Recent entries

Questioner

Will Wax ever meet a full Mistborn that we don’t already know about?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Hoid is collecting Investiture abilities like Pokemon cards. I was wonder if he could… and maybe not necessarily him, but if somebody could collect all forms of Investiture and be able to use all of them.

Brandon Sanderson

He certainly would like to try. What will happen? He’s not even sure. But he would like to try. Is it possible? It is theoretically possible. We’ll see if he is able to accomplish it.

Questioner

Will we ever see the Origin of Storms be explored?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO. It’s a RAFO with an “I intend to.” But whether I get to it or not is a question.

I do intend to. We will see. Ask me this question again in a couple years.

Questioner

Would it be possible for the Fourth Bridge to do the exploring if Windrunners and maybe Dalinar used Adhesion and Dalinar’s Bondsmith powers to hold the ship together to brave the highstorms?

Brandon Sanderson

That’s real dangerous. Way smarter to just use Windrunner pressure manipulation to go up over the highstorms. But yes, that would be a better way to use the Fourth Bridge to accomplish that.

Questioner

It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.

Brandon Sanderson

The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.

Questioner

How do Ferrings know how much of an attribute is in their metalminds?

Brandon Sanderson

They have a natural sense for it when they’re touching it. It’s not like they have a number pop into their head, but it is a similar feeling to you knowing how much energy you have left, how tired you are. They can feel in their metalmind.

Questioner

Having read Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, that world has got a lot of problems, and I have to ask. When you get to the end of it, what hope is there for those poor people?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, despite everything that’s going on, they still manage to survive. That’s pretty impressive. I would say that there is a way out for them, a way toward more stability. Because the danger is a spiral of lowering population numbers because of things that are happening. When you’re dying and becoming undead, there’s certain curves, a multiplicative curve that is very dangerous to population numbers that happens whenever you are dealing with some sort of undead thing like that. But there are ways out.

Questioner

They depend on silver, which is a limited resource.

Brandon Sanderson

It is. But do know that, in the cosmere (it’s like when you’re burning metals), there are injection points of new metals into things that are possible to figure out.

But yes, they’re in danger. They’re definitely the Simpsons meme. That is Threnody as a whole. And maybe someday, I’ll be able to write a book there, and we’ll dig into some of these issues.

Questioner

If a Full Twinborn (regardless of natural or holding the Bands of Mourning) had access to unlimited Investiture, could they become the sun by infinitely increasing their gravity and heat?

Brotherwise Games

Infinite Investiture, you’re theorizing?

Questioner

Dalinar’s next to him.

Brandon Sanderson

Dalinar’s not gonna be able to provide enough. But in a thought experiment, sort of outside bounds of time and space… you are providing infinite Investiture, you are providing an infinite amount of healing, and you are having them create heat and weight? The problem is, you’re gonna need a whole lot of mass to turn into the sun. I mean, there is a way you can do this, but you’re gonna have to provide… Either the Investiture’s gonna have to become mass, or you’re gonna have to have them do it in the proximity of a whole bunch of mass to have to start causing that sort of fusion reaction where the different layers collapsing in toward the center, dense layers, that sort of thing. In the realm of complete hypothesis, then yes. But, of course, you an do that here with infinite energy and infinite mass, if you needed to, using mechanical means.

I guess the weird part of that question is: the person could retain consciousness through infinite healing, and that is the weird part and that is possible. Yeah.

Questioner

Other than the Lord Ruler and people that are using the Bands of Mourning, will we ever see a Full Twinborn again?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I think that you will.

Questioner

If Teft, Dalinar, and Zahel were to play a game of Mario Kart, how would they place?

Brandon Sanderson

Zahel cheats. And Zahel wins. Teft lets Dalinar win because a good sergeant knows when an officer needs an ego boost. So that’s our ranking.

Questioner

Can Lift eat metal and somehow produce Stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, good question.

Questioner

Memory is tied to some level or portion of Spiritual Identity, or else Feruchemists would not be able to store it. So, Hoid lost memories at the end of Rhythm of War in his exchange with Odium. Would that mean part of his soul was stolen and then absorbed into Odium, and if so, what is stopping Odium from doing that with all of his enemies?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, what Odium split off is stuff that Hoid is storing in excess Investiture. (Basically, it was Breaths, in Hoid’s case.) And this sort of thing, where this extra memory… One of the reasons that Hoid is able to function better than, perhaps, some other very long-lived individuals is: he has found out how to keep some of this Identity in, shall we say, SD cards made of Investiture. Imagine that sort of thing. So what Odium was stealing from Hoid was straight out of an SD card. Which means that it’s not nearly as deeply ripping into someone’s soul, and it is also not nearly as noticeable.

But the other thing is: Hoid is directly in violation of certain agreements that have been made, which therefore exposes him to… He is lacking protections. As you’ll notice in the end of Book Three, where he’s like, “I need to be careful, because I am in violation.”

And so, there’s a couple things going on here. Number one, much more easy to access those memories. Number two, Hoid’s in direct violation and under no protections of any sorts of agreements and things like this.

Questioner

We’ve seen several groups throughout the cosmere that have the express purpose of collecting Investiture from the various systems. I have a fear that there is a group that is going to (either now or sometime in the future) go around collecting Investiture specifically through Hemalurgy.

Brandon Sanderson

Which is theoretically possible and horrifying to consider.

Questioner

So my question along those lines was: what happens when you use a Hemalurgic spike on an Aviar?

Brandon Sanderson

You are a very mean person. Basically, an Aviar’s got a mini-bond, so it’s gonna work in a similar way to what would happen if you were trying to do it to a Knight Radiant, which I’ve talked about in the past. Which means it is a less effective way to try to steal something with Hemalurgy, because once you’ve got two individuals involved in it… The Aviar, obviously, isn’t exactly the same. But it’s going to work, but it may not last, I guess is the answer I would give you on that.

Questioner

If that Aviar is already bonded to a person, how does that spiking affect the person they are bonded to?

Brandon Sanderson

That bond will last, but how long? Who knows. Basically, you’re gonna fool the system into thinking you’re the Aviar if you have done that. So the system is going to assume that’s what you are.  They’re gonna see you as the bird if you put the spike into yourself. But, because there are multiple individuals, things like this, and you’ve got the whole thing with the Aviar and their symbiosis, and things like that. It is not gonna work nearly as well as stealing something from, say, a Feruchemist or an Allomancer.

Questioner

Could you use AonDor to manipulate Connection? If so, would a real AonDor smarty be able to do something similar to a Bondsmith?

Brandon Sanderson

The short answer to your question is: yes. Let me give some explanation.

Even when you are seeings some things happening in Elantris itself, you are seeing them manipulate Connection. It is mostly reinforcing Connection, but it is, in a way, manipulation. Rewriting Connection, rewriting Identity are both things that they can do. So with enough power, with enough smartiness, what a Bondsmith can do can be done.

In fact, we have seen short-range Elsecalling done by… Obviously Elsecalling’s not Bondsmithing, but you know that a Bondsmith powered a big Elsecalling [to migrate from Ashyn], one of the big things you’ve seen a Bondsmith do is get people between planets. And you have seen people use AonDor to Elsecall. You’ve seen them Lightweave, you’ve seen them do a lot of these things. They also could do some of this same stuff.

Basically, rule of thumb is: almost anything in the cosmere that is possible can be replicated with AonDor with the right program. But you may need an injection of Investiture in certain ways.

Questioner

My favorite god, Sazed/Harmony, in my recent reread I got a bit angry at him because he didn’t let kandra be able to reproduce, but he let the koloss be able to do it. And I’m wondering if there’s a way he could have allowed that, but he chose not to? And also if there’s a way that it could happen in the future, so that two of my favorite people could have a baby?

Brandon Sanderson

There are a couple things that he was facing, and let me walk you through his philosophy on this, which you are allowed to disagree with. I want, for every character I write, there to be things they do that you disagree with, because otherwise I’m writing all characters to be the same person, if that makes sense.

The kandra have immortality and are able to perpetuate their culture by being immortal for as long as the individuals live. The koloss don’t have that, meaning that if he didn’t make koloss able to breed true, the entire people vanish in one generation and all culture associated with them. And so because of that, he took the extra effort to change the koloss to allow for this sort of thing. But he did it in such a way that they would not have to have hemalurgic spikes, because the idea of making new hemalurgic spikes is extremely distasteful to Harmony. Reusing old ones is a thing he was willing to allow, but new ones he didn’t.

Could he have changed the kandra to be similar? Well, the answer is kind of a fairly... yes, but they would no longer have been the kandra, they would have been rolled back to being what they were before the Lord Ruler. And so they basically would stop being what they are that makes them unique as a culture. And he decided not to do that.

You can disagree with that, and I think there are some pretty valid arguments against the choice he made, but that is the choice he made.

Is there a way going forward? Yes, this is theoretically possible.

Lotus

Can we get any pronouns for Aona and Skai?

Brandon Sanderson

Aona is definitely a she/her. I had— Mmmmm. I’m gonna go she/her with both of them, so you can talk about them accurately. That’s how I picture them currently in my head. I have not written those books yet, so it’s subject to change, but I have she/her for both of them.

Questioner

In the future eras, Breaths seem like a very easily transmitted form of Investiture. Will that become an inter-galactic currency?

Brandon Sanderson

Breath is handy in couple of ways, because it is easy to transfer, and you can take it off-world without an issue. But there’s a problem in that: yes, it’s a renewable resource, but the renewable resource comes from human beings. As long as Breath doesn’t get lost and is consistently given up, then what we’re gonna see is there will be pools of it. But it’s always going to be a fairly rare resource. Which really hampers its ability to become an intergalactic commodity on the level that people would like it to.

Stormlight is a much better (in most people’s viewpoint and opinion) of what they’re trying to do with Breath. But they can’t get it off the planet yet; they haven’t figured out how to make that happen. But that’s one of the reasons why a lot of people are really interested in Roshar, is because of that.

Now, there is one that’s really portable, but very difficult to get, and that is… I’ll leave that to you. There's another one. Go ahead and theorize. Do it fast, because there might be a note to it in Lost Metal, so you’ll get your answers soon. But let’s just say it’s fraught with danger to obtain.

R'Shara (paraphrased)

Could you show me the equator line on the Scadrial map?

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

It runs very close to Elendel. *Points to it on the map*

And the Prime Meridian runs through Elendel.

Edgebanter

Does Adolin Kholin have two different colored eyebrows?

Brandon Sanderson

I have never pictured him with two different colored eyebrows, but Isaac gets to canonize this, because he oversees the concept art. So really, you should pull Isaac aside and say, “Hey, is there some blonde in one of the eyebrows or not? Because I’ve seen them both.” I have not imagined him with different colored eyebrows.

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like Lopen and Rysn. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.

Questioner

Sometimes, Vin and Kelsier seem to notice people burning metal when there was a coppercloud around. So I was wondering if copperclouds can change depending on how much the Smoker or Mistborn wants it?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s gonna depend on a lot of factors. How strong is the coppercloud? How strong is the person piercing it? How Invested is the individual? And these sorts of things. There are deliberate points where Vin pierces a coppercloud that I intend to be moments that you’re supposed to pay attention to in the story. And this is done intentionally; this is not, like, a binary on/off.

Questioner

The Stormlight Archive deals with mental health significantly. Are you telling a story of overcoming mental health and its difficulties, or are you telling a story of ongoing...

Brandon Sanderson

I am telling a story about characters that I want to be as real to my lived experience as possible. So the story of The Stormlight Archive, what is it about? It is not about mental health. It is about people, but a disproportionate number of them do struggle with kind of dynamic mental health issues.

Mental health is one of these things where there’s always individual answers. If we talk about my wife Emily, there is no cure for depression. Even medication is about managing depression. For her, the right answer is cognitive behavioral therapy and learning what it is to live with depression, and then countering that proactively in her mind, at least for her. That is the answer that she has found that works very well for her. Other people might be able to… I have had a family member who had depressive episodes that lasted a number of years. And they, through therapy, were able to get to where they no longer would be considered having depression, because for them it was a different sort of thing. And these are two explorations of what we would lump as the same sort of mental health issue. But is it even? Everyone is so individual, right?

For the vast majority of people struggling with mental health issues, it is more like Emily than it is like this family member that it was about overcoming it. I consider it to the individual, that the story I’m telling about. I will use the example of the difference between (for physical handicaps) Rysn and Lopen. For Lopen, the story is: there’s going to be a cure, and I have been cured. For Rysn, there is no cure, and it’s about, instead, living with the disability. Overcoming the disability, yes, but it always being part of who she is. And those are two life experiences that we can find people in this room who have probably... Some are continuing to live with a handicap, and others have found that there is some way to just completely get over. And that’s an individual thing.

And I’m not trying to say in The Stormlight Archive, “This is the right path.” Except for the right path being: getting help is okay. Working on it’s okay. And society should maybe do a better job about understanding it.

Questioner

I have a question about the singers. If one of them were to reach the Third Heightening, would they then be able to sing the pure Tones of Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They definitely could. They might be able to before they reached that Heightening, as well.

Questioner

We have some idea that Autonomy is fiddling around in Roshar and in Scadrial.

Brandon Sanderson

And other places.

Questioner

Considering her involvement with the Ghostbloods: has she directly interacted with Kelsier/Thaidakar?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Whether she has or not, what is her opinion of Kelsier?

Brandon Sanderson

You’re asking, directly Autonomy, not one of her avatars? Directly, Autonomy likes Kelsier and respects Kelsier. Autonomy is a fan, shall we say.

Questioner

At the end of Rhythm of War, we see Shard-induced time dilation; you bring a lot of Investiture into a place, and it slows down time.

Brandon Sanderson

It can also speed it up.

Questioner

How much Investiture would it take to dilate an area so that one area moves forward about fifteen years into the future while everything else remains? Like, they have ten minutes, everyone else goes fifteen years?

Brandon Sanderson

There’s a couple variables here. Number one is the length of the area, and how fast that fifteen years passes. If we want us to jump forward fifteen years, in how much time? Fifteen years compared to one year? Fifteen years compared to one minute? Fifteen years compared to one second? These are all different things. And, of course, the more you’re compressing and the larger the area, the more Investiture you’re requiring.

Questioner

Could two unchained Bondsmiths in the course of a duel do it?

Brandon Sanderson

Fifteen years? Fifteen years is gonna be a stretch for what they can get a hold of, but it depends. Unchained Bondsmith, unchained to (for instance) a deity that there is no longer a Vessel controlling that power in the way that it needs to have the limits on it is going to be able to access more than one where there was some Vessel there saying “no.” So there’s one factor in it. A Bondsmith can access a lot of power, as evidenced by the migration. The migration from Ashyn to Roshar happened with a Bondsmith powering some Elsecalling. And that allowed for some pretty crazy things. Getting an entire population moved through a portal across that much space is a lot of work and a lot of energy.

So what you’re asking, I think that’s stretching. Depends, again, on how long. Fifteen to one, not so hard. Fifteen years in a second is really hard and probably beyond what they have capacity to do.

I see what you’re doing there. You saw me talk around it.

Questioner

When I asked about the Set and cards, would the names of some of the Set members (like Suit) be a codename? Or would it be a hierarchy name?

Brandon Sanderson

It’s a hierarchy name.

Questioner

What would happen if a Pure Tone or anti-Tone interacted with Shard metal?

Brandon Sanderson

Different things can happen, but generally, if it’s the right Shard metal, you’re going to get a resonance or a destructive resonance to that Tone.

Questioner

In Book One, Taravangian was talking to Szeth, when Szeth confronts him at the end. He talks about the Lifebrother; but we haven’t heard any other references since then.

Brandon Sanderson

You have not. That’s a RAFO.

Questioner

When a Shard Splinters, does it have any effect on the cosmere that we aren’t seeing yet? 

Brandon Sanderson

No.

Questioner

What would be the effect if all the Shards Splintered?

Brandon Sanderson

It does have, but see, there is Splintering, and there’s Splintering. Traumatic Splintering is a different event than a Shard Splintering themselves, or things like this. There’s a whole continuum going on there.

All the Shards being Splintered would, of course, have an effect. But it could have all kinds of different effects based on how, and why, and what’s going on, and what happened to the different pieces of Investiture. You can have a full Splintering, where the Shard is just completely blasted into pieces. Or you can have a Shard taking off pieces of their soul and Splintering it out and sending it off to be self-aware, and things like that. These are two different things.

Also, there’s a whole bunch of nuance in that question. But the answer is: it will inevitably have an effect, and there are effects that have happened in the cosmere that you don’t recognize yet as being the effects of Splintering, and things like that.

Questioner

Is Tarah, Kaladin’s flame, still currently in Urithiru? Because there’s a chapter where it kind of seems like she’s there.

Brandon Sanderson

I will answer that in Book Five, so I’m gonna RAFO you. That is at least my plan; one of the interludes should be from her viewpoint. That is my plan right now.

Questioner

Did Hoid join the Worldsingers just to learn about Roshar’s stories? Or is there something more going on there?

Brandon Sanderson

Hoid never joined the Worldsingers. (Can one join a group that one created, is the question there.)

Questioner

I have a sort of delicate question. If a bendalloy Ferring filled an unsealed mind and then gave it to someone else who tapped it, which one would go to the bathroom?

Brandon Sanderson

I don’t think this is working the way you think it’s working. The Ferring who is creating it is going to be the one who goes to the bathroom.

Questioner

Would Kelsier be able to Return to the Physical Realm in the same way that Vasher did?

Brandon Sanderson

No. Mmmm… which time? Let me parse this question. Could a Shard with a great deal of Investiture take his Cognitive Shadow and staple it to a body, or indeed recreate (which is usually what happens) an entirely new body for him? Yes, that could happen. It would need, really, the will of a Shard and the desire to do so, but that could happen.

He couldn’t do it himself, though; because you could also have been asking: “return to the Physical Realm,” pop through; ‘cause Vasher popped through a perpendicualrity to get onto Roshar, which is another way he returned to the Physical Realm. I didn’t think that’s what you were asking, but sometimes, once in a while, you’re asking multiple things at once to be tricksy.

Questioner

With all the bad things that we’ve seen the Ghostbloods do so far (like imprisoning Lift) is Kelsier no longer a good or mostly-good person?

Brandon Sanderson

Kelsier would say he’s a good person.

I would say: Kelsier’s a complicated individual whose moral compass does not align to my same moral compass. But he never was. He would say that he hasn’t changed; I would say that he has changed slightly over the centuries.

Questioner

Are the glyphs on Scadrial which happen to look like bands, spikes, and beads a breadcrumb from the Lord Ruler in case his plans failed?

Brandon Sanderson

No, they are more that we decided (if you go look at the old ones) that modern people were interpreting them differently. This is not an active thing done by the Lord Ruler. Isaac can contradict me on this, because he designed them. But my understanding that it’s a natural outgrowth of people said “that looks like a spike” and so they started doing it more spike-like. And it just kind of became a thing for them as they were standardizing, and as typography started to exist, and things like that. Not necessarily meant to be a clue from the Lord Ruler.

Questioner

Is there, or has there ever been, a Dawnshard hidden in a book?

Brandon Sanderson

I will RAFO that.

Questioner

As an avid chicken watcher in my real life, I really enjoy the inclusion of Aviar in the Cosmere. And I was curious if in upcoming series, will we see the inclusion of more worldhoppers utilizing Aviar for trans-Investiture purposes?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you will. The thing about the Aviar is: the secret of what’s going on there is known by very, very few people, and there is certainly some work going on in that regard. Basically, people offworld trying to figure out what is going on with Aviar and how they work, because they are not what people expect them to be because of the way that the Investiture is being Invested, shall we say. But you should see that being relevant to future era Cosmere.

Questioner

Kelsier was very clear in Secret History that his ties to the Physical Realm had been severed. Are we then to assume that the current Thaidakar/Lord of Scars is him teamed up with Spook? Or have they used their knowledge of Hemalurgy to find different human hosts? What’s going on there?

Brandon Sanderson

Excellent question. This is partially a RAFO. But you should assume that things have happened to allow for what’s going on. There are answers coming very soon. I’m going to warn you: not a lot of answers. But some answers are coming very soon. Maybe very, very soon.

Questioner

Dawnshards. More of an Intent, or like a Command?

Brandon Sanderson

More of a Command.

Questioner

And are they tied to the four groupings of sixteen?

Brandon Sanderson

That is a RAFO.

Questioner

The four groupings of the sixteen. Could it also be related to the groupings of metals?

Brandon Sanderson

It could be related to that, but I won’t guarantee that it is.

Questioner

Can a Shard hold on to the Cognitive Shadow of a person for later use?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that can indeed happen.

Questioner

Without it being fully Invested?

Brandon Sanderson

You don’t have to fully Invest it, no. They would have to do some Investing shenanigans, but what you’re asking is quite possible, very possible.

So, for instance, let me give you a corner case. You might be asking: could Endowment send somebody back later than immediately after they have passed away? The answer would be “yes.”

I’m gonna tell you, I have no immediate plans to do that, but it is possible within the framework of the cosmere.

Questioner

If Wayne, The Lopen, and Vasher were all in the same room, who would Vasher punch first?

Brandon Sanderson

Lopen. No filter. The difference between Wayne and Lopen is: Wayne can read a room. Lopen’s not so good at that.

Shining Silhouette

If people started viewing their worlds as doughnut-shaped, would the Cognitive Realm change as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, the Cognitive Realm would shape to that if the general group on the planet all were viewing anything, but particularly something like that. It would influence the how the Cognitive Realm manifests.

Shining Silhouette

As technology develops and people start seeing the world as spheres, will that change…?

Brandon Sanderson

It will have an effect.

Questioner

Have we been introduced to any chromium ferrings?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Questioner

Would Nightblood consider Investiture to be evil?

Brandon Sanderson

No, Nightblood would not.

Questioner

Is Whimsy the most dangerous Shard? Is he essentially, like, a Shard cat?

Brandon Sanderson

Whimsy is the most dangerous Shard to your sense of decorum and self-worth.

TeeJay (paraphrased)

Gereh, the Feruchemist in Rhythm of War, did his Aviar grant him physical abilities?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, that Aviar has mind abilities.

Will of D (paraphrased)

We've seen Stormlight act like a wave in Rhythm of War. Does it also have particle-like properties like real light, and if so will we get to see an experiment that proves that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, it does act like a particle too. No, I don't have plans to show an experiment like that. 

Pagerunner

Over the course of Rhythm of War, we see Cohesion applied in three different ways as applied by different Tones, and I can see internal/external and pushing/pulling contradictions in those. Is that a pattern that will be accurate for all of the Surges?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but a loose pattern. Accurate under the loosest definition of the word. You will find connections there, as you are looking for them, and most of them will be intentional. But it will be hard to fit every Surge into exactly that framework.

/u/brnbrn1996 (paraphrased)

Is it possible for a sentient bit of Investiture to pick up a Shard? Like a spren or Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It would be possible yes, well, for a spren or a seon for example, it would. Nightblood could theoretically but it would be difficult for various reasons.

/u/brnbrn1996 (paraphrased)

Right, because he has no hands.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

*graciously chuckles at my dumb joke*

/u/brnbrn1996 (paraphrased)

Would they have to be embodied to be able to actually use it effectively, or would they have the same limitations as Kelsier did when he was a cognitive shadow ?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They would have the same limitations yes, but there are ways around that.

/u/brnbrn1996 (paraphrased)

Right, like Ishar is working on.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Right.

LewsTherinTelescope

You have mentioned before that people should read one of the non-Mistborn stories in Arcanum Unbounded prior to The Lost Metal. Can you tell us which?

Brandon Sanderson

If I tell you, it will spoil a character who doesn't reveal themselves immediately in the Lost Metal. So I've been careful not to say.

Cosmere.es

I remember that you said that we will have like tops two Kickstarters a year, one for books, one for products. This will cover like the product one.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Yeah. Plan is for next year for there just to be one and then the year after for there to be two. But the goal is tops two. Like this year we technically had three because there was the White Sand preorder campaign and we feel like that could get out of hand very quickly. Everybody who works with us might want to do a Kickstarter now because they've been so successful so we're kinda making this promise to make sure that we keep ourselves in line as well and I feel very good about having done that.

Cosmere.es

So if the product for 2024 is like maybe the RPG would the book be the art book for the story?

Brandon Sanderson

The book is more likely to be the Hoid Storybook Collection. So The Dog and the Dragon, Wandersail, and The Girl Who Looked Up done as picture books slash kinda coffee table books. That's more likely. The art book is a challenge because you know there's just so much that goes into that sort of thing—Isaac would have to be so deeply involved and it's whether he can find the time or not because he wants to be writing stories in his free time. We'll see, I do think we'll eventually get like an art book and an encyclopedia out but I'm a little more excited by the Hoid storybook personally.

Cosmere.es

And fully illustrated—they are going to look gorgeous.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I really would like people to have like—my goal on those is like The Dog and the Dragon to be like a traditional children's book, Wandersail to be more like a giant illustrated coffee table book right—more targeted a little bit older, and The Girl Who Looked Up to be something in between.