Shardcast Interview

Kaymyth

Though the gap between Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth had been the longest gap of Stormlight books so far, the pace of writing and revision was pretty breakneck. Considering that we wanted to know some of your thoughts on what you are most proud of in the book.

Brandon Sanderson

Most proud of in the book, interesting. Yeah, the writing was breakneck, though it is similar to all the previous ones, right? It was longer cause I took the extra year to work on the, to getting the Year of Sanderson ready. And that is really what delayed us on that one. What am I most proud of in Wind and Truth? I am really in general proud of how well I can get the foreshadowing to work across fifteen years. There are stumbles when you are doing something across fifteen years. But I feel like, particularly if you compare to a lot of my contemporaries, I am pretty good at that. And maybe for the people of this podcast a little too good at it. Though there are lots of things for the back five that you haven’t picked out yet, so at least those secrets are still safe.

I am pretty proud across the entire five books of what I did with Kaladin. Kaladin’s arc across the five books is when I was building it--you know you are never quite sure when something is going to work. And I am like: is it right, like, if i am going to have Kaladin in book four be PTSD Kaladin and book five be recovery Kaladin, is that actually giving it a work in the book? You only get a couple of books of Kaladin being on his A-game before it crushes him and as a writer, the way the arc looks and comes together and having a book where he is dealing with it and recovering, was really satisfying to write. You don’t get to do that as a writer very often. You usually have to have someone go through an arc in a book and then kinda come to a catharsis by the end of the book and that is their arc. What you don’t get to do is spend fifteen years, you know, cracking a person and then having them figure out how to put themselves back together and it is something I have never really done before. I got to do it a little bit in The Wheel of Time with Rand and so I am really satisfied with that. What else am I very proud of specifically with this book? I mean I could go on for a while, it is one of my babies.

I do like how the pacing doesn’t feel like pacing of any other book I’ve done. And I know that is controversial, for some in the community. They don’t love the pacing. Again, kind of as an artist I am like: I have done all these other types. Can I do something like this? And I feel really pleased and proud of how that all came together. And you know, the themes, I am very proud of how the themes of The Stormlight Archive developed over the fifteen years and finally kind of came together and came to a head. It was quite a book to write. From kind of an artistic standpoint.

Kaymyth

But is there any specific thing in that book [Wind and Truth] that you would change if you had had a little more time?

Brandon Sanderson

The problem is, time wouldn't really do it, right? Like, part of the thing that's gets me to-- revision for me works best when I have feedback and I'm like, ohhh, and that feedback can send me. There are a few things that I would revise if I could magically have-- like, for instance, I think that the Blackthorn reborn would be better as something that appears in book 6 as a mystery with the same foreshadowing for what happened here, where you could pick up book 6 and you're like, "Wait, Dalinar died, what is this Blackthorn thing?" That would have worked better if I had sliced out that little scene with Taravangian. That's probably the main one that I would revise if I had the chance. That was a pretty late addition and so maybe if there had been like another six months to do another round of beta reads, somebody would have said something that sparked that for me, though I'm not sure I would have revised that.

Knowing the feedback I probably would have taken another pass at some of the modern language; I know that's bothering people. Just some of the things like "dating" instead-- I didn't think it was in me when I wrote it, and getting the initial feedback, any more so than normal for me, but I bet unconsciously my language had been drifting more modern because of writing Skyward and some of the future cosmere stuff like Sunlit Man and because of that I've been drifting more modern kind of unconsciously. And so knowing that that's a stumbling block for some readers I definitely would have looked at that and been like, "alright, where am I going too modern in some of the language," so I would revise that.

Is there anything else I would revise? I might, I think I said this on Reddit, I might have brought out a little bit more of Jasnah's trauma in her sequence. I just don't want to get into that too much, because I need it for the back five. And once again, if I do too much early on then it ruins story arcs for later on, because yeah. And so I've been, you can tell, very delicate with talking about Jasnah's trauma and who she is and her flashback sequence and things like that because if I talk too much about it then we have a Venli problem where we get to the book where the flashback sequence and you already know all the stuff and so the flashbacks just aren't as interesting because they don't have the kind of mystery reveal along with the kind of character arc stuff and they just don't hit as powerfully. But I might have brought out the trauma a little bit more, because that really helps explain what's going on with Jasnah.

So yeah, there's three for you. They're always these subtle things, these subtle tweaks, right, that after the fact, like with Words of Radiance when I'm like "Oh, I bet it would work better if I did it this way" and things like that. But "art is never finished, it's only abandoned," alright, the famous quote goes, you know. I wonder if Lucas hadn't ruined it for us if going through and doing a kind of director's cut revision after thirty years would be a thing that people liked, but we're all so wary of it and we-- you know I did that experiment with Words of Radiance and I'm like "no, I don't like this, people don't know what is canon and what isn't, it's too confusing."

Paleo

Going off you mentioning the Blackthorn, how are you thinking about balancing this idea of the Blackthorn continuing to exist or exist again with the risk of undercutting the meaning or significance of death in the cosmere? Like, we should think of Dalinar as being dead now, right?

Brandon Sanderson

The Blackthorn is not Dalinar and it'll be very quickly obvious what I'm planning to do with him. If I were you, and again I don't want to give too many spoilers; this is about a book-- if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about the Blackthorn's place in the story. The Blackthorn has some very specific things I'm planning to have done and I think when it's all said and done, you will not have had to worry about that. The Blackthorn's not Dalinar, any more than two twins are the same person, if that makes sense, and even more, in a lot of ways, divided off. The Blackthorn is an idea, this Blackthorn is a spren and not a person, and letss me do some things. But again, would have been stronger, I think, if you just saw this mysterious thing show up in book 6 and you're like "wait, what?" because then you would see the implications and what I do with it at the same time. So yeah, oh well.

Windrunner

That's totally fair.

Brandon Sanderson

Don't stress about the Blackthorn is what I'd say to the fans.

Windrunner

Kind of keeping in a similar theme with branching paths and decision making, one of my favorite things is when you talk about kind of your processes, when you hit those big decision points where you're like "okay, I could go down this path or I could go down this path." And one of those that you've talked about is whether you wanted Taravangian to become Odium or whether you wanted Rayse to stick around as the villain. And we know that Rayse always had this kind of prohibition in his mind against picking up a second Shard, because he did not want to risk kind of adulterating himself; he wanted to be just of Odium. And we see now that kind of the way that this book resolved kind of required Retribution to form. If Rayse had remained Odium, would Retribution have been the direction you had gone or would he have done something else?

Brandon Sanderson

He would have done something else.

Windrunner

Okay. Can you elaborate at all?

Brandon Sanderson

You guys theorize on that, what would have happened. Let's just say Rayse remaining Odium was always--how should I say this, it wasn't always--it very quickly became the underdog of what I would do as I wrote Taravangian more and more. Be aware that Taravangian in The Way of Kings Prime, the character I wrote, didn't work as well as new Taravangian. I felt like the old Taravangian was too gimmick--I can't remember what I called him--was too gimmick, too little actual character. And the option to keep Rayse around was really there in case Taravangian didn't develop the way I wanted him to. But he did. And the other thing that I was checking for was a mood check of "has Odium lost his bite, now that he tried to convert Dalinar and he tried to convert Kaladin?" And the answer that I came up with was yes. Dalinar effectively defeated Rayse in Oathbringer and then in Rhythm of War Kaladin put the nail in that coffin. His ideology, his way of being had been summarily rejected by the heroes, to the point that he was just not a threat. When someone who wasn't willing to take the other Shards could not be a threat on the level that I needed him to be and so that option disappeared quickly, shall we say, by the time Oathbringer was happening. But it was an option, it was an option as I was writing Rhythm of War that I could have gone with.

Kaymyth

A lot of people were disappointed when Cultivation just yeeted herself off Roshar and fled. Is what happened what she expected to happen, or was this like her Plan C, her Plan F, Plan Z, like how many layers were there?

Brandon Sanderson

So, Cultivation does have more plans, but let's just say if Cultivation were as capable of handling Odium as she thought, we wouldn't need a book series.

Kaymyth

Oh my.

Brandon Sanderson

That's one thing to keep in mind, right? If Honor and Cultivation could handle Rayse, could handle Odium really, the power behind Rayse, The Stormlight Archive wouldn't need to be written. And so, I wouldn't count Cultivation out entirely, but I would say that Cultivation is part of the problem, not the solution, and that's how you should be looking at Cultivation. I mean, there's some good reasons that some members of the Heralds did not get along with her. And, you know, this is one of the problems that I run into in writing this book series is I want the viewpoint characters to be the ones that are solving problems, not necessarily the people who we can't really grasp and understand. And so, from the get-go, Cultivation I would, as I said, I consider Cultivation, you know she's part of the solution, but I also consider her part of the problem. So, there you are, I'll leave you with that. You are very much allowed to be disappointed in her and you should be.

Paleo

Going a little bit more meta, I guess, so... you have talked before about having a Big Talk with us after Wind and Truth, because it's like this big capstone to the saga of Stormlight, and even like the entire Cosmere in some sense. Has this actually already happened? Because we had this gloves-off moment after The Lost Metal *gets interrupted by Brandon for a moment, then continues* was it that moment, and do you still plan to talk to us about it?

Brandon Sanderson

No, I mean, I can talk about it here. Part of it is a little bit of... not an apology, but a fake apology. I knew that I had to pretend—hmm, pretend is the wrong term. I've known all along that Book 5 was a cliffhanger and a bit of a downer. I couldn't talk about it that way during Book 1, because otherwise everyone knows what Book 5 is. So I had to talk about Book 5 as the end of Arc 1 and Era 1 [of Stormlight]. As I was talking about it [that way], I realized several years in, people are assuming it to be an end of an arc in the way that an anime arc is the end of an anime arc. Not the way that, you know, it's less—it's not even really Empire Strikes Back. It is the end of an arc, in that, we ambiguously lost? And kinda won, [but] mostly lost? Everything fell apart. Book 5 is "The Stormlight Archive unravels," [and] not the triumphant conclusion. You can see the problem that I have, knowing that my model for Book 5 was Final Fantasy VI, the mid-point, where the world ends. Have you guys played Final Fantasy VI? The world ends half-way through Final Fantasy VI. It was more that, and then we're going to do five books in a post-apocalyptic Roshar. 

And knowing that, and not understanding-- what is the Big Talk? The Big Talk is, on one hand, I'm sorry that I couldn't prepare you for this. Usually I'm pretty good at preparing my fan-base for what's coming—when I split a book, when a book delays, when you need to brace yourselves for something. And I couldn't do that for Book 5. And not being able to do that for Book 5 was a little hard. And so, I am sorry for that. It is the right artistic choice, but that's kind of what the Big Talk is about. It's this idea of, "I didn't intentionally mislead you, but I realized as I was talking about the book that I couldn't say as much as I'm used to saying." And this goes back 10 years, or longer. And I knew people were expecting more of like an Era-1-of-Mistborn end, and then a soft reboot. Not a, "the world completely falls apart, and everybody is left in a terrible situation" end.

I even pulled back on that, I think I've talked about this before. The editor at Tor was like, "You can't release this book, Brandon! You can't! You can't release this book! It's too sad!" And some nods towards that were giving the seon to Shallan, so that she could contact Adolin, because I knew by Book 6 that would've happened. So I'm like, "Alright I can do it now, to take the edge off just a little bit there." There's two Hoid epilogues—one of those was written to try to take the edge off a little bit, if that makes sense. 

But the book's supposed to be a kick to the face, and if we don't have a kick to the face then the Stormlight Archive as a series doesn't work as I have planned that arc. And it's rough because I couldn't prepare anyone for it. I told Peter, "So this book's gonna come out, this is the point—if I'm ever going to have a point where my career could collapse, it is this book. I know what fans want, and I did not give it to them." And this is the first time in my career that I just didn't give it to them. You could argue that I didn't give you Kaladin's oath at the end of Oathbringer, but I just delayed that and gave it to you in Book 4. In this book, I just said, "No, I've [not] given them what they want and I know what they want, and that's going to be hard. It's going to be really hard both for me, and for them."

And the real trick and the kind of punch is, I've never done this before. So my artistic instincts say this is what's right, and I'm going with them. It could be wrong, right? This could be the thing that in twenty years, I'm like, "Oh man, I should've written another book that has the same emotional arc as Books 1, 2 and 3, rather than taking Books 4 and 5 and changing it up so much." And maybe we'll do this interview and be like, "Well, I was the biggest selling fantasy author in the world and then I refused to give readers what they wanted, selfishly and arrogantly, and I really should've just done it." But we'll see. What I've always been saying is, "We will know if this book's a success in seven or eight years, not in seven or eight weeks like we've done with all the other books."

And I don't listen to the podcast, but I'm sure you guys have had plenty of discussions about that idea, and whether that's a good idea, and why it aggravates readers, and the parts of it that aggravate readers and the parts of it that disappoint readers, and things like that. We'll see if my artistic inclinations are correct when you interview me in seven or eight years.

Kaymyth

If it makes you feel any better, there is a small subset of the fandom that thinks it should've been darker at the end.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I'm actually one of those, but I recognized that I just couldn't do it. If I didn't have a six to eight year gap in between, maybe I could've, right? Like, David, if I had a new Stormlight book, already secretly written and coming out in a year, then I could've probably gone even darker with that ending. I could've sucked a little more hope out of things. But I just couldn't, not with the six to eight years [in between]. 

There needs to be kind of this tonal promise that there is still light, and we're still going to find it. And that's at least what my gut said. I do know there is a subset of that—and it's not necessarily even the darkness that is going to be controversial. I think fans do like books to go dark now and then. It's the, "Reading a Sanderson book and not actually knowing where the pacing is going, where the plotlines are going, what you're supposed to expect." When you read one of my books, if you are a close reader—which I assume most of your audience is—I put in all this kind of tonal foreshadowing that tells you what kind of ending you're supposed to expect. And, you can feel the book start to swell and hit there, in the [Sanderlanche]. And you're like, "I've been reading all this time, expecting this thing and Sanderson is gonna deliver" and I do. Sometimes what I deliver is different but I always foreshadow that. Whether it's going to be bittersweet, whether it's going to be triumphant, whether there's going to have a lot of worldbuilding or if it's just going to be action. These are all things that I'm foreshadowing and building to that Sanderlanche.

And this book—again I don't know if people are actually saying—but my assumption is that the response seems to be like, "No no, its not the darkness. The publishers are distraught. The publishers are scared because dark is not marketable." And they're wrong, dark is very marketable. They look at things in [with] the wrong lens. The thing is the not-knowing-where-it's-going; those cues being odd and a little off. The darkness being a kind of darkness where you're going, eugh rather than, "Oh no, they're in a terrible spot but they're going to pull through!" Right? It's less darkness, that's the problem—well it's not a problem, it's what I wrote into the book—and more of a, "I no longer know what this series is, and I don't if I love it anymore." Right? That's the dangerous thing that I'm writing into it.

Like I said I think in a post at some point—when a symphony goes atonal, all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and it seems like nails on a chalkboard. I'm looking for a little bit of that with this book, and that's super dangerous! And maybe stupid.

So, that's what the conversation is. I did that intentionally. We'll see if it's the right idea.

Windrunner

Another sort of meta question: we were just wondering, you know, how are things going with the Ghostbloods? You know, having a good time, is there anything that's kind of particularly exciting or challenging about kind of returning to this world since Wax and Wayne was unplanned, you know, and now you're coming back to something that you've had in your mind for a while?

Brandon Sanderson

Man, it has been so nice to have had Wax and Wayne. A lot of the stuff that I did in Wax and Wayne is stuff that in this book I would have had to do as setup, which has made this book streamline a lot better. We don't have to delve as much into these things; if you want to find out-- if you want to read them, they're in the Wax and Wayne books. If you don't want to read the Wax and Wayne books, then I think this book will still work, but having it there just as this four-book basically history to make this all happen means that I don't have to set up the cold war, I don't have to set up the Bands of Mourning and the strife over those, there's just so many things I don't have to do that as I'm writing this book, I'm like, "Oh, I covered that already; oh, I covered that already, I don't have to do that!" and it's making the write of the book just a lot easier. My biggest concern with it right now is everybody wants this to be a new entry point to Mistborn, right? And I find it clunky to reexplain in these characters viewpoints key ideas from the Mistborn series, and I don't know how well it's going to work for new readers, right? I don't want to delve into what is Allomancy, what is Feruchemy, and kind of, you know, the 101 level stuff, and I'm going to have to see how that flies with initial readers, but it doesn't feel natural in the flow of the text. And maybe I'll find a place to make it natural in the flow of the text and, you know, for marketing purposes, Tor and everyone wants this to be Ghostbloods book 1, not Mistborn book 8, right? But it's Mistborn book 8, I mean, you know? I've been writing in this world for a long time; I'm very comfortable with things and, you know, it's more fun for me to have, for instance, a Lurcher character doing cool things with their powers than it is for me to reexplain how Allomancy works. It's more like, "let's show some Mistings you haven't seen before and see what they can do," and that's fun. So, I'm writing it that way, and we'll see if I need to do any revisions.

Windrunner

That totally makes sense. Did they generally view Wax and Wayne as an entry point, or not so much?

Brandon Sanderson

So, here's the problem, David. And, again, this is something I did pretty eyes-open. Tom Doherty came to me--this is the CEO of Tor, founder CEO of Tor--came to me after I killed Vin and Elend and he said, "Brandon, you can't do this," before the book came out, "If you do this, then there is no series." And I'm like "Yeah, I'm going to jump forward 300 years and I'm going to write something else." And he's like, "No one will read that." And I'm like, "Yeah, but it's the story I'm telling." And to an extent he is right, right? Like, Mistborn ends and lost half the readership for Wax and Wayne, I'd guess. And, you know, that still means they sell pretty well, because Mistborn's one of the best selling books of all time, but you know, this huge falloff, those things terrify publishers. Where I'm like, "Yeah, there's a huge falloff, but suddenly it's a Western instead of a fantasy," It has a different audience, you know, and only a subset of the audience is going to want to jump to that, it's okay, I'm writing this book for them. The others, there's lots of great fantasy books for them to read, right? Not every book has to be for everyone and it's okay for readers to pick up Wax and Wayne and be like, "Eh, detective stuff, not my thing; it's a tone shift, too much of one." Not a problem with that, right? Like, I think the Wax and Wayne books are stronger-written--they get there, Alloy of Law's a little sketchy--but they're stronger written, particularly the one-two punch of Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning as the two strongest, I think, Mistborn books by actual, like, writing. I think Mistborn 1 is just still the most appealing; it had the best premise, right, and things like that. So I think they're fantastic books, but at the same time, they're fantasy Westerns, except they're not Westerns, they're taking place in a city, so they're fantasy detective novels staring a Western character who's in the Mistborn world. They're weird!

So the publisher's just never been behind Wax and Wayne, and now I'm doing it again, and in their mind we're going to lose half our audience again, right, and that's, you know, terrifying to them that you might half you audience a second time and then he's going to do it again and again. I think we have lost who we're going to lose and I think some people might pick up Ghostbloods; urban fantasy appeals to more people than weird Western does, but this is the piece of art. This is what I'm writing, this is the fun. Mistborn will stand a test of time better because I'm doing these weird things. Same thing kind of with Wind and Truth, right, like doing weird stuff can be disastrous, but when it works you end up with things that stand the test of time. And a lot of the weird things like this, the initial reception is people are really uncertain and they're right to be really uncertain, but then it works over time. That's why I say seven or eight years will tell if that's the case and we'll see with, I think, Wax and Wayne and Ghostbloods kind of the same thing. Over a long period of time, does the fact that I have these powerful artistic inclinations to do something different, is it going to make it stand out, or is just going to be weird? So, Ghostbloods, I guess circling back, is going really well. It's, I mean, just a blast to write in the Mistborn world. It's my favorite just kind of setting to write in, because it is fun to just-- the way the 32 powers kind of crunch together in different ways is really engaging and interesting and you can do quirky things with them.

Kaymyth

Wind and Truth ends with "The Postlude to the Stormlight Archive". What prelude does Stormlight 6 begin with?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm calling it The Voidlight Archive, but I know it's not--it's technically like Warlight or something like that, but in my head all along, it's been The Stormlight Archive and The Voidlight Archive. That's not a title that will be on Book 6. Book 6 will not be "Book 1 of The Voidlight Archive". But internally, I've always viewed them as The Stormlight Archive and The Voidlight Archive.

Kaymyth, Paleo

Interesting.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, Peter hates this. Peter's like, "This is just confusing, Brandon. Why--what are you doing?" But I'm like, "I got a prelude to Stormlight, I got a postlude, and then we get one prelude to The Voidlight Archive and a postlude to The Voidlight Archive. It works!" And he's like, "But it will be book 6 of The Stormlight Archive!" Like yeah, that's the series name, y'know. So, we'll see if they let me get away with it, meaning kind of editors, beta readers, when they see that, they're just like, "this is too weird, Brandon". But that's what I named the two five-book arcs in my head. 'Cause we don't have Stormlight anymore, so...

Paleo

This comes from the Staff of the Coppermind. In the Spiritual Realm visions, we meet a man by the name of Elodi. Is this the modern day [El], as he was in his pre-Fused form, or is this somebody else?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO!

Karen Ahlstrom

(provided in an email exchange with Argent)

Elodi is not the same person as El. The timeline didn't match up. Brandon says he RAFOed it because he couldn’t remember the right answer in that moment. He knew we had talked about it and wasn’t certain what we had decided.

Windrunner

One character dynamic that featured a little more heavily in the early books was the realization that Kaladin and Shallan have, independently, that Kaladin has killed Helaran, you know? That's kind of a very big deal. But it's not something that the characters have ever really gotten around to discussing, at least on-screen, and so is there a reason that you feel like they weren't ready to get to that and is it something you foresee that they'll ever get to or is that not an angle you're interested in exploring?

Brandon Sanderson

I still have that on my list of things that we could get to, but this is character stuff and so I don't force it. And part of the reason that I haven't forced it is Shallan doesn't confront problems and Kaladin has been breaking. And it's just another thing to deal with, and I don't think either of them want to deal with it.

Will they? Keep in mind these sort of things I try to treat very naturally like people do and sometimes you just don't talk about it. Sometimes you do. It'd be good for them to talk about it. Will it happen? It's really going to depend on if I find the right situation that it feels like the characters would do it. This is where the Brandon the outliner goes out the window and Brandon the write it by the vibe comes in. This is just one of those things that's kind of looming over them and they both kind of know it.

Kaymyth

Taln tried to kill Cultivation for unknown reasons, with a weapon he got from Kalak. How close did he get to killing her and what sort of weapon was this?

Brandon Sanderson

*a few seconds of incredulous silence*

You think I'm gonna answer that? Wait for Taln's flashbacks!

Kaymyth

We are obviously fishing for whether or not Taln got his hands on a Dawnshard! *questioners laugh*

Brandon Sanderson

Wait for Taln's flashbacks! Maybe I'll answer then, maybe I won’t.

Paleo

We are hoping you will.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! I'm glad you asked it. RAFO.

Paleo

So Hoid claims that Retribution's Ascension was pretty unlikely to happen and basically didn't see it happening. But we see some other characters like Moelach and the Death Rattles sort of predicting it, Renarin sees it happening basically. Does that mean that Hoid is just worse at seeing the future than he thinks he is, or...?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, yes, he definitely is worse at seeing the future than he thinks he is. But also, the future is...finicky. And things like that, so yes. Hoid is very good at getting where he needs to be. He's much worse at actually reading the future and you will see this with him. There are other point where you can see this with him. He is very good at play acting, but yeah.

Windrunner

According to the epigraphs in The Way of Kings, the Palanaeum is suggested to not be the first iteration of this library; it's mentioned that there was a "firing of the original Palanaeum." Some of our close readers were wondering is this related to the Hierocracy and Vorinism's desire to get rid of historical records, like the Knights Radiant and the Voidbringers, or is it related to something else?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for now.

Kaymyth

So, in one of Szeth's flashbacks, he's seen praying to a stone which gives him the impression it's foreign to Roshar, and I'm going to read a couple of descriptions.

Brandon Sanderson

Okay.

Kaymyth

"...brilliant stone: two feet across with a crystal vein running through the center. It opened at one side like a mouth, the crystal forming teeth." (Wind and Truth)

"At the direct middle of the circular pattern, the crystals curved inward, following a pocketlike hollow in the wall. Here, the crystals grew long, each one having a jagged, sharp edge. Like teeth lining the maw of a stone beast." (The Final Empire)

The descriptions bear a striking resemblance to each other. Is Szeth praying to an atium crystal?

Brandon Sanderson

Hm! Excellent question.

Paleo

Did any God Metals exist prior to the Shattering, like either associated with Adonalsium or one that would become associated with a Shard or something else like that?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO this one now, Marvin, but I can talk about why on this case. Basically, I do have a God Metal designed for Adonalsium and I do not know if it will work when I write those books. This is one of those things that I'm like *makes noncommittal noise* "I don't know if I want to go--". And so we will see if I do or don't, right? A lot of that stuff from Yolen's a little up in the air until I write Dragonsteel Prime, because there's been so many iterations, right? Not Dragonsteel [Prime], when I write actual Dragonsteel. Like in Dragonsteel Prime, we've had the weapons designed and at various points even in Dragonsteel Prime's chronology, I had either the father god dead or not dead yet and that the weapons had been locked away. But then there's children gods in Dragonsteel Prime that I, you know, abandoned. And so, I'm staying away from that one. If it's relevant, it will be relevant in Dragonsteel and you'll know very quickly on. Right now there is, but it's very loosely tacked to the board.

Windrunner

Braize's core has an interesting metal. Would you consider this metal to be a God Metal or no?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I would not consider it to be a God Metal.

Windrunner

You would not, okay. And that would have been something that would have been set up when Adonalsium created the system.

Brandon Sanderson

This was not placed there by any of the Shards of Adonalsium.

Okay, would I call it a God Metal? *hrmms indecisively* This is where we get into it, right? Like, what do we consider a God Metal? It is not a God Metal of one of the sixteen Shards. There you go.

Windrunner

Well, that's an excellent hint.

Brandon Sanderson

I would not consider it a God Metal of one of the sixteen Shards. It was not placed there by one of the sixteen Shards.

Windrunner

We love to do "what is" here, so if you want to answer "what is a God Metal?" we'd be happy to run through it.

Brandon Sanderson

It depends, like, right now I-- what is a God Metal? Right now I call the God Metals the essences of the sixteen. But God Metal's a term that kind of developed naturally in the community. It's not really a thing that the early in-world characters could even really define. And so, there's something wonky about the moon and bits of it hit the planet, so, you know? There's maybe some myths and stories on Roshar that you might have heard that have something to do with this and some of those-- all of those stories mean something, so there you are.

Kaymyth

You've said many times that Sel is one of the most difficult planets to get to in the cosmere. And yet, there are a whole lot of Selish worldhoppers running around. Is the planet just easier to leave than it is to get to or is there something else going on here?

Brandon Sanderson

So, there is a specific way that you can get on and off and if you know the people who run that, you can get on and off. If you're going to try to do it on your own, you're going to get destroyed, almost certainly, not completely certainly. So, difficulty inspires people to make solutions, how about that? You can't just wander over to Sel and get onto Sel very easily. But, if you know how, like-- it's a lot easier for me to get to California than to New York, but I go to New York more often.

Paleo

Continuing on what we already touched on the fourth moon. Just to, like, set some ground rules, any question we ask about it will you automatically RAFO it?

Brandon Sanderson

Probably, not automatically; you've seen me trying to give you some stuff, but it's hard, right. Giving stuff causes people to have a worse time later on, reading books.

Paleo

I'll try anyway ... Was Adonalsium the one who made it fall to Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, we'll RAFO that. I'm glad you're asking, yeah, we'll RAFO that.

Windrunner

So, we learn in The Sunlit Man that a spike can be made from a previous holder of a Dawnshard and then used to find the next Dawnshard holder in the chain. And, I always kind of figured that that was how they were tracking Sigzil in The Sunlit Man, you know, the Night Brigade. But, we see now that he got his Dawnshard from Hoid and we know Hoid was most likely not killed and had a spike made out of him, so are they using a different method to follow him?

Brandon Sanderson

So, you don't have to kill people to make spikes anymore. Be aware of that, that's one of the big revelations that we had and, by that era, making spikes is a different experience; I'll point that out. If you can get a piece of-- for instance, you could make a spike using some of Hoid's Breath that he's held long enough. You just need to get the right <to him>. But there are other ways to chase the Dawnshard, just like there are lots of ways-- so, there are other ways to chase the Dawnshard as well.

Kaymyth

So, Kalak comments that Shallan is able to draw on Fortune because she has two Nahel bonds. Is this truly what's going on or is it instead because she is the daughter of a Herald or is it maybe a mixture of both? 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, definitely some mixture going on there and some unique Resonances going on with Shallan. I would say anyone who is trying to theorize in world about what is going on with Shallan, they don't like, it's a pretty unique case and they are spitballing, maybe poorly. Whether it's Hoid or anyone else. Weird stuff is going on with Shallans spiritweb and it is causing all sorts of fun for me.

Paleo

So, I have a question about the history of Roshar, because we learn a lot in the visions that they visit, from thousands of years ago. But we still do not know what year zero in the Vorin calendar is. Can you share with us what event they are counting their years from?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I'm going to RAFO that, but not because-- because I don't want to get it wrong. It's in the notes. That's a "Karen, am I remembering right, is this what it is or did I change it three times?"

We actually had-- so my company had the twentieth anniversary of Elantris party today and part of it was trivia, which I didn't participate in because it would have been unfair, but there's at least one question where I answered wrong--I didn't participate on one of the teams, but I was answering for myself--because I had changed it and I'm like "oh, right, I changed his name." Serene's cousin was "Maben" in my head, but I changed it to something like *tries to remember and pronounce Adien* I changed it to an actual Aon-focused name, but his name is "Maben" in my head and it has been and I'm like "oh!" I remember that I changed Galladon's name, because I've used him a bunch since, but I didn't remember I'd changed his name. I change things and my mind still is on the way it was for five drafts, not the way it was for one draft. I get myself in trouble sometimes. I've mostly stopped saying "silvereye".

Paleo

Have you caught yourself writing "silvereye" in Ghostbloods yet?

Brandon Sanderson

No, that one I've basically fixed, but I caught a new one today; Maben is no longer Maben and he hasn't been for twenty years, but in my head he's Maben and I'm like "I'm going to write Maben's book someday" and he's not even named that.

Windrunner

One of my favorite moments in Stormlight 5 was the interlude with Cusicesh where we see the Iriali leave, which was a really kind of cool way to tie back to Way of Kings, I thought. But one of the things that we were curious about with Cusicesh: It seems like he's serving as a guide to wherever they're going next, maybe Lumar, maybe somewhere else, and is he the guide for just this leg of their journey or was he with them when they came to Roshar and he is kind of leading them on?

Brandon Sanderson

So, he is the guide for this leg of their journey, but he is not actually a spren.

Windrunner

Not actually a spren, okay. I guess Axies gets some things wrong sometimes.

Brandon Sanderson

Axies would have to categorize him correctly as a spren-adjacent entity, which is how he's categorized seons when he's met them.

Kaymyth

Is the dragon Hoid dated and the Vessel Hoid dated the same person?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Kaymyth

So, is it Valor?

Brandon Sanderson

It's Valor.

Windrunner

Oooh!

Brandon Sanderson

But that's a spoiler! I give you guys spoilers. So, there's your big spoiler, yes.

Kaymyth

That was one of those things where like, we're pretty sure, but--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's the same. So, yeah.