We now know all nine types of true spren that make up Radiants, but Wyndle has mentioned making a garden for keenspren. Are these an intelligent spren that does not form Radiant bonds, and are there others?
Keenspren is a nickname.
I was wondering if that was a slang term.
Yeah, it's a slang term.
How many Invested Arts/arcana does Khriss personally have access to, including through mechanical means like medallions?
RAFO!
When Taravangian first got control of Szeth, he sent a man with a dark face and an accent Szeth didn't recognize, who was also wearing a mask. Is this masked man a worldhopper from southern Scadrial?
This masked man is a worldhopper.
What do Kelsier and Iyatil think of Mraize kidnapping Lift?
Iyatil? On board with it. Kelsier? Eh, does he even know? He's on another planet.
In Rhythm of War, Lift came up to the body of Gereh, who had been killed with a messy wound to the chest. Did Mraize kill him with a spike?
RAFO!
And a followup to that, Gereh's rings were gone. Would it be possible to spike someone to take their Feruchemical power and then use a metalmind keyed to their Identity?
This is theoretically possible.
Stormlight 5 prologue: Are we supposed to be getting really weird vibes from the Stormfather, or is this just for lack of editing?
*extremely facetiously* Uh, I don't know what you mean weird, that totally seems like the way the Stormfather always acts and has always!
You've said fainlife has spread beyond Yolen in significant ways. Have we seen this in the books, excluding Mraize's fain branch?
No, you have not. Watch out for Sho Del, they'll be showing up, dragons will be showing up, but actual fainlife, when I'm talking about that I'm kind of talking about the entire ecosystem. You'll know when you see it.
Is the secret way that the God King in Warbreaker can have children the same way that the Heralds can?
*long series of uncertain sounds* No...? But there could be... I'm just gonna say no. But interesting theorizing, and it's possible that I could change my mind.
Has the Stormfather ever become a Blade in the past for previous Bondsmiths?
RAFO.
Did Evi have a miscarriage or stillbirth before Adolin? She is visibly pregnant in one of the flashback chapters set almost a year before Adolin was born.
I think that she did... or that's just a continuity error, I don't know whichone it is. That's a question for Karen. If it's a continuity error, then maybe you found a continuity error and a solution to the same continuity error for us. I'll be completely frank with you guys, the timelines of the flashbacks are really tricky, particularly because I'm writing books like Way of Kings and Words of Radiance without a full continuity team. I just kind of have to keep it in my head. And so when we sat down to run the continuity, particularly starting in Oathbringer, there are a lot of things where it makes Karen's brain break. This is not where a lot of my mental effort went to, planning out each month. I generally knew which things happened in what order and what happened where. The timeline is pretty good and tight now, but there are all sorts of things that I worked into it that I said had to happen. For instance, the dates of births and things like that, that's locked in. I say how old people are. It's totally possible that you caught us on a continuity error.
But with a solution, so that's a double win.
If a planet has no sentient life, does it have a Cognitive representation? If not, would the Cognitive area generate in Shadesmar whenever sentience appeared there?
People have started to talk about this, because it is a legit thing. So, if there is no sapient life, or even sentient life, if it's a dead rock out in space and nobody knows it's there, its manifestation in Shadesmar will be basically nothing. I say basically because the Shards are aware of it, so there's probably going to be some bit of something that manifests, but until the attention of sapient beings starts focusing on it, it's not going to manifest very much in Shadesmar. It might be like a patch of ground that is a couple feet wide. It is going to start growing as soon as they do, which distorts space in Shadesmar, and makes routes between planets change and more distance come between them. Which is very very odd, and very very interesting, and it's one of my favorite parts about the whole thing. It should kind of break your brain, and it shouldn't really make sense with our physics.
Was the prostitute from the Way of Kings that Adolin protected Beryl?
No, it was not, good question.
So, I like connections between characters. I liked it in Wheel of Time when Bayle Domon shows up again and things like that, but it would have gone too far in another series without the explanation of the Pattern weaving them together. It sometimes strains plausibility. The Wheel of Time has a built-in mechanism, it's ta'veren, they're getting woven back in, and people are showing up time and time again. I feel like that was enough of a selling point in the Wheel of Time, and the Wheel of Time did it really well. When I built the cosmere, I wanted to be careful, because I knew I was gonna be bringing back a lot of worldhoppers and having people show up in other people's stories. And if I went too far on this, and every random person that you run into ends up being someone later on, it just is too much. So whenever I've considered one of these things, I sit down and say, would they really be there? What are the statistical chances? If I make this happen, what does it do to the lore in the fandom, where now they're theorizing about the connections between these characters, and things like this. I try to be very careful on that. I brought Yalb back for a quick scene in Dawnshard, he's in the prologue of Dawnshard. Partially to be like, hey, this guy did survive! But I intentionally didn't bring him and put him on the crew that is the main story of Dawnshard, because that was one step too far for me. And maybe fans would like more of this, but it's something I want to be careful about. We already have things like Gaz showing up and joining this crew, and we have Felt jumping between worlds, and these are all kind of planned things that I wanted to do. I gotta be careful, I want to be careful, and maybe I'm overly careful on this. But in other words, a lot of times I'm gonna tell you the random person who shows up does not have any connection to the greater story that I'm telling, and that's by design.
Why does Hoid in his letter to Frost say, "as you are now essentially immortal"? To our understanding, as a dragon Frost would have always been ageless. Is this understanding incorrect, or is there something else going on with him?
There is something else going on with him. That is a good question.
Considering that Mistborn Era 2 is four books, and Secret History is canonically in Era 1, have you considered adding either a novel or a Secret History to each Era to total sixteen books?
I get this on occasion. The other option is doing the cyberpunk series in between Eras 3 and 4, basically turning it into 5 Eras, which also would get us to sixteen books. It seems like a pretty good idea to go to sixteen books, but I don't know if we should count Secret History as one of those or not. But I would like to get to sixteen books, but I have a lot on my plate.
Does Nightblood have a favorite flavor or type of Investiture? In addition, does different Investiture taste different?
Yes it would, but the thing is, when Nightblood is eating Investiture, he is generally not in a mental state to really pay attention to that. He's not what you would call a connoisseur, he is a glutton. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but kind of making a distinction there. Because of that, if you asked him, he wouldn't even really be able to remember. Because that time when he's really drinking it in, he is not himself, so to speak. But it would taste different to him, if he were able to pay attention and to eloquently speak about those experiences.
Stone is hard to Awaken partially cause it's never been alive. On Roshar, there are tons of stone Soulcast corpses. Would these be easier? Has Vasher thought of this?
Yes, I would say that he has. And yes, they would be easier.
You've said in previous WoBs that that there have been champions of other Shards, like what Dalinar and Odium are doing in their deal. Would the battle between Elend and Marsh or Vin and Marsh count as a similar type of contest of champions, or would that have to be more formalized to have them be considered champions?
To be considered, I would've said that had to be more formalized. I wouldn't consider what happened there... It's definitely an echo, but I don't think it would fit. There's been legit, actual, contractual sorts of things that have happened.
How much have you thought about the mathematical relationship between Investiture and energy/matter? Is there a cosmere E=mc^2?
I've thought about the concepts a lot. The numbers, I actually tried to get some mathematicians... There are some lovely folks, I'm like, can we come up with a standardization? And it kind of broke their brains, not because they aren't smart people, they're very smart people, but they're like, "Brandon, where do we even start? How much energy is being expended?" and this sort of thing. I would like to get a unit of measurement, how much Investiture equals how much energy, but at the same time, the work being done by the various magic systems, it's going to be too constrictive to put too much math on that, I feel like. I would like to. It is a much bigger project than you might imagine it being. How much energy is stored in a sphere? That's kind of where we started. A sphere stores Investiture, obviously some of that Investiture is being lost as energy, it is transferring energy as the sphere releases light. That is happening automatically, it's decaying and radiation is happening. How much is it therefore losing, how much could it do, how much of that can be transferred to doing work with a Lashing... All of this stuff, I have thought about way too much, and we have no answers for you yet because it is a really big project. Maybe we will someday, or maybe we'll just say, this is too big a project to even be able to mathematically quantify. I'm sure if you have suggestions, you can post thoughts on the subreddits, and perhaps that will get to the various arcanists who are helping me with this.
As a Truthwatcher I am curious, are we going to learn the standard ideals that Stump would give, or will we just learn the ones that Renarin and Rlain speak, since they are bonded to Enlightened spren? Need to know what my ideals are.
You will learn those both. You will learn the differences between them. I'm kind of being dodgy until I get to Renarin's book for some of this stuff, but my goal will be to give you both sets of ideals.
If Kelsier managed to get his hands on a spren to bond with, which Order would he naturally gravitate toward in terms of personality and morals?
This is a really good question. I have trouble answering these cause I feel like I need to take the quiz as Kelsier and check all the boxes. Where is Kelsier gonna be? Maybe I need to start eliminating Orders. So Skybreaker, probably not. Windrunner, close but no. Edgedancer, maybe. The whole "I will listen," and the whole recover the past, it's really more a Mare thing that Kelsier kind of picked up on, but it's where he found his center, so I would give him a partial hit on Edgedancer. Dustbringer is a good hit also, this whole idea of self mastery and pushing himself and things like this, is gonna be a good Kelsier fit. Bondsmith is gonna be an okay Kelsier fit, with the kind of bringing together the crew and pulling off some big thing. Lightweaver, not as much as you would think. I don't think Kelsier is there on the Lightweaver thing. What have I missed? Stoneward, no. Willshaper, he'd be a good Willshaper. Willshaper's high on the list, but I think Edgedancer might win, maybe. But he's kind of borrowing that. It's a tie between Edgedancer and Dustbringer, probably. Willshaper's up there too, three way tie. I'd have to answer the questions from the thing and see where we go.
Are there any genetic restrictions, Spiritual or otherwise, to using an unsealed metalmind? For example, if Vivenna got her hands on one of Allik's translation medallions, could she use it? Could Iyatil?
No, there are not. People from off planet could use one of these metalminds. Good question. I think that's what you're asking. Barring Elantris, most of these things don't have this kind of region lock on the magics, and the unkeyed Investiture is not going to have a problem with that. That's kind of the whole point. It extends to people from off planet.
If Lift ate Nightblood, would Nightblood eat Lift?
Yes. She would have a whole lot of trouble. He would not.
Can other Bondsmith spren become Blades for their Bondsmith? And how would it affect the Tower if the Sibling became a Blade?
I'm gonna say it's outside the realm of plausibility for the Sibling right now. Is it possible for the other two, yes. It's possible but implausible. Highly implausible for the Sibling.
How would Kaladin cope with constantly losing to Malenia, the Blade of Miquella?
He would find peace. He would find peace in the struggle, and eventually the journey would be, you know. I think Kaladin would be like, I deserve this, and find a certain peace in it.
Could primer cubes be used to store powers besides the Scadrial ones, such as Surgebinding?
This is theoretically possible. So much fun to have in the space age, that I'm not gonna let you have yet. You have one more Mistborn book, one more Stormlight book, three more Mistborn books, and then five more Stormlight books before I'm gonna let you have that fun. Keep theorizing.
In Way of Kings, when Jasnah gifts Shallan the Book of Endless Pages, she mentions that someone dear to her once made a very attempt at converting her to Vorinism. Who was he, and how did he manage to appeal to her senses?
Well, wait for the Jasnah flashbacks.
Did I miss something about it being a "he", or did they assume a gender?
They're making some assumptions, I believe.
What it is that determines how skilled a Shard is at reading the future? For example, why is Ruin so bad at it, and why are Odium and Preservation both so good at it despite being so different?
RAFO.
In the Stormlight Archive, Cryptics are often humming to tunes that denote their emotional state. A Rhythm of Curiosity is cited, and Pattern often hums when he is curious. The same goes for a Rhythm of Confusion. Are Cryptics humming to the Rhythms like the singers? If not, what are they humming?
They are humming to something very akin to the singer Rhythms. I would call them the same, with an asterisk.
You once mentioned something called "Honor's purposes" to Argent/Evgeni. Are these purposes the same or related to the core theme of each of the Knights Radiant Orders? For example, unity, protection, justice.
That gives me a lot of wiggle room. Related to, yes, but that's a wiggly answer.
In the Stormlight 5 prologue, wouldn't Gavilar have recognized that Szeth was holding an Honorblade? He was just studying them earlier that day.
Gavilar was pretty busy being killed.
That's a pretty good reason not to notice something.
I think it is possible that he could have noticed that, yes.
Did Odium have a lasting effect on Nightblood?
Yes, but basically everything has a lasting effect, right? Yes, Odium had a lasting effect on Nightblood, but not a significant one.
In the past, you've RAFO'd whether Nohadon had the powers of a Bondsmith or not. Can you answer that now?
Nope. Well I mean, I can. I will not. Something weird is happening. Will I ever answer it? Maybe not.
Will we see any more of the Seventeenth Shard soon, or are they more of a Dragonsteel/Era 4 kind of thing?
You're not gonna see a ton of them in book 5. And you're not gonna see them soon.
The Fused only use nine of the Surges (they don't use Adhesion), and Raboniel describes Adhesion as "not a true Surge." Does this mean, in its original form on Ashyn, Surgebinding had no equivalent to Adhesion, and it was created by Honor later?
That is a valid way of theorizing, and I would encourage you to go that direction. Raboniel is biased. So take those two sentences as separate things. Do be aware she is very, very biased, but also your theorizing could bear fruit going that direction.
One of my favorite characters is Kaladin. This is a bit of a *inaudible* question. I just want to know if he will ever be able to make peace with Szeth, at some point?
You know, you get one of these. Here's you card, you can come up and get it. This is your RAFO card.
Did the Stormfather feel when Jezrien died?
The Stormfather would have been able to tell, yes.
Given Demoux's religious fervor, is there a reason he's not a Ghostblood?
Yes. I might get into it someday. I will not get into it now.
Was Shallan's mom a Herald?
What would make you ask that? The chat, why would they ask that? The Stormfather said that the Heralds-- that that's impossible.
Why do Cryptics have such a bad rap among other spren? The contrast between what spren think about Cryptics compared to how they come off to the reader is hilarious. They're these utterly guileless beings who never try to fight anyone or conquer anything in Shadesmar, and who literally can't lie without audibly buzzing. And yet other spren talk about them as if they're Machiavellian geniuses bent on dominating everyone else.
I love that you picked up on this. There's a couple things going on here. One is, the Cryptics are just kind of their own weird little club. I mean, all of the various different spren are, to an extent, but the Cryptics are one of those that are extra. You know, that word, extra. They're extra. I had to cut a scene that was very fun, that would explain some of this, but you get a bit of it. I reused some of the same concepts in Rhythm of War, when Shallan around a lot of them. They can get to be a bit much, and because they will start talking in numbers and in mathematical formulas, they often seem like they're planning something, when in reality they're just not quite getting what's going on in the same way. And it's kind of this, when you meet somebody that you don't quite get, sometimes you assume things about them. That said, there have been some very smart, very dangerous Cryptics in the past, and spren have long memories. So the reputation isn't entirely unearned, but it is perhaps too liberally applied as a stereotype to an entire race-- that never happens-- when a small percentage of them might have earned this reputation individually.
If Hoid collects a form of Investiture from every planet, will it grant him special effects?
He hopes so!
Does firemoss use have an effect on Shadesmar?
You could tell, if you were really good... This is going to be, as we move forward, a talent in the cosmere, to kind of be able to look and basically read souls from Shadesmar and tell things about them. It would not be-- what was Robert Jordan's phrase-- "intuitively obvious to the casual observer" that this is a person that has suffered the effects of firemoss from the other side. However, like a lot of things in the cosmere, the more skilled you are at your particular version of arcanum, the more likely you are able to do things like this, and you could tell.
We know Nale was the only Herald to join his Order. Based on the vision Dalinar had while touching him, it seemingly happened before the Last Desolation. Did Nale spend time on Braize while he had a Nahel bond? What happened to his highspren while he was there?
Good question. So, if you end up in Braize as a Herald with a Nahel bond, your spren most likely would end up there with you. But there are circumstances where the spren could be left in Shadesmar and separated from you. Both are possible.
Someone wanted to know if there are dinosaurs in the cosmere.
Are there dinosaurs in the cosmere? There are dinosaur-esque things, so sure.
It seems that deadeyes can wander Shadesmar freely, but when summoned as a Shardblade and subsequently dismissed, they end up at the location in Shadesmar corresponding to the location of the Shardbearer. How does this work for deadeyes who are cared for by a loved one, like Captain Ico?
They would vanish if their Shardblade were summoned.
But it's been a while since that's happened, so it's not as much of a concern?
You can assume that there are more deadeyes wandering Shadesmar whose Shardblades have been lost, than there are ones that the Shardblades are kept. Probably about an equal number, I would say, 50/50. Though I would have to really crunch those numbers. I'd say that across 5000 years-ish... not quite, but you know. That a lot of those weapons, even though they are powerful and things like that, are gonna get lost. Ships are gonna get sunk; things get covered over with crem on Roshar; people go up to cross mountain passes to go attack, and they end up freezing and dying. And I think that over the years, there's been a ton of those that have been lost.
In the Rhythm of War Ars Arcanum, Khriss says she sent her best agent among the Stonewards. Was that Nazh?
Yes.
Has he become a Radiant?
RAFO. But yes, she did send her best agent, and her best agent is Nazh. And he is not happy about it.
"Deadeyes can't make choices," Notum said. "They don't have the presence of mind for it. I know this personally; my own father is a dead eye, cared for in the fortress now."
Third listen of the book, and I only just clocked that. I was under the impression that every single honorspren at the time of the Recreance became a deadeye, and that all currently conscious one's were descended from those the Stormfather made later (aside from the Ancient Daughter). How in the world can Notum's father be a deadeye without him being one too?
We became aware of this error sometime in the past year. Turns out Brandon momentarily confused Notum with the Reacher ship captain, who does have a deadeye father. The line will be changed eventually.
In Rhythm of War, Notum tells Adolin that:
“Deadeyes can’t make choices,” Notum said. “They don’t have the presence of mind for it. I know this personally. My own father is a deadeye, cared for in the fortress now.”
Is this a mistake, conflating Captain Notum with Captain Ico? Notum's father would've been born centuries or millennia after the Recreance, going off what Notum says in Oathbringer:
“The Stormfather created only a handful of children. All of these, save Sylphrena, were destroyed in the Recreance, becoming deadeyes. This loss stung the Stormfather, who didn’t create again for centuries. When he was finally moved to remake the honorspren, he created only ten more. My great-grandmother was among them; she created my grandfather, who created my father, who eventually created me.”
So if he's become a deadeye relatively recently, it's surprising they didn't use him as an example instead of Testament.
On the other hand, Ico's father is definitely a deadeye:
Ico locked the door and hung the keys on his belt. “My father.”
“Your father?” Adolin said. “You keep your father locked up?”
“Can’t stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere,” Ico said, eyes forward. “Have to keep him locked away though. He’ll go searching for the human carrying his corpse, otherwise. Walk right off the deck.”
Notum did not get conflated with Ico. Ico's father is not cared for in Lasting Integrity.
But the quote from Oathbringer apparently was forgotten. We'll have to address this sometime in the future.
By the way, Kaladin's comment on Taln and Shalash's mental health makes me wonder: Are the Ten Fools based on the Heralds after they broke the Oathpact? Having 9 immortal, mentally ill people on Roshar for millenia seems like it'd have spawned some stories that could have eventually become stories of the Ten Fools. Taln wouldn't be included in this, but with Vorinism and the number 10, I imagine they'd have created something to oppose his virtues.
Also, I can't remember if this is confirmed or not, but on the topic of the Heralds' mental health, is it at all supernatural? Taln seemed to recover somewhat when Dalinar summoned the perpendicularity at the end of Oathbringer. So, is it just severe PTSD, or something supernatural is involved?
I've tried to make it clear in talking about the books that I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health. What they're suffering from is in large part supernatural--and has to do with the way souls (or Cognitive Shadows) work in the cosmere. So you are correct. This doesn't mean that some normal treatments wouldn't help them, but their core problem has a huge supernatural component.
And yes, there IS a relationship between the ten fools and the Heralds, though people on Roshar wouldn't be able to point it out.
Is the Heralds' madness related to and/or the same thing as the Fused's madness? The Stormfather mentions that each time one of the Fused is reborn, their mind is further damaged. Is it the same with the Herald? To many rebirths, possibly compounded by the fact that they not only often died each Desolation, but were tortured until the next one?
Yes, these two things are related. (There are some hints in Rhythm of War at how Hoid has avoided a similar fate.)
Note that the torture--and the many rebirths--are a big part of this. But their age is also a factor.
Does this mean that a certain Cognitive Shadow from the Mistborn series is fated to go insane?
Depends on a lot of factors. But the longer a Cognitive Shadow exists, the more likely these problems are.
Would this affect the Returned as well? What about those with a lot (like 8,000) breaths since they are not cognitive shadows.
Returned are Cognitive Shadows. In the Cosmere, there is no way to bring someone back to life, other than normal medical resuscitation, without using a Cognitive Shadow.
What about Dalinar? I thought he has had textbook PTSD, but the screams he continued to hear turned out to be magic.
Dalinar has a whole host of issues, not easily defined by a single definition. Assume, though, that his mental state is a normal response to, in part, supernatural occurrences.
The different for the Heralds is that they have conditions which could only truly exist in the cosmere, even if some of the manifestations and symptoms are similar to what could happen on Earth.
So is that implying that Hoid is a Cognitive Shadow, or is that just an effect of being really really old? Also does Vasher know about/how to avoid these effects? Probably an RAFO, but...
Come back to that question in about a month or so.
I asked Brandon if it was possible for us to get a quick sketch of the mural so we try to dig into the symbology better and he responded (paraphrasing), "that's a good idea but I would have to talk to Isaac."
I'm also quite intrigued by the mural, and I've created a folder of ideas of how we might approach it. Unfortunately, it would take a lot of time and continuity to get right, and right now we need to be working on upcoming books. I could see this, however, being something we include in the art book. (But I'm not making any promises.) Still, this is something I'd like to put together someday.
Is it normal for people to become Connected to an area after being there for a bit, like with Kel and wherever he was when he found the Ire, or is something special going on?
It is normal for a Cognitive Shadow to get stuck to places, because they exist through investiture it is normal for them to get tied to an area. Kelsier was still in Scadrial when he found the Ire. This happened with Odium and the two shards on Roshar, Preservation to Ruin, and the Heralds.
