Questioner (paraphrased)
Will Moash worldhop?
Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
RAFO
Will Moash worldhop?
RAFO
What would happen if Nightblood was drawn in the Spiritual Realm?
Trademark, REALLY bad thing.
When will we learn more about the Cognitive Anomaly on Nalthis?
RAFO
Does Hoid have a favorite type of Investiture?
Probably, Lightweaving.
Can a Highstorm recharge sand from Taldain, and would that sand be charged with Stormlight or would it be masterable?
It would recharge the sand, and it would be masterable, not Stormlight
Would a Shardblade hurt a Kandra?
A Shardblade would not kill a Kandra outright, but it would do significant damage.
Is there anything in specific that made Stick special, or was Shallan just bad at Soulcasting?
No, Stick is just a regular stick. Shallan was just bad.
Would Allomancers born twins or triplets have the same metals?
It is more likely, but not 100%.
You said at the Starsight release that [Adonalsium] was intentionally preventing the spren from accessing Surges through fabrials and such pre-Shattering. Was this a passive or active effect?
It was kind of both - the way [Adonalsium] worked was just that the way he saw the world [magic] was the way the world [magic] worked. He didn't want the spren to be able to do that, so they couldn't.
So did [Adonalsium] want to die?
*makes face along with various non committal hmings*
That at least gives credibility to the theory.
Yeah, it gives credibility to the theory.
Would it be possible to use a soulstamp to give or take Allomancy?
Not under normal circumstances. The amount of Investiture required to do so would effectively short-circuit the stamp.
Give me a random piece of Cosmere/Investiture related info.
There is a planet with the corpse of a dead god on it.
Is it possible for a Physical being to exist in the Spiritual Realm like they can in the Cognitive?
Yes, but it’s weird. So, yes, but big asterisk.
It has been almost twenty years since I first outlined The Stormlight Archive. Back then, I didn’t think anyone would be interested in this crazy epic I’d devised–and it’s been so thrilling to see enthusiasm for it grow to such heights over the years. Book four finally gets to one of the foundational scenes I conceived from the beginning. In fact, it might be the very first big scene I imagined, and my favorite in the entire series. A part of me can’t believe people are finally going to be able to read it.
*inaudible* relationship *inaudible*
*inaudible* But that is an intentional *inaudible*
Speaking of sequels, here's what I'M planning. A book that takes place ten years after the events of ELANTRIS. It would occur in the capitol city of Fjorden, and would star Kiin's children as viewpoint characters along with a Seon viewpoint character. The plot of the book: Wyrn has declared that Jaddeth, the Derethi God, is going to finally return. (A new interpretation of the scriptures says that he'll return when everyone east of the mountains converts, so they don't have to worry about Teod and Arelon.) Kiin's family, ambassadors to the Fjordell state, has to deal with the chaos of this announcement, and investigate the truth behind the Dakhor magic. Thoughts?
[Mythwalker] is however a good title.
Yeah, it is. He almost used it as a series title for Warbreaker, but to me it seems silly to have a series title for 2 books.
[question about the TinEye search engine]
We have actually asked the TinEye people before. There's no relation. They started before Mistborn came out.
Are accretion disks [acclivity rings] common technology in the universe?
They are commonly used in the universe. Yes.
*inaudible*
Probably next year. We're probably going to release Way of Kings Prime, where we have a whole sequence of Vasher training Merin, who's the original version of Kaladin, in the sword and stuff like that. It's lot of fun. It just didn't work so it's... But yeah.
Do you get some perverse pleasure keeping secrets from people.
I do. Because I'm a showman, right?. I want you to get that moment where it all comes together, and if I don't keep the secrets, I can't do as many of those. If I could get away with it, I would say nothing, because I would let the books stand for themselves. But I have been a part of fandom for long enough to know people really enjoy this, and so I let them pull things out of me. But it's always my intent to never say anything.
One more question about the Girl Who Looked Up. It says she wears a long pack, so would this be a long pack or no. *gestures to pack*
That is not long enough.
So would said large pack hold a Shardblade or an Honorblade?
You'll have to see.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
We might be doing a picture book of it.
Somebody whispered that to me earlier. Would it be illustrated?
Yes.
Are we gonna see any more Marsh in the future?
Yes. It's likely you will see some more Marsh.
Do you think book 4? Or next trilogy?
No. He's more the next trilogy. You might see him in book 4, but I would not hold my breath.
Okay. But he's my main man so I just want to make sure.
Marsh has been through a lot and he has weathered it well, so...
Heralds. did they become immortal when they became Heralds? Or were they already before then?
I'll RAFO that.
Good question. Good question.
If a Mistborn were to try and burn a non-valid metal, like platinum or lead, would the metal be burned but nothing happen or would they not be able to burn it at all?
They would not be able to burn it at all.
Not in the slightest?
Yep. Good question.
Can a Shardblade, dead or alive, become a Hemalurgic spike?
It's already too strongly Invested for this. It couldn't hold anymore charge.
Would tapping Feruchemical speed cause you to burn metals faster as your whole body speeds up?
Yeah. I think it probably would. I don't know if we've gotten to that interaction yet, but it probably would. Good question. If it's speeding up... Yeah, I think it would. Good question. If you're in a speed bubble and doing it, it's totally going to do it, and there's some analogies there.
Could Kaladin rip limbs from people using Lashings?
Yeah. This is theoretically possible.
If Taravangian became a Vessel, would he still have smart and stupid days?
RAFO
I remember there being something mentioned, the Thousand Eyes of Trell, somewhere in Mistborn, is that a real thing?
Yeah.
There's something behind that?
Yeah.
This is a line in Way of Kings where it kind of sounds like my homeboy Nephi. Was that on purpose?
I'm not sure if that one's on purpose. You'd have to tell me which quote it is.
Taravangian who's like "better for one man to sin than a whole nation perish?"
That is probably unintentional. I don't know if that was intentional or not.
Are there intentional ones in there?
Yeah. The Nohadon Way of Kings is directly influenced by king Benjamin's speech and Mosiah. That one is intentional. Most others will probably be unintentional though, of course, what I read a lot and what is important to me ends up in the books one way or another.
Do you plan on writing Stormlight Archive where you have to be Cosmere aware?
I intend Stormlight to always be its own story. The Cosmere will start influencing a little more here and there, but I never intend you to have to know anything about the Cosmere. Who knows how I'll be at the later books if I'll change my mind, but I intend it to be no more than it's really been now.
Are we going to see more of Kaladin with his baby brother?
Yeah. You will see more of his baby brother.
Hemalurgy. If I stab someone with an icicle but it had iron traces in it, would that still work?
That iron would not hold much of a charge, so it's probably not going to work. You're probably just not going to be able to get enough iron there to really charge it.
But it's plausible that you could make it work. Like, you could get enough iron in there theoretically. I'm going to say most of the time, no. Plus, the structure of it's going to disintegrate so fast that you're just not going to be able to make any use of it.
Is the current Shin societal structure based on whatever caused the fall of the Shin invasions?
Not 100 percent. Certainly it was influenced, but it's not a direct one-to-one correlation.
In the Cosmere, are we going to get any more worlds or is like what we have enough?
No. If I can get myself to do it, I have some other worlds that we'll show. They'll be short story stuff though. They are not major players in the actual Cosmere other than Yolen which you haven't seen yet but that's where Hoid's from and that's where the Shattering happened. That's a major one but yeah.
Is Kaladin ever going to get like a wife or a girlfriend?
Here's your RAFO card. There's your RAFO card.
If you had to guess, which gender would be Doomslug?
Spensa thinks Doomslug's a she, and so I would go with that.
The way she looks kind of looks like a boy but the way she talks kind of just sounds like a girl so it gets confusing.
Telling gender on the slugs is not terribly easy.
What was your inspiration for making Doomslug? It's a very fun character.
You know, it was basically me wanting to have a pet sea slug and it just not being something you can do in real life. And I knew I wanted a creature that had some import to the worldbuilding and I settled on something that I thought would look cute.
If an Awakener were to use a gemstone as a color source, will that affect its Soulcasting properties?
Yes.
How do Lashings affect fluids like water or air?
Hard to Lash a fluid. It works poorly. How about that?
You can make it work best with the Reverse Lashing which would make sense I assume, but you can't Full Lash onto air or really a liquid. And a Gravitational Lashing, you could maybe do it on a liquid but it would disrupt real fast.
Have many magic systems does Sel have?
It depends on how you define it. I would say over a dozen if you're dividing AonDor versus Forging as different magic systems. They have over a dozen. It depends on what you kind of circumscribe in the same style of magic system with just different ways to access it. It just depends on your definition.
I'm sensing a subtle metaphor between all of the Radiants, where it seems like their lives have caused them to be pressurized gems and now they get the cut from their Oaths.
Nice job. Yeah.
They're holding Stormlight better when they do that, right?
They are indeed.
My friend and I always argue. He's like, "Amaram and Jasnah are the same age." Are they really?
Amaram is a little older, I believe, but they are around the same age.
Like 24ish?
Oh, no. Jasnah's like in her mid to late thirties. Mid thirties. I get it mixed up which one's Earth age and which one's Rosharan age. Whatever I say in there, it's about 10 percent more for our age. But yeah, Jasnah's not...
She's not a spring chicken.
She's not a spring chicken.
But Amaram's older?
Yeah. I think Amaram's like a year or two older, but they're around the same age.
I was just going to ask if we're going to hear any more from First of the Sun.
I actually started writing a sequel story but it gives a lot away about Era 4 of Mistborn. I'm like, "I don't know if I can do this."
So we'll just wait a little bit.
Yeah. We'll see if Peter thinks I'm giving away too many things. Like I don't want to give away endings of like the Stormlight Archive in the short story and so I have to be careful about those things.
When the Shards all Ascended, did they all have roughly the same power level?
Yes.
If Nightblood was to attack one [a Shard] and decided it was evil, could he destroy enough of that Shard to seriously weaken it compared to other Shards or not really?
I mean it would be such a drop in the bucket. To actually weaken the Shard. Like, there is so much out there. This would be hard to do. I won't completely nix it, but let's just say there's a lot that Nightblood would have to...
A while back I asked about, have you developed your equivalency system for Breath to...
No. We're still working on that. I actually have some people. I just got some physicists and mathematicians and said, "I'm gonna have you guys do this, and then you'll keep me honest." That's where we are right now.
And they're like, "It is such a big job." And I'm like, "I know. That's why I'm paying you to do this, so that I don't have to do it. So do your best, it's okay."
What was the name of a Shard that you choose not to use? Like the Shardic intent you decided not to use?
I can't confirm those because I still might use them. Mostly, the things I've discarded are names that are too simple, or too on the nose.
Maybe I'm not not... People are like "oh they're just synonyms, hatred and odium are synonyms" but I see more nuance to Odium. So like it feels more deep.
Yeah. If it's got a different history as a word.
But I haven't 100 percent eliminated any of them. Like, some of them are similar enough that at the end of the day, I might be like "you know what, this is better as this name instead of this name" and that would change the intents.
So you have...
I have a list of all 16 but I haven't settled on the actual name for each of them.
Oh! I decided not to do the Shard Levity. I did move away from that completely.
Your languages in Stormlight, do you have a way you do names and such?
Usually there's two different ways that I approach it. If I'm going to spend a lot of time in the linguistics, I'll look for linguistic themes like in Stormlight it's names that are symmetrical or things like that. If I need to shortcut, I'm going to look for an Earth culture and I'm going to use the language kind of based on more themes from that culture and the sounds they have and try to replicate that but not using the actual words from that culture.
Are you still planning on Death by Pizza after...
So Death by Pizza is now called Death without Pizza. It's actually called Songs of the Dead. I've been working on that with Peter Orullian who's a singer in a metal band. Some parts of it are really working, some parts aren't, so we're doing another draft. Basically, I did the outline and the world, he's writing the book. The first revision, there were some things that needed to be done in the first draft. So, we'll see how it goes. It's an experiment for both of us. Neither of us have co-written a book before.