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Brandon Sanderson

Part Four: Updates on Minor Projects

Warbreaker/Rithmatist 

Once I finish Elantris, these two will be on my radar to finish next.

Reckoners/Alcatraz/Legion

All finished for now. A new Reckoners book with Stephen Bohls is still a possibility. 

The Original

We have a release date for this novella! If you’re not aware, this is an audio original I did with the excellent Mary Robinette Kowal—and we’re now releasing an ebook version.  Look for it around the beginning of May.  

Big List of Cosmere Books

The Night Brigade, Dragonsteel, The Silence Divine, the Grand Apparatus, Mythos, the Aether World book series, Free Fall Seven Layer Burrito World, Unnamed Other Ashyn Book... Someday, someday. (Maybe.)

Brandon Sanderson

Part Three: Updates on Secondary Projects

Elantris

My goal is to write Elantris Two as soon as I finish Ghostboods Three, so it's still a few years off—but I'm gearing up for it now! I’m excited to dive back into the world of my first published novel. So for those of you who love Sel, more is coming before too long. 

Wheel of Time Leatherbounds

Announced at Nexus 2024 was that Dragonsteel, in conjunction with Tor, and with Harriet, Robert Jordan’s editor and widow, is going to be releasing leatherbounds of the Wheel of Time series. We’ve been hard at work on these for several years now, and I’m excited to share the news with you. Below are the images we shared at Nexus, which are not final. (The leatherbound picture itself, for example, is just a mockup.) 

Our goal is for the first of these to come out sometime next winter, and to then do one book a year each year following. We’ll of course keep you up to date on the progress! 

This is a dream project of mine, something I’ve wanted for many years. Tor, once upon a time, did leatherbounds of the Wheel of Time—but only 250 of each volume, and they repurposed the regular hardcover interiors without new artwork. So we’re going to do our best to give the Wheel of Time the treatment it deserves with spectacular luxury editions. Here are a few bullet points.

• Pricing. This is new territory for us, and we’re wanting to make sure both Tor and Harriet are well compensated.  For those who don’t know, we do not have to pay royalties on our other leatherbounds, as I retain those rights. This is different, and is our first time licensing for a leatherbound project. We want these to be affordable (and at least cheaper than the Tor editions, which were $250 back in the 90s) but we also might have to charge more for them than our own to actually have them make a profit. Right now, we’re looking at $175-$200. But leather prices and the cost of the effects we add will be a factor. 

• Splitting books. Harriet has asked us, if possible, not to split any of the books into two volumes—and we think we can manage this, judging by the tests we’ve gotten from the bindery. Yes, this means several of them will be QUITE large.  :)

• New Spring. Yes, we intend to do New Spring. Not sure if it will be released in publication order or after AMoL.

• The World of the Wheel of Time (aka the Big White Book). No plans to do it, or the encyclopedia, as of right now. The rights for those would be separate from what we’re doing already anyway.

• Design. We intend to use genuine leather custom made for the series and include full color interior illustrations and endpapers. We also plan to add new chapter symbols and two-color interior illustrations. 

Songs of the Dead

This book is still in revisions between Peter Orullian (the coauthor) and the publisher, but it is actually happening for sure at this point. Last I’d heard, they’re doing one more round, so this too might be a 2026 book. 

I, as I mentioned last year, have stepped back from this one and given it over entirely to Peter. To be honest, without his passion for the story, it might have fallen by the wayside—he has fought for this book, and managed to land it at a major publisher. 

I’ve given the book to him at this point for reasons of time triage on my part, and so while it comes from an outline and worldbuilding by me (and while I did two revisions on it with him), I consider this “his” book, if that makes sense. I’ll keep you all up to date on it, as I think you’ll love the novel.

White Sand

I got through much of the work I needed to do in order to get this ready, as I talked about above—but there’s still a lot to do.  It’s not quite like writing a brand-new novel, but it’s close. Updating 30-year-old narratives is a fairly big project.

I’ll try to squeeze in more time for this next year between projects. 

Dark One

Like last year, I’ll let Dan give the update.

Super Awesome Danger

I’ll let Isaac talk about this middle-grade graphic novel, as my part (the writing) has long been done, and we’re still finding time among the artists for finishing their part.

Brandon Sanderson

Part Two: Updates on Primary Projects

Stormlight Archive

With Wind and Truth out as of a few days ago, it is finally time to move Stormlight to the back burner for a while. It was a fifteen-year-effort to get this sequence done, and I need some time off from the series. I do still love it, and consider it my opus, but writing on it is quite draining—and I’m ready for a break.

That said, I have scheduled the Horneater novella (about Rock, taking place during Book Four) to be written in about eighteen months, to give us another taste of Stormlight. 

My plan is to finish the entire Ghostbloods trilogy, along with Elantris 2 and 3 (which will finish that series), before jumping back to Stormlight. I’ll talk a little more about timelines below, but we want to build in plenty of time for that. I think I’ll likely be faster than some of our projections, but I want to be careful to make a conservative estimate of when I’ll get back to Stormlight. So for now, enjoy Book Five, and savor it.  

Mistborn

Ghostbloods (Mistborn Era Three) is up next, and will be my mainline project for the next five years or so. My goal is to write the three books straight through, with only the break for the Rock novella in the middle—then hand them off to production to do continuity and the like, giving us plenty of time to do what I did for the first trilogy so many years ago. (Back when I wasn’t as important an author to the publisher, and so they’d take two or more years to publish a book after I handed it in. That gave me a lot of time to make sure the three books had a lot of tight continuity, which I appreciated.)

This series will mark the return of some familiar (somewhat spike-filled) characters from Era One, along with some new characters. It will follow, as the title indicates, the Ghostbloods and their activities on Scadrial, some fifty years or so after the end of Era Two. 

I’ve been planning this trilogy since 2006, and I’m very excited to finally write it.  

Cytoverse

My co-author Janci Patterson has taken up the reins of this series, and is doing a fantastic job. Her work on the novellas (Skyward Flight) has served as an excellent calling card from her to the fans, and judging on their reviews of that book, I think you can all see that you’re in good hands. (You are. I’ve read her next Skyward book, and it’s awesome.)

She and I just finished our brainstorming session on the second book. She’ll be writing it in the next six months, and we’ll get a progress bar up for it when she feels comfortable with us doing so. I’m loving the direction of this series, and the two of us vibe really well as coauthors, our strengths complementing each others’ weaknesses.  I’ll be doing meetings with her during these months when she needs to talk over plot and character, and then plan to read the second novel sometime in July as my break between Book One and Book Two of Ghostbloods.

These books need a lot of lead time before they’re published, so stay tuned for more from Janci and our publisher, Delacorte, for release dates. I’d expect sometime early 2026 for the first one—but we’ll be announcing a release date when the book goes into production.

Brandon Sanderson

Part One: My Year

January-June 5th: Stormlight 5 Revisions

I spent roughly half this year doing the last revisions on Stormlight Book Five—I look back even still and shudder a little bit about those long hours. Getting one of these books ready is a huge task, to say the least. Basically a writing retreat every couple of weeks, holed up working long hours. 

For fun, here’s a little screenshot from my spreadsheet, showing during my final polish the places where I managed to trim (or add) to a given chapter. Note that I’m not 100% sure these are the final chapter numbers—and you can see I was still periodically adding more than I cut away. (This final polish usually involves cutting line by line, not deleting entire scenes, so these are mostly repeated words or ideas, or unclear phrasings that can be tightened up.)

I turned the book in on the fourth of June.

June 5th–June 19th: The Emperor’s Soul Screenplay

There were some talks around this time about maybe doing The Emperor’s Soul as a feature film, and so I decided to work on the screenplay for it for a few weeks. The talks eventually went nowhere, but I do really like the screenplay I came up with—though it heavily leans into the artsy side of the story, so I don’t know how filmable it actually is. 

Rest of June: The Girl Who Looked Up

Here, I did a new version of The Girl Who Looked Up, which needed some attention. As I’ve told you before, we want to eventually do a “Hoid Storybook Collection” as a group of picture books. We want one of those to be The Girl Who Looked Up, but the story from the novel is kind of disjointed, due to the way it fits the narrative, told by two different people. I wanted a version that felt more cohesive, and I finished that here.

July: Isles of the Emberdark Revisions

I actually started playing with this back in June, but as during this time I was tweaking all these different things, I’ll account for this mostly in July. Isles of the Emberdark is Secret Project Five, releasing next year for those who participated in the Words of Radiance leatherbound crowdfunding campaign, and probably early 2026 for those who did not. As such, I needed to finish revisions on that.

I wasn’t super excited to go (basically) straight from Stormlight revisions into this, but I’m the one who makes these schedules and deadlines, so there was really nobody to complain about but myself!

August–September: Moment Zero

I spent the bulk of these two months (with some hits from a COVID bout) on Moment Zero, the new short novel (aka very long novella) for Tailored Realities, next year’s title for Nexus.

I recognize that a collection of my non-Cosmere short fiction is not something that everyone is excited about, but I also know that some of you really like it—and I stay motivated and productive by writing lots of different things to maintain my engagement with storytelling. So, even if this isn’t something for you, know that the recharging it lets me do is vital to the process!

As I write this, I’m working on the last few revisions of that story, with an anticipated turn-in during January.

October–November: White Sand Prose Version  

While I didn’t finish this during this period, I do have some good instincts for how the White Sand prose version will eventually turn out. My goal, after going back through it, is to make it align to the graphic novel as much as possible. 

Ideally, when it does come out, it will add a little more depth to things—but will basically be the story from the graphic novel. Both will remain canon, therefore, and I’d like for you to be able to experience the story via either format as you prefer.

(For those who don’t know, White Sand was one of my unpublished novels. The version we made into the graphic novel was written just after Elantris. I am going back through the prose version to get it ready for mainstream publication, not as a Sanderson Curiosity, but a full-on mainline Cosmere book. Other than Elantris, it is the only one of my pre-Mistborn Cosmere novels that I think is good enough, and close enough to current continuity, to deserve this treatment.) 

December: Nexus, SotS, Moment Zero

And, now it’s December. Nexus took a lot of work, and I’m here (on the Monday following) still trying to recover! Moment Zero’s final revisions need to be done by January to give me time to move into Ghostbloods, my next project, which we’ll talk about shortly.

The first half of my year is kind of still a blur, but I did get to jump between a lot of things these last six months, and I feel recuperated.

Brandon Sanderson

Introduction

Welcome to my yearly wrap-up, update, and projection essay—the place where I give way too much detail on what I’ve been doing and my plans for the future. There’s a lot in here, I know, but I’ve made a habit in my career of over informing, and I think it’s served me well. This is the sort of document I always wished I had as a fan, back in the 90s, when direct explanations from my favorite authors were rare and often incomplete.

So, sit back and grab your favorite holiday beverage as I talk about my year! 

Questioner

There's a similarity between Sand Mastery using water out of someone's body, as well as the spores on...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Intentional connection.

Questioner

Is it a luhel bond?

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that a certain Shard in the cosmere likes to mimic other magic systems.

Questioner

Have we seen said Shard before?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you have.

Questioner

Are we at some point, right at the very end of the Cosmere or whatever, going to definitively know what all sixteen god metals do?

Brandon Sanderson

I plan for you to be able to do so, yes.

Questioner

Did breaking a bond damage a spren before the Recreance? If so, was Ba-Ado-Mishram part of the natural healing process while being, or before becoming, Unmade?

Brandon Sanderson

Breaking a bond before the Recreance was… It hurt, but it was not long-term-damaging hurt. Ba-Ado-Mishram would definitely consider that they could help, but whether they actually could or not is a matter that you can dispute.

Questioner

Shallan has bonded two spren. Is it possible for a spren to bond two people?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

Questioner

Can you use the Surge of Gravitation to cause time dilation?

Brandon Sanderson

In the right situations, yes. But the truth is, you can get that with multiple different magic systems if you know what you’re doing.

Questioner

Can you enlighten me on those magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

Any large collection of Investiture can warp space-time.

Questioner

I've been coming since the first Dragonsteel. And there is a man that has come every year that I run into every year, and I've always mentioned - I call him “The Whimsy Guy.” Because for years he went on about how Whimsy was the most terrifying Shard, until you so rudely told him it was not. You said that Whimsy was only dangerous to your sensibility. Something along those lines.

And that got me thinking, because that sounded very Wayne. And you have a very specific trope in a lot of your characters, in every single one of your st- well, maybe not every one, but a lot of your stories. We have Lopen, we have Wayne, we have Lift; we have a lot of these. And we know that Whimsy is just off doing whatever Whimsy does. And we also know multiple Shards can touch the same person, and one Shard touching somebody could actually make them more favorable for another Shard. So, is Whimsy just kind of going off and slightly touching a bunch of different people with the only purpose of pissing off all of the main characters in your stories?

Brandon Sanderson

You think Wayne needs the help of a Shard to piss off the other main characters? So the actual answer is: this is not needed for these characters in order to act like they are. Wayne needed no help.

Questioner

Does everyone have Breath, or just people on Nalthis?

Brandon Sanderson

That is an excellent question. Everyone doesn't have Breath. People on Nalthis have an extra bit of Investiture given to them that forms the Breath. When the Breath leaves, it takes a little bit extra with it also. A Drab? An average person going to Nalthis isn't quite a Drab, but they would be considered a Drab by them. A Drab has lost something a little extra.

Questioner

Who is Hoid telling Tress's story to?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, who do you think Hoid is telling Tress's story to?

Questioner

I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.

Brandon Sanderson

I think fandom’s figured this out, and I'm not going to answer this one. I'm going to give you a RAFO card. Ask around. I left the clues very deliberately, and this is the sort of thing I don't like to answer, because the clues are there. It is a world you have seen before in the cosmere. Both of those books that he told are being told specifically to an audience in the cosmere.

Questioner

My friend wanted to know about in Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, why Hoid had six eggs on him?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, there's a very interesting story to that that I'll someday let Hoid tell.

Questioner

So, kind of along the lines of Bondsmiths: Would one be capable of reuniting a Shard that had been [Splintered], like maybe Honor?

Brandon Sanderson

So once again, there's some order of magnitudes difficulty to this, but that is the Surge that would be involved in that. So the answer is yes. But be aware it's not an easy prospect.

Questioner

Giant robots are cool. Is there any possibility that we might get to see proper giant robots at some point in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There is definitely a possibility.

Questioner

In Aether of Night, two different aethers sort of combine and powers one of them up. Is this something that could happen in canon? And if so, could any two aethers be combined in some sort of way?

Brandon Sanderson

In canon, there are ways this could happen, but I'm gonna RAFO everything else to leave it for maybe eventual exploration. But that is possible, yeah.

Questioner

If an aviar's Connection or Identity were to be manipulated in any way, would it change the abilities that it could grant?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

If you were to cook them and eat them, would it give somebody who could turn those calories into Investiture any additional abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

Unlikely.

Questioner

If a kandra ate the bones of a child, could they eat other bones and grow up as that person?

Brandon Sanderson

They could, but they wouldn't actually be the person. So, you could imagine a kandra doing that. It would probably not be psychologically good for anyone involved. But that's totally within the realm of what a kandra might do. In fact, there's probably kandra who have done that.

Questioner

Is one of them Shallan?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

When Kaladin is younger in the first book, he talks about wanting to go see two cities: the City of Storms and the City of Shadows. Those have never been mentioned after that. Do they exist?

Brandon Sanderson

Rall Elorim is the City of Shadows. Those who know your really deep cuts: Book 4 was going to take place there, and it just did not work in the outline. But the original outline... that line was there because someday he was going to go see that.

The City of Storms. I'll leave it to fandom to work out what's going on with that one.

Rall Elorim, we did take the story that I was… because most of Rhythm of War stayed the same. It was just gonna be there instead. You will find some references to it in the RPG. We repurposed my worldbuilding there, and we are going to let you have some fun there in the RPG.

Questioner

Tien's rocks he finds. Are they the same ones Rock’s named after?

Brandon Sanderson

An excellent question. The answer is no. Good question. There is something going on with the rocks, but they're not the same.

AAKS

Would anti-Stormlight be harmful to any of the Dawnshards?

Brandon Sanderson

Dawnshards would be more dangerous to the anti-Stormlight than the anti-Stormlight would be to the Dawnshards.

Questioner

If we were to get a POV from a new character in Stormlight that we haven't seen a POV from, who would it be that would change our perspective on the series or what's going on the most?

Brandon Sanderson

I was gonna say Taln, but you have actually had a brief viewpoint from Taln. You have had... There's a lot of people that know a lot. Let's say that if you had a viewpoint from, say, Tanavast, it would probably change your perspective on things quite a bit. That would probably be a good one.

Questioner

My question is relating to the color of gemstones. In your Ars Arcanum, you always need one color per gemstone for all the different magics. But different gemstones can be different colors, and they give off different wavelengths.

Brandon Sanderson

They do, and in fact rubies and sapphires are basically the same thing. On Roshar, the color is very relevant to certain applications of small permutations of the magic. And so, because of that, they will define, for instance, a blue topaz and a brown topaz as different gemstones, when we would not on Earth. So color is really - it's not going to influence some things, but it does influence others, kind of some minor applications. The answer is, the chemical property is less important than the color as it applies to that magic.

Questioner

My question actually was the wavelength of the color. Because Navani did so much magic, and the wavelength and the sound affects things.

Brandon Sanderson

Yep, wavelength is important. It's going to be a bit of a... I want to say a spectrum, but wavelength…there's gonna be a range that would be workable, if that makes sense.

Questioner

So it would also affect how fabrials are going to-

Brandon Sanderson

It’s going to affect fabrials, it’s going to affect some applications of Soulcasting, and some things like this.

Questioner

Would it be possible for, like, a full power, Fifth Ideal Bondsmith to gather all the Shards of Adonalsium and re-unite them back into one?

Brandon Sanderson

Hehehe… RAFO! Obviously - but that’s a RAFO with… “this is probably orders of magnitude more difficult than you're imagining, even for them.”

Questioner

If you encase a gemstone in aluminum, will that prevent, or only greatly reduce, the speed of Stormlight leakage?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, the Stormlight will still leak out of the gemstone. Assume that you’re like, creating a perfect shell for it. The Stormlight is still eventually just gonna make its way into the Spiritual Realm. The aluminum can't act as a Stormlight containment, necessarily, unless the Stormlight is persistent enough that it's not just evaporating into the Spiritual Realm. So, for instance, you could use some sort of device like this to encase a sapient spren who is already locked into the Physical Realm. But Stormlight’s just eventually gonna evaporate due to Stormlight evaporation, which is changing realms. The aluminum's not going to stop that.

Questioner

Are there any naturally occurring instances of steelpushing or ironpulling fields on Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Natural instances, Scadrial. Uhm… RAFO. This is a… yeah, RAFO.

Questioner

My favorite scene, and actually one of the scenes that I think was most powerful in anything I've read, was the scene between Kaladin and Shallan, when they're in the chasms in the Shattered Plains. And what I wanted to know is, what was the inspiration, either in your life or a family member's life, behind that beautiful scene?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a whole bunch of inspirations. And some of them are personal to individuals, so I won't go too far. But there are moments where people have shared with me things in their life that felt very personal to them that meant a lot to me, and usually it unfortunately also coincides with moments of great trauma. And so those are moments that are both cathartic and traumatic all at once. And I was drawing upon a lot of those, particularly putting two people who have both been through things together. Because I'm usually a sounding board. I'm usually the safe person you can go to to talk about these things that you know won't overreact. But sometimes I underreact, which can be just as bad. And there are certain things that people can share that will not cause underreaction that I have observed in others, that is something that I actually haven't experienced. And like everything that I tried to do in my writing, part of it is about exploring what it is to be someone else. And that's what I was exploring there.

Questioner

Has Weatherlove, the god of storms, or any other Returned of the Court of Gods visited Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

The answer is no. Except asterisk, there is one. Very obvious one.

Questioner

But not currently serving at the time of Warbreaker?

Brandon Sanderson

Not currently serving. No one that is serving in the Court of Gods has made their way to Roshar.

We’ll say “as of the timeline on Stormlight Archive.” I can't promise for the future era, because there’s a bunch I haven’t written there yet.

Questioner

In Lost Metal, when they're testing the trellium. And they notice that the spectral response is flat-lined, with some really weird effects in the red. And they also note that Harmonium had the same spectral output. Is that because when you have an impulse in the time domain, that's a flat line in the frequency domain? And if so, is there also a phase shift between them to know which Shard you're looking at?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that should all - yeah, I believe you're correct in all of that.

Questioner

On Canticle, the rings around the planet are blue and gold and they're non-equatorial, which are both noted in the text. Is there something about the rings (the color or non-equatorialness) that points to either who made it or the purpose of it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but it's a pretty tenuous and vague one. But there's a yes in there.

Questioner

I love larkins, and I want to understand more about how they work. And so I was wondering, can they consume all types of Investiture? And what do they do with the Investiture that they consume?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they can consume all kinds of Investiture. And they use this for growth. Basically, they store it away, and they are waiting for a time where they will go pupate, and they will come out bigger. And then bigger, and then bigger, and then bigger. Their growth is not linear, and this is one of the ways that we're justifying - that I'm justifying for myself - how we're getting to some of the size of the various greatshells that exist on Roshar. So you'll find that getting to that state either requires long periods of time (which some of them just take a long, long, long, like, centuries), and some of the species, they use Investiture. Chasmfiends use Investiture in order to get to the size that they get to. And larkins do the same.

Before you ask, chasmfiends cannot eat Investiture the way larkins do. They get it a different way.

Questioner

You’ve mentioned in Scadrial, the future, there’s gonna be Sleepless. Have we seen any Sleepless so far? And if so, is Sir Squeekins, the rat that Wayne traded to Hoid, a Sleepless?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm going to RAFO that for you. (It's mostly a for-fun RAFO, don't read too much into that one.) But you have seen Sleepless around, yes.

Questioner

I have a question about chasmfiends. Are they the kind of animal that mates for life and has really strong social structures? Or are they very territorial, and they hate each other?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, but with a promise there's a little bit in Wind and Truth for you. Ask me later - Wind and Truth’s not gonna answer everything, but there's some in there that'll lead you to theorizing in the right way.

Questioner

What would happen if a Herald fell into a black hole?

Brandon Sanderson

Investiture is going to respond to a black hole, maybe not in exactly the same way as light and matter, but in a similar way. It's going to crush them, pull them in, hold them. Their soul will probably still be… there’ll be some cognitive remnant in the Cognitive Realm, depending on how the black hole is manifesting there, which we haven't gotten into yet. So, what would happen? Let's quote Halle Berry from X-Men: “What happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning? Same as everything else.” Basically, the same thing that happens to everything else. The question is, would their immortality remain? Yes, asterisk.

Questioner

I was wondering if Shallan has any familial connection to Chanarach?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Could someone burning bronze detect a non-Metalborn’s Investiture? Like how much Breath someone has, or that someone is a Surgebinder?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but you need that Investiture to be kinetic. This is the term that I use for “it's actually being used.” Really hard for somebody who can sense Investiture to just tell it's sitting in an object. And I did this quite intentionally, because there are too many plot points where something is Invested and you don't know. It's just too overstepping of a power. So when you use Investiture, it creates these pulses; and these pulses are what's being sent. Basically, in the same way that, you know, we can only see light with the photons are bouncing around against our retinas and things. Those who can sense Investiture need to have something hitting them to be able to tell where it is. And usually that means it has to be in active use. You'll see in Stormlight, in Oathbringer you see spren who can do the same thing; but it only works for certain magics at certain points. And that should lead you to some understanding of how this works.

Questioner

Is there any relationship between the Lift’s ability to eat food and create Stormlight [Lifelight] and Scadrians’ ability to eat metal and burn it?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

We know that Taln has amazing willpower. So it’s kind of a two-parter. What Herald had the weakest willpower that allowed the Desolations to become so short? And what is the difference between that Herald and Taln that allowed them to have…?

Brandon Sanderson

I'm gonna RAFO this because I am gonna delve into some of these things in upcoming books, so you get a RAFO card also. But the idea is: let's focus more on how awesome Taln is and less on how… right? I would say all of the Heralds really tried. And the whole way the system was set up was designed to break them. Not by intent, but I think focusing on who broke the most is maybe the wrong way to look at it, rather than holding up and saying: “Wow, why did this guy not?” And he's got a book coming up in the back half where we'll find out a lot about him.

Questioner

I've been a big fan of your books for years now, and I'm also a big fan of MTG, and I was wondering can we ever expect a Universes Beyond: Cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Some of you know the answer to this already because I have talked about it. I would be open to the idea. In fact, when they were first exploring Universes Beyond, before we kind of knew where they were going, they came to me and said, “Hey, would you be ever interested in doing one of these?” And I wrote back and said, “Yes, absolutely, gimme, gimme, gimme.” (Maybe just a little more professional, I don’t know). And then I didn't hear back from them, which is not uncommon: Wizards [of the Coast] is a very big company and there's a lot of moving parts.

I think… This is only “Brandon fan theory” time. I think they did this to a bunch of people, including some very large IPs, and I think all of them said “yes,” too. When you're going, you're like: “Hey Brandon, would you like to? Hey Marvel, would you like to? Hey Lord of the Rings, would you like to?” My “yes,” maybe, is a “yes” that goes pretty far down on the list. I am eager for them to work through all the other properties that would make decent Magic sets and eventually come to me

I would, I've decided, hold out for a full set. Not just a few cards. I would want to do a full-blown set. And I've told them, if they ever get around to this, I will fly out to Seattle and be involved. Because I do like it so much. So the answer is: I do think it's probably something that will happen, assuming MTG doesn't fall apart. You know, the wheels don't come off by trying to do so many sets in one year. I think it is something that will eventually happen, but I'm in a place where I can wait to do it until they're willing to give me the full set, or something like that. 

We did specifically write into the Brotherwise agreement, when we were doing things with them. Because we partnered with them large-scale to do all kinds of things. We found a partner in them we really liked, and we're like, “We're just going to make stuff with them because it works so well.” We did put a carve-out saying, “We're going to do everything with you unless Magic: The Gathering comes and specifically asks Brandon to do a Magic set. Brandon's reserving the rights to do that.” 

Questioner

For the Dawnshard “Change.” Did that have any interaction with the Nahel Bond coming to fruition?

Brandon Sanderson

I mean, “any…” It gives me a lot of wiggle room, but the real answer to you is “no.” That's moving in the wrong direction of theorizing. So good question, but no.

Questioner

Is it possible that the Southern Scadrians could have pulled some kind of shenanigans to convince the North that the Bands of Mourning were drained, when they were not actually drained?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that's possible.

msyverw

So we see a lot in the cosmere about how different magic systems interact and have these resonances. Is it possible for magic systems from different planets, such as Surgebinding and Allomancy or Feruchemy, to have the same kind of resonances?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah, that's totally possible. The purpose of these resonances is to, number one: give me some fun things I can do. But really, number two: it's just like if you're imagining these things, like... I don't know, something on the electromagnetic spectrum, right? When they hit they're gonna interfere and/or they're going to change one another. And I think the magic systems are doing things like that, and I like to play with that idea. So the answer is yes.

Questioner

You mentioned earlier about Investiture with spren and concepts. You mentioned there's only a certain amount that there could be. Is it possible for a concept to not be popular enough, where that concept could die, those spren could die? Or would they change?

Brandon Sanderson

They would change over time. Which some of them would call death, be aware. When you are essentially an immortal piece of something that's become self-aware, it would be very traumatic. And an individual that's obtained sapience-level intelligence is going to resist that to the point that it would have to be something devastating on a catastrophic level to actually do it to them. They would call that death. Lesser spren wouldn’t call it death; they would just be changing over time. Any more than an atom becoming part of a new compound is gonna think that it died.

Questioner

One of my favorite books is Warbreaker, and it’s been eating me for years what’s going on with Vivenna and Vasher. Are we going to get some kind of sequel soon, or is that going to be explained in any upcoming books?

Brandon Sanderson

When The Wheel of Time came along, there was a certain path my career, I thought, was taking. And there are certain things I began that got changed. And so, I learned very quickly to stop promising sequels to things when I can't see the future. But I promised to finish the Alcatraz series, the Legion series, The Rithmatist, Warbreaker, and Elantris. I have finished Alcatraz and Legion. And I'm doing Elantris next. Warbreaker and Rithmatist will come. But I feel like Elantris just fits better right now. It is something I am going to do. Assuming I live long enough, which shouldn't be… as long as I'm making it to the end of The Stormlight Archive, by that time you should have it. I can't promise it soon. Because I sat down, I'm like, “All right, what am I doing next?” And the Elantris sequels fit so much better into the framework of what I'm doing, that it felt like I should do those.

Questioner

Regarding Sarene’s father and the rift between him and his brother Kiin. You touched on it but never really expanded on it. So I wanted to know if you could fill us in on that. And then also, kind of curious as to who you think is in the right?

Brandon Sanderson

Well, it's one of these complicated things, right? Because Kiin tried to seize the throne. He thought he was in the right; I think he was in the wrong, personally. But it is closer a decision… Like, he had more justification than Sarene’s father thinks he did. Imagine disagreements between brothers that grow to the point that kingdoms are involved, and you will get there. It's a very normal sort of thing that happens to families. Except these people had access to armies.

Questioner

Could a sufficiently advanced Skybreaker or Dustbringer use the Division Surge to forcibly split the Nahel bond?

Brandon Sanderson

So what you're talking about is something in the cosmere that's called microkinesis. It is a possible manifestation of base cosmere surges, and it is about as dangerous as you imagine. A sufficiently trained and invested Skybreaker or Dustbringer probably could do it. It has been done, but not by them during...

So yes, fission and fusion are part of the magic systems. They call it “microkinesis,” but yeah. So you can read about that in Dragonsteel Prime. It’s in there. But they are the same Surge.

Questioner

What adjective would you use for describing something in or of the cosmere? Would you say “cosmerian”?

Brandon Sanderson

I used “cosmereological” earlier, kind of in a scientific term. Cosmereological… it's a mouthful, though, so maybe the fandom will come up with better things, and I'll start using that. I believe you guys came up with “worldhopper,” right? I believe that was a fandom term that I just eventually started adopting. So, sometimes you come up with better terms than me. I use “cosmereological” right now.

Questioner

Why is Awakening a recent development on Nalthis?

Brandon Sanderson

There's a bunch of reasons for this. It's not necessarilyas … Define "recent" by how people are using them, and things like that. There's a whole bunch of reasons for this 

I think I’m gonna RAFO because I just realized I was gonna stumble over something that I plan to talk about. But anyway, I’m gonna RAFO. With a “hopefully I will get it to you later.”

Questioner

Do the Shards of Adonalsium still have a tangible connection to Adonalsium? The Vessel and the power?

Brandon Sanderson

Technically, yes, because the remnants of Adonalsium are the Shards, and that connects all of them. Probably not in the way that this question’s intended to mean, but it is a technical yes. But what's left of Adonalsium is the Shards.