Brandon talked about something he called "Honor's purposes" or maybe "Honor's Purposes," and how they are the reason 10 is such a holy and dominant number - I assumed it meant Honor has (had) 10 of those Purposes. It was heavily implied in the conversation that Odium, if he has similar Purposes, does not have 10 of them.
Is Hoid human?
Hoid was human a long time ago. Now... it's complicated. We would call him human, and so will pretty much everyone else, but he is not exactly that.
The ketek in the first book ["Above silence, the illuminating storms - dying storms - illuminate the silence above"], it seems like this refers to Honor's death.
Mmhmm.
What does "Above silence," refer to?
Above a silent land.
Hmm. Roshar, somehow? Okay, you're not gonna tell that.
And the second ketek, in Words of Radiance, similarly refers to the highstorm and the Everstorm... Is there more to it?
No, it's by Navani about the two [storms].
Do Surgebinders have gemhearts like greatshells do?
RAFO.
The Parshmen / Parshendi / Listeners, do they give birth like humans do? Living little Parshendi?
They give live birth, yes.
Did Gavilar see the same visions Dalinar did?
RAFO.
The Iriali Long Trail, is it related to the Cosmere?
Yes.
And the Fourth Land, the Seventh Land, those...
These are definitely-- They are in the Cosmere. This is where you give me a lot of wiggling, because yes, it is related to the Cosmere.
There is a person on the forums who noticed that Shallan has this awesome Memory thing going on, Jasnah seems to have a really powerful, kind of, geolocation thing going on, Kaladin is a really good fighter - are those just their traits, or is there something supernatural going on?
There is something supernatural going on. Each Order... Well, how about this. If you look at the scholar interpretations, there are some scholars who think that these things are not supernatural, in the past, and some who said they definitely are. But many, if you look, many Lightweavers had powerful mnemonic abilities.
So it's definitely tied to the Orders?
It's tied to the Orders. Now, I am not going to say that you've got them all 100% correct, but each Order, there are things that come with Order, things that do not add up from simple the "you get this power plus this power," there is something else going on. And I would say that for Windrunners, watch the number of squires and the power of the squires... is abnormal for the Windrunners.
And each Order's squires are somehow different from the other Orders'?
Yeeeaaaah... some Orders don't have them, [that] is the difference.
But some have more?
Yeah.
In the different worlds, can you spike people Hemalurgically with materials other than metal? Say, you create a wood spike for Breath, or a gem spike for Surges?
RAFO.
Is normal Awakening and BioChroma an end-neutral system?
Yeah. Yes. Meaning, you don't lose Breath in the [process].
When a Surgebinder's eye color changes when they Surgebind or have a Blade [out], is the color of their eyes corresponding to their Order? So Windrunners would do blue, and then--
Yes.
So each Order gets a different eye color?
Each Order does indeed have an eye color representation.
The person who arrived at the gates of Kholinar, the one you refuse to acknowledge as Talenel - is that person the same as the one delivered to the warcamps?
Yes.
If I were to impulsively Soulcast pewter, the way Shallan does with the blood in The Way of Kings, would it come out that an Allomancer be able to use it?
You could create Allomantically viable metals, yes.
But is it automatic?
I would say that the pure metals are, but the alloys are not.
What is the gem cut that holds the most Stormlight, and does it vary from gem to gem?
It does vary from gem to gem, and... I've got this written down somewhere... I am going RAFO, because it's more of a "go to my notes and find out."
Ars Arcanum at the back of this book [The Alloy of Law] - who is it written by?
The same person who has written all of them.
Can Returned feed on Stormlight?
This is definitely possible.
Has anyone other than the Five Scholars and Vasher Awakened Steel?
*photo pause* Not that Vasher knows about. And if he doesn't know about it, then there is a decent chance [that it never happened].
The Horneater names are very similar to Polynesian names...
That is the direct inspiration. I love how Polynesian languages sound, and it's something I've been wanting to use for years.
After a spren has been bonded, what happens if the person it's bonded with dies?
If the person they are bonded with dies, it is an emotional event for the spren, but not a damaging event. As long as their oaths were not <broken>.
Kind of like if a friend dies?
Maybe a little more personal than that.
I guess Helaran was not bonded to a spren then?
And why do you say that?
I was looking at this line here and saw that his [Blade] had a gemstone at the bottom, so that was a clue.
That is a very good clue, yes.
With all the spren, the ones that are developing thought and all that, are you going to have them interact, that we see-- Because you don't really have much interaction between them right now that we know of
Yes, we do not. I think it is safe to say that what Syl and Pattern say about spren in this book implies that there is between different spren that you can look forward to.
Why can only women write?
It has to with a lot of cultural mores, spraying out of a certain sort of essay written a long ago that divided masculine arts and feminine arts, and then some cultural things sort of went along with that ended up gaining momentum.
And we'll find out more about that I guess.
Yeah... I mean, to the characters it's like asking "Why do you guys shake hands?" It's what you do, culturally. But there are reasons for it.
The Nahel bond, what determines whether you get a Cryptic or an honorspren?
The spren themselves.
So it doesn't have to do with the Orders of the Knights Radiant?
If you match, you have to attract the spren, the same way you attract emotionspren, you have to attract the right spren for the Order.
Since Hoid is the Horneater god, are there, or at least implied, would other Shards--
Hoid is not a Shard.
Or other Shards that are related to Hoid, since they are in the same time period. Would they also be Horneater gods?
I think that the Horneaters might interpret things very differently from their reality, as they are viewing certain things happening--
So would they originally be from Roshar, or would they have travelled from somewhere else?
That's a RAFO, it depends on the person. Hoid is not originally from Roshar.
Is there a way to tell between different Investitures?
Yes.
For each Shard.
Oh, for each Shard? Each Shard-- Most of the magics have built into them that ability, but I wouldn't say that everyone does. I am trying to remember if they all do... I lot of them have a power that would allow you to do that, but I don't know if every one of them does.
No, I mean that, in the ones that do have [this ability], they can tell the difference between each one.
If you were really good at burning bronze, you could use bronze to distinguish between different types of Investiture from different planets even. And that sort of skill does exist in other magic systems.
Is it like a wavelength kind of thing?
Yea, that's exactly what it is.
Is it possible to become a Sliver if you burn enough atium?
I don't think so.
Is there a limit to how many Shardblades you can have? Be bonded to?
Theoretically, not really. There are some things that could bound that. I can imagine people having a lot. In the original draft of The Way of Kings (2002) Amaram had two. And so, it's definitely possible to have multiples, and I had not thought of someone trying to bond every Shardblade.
So that means you can be bonded to more than one spren.
Well, those Shardblades... Can you be bonded to more than one spren? That question's answer is also yes. Potentially. But there is a much harder limit on that.
Can you tell us which Shard is with the new story?
This is a world that does not currently have a Shard.
If you were to use Allomancy to fly faster than light, would it be like the Navigators in Dune, where you pick out the best possible route through the stars?
No, good question though! That's not quite the way, I haven't really given you the tools to figure it out, because I feel that the tools to figure it out, I couldn't give to the characters early enough. I wanted it to progress with the technological development, so hints are only just really brief in the story.
May I ask you what your revision process is?
My revision process is very goal-oriented. I decide what I want to change about the book, I write it all in a big notes file, and I organize them by how important it is and how far-reaching the changes are. And then I start revising with <the file> open beside me, always watching to make tweaks to fit the goals I have established.
Oh, okay. And do you find yourself able to remember everything you've written when you go back and--
No, that's why-- you got your document here and you've got your revision file here and watching [the revisions file] while revising I'm trying to clear things off this list, and then things near the bottom will move up. And I'll sometimes need to do two or three drafts to clear everything off the list, but being goal-based in it helps me a lot.
The prevailing theory on the 17th Shard is that [Hoid] worldhops using Shadesmar. I was wondering if you were willing to confirm or deny that?
Hoid has indeed gotten between worlds before through Shadesmar.
And would you be willing to give us a hint as to how he does that?
There are hints in the books. There is a hint in the very first cosmere book I released [Elantris]. [...] Which I thought was a huge hint, but so far I haven't seen anyone talking about it.
Really?
Mmhmm. [...] I thought that once people started figuring the Cosmere, they would see the massive in-your-face hint I put in that book, but so far, as far as I know, no one has. *brief conversation about Brandon's tendency to drop sneaky hints and how he likes doing that* Now, the one [hint] about the map [of Roshar], that one I don't think is obvious. I know people have been trying to figure it out. It's something fun once you figure it out, but it's not something huge and obvious. The Elantris once was, like, enormously "HIIINT!"
In Shadesmar you describe the beads, they are like little beads, this big, BB size...
They are bigger than BB size.
Okay, and everything melts into beads. But when people pick them them up, do they form into the thing they are supposed to be, or just one bead represents the stick, and--
One bead represents the item that is seen and views itself as a cohesive thing.
Is there a picture inside it, or...?
We will get more into this as time progresses.
In the future Mistborn trilogies, is there going to be any spectator sports revolved around the magic system?
That is very likely. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote The Rithmatist was to play around with a magic system that's used as a sport, as a game.
Why can Stormlight heal Lopen's arm, but can't heal Kaladin's scars?
Because *photo pause* a lot of the healing in the Cosmere works on principles of expectation and how you envision yourself.
So Kaladin has accepted the scars.
Kaladin has accepted the scars, and Lopen never accepted the one arm. It's a good question, it's one I am hoping people will ask. [...] It's one of these ties when I built the magic systems that I wanted certain threads to run through them, so when I eventually have them being used in the same books, that there will be consistency among them, that so they won't feel like everything's just thrown together. So, for instance, the intention and expectation, for instance, in Warbreaker-- What you want to have happened influences what does happen, the expectation, the way you are thinking about things. Very important for most of the Cosmere magics.
Elhokar's assassination attempt, the drained spheres [from his Plate] - was that <him> Surgebinding?
That's a RAFO. Good question. [...] Let me say this. Drawing the Stormlight from an active set of Shards is very difficult to do.
I'm actually writing a-- I planned, I don't know if I'll get to it, but I planned an in-between [Stormlight] books short story called King Lopen the First of Alethkar. And I'm hoping I'll get a chance to write that and stick it up there for you guys, but yes. Because if you see at the end he is claiming to have been a king for a while. You will find out why he claims that.
Will Jasnah be one of the characters that gets her own book?
She will be.
[I noticed] Nazh's name at the bottom of the illustrations a lot - is that a character that's going to come in in the future?
He's already appeared in the books. Very very cameo-ish tangential things, you have to be really looking to spot him.
*brief conversation about space age Mistborn*
Books, plural?
He wasn't in The Way of Kings, no. Not on screen, I don't think.
I was kind of curious, is Nightblood gonna be able to drain Stormlight or is it going to drain--
Nightblood will drain any Investiture it can get its hands on, so yes.
Will main characters from books 1-5 [of Stormlight] also show up [in books 6-10]?
Yes. They will be about as prevalent, maybe a little bit more than ones from 6-10 are in these [Stormlight 1-5].
I'm assuming there's going be be ten opposite orders to the Knights Radiant? Yes? No?
RAFO! That's big ol' RAFO!
That spren that are of Odium, that are in the Everstorm - are there more of those and will they pair directly as opposites of the <Nahel spren>?
There are more of them. There is not an exact one-to-one correlation?
Is Jasnah still alive at the end of the book, since the whole scene where she kind of appears...
Yes, she is.
*photo pause* Why does she take so long to come back?
Because Elsecalling is not precise even if you know what you are doing, which she doesn't.
Can I ask about the wrong decision in the beginning of the original The Way of Kings?
In the original [The] Way of Kings Kaladin wins and Shardblade and Plate and keeps it.
In regards to the one-armed Lopen - which arm is missing?
*photo pause* I have always imagined it as his left, but I don't know if I ever said or canonized it.
In the last part of the book [Words of Radiance], Wit is talking to <the songling>, and says "If you think hard, this sentence is really clever." Are there any implications beyond this, or was that him just talking?
Go compare to another sentence he used earlier in the book. He is making a pun off of the sentence he used before. [...] It's not as clever as he thinks he is, I'll just warn you that.
[Why did Syl use the word "thy" after Kaladin spoke the words of the Third Ideal?]
Because in their language she was using a more antiquated version of their language, and so that's the best English translation.
The glyphs on the cover of the [US hardcover Stormlight] books do represent the Order of the Knights Radiant that is being investigated in that book, as is the color of the book. If you look, it represents the color [of the] them in their, sort of, periodic table of Surgebindings in the first book's front endpages.
Now, I will say there is one thing I've been wanting to do for a long time that will probably never happen so don't get too excited. But I had this awesome idea once, and these come to me, where I would write a book with Pat Rothfuss where *audience gets too excited*-- wait, wait, you've gotta hear this pitch - where we both have a set of characters who're competing for misaligned goals, like one wants to save somebody and one wants to assassinate somebody-- they've cross purposes. And we write them, and exchange chapters, and have try to assassinate each other and fiddle with each other's plots. And we get it to, like, 80% of the way done and then we send it to George Martin, and we say "read this and decide the ending and then we'll write it *audience laughter and applause*. And so the reason I want to this is so we can write on the cover, it's not "Brandon Sanderson and Pat Rothfuss", it's "Brandon Sanderson vs. Pat Rothfuss". And see who wins at the end if we can convince George not to kill all of our characters. It's never going to happen, but wouldn't that be fun?
Is it possible to have both an Honorblade and a spren? Yes it is.
In The Stormlight Archive there have been multiple writing systems, [which] as a part of a community effort we've translated, for the most part, the Alethi [Vorin women's script], the Thaylen. Can you talk about the technical details of the glyphs writing system?
The glyphs were designed by Isaac Steward. He is my scribe, artist, and cartographer. He is also the art director at my company. We sat down and I wanted something symmetrical, so actually half of the glyph is repeated. When you read into it, it's symmetrical, and you can read them by the points where they slant, but you will have to go talk to him about exactly how to do it, because I say "I want a glyph for this" and he designs it. So they are readable, but-- The thing that I used as a model is, I got Arabic art; if you guys haven't read Arabic word art it's gorgeous, it's really cool. And sometimes when it gets really distorted you have to know already what it says, and that's how some of the glyphs are.
