How far back was the <second> Warbreaker book? Chronologically does it come before or after Stormlight Archive?
Before.
Before. So in between Warbreaker and The Stormlight Archive?
Yes. More close to Warbreaker than to Stormlight.
The hair color, is there a link between the hair color in Warbreaker and the hair color in, with, like the Alethi always have black, and I can't remember the other country that always have gold hair coloring?
Yes. You are noticing something very interesting which was done deliberately.
So do you come up with those [glyph designs] or is there an Artist that does that?
You know what? All of those have been done by Isaac. I came up with a sequence of them for the original right in 2002. And they just weren't up to my current artistic standards, and so I let Isaac do it. I'm a big believer in letting people who are experts in things do what they're good at doing, to the point that when I needed a creepy lullaby in this I hired a musician to write it rather than writing it myself just so that we would have the extra *inaudible*.
Is that the?
The backstory one.
*inaudible* this thing I have fallen in love with *inaudible* when you're the only one that knows that you can only talk about...
I end up RAFOing a lot. "Read and find out". I do a lot of that.
Will it ever be in print or will it always be a backstory...
There will be several series about the cosmere, but they're a little ways off.
Is Shallan's father her actual father?
Ah! People asked if her mother were her mother. No one's asked yet if her father were her father... Yes, it was her father. Yes, I will give you that, yes. Her mother and father as presented in the stories were actually her mother and father.
Hoid says [in Warbreaker] that he learned stories from a place where gods have died. Is that Roshar?
RAFO. I will say this. A god has died on Roshar. Only one, that we know. So, "gods" would not be plural.
How does Susebron love sweets if he doesn't have a tongue?
The fact that your tastebuds are all in one place is actually untrue, scientifically. You have tastebuds all through your mouth.
One of the things I love so much about your books are the illustrations and the maps, even though I'm really bad with maps. So I guess I was wondering, do you have a really clear vision in your head for what you want them to be or...?
It depends on the book. In some cases I do. In some cases I'm more vague and I work with my illustrator through several iterations then decide what we want.
For Feruchemy, can you only inherit that? Or is there another way to get it?
Yeah, you could obviously get it through a Hemalurgic spike.
Yeah, but that’s kind of a different thing.
It is hereditary, but it came from somewhere. Which is a RAFO, but it’s not a big RAFO. There’s not something you missed in the books, or anything like that. It originally came from Preservation long ago. And there are other ways to get it, but you have not missed any major plot points regarding that. Good question.
You mentioned one time that there were guards hiding under the bed and in a secret room when Siri first goes to the God King?
Yes, I at least imagined it that way.
Do you always add details like that in your imagination?
It's very frequently I do. Just cause I want to be a few steps ahead. And I want to be making sure that my motives for the characters—particularly the side characters, we're not seeing through their eyes, make sense. Motives are really important to me.
Are the Tranquilline Halls part of any other culture outside of the Rosharan system?
No, they are not.
Was the black mist spirit that Alendi saw Preservation or Ruin? Which one?
RAFO!
Could a Seeker savant tell the difference between regular Allomancy and Compounding?
It is possible!
I asked Brandon to include some interesting larger-Cosmere-related tidbit about Dusk.
Dusk has had Herdazian food + hates it.
In the original version of Kings, the character in Shallan's place was engaged to a different character!
I asked Brandon if Royal Locks are controlled with emotions mentally or willpower regardless of emotion.
Both!
Can iron/steelsight lines be used to identify specific metals? If yes, for only savants?
This is possible. Not just savants.
Is it possible to worldhop from/through Patji's Eye? If yes, could a naturally Invested creature like a nightmaw worldhop?
Worldhopping is hard if you are not sapient--but yes, it happens.
As for Patji's Eye, RAFO.
The background to my question is this:
It was once stated by Mr Sanderson that "Magic in the cosmere needs a guiding force. If it doesn't have one, the magic itself will gain sentience." We also have that things like Nightblood that gained sentience because of crazy amounts of investiture.
My question then is:
"Is the reason that investiture has this tendency to lead to sentience caused by the fact that pre-Shattering Adonalsium had a goal/purpose/intent of bringing sentience to his universe."
(I guess this is in a way a 2 part question, because it assumes that Adonalsium actually HAD the intent of bringing sentience to his cosmere)
Yes, this is part of the reason. Good question!
What does the Cognitive Realm of Sel look like?
RAFO!
Who was holding Szeth's oathstone when he was ordered to assassinate King Gavilar?
RAFO.
I asked him to put something about aluminum.
You have seen aluminum in unexpected places...
Hoid says he would watch Roshar burn if it meant his goals were achieved. Would Hoid go so far as to kill to achieve these goals? Can you give a hint about what his goals are?
Yes, Hoid would kill--if he were able to make it happen--to achieve his goals. His goals are super secret. Some you would agree with. Some, maybe not.
I asked for "Info on why Adonalsium shattered".
Adonalsium Shattered because he was killed.
My request for Brandon was "for information on the current status of the weapon that was used to kill Adonalsium, including the current possessor".
The weapon was expended, and no longer exists in its original form.
Is Odium aware of the weapon created by Adonalsium's opposition?
Yes.
Can a Nahel bonded spren safely worldhop with their bondmate?
RAFO! Book 3 gives some clues.
I had asked for a new piece of information about the Diagram that is important to the cosmere.
If Dalinar lives, something worse must be attempted.
In Edgedancer we see what I believe is a Dysian Aimian, Arclo, refer to the Sleepless. Is this the term the Dysians use to refer to their species or is it rather the name of a group of specific Dysians?
This is how they speak of themselves. Good question.
For the Coppermind: What should we call the page about the Southerner medallions? (or: How would Khriss refer to them in an Ars Arcanum?)
Let's call them "unsealed metalminds" though Era 3 might use slang.
While imprisoned Kaladin encounters a strange type of spren described as "taut wires crossing before him". When I first read this I instantly thought of the captivityspren Axies is searching for, so I was surprised when someone asked you about it and you were reported as saying they are not captivityspren. What kind of spren is it then?
I must have misunderstood. Those were captivityspren.
To what extent do the Shades of Threnody remember their lives? Silence’s grandmother appears to recognize her but on the whole Shades don’t really act like people. Kelsier however, the other main example of a Cognitive shadow, seems little altered from his living state.
Shades of Threnody are not as self-aware as other shadows.
Can an Allomantic bronze burner hear the Rhythms on Roshar?
Yes, this is possible.
I was actually wondering, the epigraphs for The Way of Kings, that were talking about how the various Shardholders [Vessels] are influenced by their Shards over time—how does that impact someone like Harmony, with multiple shards?
The main effect it's having on Harmony right now is the inability to act sometimes, because his two sides are pushing, and so he is having trouble being proactive. It'd take a long time before it really becomes manifest, but he's had several hundred years, so it's starting to have an effect.
How do you do time dilation and character time? Like how do you keep the stories straight?
Just practice. And good beta readers really help with that a lot because in my first drafts I will often mess these things up and then my beta readers will help me.
Kaladin in the second book seemed to be a different Kaladin than at the end of the first book.
In what way?
And he seemed angrier, and my question is, why did you write him that way?
He has always been angry. In the first book, he is focused on saving his men and now that his men are safe, all of those emotions—if you go look at him from the first nine chapters of Way of Kings, he's that way there, it's when he becomes focused on saving his men he has something to drive him and it kind of subsumes these things, but once they're safe all these things he hasn't dealt with came back out.
Are the Wax and Wayne stories going to always be in stand-alone, or are they ever going to tie in to the main Mistborn and stuff?
They will tie in, in fact I intended the first one to foreshadow stuff for the next trilogy, so you will find things tying in with what's going on, but I kind of wanted them to also just be more independent, so we'll see. It'll be a little of both.
Is there a difference between the Shardplate of the Radiants from the visions of the past and the current Shardplate?
Yes.
Is Lopen, is he going to be one of the secondary [main characters for the back half of the Stormlight Archive]?
He is not. Good question.
How are you going to finish the cosmere stuff? Like when you get to book 35, how are you gonna resist like book 36, we're gonna say "Courage is held by dude named Steve and according to Hoid he's pretty cool." Just extend it another ... how are you going to finish?
We'll see. We will see. The thing is there's a beginning, middle, and end to the Shattering of Adonalsium and the involvement there. More stories can be told in the cosmere, but there's a beginning, middle, and end to that. When I finish that, that is the sequence that I wanted to tell.
And you have that outlined out?
I do.
Guys, have you noticed this bit in the Bendalloy section [of the Mistborn Adventure Game]?
"A physical attack made through the bubble, whether held or thrown, is robbed of its kinetic energy, often with an audible 'pop.'"
Could this be what we are looking for when trying to figure the FTL space travel thing?
This statement seems to violate several things from Alloy of Law: first, Wax's "shooting the bullet" scene, and the danger of being shot while inside a cadmium bubble.
Not really. A bullet shot out of a speed bubble IS robbed of kinetic energy—not all of it, but just enough to slow it down to the speed it would have been moving at had it been fired outside the bubble in the first place.
At the signing I asked Brandon to personalize the book with a suggestion for a unique or rare effect that could be achieved with a metal. He signed
"Watch for what happens when something leaves a bendalloy bubble."
He then laughed and said "That won't make any sense for 10 books"
This leads me to believe that this might be related to the FTL travel.
Why 10 on Roshar, and not 16?
Oh, now that is an excellent question. So, we've got 10 on Roshar, we've got 9 on Braize, so the answer is...something I will do eventually, but it's something you should be noticing.
What is the proper way for nobles to address Inquisitors?
Your Grace. They are like cardinals in the Catholic Church.
What metal is the lynchpin spike made of?
RAFO.
@BrandSanderson In M:AoL, will bendalloy’s time dilation result in redshifting of light going in/out of the bubble? #weescience
I’ve been working on the science of it. Basically, I’ve been treating it as a gravitational time dilation.
But only focused inward, and equally, on those inside the bubble. It’s making my brain hurt a bit, but I think I’ve got it working
I think this means yes to a gravitational redshift. But . . . it gets wacky. Trying to decide just what it would do is tough.
Is Lopen still going to have one-armed jokes?
Oh, he will always have one-armed jokes! He's probably going to have to come up with some two-armed jokes.
I do have to know, how many cousins [does Lopen have]?
It depends on what your definition of cousin is. By Lopen's definition, there are a lot of cousins. He's counting like fifth cousins.
Third cousin twice-removed?
Yeah, that's his cousin. Like [someone] dating his sister, or his mom's sister - that's a cousin.
With the ten books split into five and five, is that going to be chronological?
Yes. They will be chronological.
How many people that we've met know the story of Dalinar's wife?
Know which story?
The story about the pact, why he doesn't remember anything.
Oh. Not very many at all know that he doesn't remember. He's had to fake it.
