Recent entries

Questioner

Is it possible to build a city that only exists in Shadesmar?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Mi'chelle Walker

Is the city that the Parshendi are in Urithiru?

Brandon Sanderson

In The Way of Kings, Jasnah tells Shallan that Urithiru is not on the Shattered Plains. So either Jasnah is incorrect or that is not Urithiru.

Mi'chelle Walker

In other words, you’re not going to tell me?

Brandon Sanderson

I’m just clarifying for you so that you have all the information you need in order to make judgments and ask questions.

Mi'chelle Walker

Brandon, have we seen a point of view chapter from the character who writes the Ars Arcanum?

Brandon Sanderson

I’m not gonna tell you that. That would be way too much giving away.

Questioner

Is the character who writes the Ars Arcanum from Sel originally?

Brandon Sanderson

I’m not gonna tell you anything about the character who writes the Ars Arcanum.

Questioner

If you make a Feruchemical storage and you burn it, can you put the excess back into a Feruchemical storage?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

So I was reading the Alloy of Law, and at the end I read through the Ars Arcanum. And I got confused because it’s written in first person, but it refers to Harmony in third person. I thought he was writing it, so who writes that part?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s a good question for you to be asking, one which people have been curious about, and I have not yet answered who writes all of the Ars Arcanum, but they are in-world, somebody's writing them. If you ever read The Way of Kings, it’s written in first-person too.

Questioner

Are they all written by the same person?

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, have I answered that yet?

Josh Walker

You should.

Brandon Sanderson

I should? They are all written by the same person.

Questioner

Because it sounds like they’re written by Hoid, I think.

Brandon Sanderson

They are all written by the same person.

Questioner

You like how you have those smaller, one-chapter type things? The burglars, I want to know more about them. Are those guys like, are those chapters going to show up more in the rest of the books?

Brandon Sanderson

Not all of them. They are all important in one way or another, but it's not always the characters who are the important part. Or not necessarily the viewpoint characters who are important. So for instance, in that particular instance, with the burglars, it's the woman who is the important one in that group.

Questioner

And the guy who goes measuring... cataloging different types of spren, he's going to be important later on.

Brandon Sanderson

Axies will most likely show up at other points in the series.

Questioner

The Windrunners, they’re just one order of the Knights Radiant, aren’t they?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes they are, in fact they are--every order is a grouping of one of these *points to the large symbols on the Radiant tables* and two of these *points at the smaller symbols*, these are the Surges. So these are the ten, sort of forces. And so Windrunning is pressure and gravitation, which are those two. But the Skybreakers are right there, with a different combination and each of these different groupings would make one order of the Knights Radiant. And that is the symbol of the Windrunners, right there on the cover. *points at the swordgylph under the dust jacket*. So, fun little easter-egg type things there.

Questioner

When are we going to find out about how Elhokar can see like the symbols in the mirror and stuff like that. He can Soulcast then, right?

Brandon Sanderson

You’ll have to see, you’ll have to see...

Questioner

Just wanted to ask how you come up with all your different universes?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, it’s hard to say where specifically where they come from. You can point to certain ones and say, okay, Mistborn, Mistborn came from me driving through a fog bank at 80 miles an hour and saying, “Wow that looks cool, can I use that?” And you can point at Warbreaker with me saying, “I’ve done this whole world of ash and I need to do something colorful, let’s build a color based magic system.” Way of Kings is definitely influenced by tidal pools and things like that. And so, each one’s different, it’s just things I see that I think will make interesting stories and settings.

Questioner

So why is Shallan so whiny? No I’m just kidding...

Brandon Sanderson

Shallan is very young and has gone through a lot in her life.

Questioner

And does she have a Shardblade?

Brandon Sanderson

She does have a Shardblade.

Questioner

What time period do [cosmere books] all fit in, do they all fit in time--at the same time?

Brandon Sanderson

No, like for instance, Way of Kings and Alloy of Law are pretty close to one another, but Elantris is fairly far before them. So far I’ve written them chronologically basically, except I’ve skipped certain stories, like there’s a series called White Sand which is in the middle there somewhere which will actually be a jump back in time when I end up doing it and some things like that. And Dragonsteel is like way at the beginning which I’ll eventually do, but I’ve done them chronologically so far.

Questioner

I enjoy Way of Kings, it seems like that’s the one where everyone’s coming together. I was reading online about Galladon and Demoux being in it. I enjoyed that. Is that going to happen more often?

Brandon Sanderson

In that book- that series, yes. There will be more crossover. It’s kinda one of the core stories, along with the things happening on the Mistborn world and things like that. And so, there’s going to be a lot more crossover. Most of it’s still kind of subtle stuff, but if you keep your eyes open, there’ll be some real zingers in the next two books.

Questioner

[Josh and Mi’ch] were kind of explaining that your books were all in different worlds and Hoid can jump from world to world?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they’re all in the same universe. And there are some characters who have appeared in multiple books. Hoid, for instance, has appeared in all of them so far.

Questioner

Yeah, is he going to have his own book?

Brandon Sanderson

He will eventually have his own book series.

Brandon Sanderson

The magic systems for Elantris- the pitch to myself designing the world and magic systems was this kind of procedural-based, almost programing-based magic. Where in Elantris, you use these characters to program out a sequence of events that tells the power that's flowing through what to do.

What Shai is doing in this book is she carves a little seal. And the seal is very much like a little program, and she stamps it on something and uses that stamp to rewrite the history of the object. As long as the seal is there, the object thinks it has this other history. The example you see in the book is you know... an old dirty table that's not been cared for, she can write a seal for its history, she has to figure out what its history was first. And she can write out a seal that basically reprograms that past, so when she stamps it, it thinks it's been cared for all along and suddenly it gains this lacquer, it's beautiful, it's been well-cared for, because in that fake Forgery of the history, that's what happened to it. And that's what her magic does, which is why she's been hired to Forge a copy of the emperor's soul.

But, yes, the magic systems have the same root. And it's not just the Dor. I like the magics on a given planet to all have a consistent theme. And for Elantris they are these almost programming-like, very based on symbols and what-not. In Mistborn, it's based on the metals and the interactions of the metals.

Questioner

Mistborn, the broadsheet hints that there's a continent or whatever on the other side of the Mistborn planet. Would that also be connected to Allomancy and Feruchemy and all that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it will be. The Southern Continent does have interactions with the three Metallic Arts, but they use them in very different ways.

Questioner

So the Emperor's Soul takes place on Sel. Is it's magic derived from the Dor?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Where did you get your inspiration for having kind of a kind of consistent universe; it's kind of similar to Stephen King and things like that.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, where did I get the inspiration for that? There's a couple of places, and I don't want to go off on this too long, if you go look on the Q&A database that these guys have on the 17th Shard you can find more.

But there were really two things that made me do it. First off is reading how Asimov did it and really being impressed with what he did and also noticing that he had to like do some patches in order to make everything work. Asimov connected his Robot series and his Foundations series after the fact many years later. It turned out really well; the two series, as it turns out, blend together in a really cool way but it felt to me it felt after the fact . And I wanted to do something from the get-go and say, "Well, if I've got something like this as a model." Stephen King did it also, but he did it after the fact. But I've got writers like this as a model to show how cool this can be, so my question to myself is, "How much cooler can it be if I do it from book one?" And you know, it's the sort of advantages you get as a writer by standing on the shoulders of authors like that, who have done these awesome things in the past. It allows us to kind of see what they did and say, "Okay, how can I expand on this? How can I do something new, rather than just doing what Asimov did?" And one of the approaches was to try it from book one.

And the other reasoning was that I like big epics but I also want to be writing a lot of stand-alones. And early in my career in particular, it was important for me to be writing stand-alones. And so the hidden epic behind the scenes allowed me to embed some of this depth of foreshadowing and connection in a way that would not be intimidating to readers because they could just read the story and enjoy the stand-alone. And then if it's something- if they're the type that really gets into this and really wants to dig deep, they can find the other level and be like, "Wow, there's an epic on here and Mistborn is a sequel to Elantris. I didn't know that," and things like that. Or they can be read completely independently and you never have to worry about that. So I like that versatility.

I will eventually write some stories connecting all of these things in a more obvious way, but I don't want it to come to the forefront of any series that that's not already the focus. For instance, I don't want Way of Kings to be about that, because I've already promised you what Way of Kings is about. And I don't want then to trick you into, "Oh, now it's this other thing." I have books planned that will be that, but they're a little ways off.

Questioner

Okay Hoid, you mentioned he's in all your books, is he in also in all your shorter stories?

Brandon Sanderson

He is not in all of my shorter stories. In fact, he is not in any book that references Earth. So if there's a reference to Earth- most of my science fiction has referential stuff to Earth, Alcatraz is like this. He's not in anything like that. He's not in the Wheel of Time. It would not have been appropriate for me to seed something like that into a Wheel of Time book. So he's not in Steelheart or the other children works that I've done. But he is in all my epic fantasies.

Questioner

Now my main question actually, which magic systems, if any, does he have access to?

Brandon Sanderson

That's an excellent question. He is familiar with very many of them, and lots that you haven't seen yet.

Questioner

Does Elantrian conversion follow the Law of Sixteen?

Brandon Sanderson

Does Elantrian conversion follow the Law of Sixteen? No. Good question, excellent question.

Questioner

Who was the first Feruchemist?

Brandon Sanderson

Who was the first Feruchemist? I don't have their name written down. It's fairly ancient of date.

Questioner

Were they born or were they created?

Brandon Sanderson

The first Feruchemist, were they born or created? Both. I don't see those two as mutually exclusive. See how good I am at dodging questions, now? I've been dealing with the Wheel of Time fans long enough. They've really whipped me into shape for dodging questions.

Questioner

Were there highstorms on Roshar before Adonalsium Shattered?

Brandon Sanderson

Were there highstorms on Roshar before Adonalsium Shattered? I'm gonna RAFO that. I'm not gonna answer you, because I'm mean. Maybe someday you shall have your answer to this important question.

Questioner

Do you have any future plans for the character of Stephen Leeds?

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, Stephen Leeds. So this is the main character from Legion. Legion is- actually kind of got some cool stories behind it. Legion, you know, is one of these quirky ideas I came up with. And actually since it was mainstream and things I said, "Hey Dan," talking to Dan Wells, my friend, "You should write this story, let me tell you about it." And he was not nearly as excited about it as I was. I'm like, "Dan, you need to write this story, you need to write this story." And finally I realized, "Oh, I should write this story cause I came up with the idea, rather than telling Dan to. It's okay, Brandon. You can write something mainstream."

So, I kicked it around for a while. For me, I viewed it as being a television show, a pitch for a television show particularly. So I wrote a pitch on it, and I wrote that story to be kind of a pilot pitch. Which then sold the television rights on it, which was always kind of the goal for me was to get that because I view it as being a really awesome television show. So we sold the rights to Lionsgate and I went ahead and released the story that I wrote

I would like to do more things like that. I have so much on my plate, who knows? My little notebook that I carry around places where I expect to be bored, it has scribblings, you know, of maybe a quarter of another Stephen Leeds story. I ran into a hangup with some of the science and so I fired off a furious email to Peter, my assistant, and he was like, "I don't know". And usually that doesn't happen with Peter on the science, so maybe it is a real quandry. So, answer is, yes there should be more. Hopefully we can get the television show off the ground and that would be a lot of fun.

Questioner

I was just wondering, how Stormlight 2 is coming?

Brandon Sanderson

How is Stormlight 2 going? It's going pretty well. This whole being trapped in a hotel during the storm thing was not actually as conducive as you might think. Cause I sat down and I worked on it for a bit but being away from home, being, you know, annoyed that I'm trapped in a hotel and things like that I actually ended up writing a short story I owed somebody instead, just to kind of further clear the plate.

I owe Charlaine Harris a story. Charlaine's a friend and she's been a dear to me and she keeps trying to get me into one of her anthologies. And I'm like "Charlaine, this isn't really my thing," but she keeps asking so I finally said yes to one of them because the concept sounds fun, it was called Games Dead People Play. So I wrote her a story for her Games Dead People Play anthology. So we'll see about that.

It was actually four thousand words; you can be impressed now. I don't write things very short very often, if you can't tell. My short stories are as long as the book you're holding in your hand usually. So that's how that tends to go. So four thousand words is really short for me; it's only like 20 pages or something, it's tiny. Anyway, Stormlight 2 is coming along well. Hopefully next Christmas-time is when it should be coming out. I'm supposed to be turning in a new title this week and a cover concept by the end of the month, so that Michael Whelan can paint one. So we will see if I'm able to keep these deadlines.

Questioner

What are your feelings on fanfiction?

Brandon Sanderson

I am perfectly fine with fanfiction.  I think fanfiction is cool. I don’t read a ton of fanfiction, I probably won’t specifically read fanfiction based on my works just for the idea contamination potential and things like that, but I think fanfiction is awesome and you should feel free to write fanfiction in my worlds, as long as its not for profit.  I don’t know if I will buy into this Amazon Fanfiction for profit thing or not, I'm not sure what I think about it yet. But at the end of the day I think it’s cool and it’s good practice for a lot of writers. So go for it.

Questioner

On that note, the book that you were just talking about earlier I read that it was supposed to be Hoid’s origin story?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it was Hoid’s origin story, yeah.  I will re-write it eventually. One of the problems with it, about halfway through I felt this should really have been a first person book all along and it wasn’t.  So that was part of the big reason it wasn’t working. It needs to be his voice telling a story as opposed to the way I was doing it and that is going to involve a major re-write.

Brandon Sanderson

For those of you who don’t know, when I was writing these thirteen books.  I started working on them and I loved the big epics but when I sat down to write Elantris a lot of the advice I had heard from editors said “Don’t write a big series in the beginning.  You want to write a standalone book with sequel potential. So when you sell that you can then write the sequels to it, but if you don’t sell it you’re not locked into spending all of your time writing these.”  The idea was if you’re going to write five novels, write five first novels as opposed to one book and four more so if you can’t sell the first one the others you can sell somewhere. And that’s decent advice, it’s not the only advice. Naomi Novik who writes the Temeraire books, if you’ve read them they’re quite good, she wrote the whole trilogy right off.  She ignored that advice and when she sold the first one she had the other two ready and they bought those too and they released her books one at a time one month after another. I think the Iron Druid guy did that too. It can allow for a really explosive start where you’ve already got shelf space, you’ve got three books there. Instead of being a nobody with one book, you’re a nobody with three and suddenly you look more important.  

Anyways I heard this, and I really do like jumping to a lot of different projects so this is what I tried but in the back of my mind I did love the idea of the big epic.  It is what got me into this, I love the Wheel of Time and things like this. So I started writing a hidden epic so I embedded into Elantris hints of a character I had been developing for years which was a guy who went from world to world in a fantasy universe investigating the different magic systems.  I started embedding this story behind the story using an outline I had used for my very first book that I had never actually finished as a background for all of this. So I was basically writing a sequel to that book but on a different planet, with different characters. I started writing my next book each had these same hints and allusions hidden behind with different characters crossing between the worlds and sharing.

I eventually published Elantris and decided this is something that I thought was cool and wanted to do and I’ve seen people do it.  Stephen King connected all of his worlds. And other authors, Terry Brooks eventually combined a bunch of his worlds together and I thought that what they did was really interesting and I had never seen anyone do it from the get go though right?  Like when Asimov linked the Robot books and the Foundation books it was something he did later in his life where he’s like “I’m going to blend these two together and make one universe out of them.” I hadn’t seen anyone do it from the start, and again I have an advantage on Isaac Asimov and Terry Brooks and people because I’ve read them.  I’ve been able to see what they did and say “Well I’m going to do this from the get go, to see if I can tell this cool hidden epic behind the stories.” So that’s called-- I called that the cosmere, it was my name for it when I was sixteen. It now seems almost a little silly to me but I’ve kept with it because, you know, it is one of those old remnants that I have from my teenage days.  There are characters-- There is a character that has shown up in all of my epic fantasies, things like the Rithmatist are not part of the cosmere, Earth isn’t so if it references Earth you know it’s not. But they show up, and there’s like an underlying, fundamental laws of magic. And there’s a story that happened long in the past and a lot of these people are reacting to this and things like that.  The thing that I want you to know though is I do it in such a way that you don’t feel like you have to have read my whole body of work to read one. Like you don’t have to have read Elantris to read Mistborn. You don’t have to read Mistborn to read Way of Kings even though there is a character from Mistborn in Way of Kings. You don’t have to do that, it’s all behind the scenes and it will never take over a series.  You will never get to like book 8 of the Stormlight Archive and be like “Wow, now its all about the cosmere, its not about--” It’s not going to happen happen like that. I will write books about the cosmere but I will be upfront from the beginning about this is going to be the cosmere series. If you don’t know the different magic systems you’re going to kind of be confused because they are going to interact with each other and things like that.  Eventually that will happen but for right now, you don’t need to worry about it. They are all easter eggs, you can read them in any order and you can piece them together and stuff like that.

Questioner

When one of the shards, like Odium, move from world to world in the cosmere, does their presence, like the metals they leave behind and their magic, leave with them?

Brandon Sanderson

Odium never really settled on a planet.  He is now settled on Roshar and his magic has permeated things.  Leaving would be very difficult for him. It would either involve leaving behind some of his power or ripping that out, which would be a difficult process.  So yes it is very tough to leave.

Questioner

*inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, that’s a good quesiton. The question is am I going to be expanding Elantris, what am I going to do? The history of Elantris is that it was my sixth book, I sold it while I writing 13, which was the Way of Kings, the first draft of it. When I sold [Elantris], my editor said “Elantris, looks like you may be planning more for this world, you want to do a sequel?” and I said “Yes I do, but not right now. I would like to release something that people can read that’s just a standalone, for now, just to introduce myself to the community” I didn’t like the idea that everything by every new author had to be a big massive series. As much as I love those, I kind of like it as a reader when I be like “Alright here’s a standalone I can read by this author, let me get to know this author before I delve into something that may take five or six years to finish. And so we did Elantris on its own, but I always had, in the back of my mind, what I would do for sequels. I actually imagined the Elantris world, the sequels being kind of Pern-style sequels, in that each sequel is kind of about a different person, different characters but the other characters are still a big part of the plot. And so the sequel will take place ten years after the first book and I hope to release it 2015 which will be ten years after the book came out. And the star of it will be Sarene’s uncle and his family, so Kiin and his children, they’ll be the main viewpoint characters, though Sarene and Raoden would appear, but it will be about them. The plot of it is actually, they go and visit Fjorden as the ambassadors to Fjorden and things start to go kind of creepy. I will eventually write that book but I’m not sure when I will get to it.

Questioner

So this morning I just finished reading The Rithmatist. I was wondering if you could talk about your process of creating that magic system. Specifically about how it dealt with mathematics. And also if it is going to have a sequel.

Brandon Sanderson

This has a fun history in that it is the last book I completed before the Wheel of Time hit me like a freight train. I was working on a different book, you can find the sample chapters of that one on my website, its called the Liar of Partinel and it really was not going well. I have talked about this before, I talked about it in my essay that I posted on my blog when I released the Rithmatist. But things were just going poorly and I actually stopped writing that book and wrote the Rithmatist instead. This book that I didn’t have a contract for, that no one was expecting. Sometimes it is very liberating to do that. When you see these side projects, like last year, Emperor’s Soul and Legion and things like the Rithmatist, it’s me saying “Okay, I really love the big epic fantasies, it’s what I came in to do. But sometimes how complex they are and how much work they are, between them you need a break.”

The Rithmatist was a break and I had been toying with this magic system where—And I don’t even really know what started it but I wanted to do a magic where you dueled with chalk. Where you would take chalk and you would draw things and you would have a duel with someone else using chalk. I wanted two-dimensional things playing out. I guess it maybe comes from me being a gamer and me wanting to- There’s so many things that we take from the modern day and we twist them and make a fantasy world out of them. Its where Steampunk came from. Let’s take modern technology but let’s build it with an ancient- or an older technology and see what cool stuff we can do. Airships with steam, and robots with clockwork. Gearpunk and things like that. And so I was like, let’s build video games with magical chalk.

Really the magic system is, you draw a circle around yourself and you basically then play Starcraft. You draw little units and you send them over to try and break their defense—it’s more like Tower Defense honestly, like versus Tower Defense. Where you try to break through your opponent’s circle, when one of your beasties gets through the circle you have won the duel; and you can shoot off different lines of chalk that do things and stuff like that. Where this came from was just that sort of thing, all of my- One of the things that drive me to write is that “one foot in science and one foot in magic” and you can see that. When I described this magic system here I’m taking all these sort of disease concepts and the modern germ theory and all this stuff and I’m saying “let’s mix that with magic and see what we can come up with.” Mistborn was like “one foot in alchemy and one foot in vector physics” and things like that. This just gets me excited.

There was an era in our world where science was this awesome, almost magical thing. If you read back about the turn of the century, 1800’s to 1900’s you’ll find essays where people were researching- new scientific discoveries were happening all the time and everyone was so excited about them. I remember reading this essay, I’ve told this story before, someone wrote an essay in like 1910 where they went and they interviewed a bunch of ditch-diggers and they studied the Science of Ditch-Digging and they went and they told all these ditch-diggers what they learned and helped them be more efficient in digging ditches and suddenly science was for everyone. It was for the ditch-diggers- Who knew what else we could discover. And then we basically blew ourselves up and ever since then we’ve been scared of it and that’s when we got the science as an antagonist sort of thing that happened in the 50’s and 60’s in science fiction. It’s a wonderful era, and things like that. In my writing I always find that time when science was something that was for the common man that we were discovering, that there was this sense of wonder to science, it’s really fascinating to me. And I find myself returning to that time and time again, and that’s where you see this. In this one, with The Rithmatist, it’s honestly a little more lighthearted even though the prologue is someone getting attacked by these chalk monsters. The concept is more lighthearted, it’s blending teenagers playing games with magic and where would that go and what could I do with it. I did go to mathematics because I wanted the idea around all of this to have structure and rules; and I liked the idea of using “the more perfect your circle is the stronger it is, the more stable it is against someone trying to break through it.” So I started looking into the interesting properties, mathematically, of circles, and what creates-. What they do with arithmetic. And that sent me off on this whole thing where I drew all these cool whatchamadinkies and stuff like that. That’s where it came from, that’s a long explanation for a simple question.

Questioner

So I’ve heard you talk about a book and as a nurse is really interesting to me, or the idea of the book. It’s the one where viruses not only make you sick but they also give you a super power. So I was kind of wondering on the list of when projects are being...

Brandon Sanderson

I originally called this book Silence Divine and the idea behind this book is—I’m always looking for interesting interesting Magic systems and I came up with an idea of “what if viruses and bacteria evolved in line with the magic on the world so that when you caught the disease you got a power” Like if you catch the common cold you could fly, as long as you have it. But when you get over the cold, you can no longer fly. So they keep you alive to help spread themselves and things like that. So when your immune system beats them you lose the power. The book will be about someone who’s basically like half-counter-terrorism, half-police force, where they keep track of these things because what happens when it moves through the city. Like half-CDC, half-counter-terrorism, half-police force. Where suddenly everyone in the city can walk through walls. What do you do, as the police force, when that happens? And things like that. And they keep special people incubating diseases that have come through before and they keep their immune systems low so in an emergency they can go in and catch a bunch of diseases and stuff like that. It’s going to be really awesome.

And the answer is, I have no idea when I can write this book. It is in the Cosmere, so it’s part of all that, but I have no idea because I really feel, coming off the Wheel of Time, the people who are fans of my work, everyone understands, at least I hope they understand, that the Wheel of Time was something I needed to do. But it did delay people getting things like Stormlight Archive and stuff like that. And I feel like right now I really need to dedicate myself to getting a few books out in the Stormlight Archive before I get too distracted by anything else, such as this, and I write books that are really cool but no one’s asking for, really, at this point. (Except for you so thank you.) So I will eventually write that book. I have toyed several times doing a novella in the world just to get that out of my system. So maybe eventually we’ll do that.

theofficetroll (paraphrased)

If a Shard ruled Talents (Alcatraz), what would the Shard be?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Betrayal, or inner self-contradiction, people contradicting themselves in some way.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There are two Shards on Roshar. Odium's presence is felt on Roshar, but he is on Braize, the third planet in the system.

theofficetroll (paraphrased)

Is that Shard on The Silence Divine?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Oh, you mean Ashyn. Ashyn is mostly barren with small fertile patches

There are two Shards on Roshar; however, Honor is dead.

theofficetroll (paraphrased)

Are Nightwatcher and The Old Magic related?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The Nightwatcher is related to The Old Magic and is related to a Shard.

theofficetroll (paraphrased)

Which Shard?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

RAFO.

theofficetroll (paraphrased)

If Hoid were tempted by a Shard, which one would it be?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Endowment.

Shardlet (paraphrased)

If a Scadrian allomancer had a baby with a Nalthian (and the baby was born on Nalthis), could the baby have an original Breath and also be a Natural allomancer?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It could happen, the baby would have a bit of Preservation and a bit of Endowment.

Shardlet (paraphrased)

If a time bubble is raised in a vacuum, is the diameter larger than a bubble raised in atmosphere.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, atmosphere has no effect on bubble diameter.

Shardlet (paraphrased)

A slider and a pulser are standing near each other and each put up a bubble. Neither is standing close enough to the other to be within the other's bubble, but they are near enough that their bubbles would overlap what effect would you have?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The bubbles would overlap and it would be like a Venn diagram (i.e., outside both bubbles-normal time, in sliders bubble-fast time, in pulser's bubble-slow time, in the overlap-normal time).

Shardlet (paraphrased)

You said previously that a slider's bubble is anchored to its position on Scadrial rather than on the slider's position or on the train (if the burner was on a train). If the slider was on a rock in space, would the bubble be anchored to a position relative to Scadrial, the rock or something else?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

RAFO

Shardlet (paraphrased)

In Hemalurgy, does the person doing the spiking need to have Scadrian Investiture?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No.

Shardlet (paraphrased)

So, anyone with the knowledge could spike someone?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes.

Questioner

Were the Shattered Plains broken before Natanatan fell?

Brandon Sanderson

Let me RAFO that one just because there's enough there that I want to... how it was Shattered and what happened is...

Questioner

And is Eshonai viewpoint like Szeth in the Interlude?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you get a sequence of interludes from her.

Questioner

Was the city beneath the Shattered Plains inhabited when the Plains were broken?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, good question, nicely done! Yes. Words of Radiance deals a lot with that.

Questioner

How many Shards have Invested their power on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Technically, all of them did.

Chaos

Is Forgery completely distinct from Bloodsealing?

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Chaos

Are they distinct magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on your definition of a system. For instance, do you call Windrunning its own magic system, or would Surgebinding be the magic system? Or would you break it down further, and say Windrunning is further composed of two different systems...

Chaos

I guess I did just ask earlier if they're all manifestations of the same system.

Questioner

Like, more closely related, to maybe some of the other ones on Sel?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they are definitely more closely related.

Questioner

What defines the early, middle, and late eras on Sel?

Brandon Sanderson

My instinct is (and I could be wrong) that... If you were to ask me that right now, what I mean by the early, middle, and late eras... It probably has to do with ancient being pre-Splintering. Not Pre-Shattering. And then the middle era is during Elantris' sort of reign, and then the late era is after the fall. Is probably what I meant. But that's off the top of my head, because I wrote [the Aon pendant descriptions] a long time ago.

Questioner

Is there a similar relationship between Endowment and Hallandren's jungle as there is between Harmony and Elendel Basin ?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. The flowers are being fed by something that's very similar to what you might find on other planets. So the ground is saturated with something that is having a similar effect as Elendel Basin. But it's not the same thing. Elendel Basin was just crafted really, really well, and then it was endowed with a little bit of extra oomph. Here [in Hallandren's jungle], we have this extra seeping into the ground from the pool, which is saturated around and causing the flowers and causing what's going on there.

Questioner

Are gemstones the focus of Surgebinding?

Brandon Sanderson

Define how you mean focus in this conversation.

Questioner

The definition you gave me of focus a few years ago was... You said that the Commands were the focus for Awakening, you said and Aons were focuss for AonDor, and metals are the focus for the Metallic Arts... and you haven't given us a proper definition.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Before Sel's Shards were Splintered, were the Investitures there still form-based?

Brandon Sanderson

Umm... yes.

Questioner

Is "form-based" the right word we should use for that?

Brandon Sanderson

No, it's not really. The are all, in my head, programming-based. They are sequences. But of course, the difference being, with the true programming, the form doesn't matter, it's the numbers. And in this case the form does. The actual depictions are very influential. So, it is not just a magical programming.

Questioner

Is all magic on Sel influenced by both Dominion and Devotion?

Brandon Sanderson

Technically, yes. But they definitely have their themes and their focuses. Influence is such a tricky word, I will warn you...

Questioner

Are Selish magics their own distinct systems, or are they different manifestations of one system?

Brandon Sanderson

Different manifestations of one system, which is in turn a manifestation of the common laws between the worlds.