchett's passing, which of his works has most impacted you as a writer?
2. What has been your favorite Magic draft format?
3. At what point did you first realize that you had fans scouring your works for hints of the Cosmere?
4. Can an Awakened form a nahel bond with a spren on Roshar?
5. Are spren bound to Roshar or can they travel to other worlds? Could they do so if they were bound to someone that traveled to other worlds?
6. Will we eventually see a collection of short stories from various worlds in the Cosmere like Shadows for Silence and Sixth of Dust?

1. I'd say The Truth, which was the first Pratchett that really got its hooks into me. Something about newspapers, the quest for what was true, and the themes of writing.
2. If cube counts, cube. If not, triple ROE followed closely by Innistrad. (Have set cubes of both, now.) Shards block was fun too, as was original Ravnica.
3. Right around Mistborn Three's release--while I was working on Warbreaker, I think--where people started to realize this "Hoid" thing was relevant.
4. Depends on the spren!
5. RAFO. Excellent question, though.
6. Yes, you will. Tor is trying to pin me down on one as we speak, actually, but I'm not sure when I can promise one. (I'd want a collection to have at least one new story, original to it.)

Hey Brandon!

I'd like to open by thanking you for changing the method of Szeth's death. When I read it the first time, Kaladin's actions in that moment didn't ring quite true for how I saw the character. I'm glad Kal does what he does in the revisions.

I have three questions, if you wouldn't mind. I'm trying to avoid the obvious RAFO's xD

1. Threnody and Scadrial are both noted as having unusally bright patches of stars in their skies. Are these two planets near to one another?
2. Did Ashyn ever have a Shard, or is its magic a natural manifestation akin to Threnody or First of the Sun?
3. As you've stated that the magic of First of the Sun is natural and independent of any particular Shard, what is the nature of the pool on Patji? Is it also a natural manifestation of magic, a Perpendicularity, or simply a pool like any other?

1. They are both seeing the same thing, yes.
2. RAFO on Ashyn, as--being in the same system as Roshar--there are going to be some spoilers relating to Stormlight in anything I say here.
3. It's a natural manifestation, but on a much smaller scale than you might find on other worlds.

kabili207 (Reddit)

Regarding #1, does this mean that Threnody and Scadrial are part of the same system, or are these bright patches visible from other worlds as well?

Brandon Sanderson (Reddit)

Visible from other worlds as well. The cosmere is a relatively small place (on a galactic scale, that is.) We'll publish the star map when that becomes relevant in a decade or so.

Hi Brandon! Thanks for doing this. I may have made some embarrassing sounds when I heard you were answering questions. I have a few questions:

1. You've said previously that the molecular structure of metals serve to act sort of like the Aons in AonDor. Why, then, can mists power Allomancy? Shouldn't the metals themselves be the things causing the powers? And if metals don't cause the effect, how can a non-Feruchemist burn a metalmind that has been 'unlocked' through identity tricks and get a boost of an attribute without Feruchemist sDNA?
2. If a Surgebinder went to another world with infused gems, would they still automatically be able to Surgebind, or is that an effect limited to Roshar? (I ask because you've said someone with a Seon bond who went to Roshar would gain some powers because it would be treated like a Nahel bond.)
3. Hoid uses Allomancy in one of Shallan's flashbacks. How can Hoid draw on Preservation's power on Roshar? Does it teleport? Shouldn't he only be able to burn metals on Scadrial?
4. Breath seems like it doesn’t run out like Stormlight. You Awaken something, and it lasts basically forever. But if you Lash something, the Lashing ends a short time later. Why does Stormlight run out and Breath not?

Thanks for answering!

I was trying to figure out how to answer this, and then I realized while driving to get a hair cut that you were regarding this wrong in a fundamental way. Remember, the source of power for Allomancy is EXTERNAL while the source for Feruchemy is INTERNAL. This is a fundamental difference discussed in the series.

When you burn metals, you're drawing power from another place. When you tap a metalmind, you are drawing power that the person has created--a battery developed by themselves, so to speak.

So I think that's going to answer the source of your confusion.

Thanks a lot for doing this, Brandon. You're my favourite author, and I have a million things I want to ask you, but since I'm not the only one asking questions, I'll ask the ones most important to me.

1. I'm fairly invested in the pairings of The Stormlight Archive, with my favourite being Jasnah/Szeth. Do either of these two have any romance planned in their future?
2. In The Hero of Ages, Demoux gets together with a woman named Aslydin. He's then seen on Roshar in The Way of Kings. Knowing how loyal Demoux is, he wouldn't just leave Aslydin behind like that. Is she connected to his reasons for becoming a member of the Seventeenth Shard?
3. I'm pretty interested in the integration of magic and sport, like in Harry Potter and The Legend of Korra. Will we be seeing any allomantic sports in the second Mistborn trilogy?
4. Was the guy Dalinar met in his flashback really Nohadon?
5. Will Lift get a Shardfork?
6. Finally, can you tell us what Regalia's weakness is? We never did find that out.

Again, thanks a ton for doing this.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for e-mailing me White Sand and Aether of Night last year, and for just being so awesome and giving to your fans.

Here are my questions:

1. Sel question: What are the names of the Aons for West, North, and South? I'm assuming that these are also the names of the other cities around Elantris besides Kae ("East"). Is that right?
2. Scadrial question: We've seen Kandra True Bodies made of crystal, stone, or wood. Can a kandra use a True Body made of metal? If so, what happens if each metal "bone" had a Hemalurgic charge, and each one is touching an appropriate bind point?
3. Roshar question: Looking up the meaning of "lucentia", I see that it's a Latin word related to light and visibility. Why isn't the Surge of Illumination connected to the Order of Edgedancers, which is the Order associated with Lucentia?
4. Nalthis question: This is a two-part question about Perfect Invocation. (A) When an old God King passes down his Breaths to his infant heir, does Perfect Invocation turn him (the old God King) into a white drab and does that grant him any cool powers? (B) Secondly, do God Kings create white Lifeless instead of grey ones and are these white Lifeless special in any significant way?

Those four questions will do for now. I hope you'll visit the Philippines one of these days. Anyway, I need to go back to sleep. Happy writing!

17th Shard/JordanCon

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Question

You said “have.” The question was, are there?

Brandon Sanderson

I’m sure there are people around...[Laughter] I’m sure you can go to any city in the United States and find someone who claims to be Jesus, right? So yes! Absolutely!

Question

So, why is it that there are only dead swords?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s a good question that will be answered in the future.

Question

Could they make a lightsaber?

Brandon Sanderson

They could make...metal weapons of a similar style to that, so no, we’re not talking lightsabers. Creating plasma is not something that we’re looking at.

Question

A bow, for example?

Brandon Sanderson

They could create, probably...Well, let’s RAFO that one, I’ll show you what’s going to be happening.

Question

You mentioned the ecology on Roshar, and you mentioned that mostly the non-sentient spren predate the [shattering of Adonalsium?]. So my question is about the evolution of life on Roshar, and how essential the highstorms are to life on Roshar, how the plants evolved...so can we assume that life that is dependent on the highstorms predates the Shattering of Adonalsium?

Brandon Sanderson

Um…

Question

Can we correctly assume? [Laughter]

Brandon Sanderson

I’ll tell you this. The highstorms predate, and there was a lot of natural evolution on Roshar resulting in a lot of what we have there.

Question

An iron is iron, does it have the same effect if it will be iron that was created on…

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I see what you’re saying… the metals are themselves… I’ve said this before, I think, but… the metals themselves, where you get it is not relevant.

Question

So if say Wit is drinking flakes on Roshar, then those flakes could be Roshar-bought.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

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.

Djarskublar

So say you go to Roshar and you give somebody a Hemalurgic spike for some Allomantic power, don't care what, and you use it to become a savant. Does that qualify them as 'broken' enough to become a Radiant? As long as they are also following the Ideals to attract a spren.

Brandon Sanderson

So becoming a Radiant is a spectrum of terminologies. It... probably, but you would have to find a Radiant who would, or a spren who would be willing to touch that, okay? It's going to drive them back.

Djarskublar

So would it also affect your probability of becoming an Elantrian?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah it would affect your ability to become anything else, yes.

Djarskublar

Okay, so would it be a positive effect, negative effect...? Because I was like, it gives you cracks in your Spiritweb.

Brandon Sanderson

It does give you cracks in your Spiritweb.

Djarskublar

So it's easier for Investiture to get in. Does it make it easier for other Investitures to get in?

Brandon Sanderson

It would make it... yes. It's going to drive spren away. So what it's really going to make easier for, there, is spren and Investiture that doesn't care.

Djarskublar

Okay, so Investiture doesn't care but spren do.

Brandon Sanderson

Investiture might care depending on if it's part of a Shard-- if it has intent and things like this.

Djarskublar

So it might let Stormlight in easier than a Breath, type thing.

Brandon Sanderson

I'm saying it might let Odium in easier than Syl. Because Syl would care, and Odium would not care.

Djarskublar

Okay cool.

Brandon Sanderson

Alright, so it could be a really bad thing, is what I'm trying to say to you.

Djarskublar

Yeah that's cool. I just want to know more about gold too. Gold Allomancy too. Because Miles was doing some funky stuff.

Brandon Sanderson

Miles was doing some funky stuff.

Necarion

It would make the orbits work

Brandon Sanderson

[Long pause] I’m not sure the implications, I have to think through implications before answering questions

Necarion

The situation I’m thinking of, it would orbit the big star but at the same period as the smaller star.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, well, I’ll just say ‘yes’, but I want to make sure I’m not saying ‘yes’, without...well, yes that’s how it has to work

Necarion

Right

Brandon Sanderson

Because [Taldain] I want to be not like Roshar where we have unstable orbits and things. Uh, but I… I’m saying yes, but I hope that doesn’t get me into trouble scientifically.

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