What's the closest that humans had gotten to the 'inhabitable' zone of the planet during the events of the first Mistborn trilogy?
There were groups who would go out there to escape the Lord Ruler, and the Final Empire in general. Survival was practically impossible. It's possible someone might have gotten across to the southern continent, but it would take a small miracle.
What's up at the south end of the world (during the 'closer to the sun' phase)? Life there? Cultures? Allomancers? Assuming that there is some life down there, can we assume that we'll have some interesting 'culture clashes' in future books?
They will be known by the modern trilogy, so it's safe to assume that a discovery will happen soon. Either during the Alloy of Law era or soon after.
Is there a functional/structural difference between modern-day Shardplate and the stuff the Radiants wore? Did the Radiants have to use infused gems to keep their suits going or could they just 'breathe in' Stormlight and feed the suit off of their 'inhaled' reserves?
Something is different. You will find out what.
What are the smoke-y spren that appear around a dead chasmfiend?
They are in a symbiotic relationship with the chasmfiend, and are part of what allow the creatures to grow to the size they do with an exoskeleton. (Along with a high-oxygen, lower-gravity world.)
After reading The Way of Kings, I couldn't help but to wonder this: hypothetically if there were two equally skilled combatants in every way, one armed with a Shardblade and the other with a Lightsaber, and take magic and the Force out of the equation (except for the weapons themselves), who would win? And yes, the Shardblade would have already been summoned and the two are just squaring off in a dual. Have fun with it.
A lightsaber is actually a little more easy to wield than a Shardblade, I would guess. Shardblades were designed to fight something larger than another person; you don't actually need all of that size when fighting someone. So that gives a slight edge to you average Jedi. If it's someone like Szeth, who has a more modestly sized Blade, then I don't honestly know.
What about a lerasium savant? Or would that require so much lerasium that the person attempting it would ascend to become a new Shardholder?
Basically, this is what Ascension is.
What is/was Endowment's gender? Is Endowment the same being as Austre (making him male)?
RAFO.
Where did you get the idea for your Adonalsium mythos? Did it develop in your head for a while, or did you have a sudden flash of inspiration.
Over time, particularly when building Dragonsteel as a novel. I was planning it as I wrote Elantris. Hoid has been around forever, long before Adonalsium became the central plot of his story. I have an old short story from the early, early, early days where he's on a planet trying to figure out how the local magic system works.
Is there a chance that any dead protagonists will miraculously come back (IE Vin, Elend, Lightsong) to help fight later battles? You have shown Kelsier having influence after he died, and Sazed makes a statement about keeping in touch with Vin and Elend.
I don't want to be unsympathetic to people's love for these characters, but I feel that as a writer I must resist the urge to bring back characters in this manner. I feel it would undermine my storytelling. I never want to get to the point where people read and the tension of a character being in danger is ruined by the thought, "Well, even if they die, they'll probably just be brought back in the future."
I'm not saying I won't ever do it, but I want to be very sparing. I like how Robert Jordan did it with a certain character's return in [Towers of Midnight]. It was foreshadowed, built into the story itself, and relevant.
There are characters--in the 36-book-cosmere-superoutline--who return when thought dead. Some have not met their perceived end yet, while others have. So it's going to happen, but I want it to be very rare.
Is there a magic system that best allows people to worldhop between worlds?
Yes, but it isn't needed. Some do help more with understanding how to traverse the Cognitive Realm.
Are there any worldhoppers that we should recognize as worldhoppers in anything other than [The Way of Kings] beyond Hoid?
They aren't recognizable, and aren't intended to be, as of yet. There are some around, however.
Are any of your books' locations (barring Legion) based on real-life places? If so, where? If not, what propels your creative drive to make new worlds?
All of the keeps in the Mistborn series are based on real structures I've visited. The mists are based on a trip to Idaho, were I drove through a fog bank at high speeds.
Warbreaker's setting was inspired, in part, by a visit to Hawaii.
Much of Roshar is inspired by tidal pools and coral reefs.
You have told us there are more than 30 magical systems on Roshar. I am assuming there are 10 Surgebindings and 10 Voidbindings. Do the next 10 belong to another such classification? If yes, can you give us the name for it.
Fabrials are part of it.
What would happen if Nightblood and a Shardblade hit each other?
RAFO.
Are the lighteyes descendants of the first people who took the Shards after the Knights Radiant abandoned them?
I'm afraid I have to RAFO this too.
Did Sazed do anything with the bodies of Ati and Leras after he Ascended?
No, I'm afraid not. Those might have been useful to have around, though.
Are we going to be seeing Eastern Slang/High Imperial throughout the whole of the Mistborn sequence? How about on any of the other Shardworlds?
RAFO. (But you will see it again.)
According to [Sanderson's Second Law of Magic] your characters have flaws, weaknesses. What is the reason, that in a lot of them (Vin, Elend, Kaladin, Dalinar, Spook, etc) the most significant weakness is the lack of self-confidence?
It's because of mode-shifting. The people you noted have been doing one thing for a long time, and are now forced into something else. The self confidence is a side effect of that. However, I wouldn't say it's the primary character attribute for any of them, however. I think you're blanketing self confidence as a larger issue, when it's the smaller part of something larger for each character.
Vin: Trusting Others
Elend: Idealism
Dalinar: Conflict between the killer he was and the man he wishes to be.
Spook: Self Worth
If a Shardblade was used on an Awakened object, would it physically harm the object, destroy the Breath, or a combination of the two?
You will someday know.
Can Knights Radiant of one Order see the spren of someone from another Order?
RAFO.
How has writing Shallan as the focus character been compared to Kaladin in the last book? Easier? More difficult?
So far, I've only done her flashback sequence--but this was a little easier than Kaladin's, as I've been kind of chomping at the bit to tell her story.
Is there any relationship between Hemalurgic bindpoints and the body focuses in Surgebinding? Specifically, the eyespikes and the eyes being a body focus in Surgebinding?
The relationship is there, but it's not a very strong connection.
Can a Misting burn the god-metal alloys of their metal? If not, do the god-metals even 'exist' if there are no full Mistborn?
There are metals which exist that any Allomancer can burn, regardless of their own orientation.
What do you think to a Sadeas and Zane pairing? Not many people seem to like the idea, but I think they'd get on swimmingly :P
Sadeas would make great use of Zane. Far better use than his father did.
If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?
As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.
What do the Terrismen who aren't stewards or breeders do? Are there castrated Terris craftsmen around in the Terris dominance? What do the Terriswomen who aren't breeders do?
Lots of things. There is a full society up there. Lots of small villages.
If there's really no upper limit to Feruchemy for practical reasons* , why didn't Sazed just fill steel at ridiculous levels for a few minutes in [Well of Ascension], and then go back to running instead of leaving his steelminds there? Say, being some 100,000 times slower than he would normally be for about a minute. Meaning that a Feruchemist should be able to fill a given metalmind in very short periods of time if you fill at a high enough rate.
*(yes, you have the limit of how much you can store in a given metalmind and for how many metalminds you can carry on your person, but those are probably too high to really be taken into account in more "normal" circumstances)
The low end is bounded. You can pull out tons--but in filling, you can only go so far. I didn't ever explicitly talk about this in the series, but the implications are there. Not all have the same bounds, but in your example, the body just can't slow beyond a certain point. Think of it this way--you can only fill a weight metalmind with as much weight as you have to give. So you can become very, very light--but you only add to a time for doubling your weight. You can't make yourself 100,000 times slower and gain 100,000 times multiplication. You can give up all of your normal speed, and so when you tap that speed out you are at 200% for an equal period. (And that's a theoretical maximum; realistically, you can only go to down around 75% slower or the like.)
Are there any racist jokes in the Mistborn world?
Yes, I would think there are lots of racist jokes everywhere. It's more of a thing on Roshar, however, where the races are more distinct and rub each other the wrong way more often.
Just wondering, are you ever going to go back and write about The Further Adventures of Lestibournes? I think his character is pivotal to the Mistborn trilogy and felt cheated that the trilogy mostly focused on Vin, Kel, Sazed, and Elend. I would like to know more of his backstory and how he became the stud that he is.
He became quite the 'stud' in the years following the first trilogy. I might be persuaded to show some of this at some point. He also knew many things he really should not have.
Tell us something new about Cognitive Realm, please :)
You will get plenty in the next Stormlight book. But more than one type of spren live there.
How much power does a Breath and a freshly charged Hemalurgic spike have relative to each other?
This is a RAFO. I don't want to be pinned down on this one quite yet.
How is heat a mental attribute in Feruchemy?
Because I messed up. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but that power was supposed to be swapped with another one. (You might be able to guess which one.) However, by the time I realized my mistake, it had already been canonized in print in the trilogy, so I was stuck with it. I've been tempted to go back and correct the error, but it reaches pretty far back. People drawing upon warmth is mentioned in the first book. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that in general the 'physical, mental, etc' things are applied by people--they are boxes that people investigating the magic have used to describe it.
Is Wax's sister a duralumin Ferring?
I'm curious what makes you guess that particular power.
Would you be willing to write a Ketek in High Imperial? It's just something that's been going around in my head for a while, I think it'd be pretty cool XD.
Ha. I...really would rather pass on this one. Getting the Ketek right in [The Way of Kings] took weeks of writing and rewriting. I'm not sure I'd like to try something, even for fun, in a quick forum write like this.
A few months ago, I discovered listening to classic jazz just really got me into the mindset for my current novel, and I think it might be because the story is set in a time similar to the America in the 1920's; do you ever try to match the music with the setting of a specific book or scene? Is there any one artist or style of music that works no matter what?
Yes, indeed I do. I actually listened to era-appropriate music when working on Alloy of Law. In general, a good soundtrack can work no matter what, but for some scenes I need something more powerful. (Szeth's scenes in [The Way of Kings] were usually to Daft Punk.)
Is it possible to give cats intelligence with Hemalurgy? Or transfer cat's identity to a human?
Hemalurgy can do some very, very odd things. And the endowment of intelligence is a common result of tinkering with Shard-based magic.
In one of the death sentence things it says something like three of sixteen ruled, but now the broken one reigns. Is this referring to the Shards on Roshar and if so, is the broken one Odium?
RAFO.
In [The Hero of Ages], what spooked Vin off from meeting Hoid? (My theory is Ruin's infulence, because he didn't want Hoid interfering(sub question that just occured to me. Was Ruin aware of Hoid on Scadrial?)
And
What would Hoid have told her if they had talked?
Ha. Well, by this point Hoid had been to the Well--getting there just before Vin--and had retrieved something from it. That should have been enough to get him to leave the planet entirely, but he got involved in events. (He tends to do that.) It's pie in the sky, but I would someday like to do parallel novel to the Mistborn series with Hoid in the background like they did in the second(?) back to the future move. I don't know that I'll ever be able to do it, but we shall see. I would answer this question there.
The Way of Kings was named after an in story book, as is the would be Shallan's book if you don't change like you siad you might "The Book of Endless Pages", do you plan on naming all the books in The Stormlight Archive with in world literature?
That was the original plan.
Can male members of the Idrian royal family and or Returned grow out their facial hair at will? If so, can this lead to epic beard competitions?
Totally.
Are spren Cognitive aspects?
:) You guys are figuring this all out pretty well. I want to hold off on talking much about the nature of the spren because the characters in-world are discovering this as the books progress.
Is Szeth bound to his Oathstone by anything but honor (not the Shard. No loopholes here ;) )?
RAFO.
And finally, to speak non-canonically, would burning copper mask someone channeling the one power, and would burning bronze allow one to detect when someone was channeling?
Uh... You should ask Kelsier. He probably tried it when he hung out with Moiraine.
Could an iron Twinborn "fly" by drastically increasing his weight, pulling hard on a counterweight so it flew above him, then decreasing his weight drastically and pulling himself up by the counterweight, and repeating?
It's plausible. It's kind of a 'Thor-like' way to fly, isn't it? (For those unaware, he throws his hammer and it carries him with it, and STOP THINKING.) I played with this idea, but the trick is not getting hit by the counterweight as you pull it to yourself. If you could stop that, you might be able to manage it, but it felt pretty hard to pull off to me.
What are the chances that you will eventually write a fifth Alcatraz book?
Does Alcatraz ever actually end up tied to a stack of encyclopedias, about to be sacrificed by evil librarians?
I bought the rights to the Alcatraz series back from Scholastic earlier this year, and they were given a 'sell-off' period to sell the rest of their stock. I now own the rights again free and clear, and will probably be putting out an omnibus ebook. (Perhaps a print one with Tor as well.)
I can now write the fifth book (which Scholastic did not want.) It was always planned as the book where he ends up on that stack of encyclopedias. I'll do this sometime next year, hopefully.
It seems that certain colors and numbers appear frequently in specific Cosmere books, like the number 5 in Warbreaker or red and blue in Elantris. Do these colors or numbers happen to refer to a specific Shard, and if so, would they be consistent across the cosmere?
Certain colors and numbers are important in reference to certain Shards.
