As a physicist I appreciate you being so consistent with your magic systems.
It is something I try very hard to do, though I do recognize that we do bend a lot of rules. When we were doing the time-based one in this [The Alloy of Law], I'm like, "Oh, boy, redshifts. Oh, no, conservation of energy." We had to do some bending to make it so that the radiation from the light passing out of the time bubble wasn't deadly.
I was wondering what made you so interested in the super rules-based magic system. Because you're probably one of the best at that, and in every different universe you manage to create a complete unique set of rules-based magic and they're all completely unique.
So there's a panel on magic tomorrow, so I hope I don't repeat myself too much. But the whole rule-based magic thing came about mostly because I was looking for holes in the market, right? Like, things people weren't doing that I wish they were doing. I often say to new writers, "Find the books that nobody's writing, that you want to read, and try to write those." That sounds-- I mean, that's just very vague. I don't know how useful that is, but that's kind of what I was doing.
But at the same time I like-- there are lots of soft magic systems I like. Uprooted which came out a couple years ago. It's a really great book with a very soft magic system. So it's not like I feel like magic has to be done this way. But I found something I was good at, that I didn't think people were doing enough of, that I felt like people would want to read, and so that kind of became my thing even before I published. Like when I was writing my books only for my fri-- I wrote thirteen before I sold one, if you guys know about that-- And so when I was writing those books it was, "What weird setting is Brandon going to do?" Because fantasy through the 80s and 90s-- I mean, there's lots of great writers. I love them. But I felt like they were really safe with their settings, and they didn't-- they explored other directions really well. But it-- we had a lot of these kind of faux-Medieval, elemental-base magic systems, and cultures that were very "England, but not England." And I'm like, "Well, fantasy should be the most imaginative genre. Where can we push it? Where-- what different things can we do?" And so I tried that during those years. The magic systems kind of grew out of that. Like, "What are people not doing?"
I will say there are some people who have done it even in the past. Melanie Rawn's Sunrunner books. I've really liked those. Those kind of have-- it's not scientific, but it's rule-based, which is kind of-- are two different things. Being consistent is one thing, and then trying-- like I try to play off of physics and make it feel like it's playing off of physics when it's really not, because I'm a fantasy writer, right? Like.--
In Mistborn it's pretty physics.
Pretty physics-- But even in Mistborn, right like if you-- the time bubbles-- speed bubbles. Like I have to fudge some things. Like I spoke with my assistants, like, "Alright, what would happen if we build these?" And we're like, "Well first thing would happen is that it would change the wavelengths of light and irradiate people." You know, like this sort of thing. We're like-- we just have to make a rule that it doesn't irradiate people. You can't just take a flashlight and melt people. Yes, you just have to come up with some-- And so for me, a lot of the big difference, I say, between a fantasy writer and a science fiction writer is, the science fiction writer is forward-- each step trying to be plausible-- and the fantasy writer a lot of times drafts it backward. "Here's a cool effect. Can I explain this in a way that makes it feel like it's real and logical?" But I'm working backward from the fact, not forward from what's happening here.
So I was actually wondering, I keep finding myself thinking of new and exciting ways to break science with magic. How do you keep yourself from doing that constantly as you're writing?
You write the book the best way the book can be. You give it to a scientist. You say "What does this break?" and then you either take it into account, if you think it is going to work for the book. If not you come up with an explanation in-world and you move forward. We're writing fantasy, we don't want the science to ruin our book, we want the science to be something we considered. Does that make sense? Like when I made speed bubbles and Peter's like "Red shift! You're going to irradiate people." I'm like "Alright we're just going to have to say 'Speed bubbles are not irradiating people' ". And just be aware of it and write the best book you can.
So, Metalminds: if you store weight, how does that work, do you decrease your mass or...?
So, storing weight actually plays with your mass, because if you look at how we do the physics of it… This one is really screwy, because we are changing mass and playing with it. You watch, like with Wax decreases his weight while he's in motion he'll speed up, and if he increases it, he'll slow down. The conservation of momentum and things like that, but we'll doing really weird stuff. It's like, how can you store your mass… Well, in the magic system it works, but it’s one of the weirdest things we do. *pauses to sign book* We kind of play loose and free with the physics sometimes. Like the example that I often use is Wayne doing a speed bubble, the light that is trapped in the speed bubble...like if he turns on a flashlight would actually radiate because of the redshift, and you could just kill everybody by flashing that. So, we make the speed bubbles not cause a redshift for that reason. We kind of work with what is good storytelling first, and then work the physics around it, but we have to put in all these little breaks and things like that in there regularity in order to actually have the story.
[Can Lift] get Stormlight from spheres like normal or if it's just from food for her.
She can only get it from food.
Which [is it] related to her boon or her curse?
RAFO.
If you transform something using Aon Shao, would that be permanent, for taking off-world?
That would probably be permanent. That's where I stand right now on those ones.
When a Dakhor monk leaves his homeland do his bones still give him his abilities? Is it only the creation that's location-dependent or is it also the ability that's location-dependent?
The further you get away, the weaker the power the bones will give you will get. It's way better than Elantris at bringing the power with you. That's where it is in the notes right now, I have not written the second book, I could totally change that.
Forged items. If it's one of those where it's permanent or it's not going to die after a couple of hours, can you move it off-world or would it transform once you moved it too far from its location?
Forgery requires a constant little stream of power to keep it going so yeah if you moved it off-world the Forgery's going to collapse.
Why didn't Harmony heal or change *inaudible*? [from notes: Why didn't Harmony change Southerners on Scadrial?]
That is a RAFO. Good question.
When you are burning a Compounded metal are you getting the metal’s effect and the stored power? Can you explain, I’m unclear on the Compounding.
Compounding is a way to hack the magic system so you can get a Feruchemical attribute out of-- basically powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. If that makes sense.
So you’re not actually burning the metalmind?
Kind of? There’s a big explanation on Reddit, if you send me an email I can link you to it, that steps you through exactly, easier than explaining it here
I'm doing video game design, and I'm curious: what are your thoughts on constructing interesting stories, because we're kind of getting to a point where video games are able to tell... like, people are getting used to, basically, interactivity being a medium <with which> to tell a story. I'm curious, from having spent some time developing your craft, how to link that in with being forced to have the 'main character' <do that more often sorts>?
Yeah, I think there are so many cool <different ways> of people who are doing it, but I'm not sure I can point out and say "This is the right way." I know that my favorite stories from video games tend to be ones where they force you to experience the story without forcing you to stop the game. Things like in inFAMOUS where you're riding from position to position, you're on the phone with people. Or things like Dark Souls, where you kinda just reveal it all around you. I don't like the games where they stop. And play a cutscene.
Where it takes you out of the game, and it's like, 'movie time.'
Yeah. I think there's <a way beyond doing that>. I also really like it when something about the form of the game enhances the story. Like how <Braid> was with <the guy who could rewind time to move stuff back>, stuff like that. There’s all sorts of cool things happening, VR’s only going to make that more interesting.
Do you purposefully take ideas from the Book of Mormon and turn them inside out, on their head, so no one knows where you got the ideas from? Like when you have Kelsier saying, in this moment, and he defeats the Lord Ruler, just in Ruler's capital city, and like how in the Book of Mormon when the Lamanites, besieged Zarahemla, because no one else can see it coming?
So, I don't intentionally take, usually, from the Book of Mormon. There's a lot of unconscious things coming out. The only thing you can say is that I based The Way of Kings a little bit on King Benjamin's speech.
Could Nightblood theoretically be turned into a Hemalurgic spike?
The problem with that is that Nightblood is already invested, so it depends on your version of ' Hemalurgic spikes'. Piercing someone's body with Invested metal can have weird effects all through the Cosmere, but ripping off a piece of a person's soul using an un-Invested spike to Invest it and create one is different... we're talking about two different things, right. So there's the.... so what is a Hemalurgic spike? For instance if you've got a spike that's Invested and you stick it into a Kandra on Scadrial it will still work as an Invested Hemalurgic spike. Making a new Invested spike by ripping off a person's soul, that's a different process and a little more difficult to accomplish and requires some specialized knowledge.
What led you to want to write a fourth Wax & Wayne book?
Right, when I wrote Alloy of Law as an experiment, then I said, "Oh, I really like this series, this turned out really well. I will now plot a trilogy with these characters." So, Alloy is the outlier, where I view Shadows, Bands, and Lost Metal as a trilogy. And this is, like, the prelude to the trilogy. And I do think that because... this was an experiment, I really think it was a good experiment. I'm better when I have more of a framework, so I think these two [Shadows and Bands] turned out stronger than this one [Alloy], because when I have a framework, but... at the same time, you need to always be trying, experimenting, new things as a writer.
What does "Aagal" mean and do Aagal Uch and Aagal Nod ever come in to the Mistborn plot?
RAFO!
Is-- Would you consider Szeth an official Skybreaker? And will he have spren or will he just use Nightblood as one?
So, would I consider Szeth to be a Skybreaker. That is definitely also a RAFO for the next Stormlight book.
Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax [in The Bands of Mourning]? And where did he get it?
Why was Hoid drinking perfume when he met Wax and where did he get it. This is an answer-- You are getting RAFO'd-- But this is one I do intend to talk about eventually. There are lots of seeds of things in the Mistborn series that I can't promise I'm going to be able to get to, that I hope I'll be able to get to. Secret History, which is in the Arcanum Unbounded that hopefully many of you have. If you haven't read through to the end of the released Mistborn books, don't look at that story, because it's a behind-the-scenes story of things that are happening, that I put seeds in the original trilogy for. That's another seed, and it might be one I can take up. I might just have to explain it someday.
Radiant vs. Mistborn: who wins?
Depends on the situation and the Radiant order.
[Way of Kings] is my best book, but it also is the one that requires you to trust me the most.
So, the original Steelheart, David's father, vs David, once he gets his new steelheart powers, which one do you think would be better?
More powerful you mean?
Yeah, and, like more, skill-wise and...
Oh definitely original Steelheart but, you know, give David some time.
Will you be making an origin series for Bastille?
I will be writing a book from her viewpoint next to kind of wrap some things up. We will see how it is received, if it is I can do more Bastille books, that is not outside of reason.
Can you confirm the real names of the Heralds for me? I have Jezrien (ˈjɛzɹən), Nale (for Nalan) - is that right?
Nale (neil) is what-- Nale is, yes, yes.
Chana [pronounced Shana] or Chana...
Yeah.
Vedel.
Vedel (vəˈdɛl), yeah. Chana (ˈt͡ʃænə) is also called Chanarach (ˈt͡ʃænəɹæt͡ʃ). Either one would be alright.
Okay, but her birth name...
Probably-- I think Chanarach is actually her birth name and Chana is the nickname.
Vedel... Pali, for Pailiah?
Yeah, I think Pali (ˈpæli) is the nickname in that case.
Okay, Ash?
No, that's a nickname.
What's the real one?
Shalash (ʃəˈlɑʃ).
That's not he just the Vorin...
No, that one was actually symmetrical.
Awesome. Battar (bəˈtɑɹ)?
Yes.
Kalak?
Kalak (kəˈlɑk), yes.
Talenel (tæləˈnɛl), with a nickname Taln (tæln)?
Yes.
And Ishar (ɪˈʃɑɹ)?
Yes.
How long does it take for someone who has had four iron spikes in to become a koloss, how fast are the changes?
Very quickly!
Is there significance in the fact that the world of Silence Montane uses silver for protection? (Even though there is no known Allomantic use for silver)
Yes.
I know it’s a RAFO but, are the Ones Above [Scadrians]?
RAFO.
I just wanted to make sure.
I'm sorry Brandon, you might RAFO me.
*written* For the metal in Bleeder, is it from a Shard we know?
Oh no… You drove all this way, that's what makes me. Eric comes and he's like--
You RAFO'd me at Words of Radiance--
I know.
--I asked you a question that was too much.
…you push, yeah… There you are you got your answer. You got me.
*writes* Yes.
I asked for some new info about Renarin, and this is what Brandon wrote to me!
To Alyx, Renarin sees a spren that nobody else does.
I know that Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, Elantris are set in the same universe, and they've all kind of got certain Shards and I was reading that, like, you might do a book about that?
I will eventually, there's no 'might' about it, but I always try to talk somewhat timidly about it because I don't want the focus to be on that, I want the focus to be on each story that's happening. For instance, The Stormlight Archive will only be about The Stormlight Archive. I will be upfront when I do a crossover, but it is many years in the future. For now, I like it being a behind the scenes thing for fans who really want to get into it. I don't want to scare a reader who'll be like "I can't read Mistborn because I haven't finished all of these other books". You can read Mistborn on its own, and there will be cameos that you will notice as you do more, and the more I write, the more to the forefront some of these things will come, but I will lead you gently into it. But yeah, I will be doing crossovers eventually.
And when did you kind of-- was that something you wanted to do from the very beginning, or were you halfway through--
No, that was something I wanted to do from the beginning. I was inspired by Isaac Asimov combining his Robots books and his Foundation books, and he did it late in his career. It kind of felt a bit hacked together a bit, but it blew my mind when he did it and, as a writer, I always thought, what if somebody did this from the get-go.
The actual origins of the kind of worldhoppers for me was reading books as a teenager and inserting Hoid into them. I really did this.... Do you read books and you like change what is happening in the book, or maybe it's just a me thing? I would have my character interacting with the characters in the books, in my head, as I played the movie of that book in my head, while I was reading it, and there was this character hopping between worlds, with this knowing smirk on his face.
And so, when I was working on Elantris I said, "OK", I knew I had something in that book that was good, that was important, that was relevant, I was very confident in that book. It was my sixth novel, by the way, so I kind of had a handle on these things, and so that's when I decided I'm going to start doing some of this, I'm going to insert Hoid into this and I'm going to start planning this larger epic. It was particularly important to me because I knew I was not going to write a sequel to Elantris immediately, but I wanted to be writing epic stories, and the reason I didn't want to write a sequel to Elantris is because, if an editor rejected Elantris I wanted to be able to send them another book, because when you're getting close to publishing you'll start getting rejections that are like "This is actually a really good book, it doesn't fit our line, you just wrote a great mystical llama book but we just bought one of those, do you have anything else?". I wanted to be able to send them "here's my next thing" rather than "oh, I've got a sequel to the one you just rejected". And so I sat down and wrote the sequel, which was not a sequel, it was called Dragonsteel, which was Hoid's origin story. And then I jumped forward and I wrote White Sand which is another book connected to all these things and it went on, you know, it went crazy from there. And then when I actually sold Elantris it was already going and already in there, and I was able to sit down and write Mistborn, well in hand, knowing what was going to happen. That's why you find Hoid in Elantris and Mistborn and the sneaky, the scary-- well, it's not sneaky and it's not scary-- the moment in the third book when Vin gets creeped out by Hoid is a very important moment, Cosmerologically, but I'm not going to tell you why!
Yesterday you said that crem was actually like Shard poop.
No, I was saying that it was more like that than what they were saying.
It's not really poop?
No, its not.
Dang it, I like poop jokes! Can you make it poop so i can have a poop joke.
Ok, for the next thirty seconds it is.
I have a question on the recording, since that's mine. To clarify, we need to send it to Peter? The transcripts, or the audio?
The transcripts.
Of all three days?
Yeah. Only the things you're going to post, they're gonna cut out almost all of this. Run it by him. There's a question I'm trying to remember where I flubbed yesterday. I can't even remember what the question was. A lot of times, you're sitting here, and you're just, like, brain dead as people are coming through, and they say something and you're like "Yeah, uh-huh."' And then, you're like, "Wait, no. That's not even the question they asked." I'm pretty sure I got the important words right, but send it through him. It's a practice that I want to get in the habit of doing.
And he sometimes will have all these things all in the notes, so he gets them, and can add them to make sure they're in the notes, for continuity and stuff.
You mention... No you didn't mention Arthur Clarke. The guy with the "Any sufficiently advanced technology is distinguishable from magic" ...In, at least, one of the Mistborn trilogies you are probably going to have to deal with the distinction between magic and technology. So can you talk a little about how you are going to address that?
So yeah, addressing the-- This is a really good question, thank you. So Clarke's Law says that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Right? And this is kind of a science fiction truism that we use in writing. It's a really cool concept when you think about it. But he asks "Well we're pushing the Mistborn trilogy more and more towards science fiction--"
For those who don't know, I pitched the Mistborn trilogy to my editor, long ago--this was 2003 when I pitched it to him-- I pitched it as a trilogy of trilogies. An epic fantasy trilogy that then after the epic fantasy trilogy we would jump hundreds of years and do an urban fantasy trilogy in a more modern setting, where all of the events of the epic fantasy trilogy became the foundation of religion and superstition and even culture to a modern society. What if our heritage were something like The Lord of the Rings? And then I was going to write a science fiction trilogy where... magic became the means by which space travel is possible. So there is, built-in to Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy, FTL-capability. *audience mutters* *nervously* It's not there yet don't worry. *laughter*
Somebody found the rabbit-hole.
That's all RAFO's. I'm not answering any of that.
So I did Alloy-era, by the way, as a stop-gap between the epic fantasy and the modern because I wanted something smaller-- The modern trilogy is going to be very thick books, and I wanted something to balance Stormlight while I was doing the first five Stormlight...
So he's asking how I'm going to deal with this whole collision... between science and magic. So there's a-- I don't know if corollary is the right term. Probably not, but there's a version of Clarke's Law which you inverse. And you say "Any sufficiently understood magic is indistinguishable from science". In the cosmere the magic is science. What I would call-- say is science fantasy because we've added to the Laws of Thermodynamics. We have this other thing called Investiture, which is what powers all the magic. Which is the souls of the things they call gods, their substance. And you can change matter or energy into Investiture and back. And so we've got a third circle in the old Laws of Thermodynamics and so because of that it's science fantasy. I would still call this fantasy because science fiction is where they go "We're going to take the Laws of Thermodynamics and try to explain what we can do using them" I'm like "No, we're just going to add to them, right?" But yeah that's where we're going. There will be a collision of that but it's really going to be-- To them it's indistinguishable, once you get far enough along, that it really is science.
A bonus piece of information - my poor friend that I dragged along with me (who had only read Warbreaker) asked about the specific naming of Bio-Chromatic Breath.
Sanderson confirmed as part of his response that at least some the Five Scholars had visited worlds who had gone through the Industrial Revolution (and therefore would have more of a sense of scientific theory, that the Scholars would have picked up on).
Alright, thanks. Last question for me tonight - so, when a Hemalurgic spike steals something, then it's storing Investiture in it, yeah? So could you - could you do something with that Investiture? Like... say I'm on Nalthis, and just theoretically, I use a Hemalurgic spike to steal a lot of Breath - can I use that Investiture to Awaken something? Could I Awaken the spike?
That... you'd need a lot of Investiture to Awaken a spike.
Because it's already charged up with something else?
Yeah.
Is Adolin and Shallan going to get together, or will Kaladin and Shallan?
That is quite the question. I will eventually answer that, but you are getting Read-and-Find-Outed. It is intentionally a bit of a mimicry of something else that happened in the past.
How involved are you in the Wheel of Time [television] development?
How involved am I in the Wheel of Time development? Not at all. They haven't contacted me. If they did I would be involved, but they have not contacted me.
That's disappointing.
Yeah, well. I mean, I don't think they're as far as long as Harriet's limited communication to the fact has made it sound. I don't-- I think they are just starting the process. Now they own the rights outright, which is a big advantage for actually getting something made. I think the chances are pretty good. But I doubt they're beyond looking at screenwrite--scripts and things like that. Maybe they'll write a script for a season of a TV show and come to me and say, "Hey Brandon, do you want to consult on this?" But I would expect that they would wait until then. I don't know. If they ask me... But I-- the Wheel of Time is not mine, and so I have very limited creation with any of the business side of stuff on the Wheel of Time.
Has Mistborn: Birthright officially tanked?
Has Mistborn: Birthright officially tanked?
So this is the video game. So the kind of longer-- the short answer is yes. The kind of longer answer is the developer who was making the video game bought the movie rights for a year, because we wanted to combine the movie rights and the video game rights. We gave him only a year, because we were like, "You haven't made any films. But we want to tie these rights together. It sounds like a good thing." We gave him a year, and he lives in LA so he knows a lot of Holywood people. "Sure, give it a try." In a year he couldn't get a film made, or really moving. You can't make one in a year anyway, and so the rights for everything have lapsed, and now he's talking to the people that we sold the Mistborn rights to, to say, "Hey, maybe I can make the video game if you make the film."
The problem being that new IPs in video games are very hard to get funding for. And those who work in video games and know them are nodding their heads. And so he tried very hard. He's made a lot of video games. Most of his games as you know from looking at his developer site are all movie tie-ins, right? He wanted to try a book tie-in. He's made good games. He has a lot of people on his staff who've made really good games with a lot of different companies. They could make a good Mistborn game. They needed, you know $20 million. Which, they can usually go to people who give them funding, and say, "Hey, we're making the video game for, you know, Kung Fu Panda." Which they did. And they're like, "Oh, okay here's you're--you know-- $10 million, $20 million. We know this is a safe bet. This video game will sell."
When they say they're making one on Mistborn they're like, "Where's the movie?" And so it was very hard for him to get the funding. It was very hard for him to get things built. I think he still wants to make it. But now he's in talks with the guys making the movie, and I don't think it will ever happen unless the film gets made. If the film gets made I think it will happen. I pitched to him last week doing a 2D side-scroller Symphony of the Night style Metroidvania Mistborn game, which is something we can fund in-house, right? And just kind of do what a lot of the cool indie games are doing right now. It's like modern design aesthetics, but a 2D sort of thing. Salt and Sanctuary comes to mind, if you guys played that. You know, you can do some really cool stylized stuff and really interesting game mechanics, but if you want to go full 3D, this generation console, like 20 million is like the low end of what you need. And so that's where we are.
What's the title of the sixth book gonna be?
Right now it is named-- it says "Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians" with the "Alcatraz" crossed out, and says "Bastille". And it says, underneath, "Versus His Own Dumb Self"-- is the title I'm going with right now, but it might change. But it's called Alcatraz Versus His Own Dumb Self.
...How long does it take to do the first run?
How long does it take to do what?
The first run.
The first draft, of an Alcatraz book, usually takes about two months. They can be a lot faster than my other books, but yeah.
Can bronze+duralumin pierce copperclouds for a split second?
Yes, for an instant.
Does having multiple people burn copper make it harder to pierce them?
Yes.
Do you ever plan on writing a sequel to The Emperor's Soul?
The first one turned out so well, and it's one of those things that you kind of-- Like I didn't expect-- Like sometimes you're amazed at how well something turns out. I wrote that mostly on the flight home from Taiwan. It wasn't anything I was planning to write. I was inspired by my trip to Taiwan. I sat down, and I lived in Korea for two years, so I was kind of familiar with some of the culture, tojang, the stamps, and things like that, and so I ended up writing a story. It turned out so well, that it feels like it's one of those things that may not need a sequel. Does that make sense?
There's some things that are just better by themselves. *laughter* So we'll see. If the right inspiration strikes. I'm not planning one right now, though, for those of you that have read it, there is-- we have sold a movie option on it.
*applause*
So a movie option on Emperor's Soul, how would you do that? The producers are working very closely with me, and I'm working on the treatment , and I'm very excited. In fact, [Matt Hughes?], are you in here somewhere? The producer of it flew up from Hollywood, because he wanted to see WorldCon. So he's skulking around WorldCon for the first time. But yeah, so you might see a film.
In Way of Kings, Shallan is being chased by Cryptics. She begins to summon her Shardblade, stops and then Soulcasts for the first time. We know from Words of Radiance that it's her bond to Pattern, her Shardblade that allows her to Soulcast. So my question is, if Shallan had not begun to summon her Blade, would she have been able to Soulcast?
She would not have been able to. Good question! Wow. No one has ever asked me that before.
So, because we have Worldhoppers like Hoid, Khriss, and Nazh, and I think that I've heard that era 4 will be more science fiction.
Yes, era 4 is science fiction.
So, will we ever have a chance to see characters from one world in the cosmere go to another world in the cosmere?
So, there's a couple of things that I need to explain to you guys in this one. First is that Mistborn, I pitched to my editor, way at the beginning, as a series where a fantasy world slowly became a science fiction world. So we would pass through a modern era, where things are like our world, and then we pass on to a science fiction era, because I'd never seen that done before. I'd never seen someone take epic fantasy and then build from the events in the epic fantasy, like religions and philosophies, and then tell another story set in a more modern and contemporary world. And then in the science fiction one, the magic will become the means by which space travel is possible. So we're in the middle of that. Wax and Wayne is an interim, I'm calling it era 2. There's an era 3 which is 1980s, cold war, spy thriller Mistborn. Then there is an era four, which is science fiction, unless I slip in a cyberpunk, near-future science fiction, which I might do. So there might be five, we'll see. I've warned people of that. The last Mistborn series, whichever era it ends up being, is the last thing of the cosmere chronologically. So, it's a long ways off. All the other series have to finish before I can do that.
The other thing that people have to understand is that all of these worlds are connected in something we call the cosmere. It is mostly, right now, just easter eggs. It's important to me that people don't go, "I can't read Mistborn until I've read Elantris," or whatever. No, each series is about that series. There's easter eggs connecting them but you don't need to know it. It's just fun to find out; you can find it all out after the fact.
Are we going to see people traveling between the planets? Yes, you will see space travel between the planets. You have seen it already. One of the stories in the anthology comes from that era, but it's on a planet that doesn't yet have space travel. Sixth of the Dusk takes place chronologically near-end of the cosmere sequence. So yes, you have seen it, and you will see more of it. In Sixth of the Dusk, there are ones they call the Ones Above who have visited and these are people from a planet that you have seen, I won't tell you who, who are visiting.
I'd like to ask what led to this decadence in the Iridescent Tones, what were the social causes? It started out as the Cult of the Returned, and a simple faith in caring for the Returned so they'd live long enough to fulfill their purpose. And I assume the Voice even sends them back without memories exactly to foster this faith and hope in people, so that mortals can be part of their salvation instead of just getting divine hand-outs. That sounds really nice. But by the time we reach the events in Warbreaker, a lot of corruption and cynicism has found its way in, no?
Yes, it has. Part of it is something that Lightsong points out. Their religion encourages the best of the Returned to give up their lives for their people, and they hit a patch where a lot of the best of them have already given up their lives. The rest have their needs and wants seen to. Beyond that, remember this is a society in which they're living in a very temperate climate where there isn't very much harsh weather at all; they're very sheltered, they have an extremely rich resource, and they have a lot of leisure time. So we're mixing leisure time with a somewhat selfish batch of Returned in control, and we're mixing that with a religion that focuses on art and beauty and that sort of thing.
I think one of the dangers this society would have to be worried about would be for this decadence to creep in as has happened at various points in various cultures around the world. The society certainly isn't irredeemable at all, but it is going through a patch of these three concepts aligning in some of the worst sorts of ways. But there are some better Returned than we focus on in the book, and there have been much better Returned in the past.
The question I have for you is will we ever get to know what Hoid's purpose is? He shows up in each of the books, presumably looking for something or on some kind of mission. (Lerasium bead?)
Will Hoid have a short story, novel or will we have to try and piece it together?
There will someday be Hoid short stories. I've actually written half of one and then haven't been able to have time to finish it. He will also have short viewpoints throughout the Stormlight Archive series, assuming he survives.
Mostly this is for you to piece together. As I said before, this is a story I'm telling, and if I have to explain the story outside the story, then in some ways I've done something wrong. So let the story speak for itself, and you will see. I guess that's a RAFO.
It was said throughout the book that you cannot just give some of your breath, but must give all of it. Perhaps I'm simply forgetting part of the book where this changes, but wouldn't Vasher have to give his Returned breath along with his others?
The "You must give up all of your Breath, not some" line was mostly perpetuated by Denth, who is saying it to Vivenna to stop her from giving away her Breath to all the people she passes. It is a lie. Now, it's a lie that's commonly accepted by a lot of people. But it's still a lie—as we find out midway through the book, you can stick some of your Breath in an object and bring it to life, and then recover that Breath. So it's very easy to give some of your Breath to someone if you know the logical steps to take. Invest most of it into an object, give what you have to someone else, then pull back what you Invested. So it's flat-out proven in the novel that what Denth is telling her is wrong. Now, he could dance around that lie by pretending to be the ignorant mercenary—he's just perpetuating a falsehood that many people believe. But it is a lie. In fact, a lot of the things people believe about BioChromatic Breath isn't true.
One of the things I was trying with this book was to take a few steps back from MISTBORN, where so much was understood. I feel that the approach I took in MISTBORN is right for that book, and yet people have so much superstition regarding all sorts of science. I worry sometimes that there isn't enough superstition in my books, regarding magic as science. What people believed and what people knew and what people understood was so varied and confused throughout most of history, that I worry that I lack realism in that. Vasher brings up at several points in the book that they don't know a whole lot and that people perpetuate a lot of myths and stories and lies.
Vasher has learned to suppress his Returned Breath. When it's suppressed, it's as if it doesn't exist to him. He's Invested it into a place within himself, much like you can Invest your Breaths into a shirt, and when he gives away the rest of his Breaths, he doesn't give that one away. He could split off others of his Breaths if he wanted to—he's learned to do that, so that he could give a few Breaths and not all. It's just a matter of practicing as long as he has. But even people who aren't as practiced as him do it all the time when they Invest an object with not all of their Breath but just enough to bring it to life
I was wondering how the animation of the lifeless statues worked, in regard to the use of Susebron's Breath. If they were lifeless, then vasher wouldn't have been able to take his Breath back out of them, nor would susebron have needed such a great deal of breath to revive them—he just would have needed a password. But if they were simply Awakened, no password would have been necessary to animate the statues, just Breath and Command.
It seems like the statues could be neither lifeless nor awakened. Are they unique, because of the use of bone, or am I missing something? The only other explanation I could think of was that they were lifeless, but Susebron's breath wasn't used to activate the statues, he simply had it passed down from vasher, in addition to the statues. If that's the case(and then I've simply been confusing myself with unnecessary, convoluted logic), why was it necessary to keep the breath safe for all these years?
Wow, there are a lot of questions in there. If you follow the drafts, I think you can see the evolution of what became of the Lifeless army. Originally I had planned for the statues to simply have been placed there so that you could Awaken them—just in my original concepts, before I started the writing—and then that became the army.
I eventually decided that didn't work for various reasons. Number one, as I developed the magic system, Awakening stone doesn't work very well. You've got to have limberness, you've got to have motion to something for it to actually be stronger. So a soldier made out of cloth would be more useful to you than a soldier made out of stone, if you were just Awakening something. At that point, as I was developing this, I went back to the drawing board and said okay, I need to leave him a whole group of really cool Lifeless as the army. But that had problems in that the ichor would not have stayed good long enough. Plus they already had a pretty big Lifeless army, so what was special about this one? Remember, I'm revising concepts like this as the book is going along. You can see where in the story I could see what needed to be there. So I went back to the drawing board again.
I think the original draft of WARBREAKER you can download off my website has them just as statues, though at the time when I was writing that I already knew it would need to change. I was just sticking to my outline because I needed to have the whole thing complete on the page before I could work with it. A lot of times that's how I do things as a writer—I get the rough draft down, and then I begin to sculpt.
I eventually developed essentially what you've just outlined in the first part, before you started worrying if you were too convoluted. I said, well, what if there's a hybrid? What happens if you Awaken bones? Can you create something? The reason that you can't draw the Breath back from a Lifeless is because the Breath clings to it. If the Lifeless were sentient enough, it could give up its own Breath, but you can't take it, just like you can't take a Breath from a person by force. You have to get them to give it up willingly. So it sticks to the Lifeless. A Lifeless is, let's say, 90% of a sentient being. The Breath doesn't manifest in them, because they aren't alive, yet they're almost there. A stone statue brought to life would be way down on the bottom rung.
Is there something in between? That's the advancement I had Vasher discover—what if we build something out of bone, but then encase it in stone to make it strong, and build it in ways that the bone is held together by the force of the Breaths? That's really what you're getting at there, that you need a lot of Breath, a lot of power, to hold all that stone together. There are seams at the joints. What the Breath is doing is clinging there like magical sinew, and it's holding all of that together.
Vasher left the Phantoms Invested with enough Breath to hold them together but not to move. You needed another big, substantial influx of Breath in order to actually make them have motion, to bring them enough strength to move and that sort of thing. So it's kind of a hybrid.
Also, would the Elantrians and the Lerasium-mistings be considered Slivers? Or is just the Lord Ruler and Vin Slivers (Via the Well)? Or do you need more power to be considered a Sliver?
Elantrians are not slivers. Mistborn trilogy spoiler warnings follow! The Lord Ruler was indeed a Sliver. So was Vin. For the rest, I would say probably not.
What defines an actual Sliver of Adonalsium is not as clear-cut as you might think. It's a term that in-universe people who study this have applied to various existences and states. Every single person on the world of Scadrial has a bit of Leras in them—a bit of the power of Preservation. Every single person has a bit of Ati in them. There's a certain threshold where these scholars would call you a Sliver of Adonalsium. But I would say that any regular Misting is probably not a Sliver. A full Lerasium Mistborn is getting closer, but people who have held one of the powers are what would probably be termed a Sliver by the definitions. If you hold all the power that makes you a Shard, but the Lord Ruler held a little bit of it and then let it go. From then on they referred to that change in him—the residue, what was left—as a Sliver. When he held it he became the Shard for a short time, and Vin was a Shard for a short time. After Vin gave up the power, what Kelsier is at the end of the trilogy—that's a Sliver of Adonalsium.
I was talking with a couple of others in another chat room about Vivenna and Siri's personal journeys in the book, especially at the end when Vivenna decides that she isn't going to write to her father in Idris. There was much debate over whether Vivenna was being childish and running away from responsibility, or if she realized that she was so drastically different from who she was before that she knew she was going to disappoint her father and family. As the author, what is your take on this scene regarding Vivenna's growth as a person?
I would say yes to both. Vivenna ends the book having experienced a great deal of personal growth. However, unlike some of the other characters, she is only a few rungs up the ladder. She's got a long way to go. That's why as I was plotting the book, before I even started, I decided I'd probably want to do this as a two-book cycle. Overlapping and forcing upon Vivenna the level of personal growth that it would take to get her character to completely reach an end point just couldn't happen in the book. Particularly with me doing what I did with Lightsong and the personal arc he has, and with Siri. So Vivenna certainly had a lot of growth, but I planned a separate book where I could really delve into and dig into her psychoses and her psychology.
Vasher still has a long way to go too. His personal growth is more like a zigzag pattern—a line graph with lots of peaks and valleys. He's been around and still hasn't really found himself, though he's thought he's found himself a number of times. Anyway, those two characters led me to think that there was a lot more to explore there. I didn't want to ram them through the paces it would take in this one book. I thought it would ruin the book. So I let them grow at the rate they needed to grow at, or decline at the rate they needed to decline at, and saved a second book in the series to deal more with who they are and who they become.
What do the Pahn Kahl believe in? All we seem to know is that they are similar to the Iridescent Tones. Any more info?
I was going to get into this more in the sequel, because we would have some more Pahn Kahl people. Anytime I'm saving something for a sequel, I feel like I shouldn't say too much because I don't want to lock myself in. Let's say that it's like the Iridescent Tones, but without the god-worship of the Returned. More worship in the concepts, and more of a focus on the voice itself.
One thing to remember about the Pahn Kahl is that they've kind of lost a lot of it. By letting themselves get so focused on the enemy that conquered them, they've actually ended up losing much of who they were. Not everything, of course, but substantial portions of who they were have gotten swept under the rug and consumed in their desire to get their freedom. Which is an important thing, but they've let it consume them to pretty extreme levels.
My question: What exactly does the Mistborn sequel series entail?
Several hundred years after the original trilogy—Spoiler alert!—Wait, aren't these questions supposed to be about WARBREAKER?
Anyway, the Mistborn sequel trilogy, as I've said before, takes place in a more technologically advanced version of the world, several hundred years later. They've progressed beyond steam technology to combustion engine technology, are building skyscrapers—that level of technology. It will follow the exploits of a team of Allomancers who are kind of like an Allomantic SWAT team, a group of hybrid mercenary/deputized individuals who are brought in by the police to take out Allomancer criminals. The first book will deal with when they are called in to deal with a Mistborn serial killer. That's how it starts. It will go bizarre from there, of course, but think guns, cars, skyscrapers, and Allomancers.
