The origins of the Deepness - the new London reading

[alder24]

There is a new reading from a dropped secret project that was just read in London. Here's the link: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/554/#e17193. 

The story is set thousands of years before Rashek and Alendi, so long ago that they still use bronze for weapons and armors as well as phalanx and war chariots. It's such an ancient past that it explains the origins of the Deepness. There's a few interesting things I've noticed while reading it.

The first one and the most important one is the complete lack of the white, Preservation's Mist. It's absent and even replaced with the black smoke called the Murk, which forms as night sets. It obscures clouds and stars, just like the Mists does. That sounds a lot like Ruin's Mist. From it the Midnight Dead emerge, forming out of the smoke, bones included. An individual Dead doesn't seem to linger for a long time as they fade as new ones appear. Those Deads are said to be the souls of angry dead people, buried for specific purpose, which would mean they might be some form of Cognitive Shadows. What's more, they whisper unrecognizable words, which might pose some kind of threat as people put wax in their ears. However, they seem to be somewhat mindless in their behaviour. It looks to me that Ruin's directly involved with the Dead and the Murk. 

The Ageless was mentioned a few times, a ruler of Iratrians, who are on an offensive war. He rules from Mount Dominant and rumors said he can control the Midnight Dead. The city of Caldweth is independent, but on map it belongs to Iratrian and it was said that the Ageless hasn't enforced his rule over them in decades, which might mean he was busy elsewhere, or he was/is absent. Once again, that sounds like Ruin to me. 

Silver is used to create swords to fight the Dead - which suggest that they really are CS akin to Shades. There is also a flower that repels them - maybe it's even the Marewill flower?  

And lastly the Gwit people, or Gway Fiatelle, failed in the past and they are forbidden from carrying a sword until they redeem themselves. They act as mercenaries and by tradition are given a sword by others. They usually have pale skin and brown hair and wear a silver sword pendant - they do not look like Terris.

There is no sign of Preservation, Mists or any kind of Metallic Arts present in the story. From all of this I speculate that the story takes place either shortly before Ruin's imprisonment by Preservation or shortly after, because it looks like Preservation hasn't set up the Mistsnapping and the Mists yet. The Murk is most definitely Ruin's investiture, which I think was later splintered off by Preservation and trapped in the Atium cycle in the Pits of Hathsin (this idea aligns with WoB and WoB). The Ageless might be Ruin himself or his agent trying to conquer Scadrial for him to destroy it, or to free Ruin if he's already imprisoned - but only the "controlling the Dead" part makes me believe this.

Then there is a question of what Gway Fiatelle did to condemn the entire nation? The only thing I can think of is that one of them was the first one ever to Ascend at the Well of Ascension (after Ruin's imprisonment)  and caused this whole mess with the Midnight Dead somehow, however this doesn't really fit with the absence of the Mist and the presence of the Ruin's Mist. 

Honestly, it's a pity that Brandon has dropped the book and it probably won't be finished as the lore sounds really interesting and nothing like I've imagined. I'm super curious now how did the Deppness and the Mist appear for the first time, what's going on with the Dead and the Ageless and how Ruin and Preservation fit into all of this, but unfortunately we are unlikely to get the answers to those questions.

What do you guys think of this reading and what are your theories about all of this? 

[Frustration]

I also found this to be amazing, and if I'm honest I prefer this to the Scadrial we got.

The midnight dead I agree are of Ruin, but I found them more similar to Midnight Essence than to Cognitive Shadows.

 

I'm really sad Brandon probably won't ever finish this.

Edited May 25 by Frustration

[Trusk'our he/him]

You know, the dead greatly resemble Shades. 

Cosmere spoilers:

Spoiler

They become visible at night, silver can be used to combat them (not a trait specific to Shades, but still there), and the PoV's pressed flower wards sound an awful lot like perception-based protections, which are far more potent against Cognitive entities that share no direct affiliation with a Shard.

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/493-secret-project-3-reveal-and-livestream/#e15524

ArgentSun

The way Painter transforms nightmares into other things is reminiscent of the way spren are affected by perception - only much more extreme. Is perception (and the way the world is set up) the only important factor here, or is Painter using Investiture too somehow?

Brandon Sanderson

What's going on here is not Painter using Investiture really. It's the fact that the nightmares have less control over them from another source. Spren have an oversight from Honor, Cultivation, and Odium, and this is kind of leaving them less at the whims of other people's perception. The nightmares do not have that. I'm not going to say they don't have it at all, but Painter is not using Investiture, but the nightmares are specifically more susceptible to what's going on. So for instance, a good way to answer this is if he went and did this for a spren he would not have the same level of power.

Their appearance is definitely different than that of Shades, but Shades should be more easily molded by the thoughts of those around them, much like an Evil.

Heck, the Ire's fear of Shades crossing their borders on the edge of the Scadrian subastral suggest they've done so in the past, or at least are feared to have that ability.

If I were to throw out a guess, the Midnight Dead are visiting Shades pushed into Scadrial's PR by the Murk, which I agree is almost certainly a manifestation of Ruin's essence.

Or they could just straight up be our first known form of Ruinous CS, I suppose.

Edited May 25 by Trusk'our

[Frustration]

Thinking about this a little more, there are some similarities to other things

Obviously

Cosmere

Spoiler

Midnight Aether, and Midnight essence

But also some things we've heard mentioned like the zombies on the Island of Death Nicki Savage spoke of, as well as the mummies Isac keeps promising in the Book of Nails.

Edited May 25 by Frustration

[Nitpicking]

This sounds to me (and apparently to @Frustration) like a discarded draft of what became Mistborn, not something canon. It's something like Dragonsteel Prime, which Brandon mined for ideas used in later books (the Shattered Plains from DP for the Stormlight Archive, the mists from this one for Mistborn, bits of the Dead from this for Shades).

[Trusk'our he/him]

20 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

This sounds to me (and apparently to @Frustration) like a discarded draft of what became Mistborn, not something canon. It's something like Dragonsteel Prime, which Brandon mined for ideas used in later books (the Shattered Plains from DP for the Stormlight Archive, the mists from this one for Mistborn, bits of the Dead from this for Shades).

He does say though that he considers it canon still, though it could change as things are published. 

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/554-mcm-london-comic-con-2026/

Brandon Sanderson

Let me explain a little bit about this reading. First off, this will not offer any spoilers to anybody who hasn't read my books, because it's a book that has never been finished and might not ever be released. In fact, the chances are good that it won't be. What is it? Well, it was an attempt at a Secret Project before I wrote Fires of December. Around the time when I finished Stormlight Five, I gave myself a little bit of time to just write on whatever I wanted. And this one was an attempt at digging into the history of Scadrial before the Final Empire and before Alendi and Rashek. In fact, thousands of years (maybe couple thousand years?) before them, digging into the Deepness, what the Deepness was, and kind of the foundation of some of the things there. So, you're gonna get a pretty special look at this. You're not gonna see a lot of references to that; this is quite a ways before. But it was kind of just me exploring what's going on.

I consider what's happening in here to be canon, but I don't know if I'll ever release the book, so it's not strict canon yet, if that makes sense.

<snipped for relevance>

Though honestly I agree with the vibe pretty much being what you suggest.

Edited May 25 by Trusk'our

[Frustration]

24 minutes ago, Nitpicking said:

This sounds to me (and apparently to @Frustration) like a discarded draft of what became Mistborn, not something canon. It's something like Dragonsteel Prime, which Brandon mined for ideas used in later books (the Shattered Plains from DP for the Stormlight Archive, the mists from this one for Mistborn, bits of the Dead from this for Shades).

Brandon wrote this slightly before FoD, it comes way after Mistborn.

[Schizoposting]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

I'm really sad Brandon probably won't ever finish this.

While the lore may have been interesting, the actual writing was pretty boring, and it felt like generic Sword and Sorcery—The Fires of December is far superior. But maybe you think differently.

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Frustration said:

The midnight dead I agree are of Ruin, but I found them more similar to Midnight Essence than to Cognitive Shadows.

Yumi spoilers:

Spoiler

Both can be true as seen with Nightmares:

Spoiler

Strifelover

My question is around connections between corrupted Investiture on different planets. We have the shroud; we have Midnight Essence; we have the nightmares; and we have Nightblood. All of them have, like, oozy black smoke. Are they all connected somehow with the corrupted Investiture of Odium, Ambition...?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes and no. The question is: all of these different manifestations (we've got the Midnight Essence, we've got the shroud, we've got Nightblood), are they connected? Are they all related in some way to Odium or Ambition? The answer is no to the second.

When I was building the Cosmere, one of the things that I knew is that I wanted to explore magic systems really in depth. And in order to do that, I built fundamental principles by how magic, Investiture, would manifest. And I wanted it to be consistent. For instance, I wanted the rules... if you're making illusions in one world, I wanted those illusions to behave a lot the same way that they would on other worlds. So I built these fundamental principles that I build up from. And one of those fundamental principles is about Investiture that is trying to become alive and is being held back by something. And that is where you get Midnight Essence sort of things. It's, like, one step from being able to become self-aware, but it's being held back. And there's even, kind of, some frustration in there, as much as something not truly self-aware can have. So if you watch for that theme, you'll see it more and more.

C2E2 2024 (April 26, 2024)

 

 

2 hours ago, Trusk&#x27;our said:

You know, the dead greatly resemble Shades. 

Cosmere spoilers:

  Hide contents

They become visible at night, silver can be used to combat them (not a trait specific to Shades, but still there), and the PoV's pressed flower wards sound an awful lot like perception-based protections, which are far more potent against Cognitive entities that share no direct affiliation with a Shard.

  Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/493-secret-project-3-reveal-and-livestream/#e15524

ArgentSun

The way Painter transforms nightmares into other things is reminiscent of the way spren are affected by perception - only much more extreme. Is perception (and the way the world is set up) the only important factor here, or is Painter using Investiture too somehow?

Brandon Sanderson

What's going on here is not Painter using Investiture really. It's the fact that the nightmares have less control over them from another source. Spren have an oversight from Honor, Cultivation, and Odium, and this is kind of leaving them less at the whims of other people's perception. The nightmares do not have that. I'm not going to say they don't have it at all, but Painter is not using Investiture, but the nightmares are specifically more susceptible to what's going on. So for instance, a good way to answer this is if he went and did this for a spren he would not have the same level of power.

Their appearance is definitely different than that of Shades, but Shades should be more easily molded by the thoughts of those around them, much like an Evil.

Heck, the Ire's fear of Shades crossing their borders on the edge of the Scadrian subastral suggest they've done so in the past, or at least are feared to have that ability.

If I were to throw out a guess, the Midnight Dead are visiting Shades pushed into Scadrial's PR by the Murk, which I agree is almost certainly a manifestation of Ruin's essence.

Or they could just straight up be our first known form of Ruinous CS, I suppose.

Cosmere spoilers:

Spoiler

Nightmares are especially susceptible to perception because they also lack identity, as it was consumed by the Father Machine. Shades didn't exhibit such a weakness anywhere, they did wear uniforms in TSM and the Chorus looks like white mist at first, but that's it. They still have eyes changing colors, wherever they are - the Midnight Dead don't have them at all, just pits for eyes. Moreover, Shades are visible during the day, Dead are not, they are spawned by the Murk, which appears at night like the Mists and are made out of its essence. They do appear very similar to both Shades and Nightmares, but I highly doubt those Dead are Shades that somehow made it to Scadrial. I believe they are native and of Ruin, but they probably are the same type of CS as Shades and Nightmares.   

 

1 hour ago, Frustration said:

But also some things we've heard mentioned like the zombies on the Island of Death Nicki Savage spoke of, as well as the mummies Isac keeps promising in the Book of Nails.

That's a good connection. It's possible that the Midnight Dead are only a local phenomena and they survived all the way past Catacendre, or they were all around Scadrial but some of them survived on that island.

 

1 hour ago, Trusk&#x27;our said:

Though honestly I agree with the vibe pretty much being what you suggest.

35 minutes ago, Schizoposting said:

While the lore may have been interesting, the actual writing was pretty boring, and it felt like generic Sword and Sorcery—The Fires of December is far superior. But maybe you think differently.

Yup, except for the lore, the rest isn't that impressing. The main character didn't leave any impression on me at all - he just was in the book and didn't really do anything. Brandon was right calling it an average book, but rusts I want that sweet sweet ancient Scadrial lore drop so much!

[Frustration]

2 hours ago, Schizoposting said:

While the lore may have been interesting, the actual writing was pretty boring, and it felt like generic Sword and Sorcery—The Fires of December is far superior. But maybe you think differently.

It was still a draft, and honestly I love Sword and Sorcery, and while I agree that Fires of December is better, I can still wish for this.

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Yup, except for the lore, the rest isn't that impressing. The main character didn't leave any impression on me at all - he just was in the book and didn't really do anything. Brandon was right calling it an average book, but rusts I want that sweet sweet ancient Scadrial lore drop so much!

I'll second this, though I don't feel the negatives were that present

[Treamayne]

My initial implression was that "Ageless" was the first person to use the Well and become a Sliver. However, without Ruin imprisoned, it seems using up the Well (in the 1024 yr cycle) allows the imbalance for the Murk to be completely/predominately of Ruin. Will read again tomorrow when I am less tired and can cross check a few things.

[Schizoposting]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

It was still a draft, and honestly I love Sword and Sorcery, and while I agree that Fires of December is better, I can still wish for this.

I'll second this, though I don't feel the negatives were that present

Well, Brandon only has a finite amount of time and must therefore prioritize certain things over others. It's a sad fact of life, but he won't be able to get around to writing everything.

[Nitpicking]

I haven't actually read the WoB, but I stand by saying it reads like a discarded draft ... and it is, just a draft from much more recently.

[Cosmer]

On 5/25/2026 at 10:05 AM, Frustration said:

I also found this to be amazing, and if I'm honest I prefer this to the Scadrial we got.

The midnight dead I agree are of Ruin, but I found them more similar to Midnight Essence than to Cognitive Shadows.

 

I'm really sad Brandon probably won't ever finish this.

Which era of Scadrial that we got do you not like? More of the modernization into our Earth proxy? 

[Frustration]

16 minutes ago, Cosmer said:

Which era of Scadrial that we got do you not like? More of the modernization into our Earth proxy? 

Of all three this is my favorite