Are we ever going to see a book with Multiple magic systems

[SzethIsBadAsHell he/him]

I was just wondering in the future are we going to see a book where there might be someone from Scadrial , someone from Roshar and perhaps someone from Nathis and they are all employing different magic systems in a fight . I think that would be epic . And the true culmination of what the Cosmere has to offer ! I Realize that this situation currently exist on Roshar but we don’t see anyone using powers in a confrontation. The closest we have is Hoid utilizing breath on the doll .

            What I’m getting at is a conflict between Worldhoppers offworld , 

[+Invocation]

5 minutes ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

I can’t wait ?! So how come so many profiles begin with Ookla ? Is that a reason

Oh, it's a little tradition thing. Here, this thread breaks it down:

 

[+Invocation]

Given that Mistborn Era 4 is going to be a space opera with most (if not all) planets involved, I'd say it's likely if not guaranteed. 

[SzethIsBadAsHell he/him]

15 minutes ago, Ookla the Quill said:

Given that Mistborn Era 4 is going to be a space opera with most (if not all) planets involved, I'd say it's likely if not guaranteed. 

I can’t wait ?! So how come so many profiles begin with Ookla ? Is that a reason

[aneonfoxtribute]

Yeah, Era IV will most assuredly have that. Nightblood might also have it, if it explains how Nightblood got out of Vasher's hands and went to Roshar, which it probably will. 

[Karger he/him]

Mistborn sort of has three magic systems and don't even get me started on Roshar.  Also Oathbringer technically has some awakening in it.  However if you are talking about meaningful interactions between the magics of different planets that the closest I can think of is likely the silverlight novella.

[Honorless he/him]

Brandon calls them conflux novels

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Questioner

Do you have a plan for the entire concept of the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes I do.

Questioner

Do you have an Allomancy dude fighting a Surgebinding dude?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah it's going to be cool. It's going to be super awesome. The Allomantic space battles are really great. It's going to be like 15 years, sorry. But they are really cool.

Firefight Chicago signing (Feb. 20, 2015)

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Questioner

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? 

Brandon Sanderson

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.

Questioner

And when did you kind of-- was that something you wanted to do from the very beginning, or were you halfway through--

Brandon Sanderson

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!

Shadows of Self Newcastle UK signing (Oct. 20, 2015)

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John Lee

Will you ever do a crossover novel with different characters/worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I will. The final Mistborn books will have this. There's already some in novellas like Secret History and Sixth of the Dusk.

#SandersonChat Twitter Q&A with Audible.com (Feb. 4, 2016)

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ckannan90

I have a cosmere question. At the end of Words of Radiance, Szeth receives Nightblood. The wiki told me it was a sword from Warbreaker, but I didn't realize how significant it was till I read the book. This, to me, seems like the first major cosmere crossover. All the other crossovers so far seem to have just been cameos (Hoid tells stories, or there are mysterious people hunting somebody, etc). I will RAFO, but it does seem like Szeth getting the sword means Nightblood will play a not-insignificant role in Stormlight 3. Does this mean the cosmere books are going to converge more going forward? Specifically, would someone need to have read Warbreaker to understand Oathbringer? Till now your different cosmere series have been readable in any order (and I didn't read them in publication order). Similarly, Mistborn: Secret History seems to be a prerequisite for at least the next Mistborn book.

Brandon Sanderson

One thing you have to remember is that in my cosmere outline, Warbreaker was a prequel to The Way of Kings, explaining Vasher's backstory. So I consider them more closely connected than some other things. But you could consider this the first major crossover.

Nightblood will be re-introduced, so those who haven't read Warbreaker will be brought up to speed.

Thoughtsunthought

Wow. Cool to see this.

One of my "concerns" is that eventually the cosmere stuff will overwhelm the individual series arcs.

Kinda like the Marvel Avengers movies, whilst they are great on their own, they lose some of the individuality that an Iron Man movie might have. If the overall story adds characters then you may end up with a Captain America: Civil War movie which whilst was amazing. Wasn't really a Captain America movie and would lose so much to someone who had only seen Capt America movies.

That being said I totally trust your judgement on this, I say concerns but I don't mean in a bad way.

That being said is any book flagged for an Avengers style "battle for the cosmere"?

Brandon Sanderson

I do have some plans for mixing later on, though I'll be very forthright about when those books come out. Meaning, so long as I'm not talking about these things as the main focus of a series, you don't have to worry about it taking them over. Conversely, you can be very excited when it does happen, as those stories will be very clear about what they're attempting to do.

One thing I do try to warn people is that the cosmere isn't an "Avengers" style concept--the goal here isn't to collect a variety of heroes from a variety of worlds and then throw them at a problem. It's more of a, "What if you could watch the world of something like Star Trek develop, by seeing individual engaging stories from various planets, then slowly watching them merge into a larger universe."

While some characters will, obviously, continue on through the series, and the Vessels of the Shards will be very important, the focus of the greater cosmere storyline is the cultures, the magic, and the evolution of the planets, while the individual stories are about the people who live on them during turning-points in their history.

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 5, 2016)

 

[aneonfoxtribute]

tbh, a big thing I'm wondering is how many current characters will still be around come Era 4. Obviously the likes of Hoid and Khriss are basically guaranteed, and Kelsier and Nightblood likely, and other undying characters like Vasher too potentially, but I'm wondering about the characters who are not undying as we know them and if they'll still be around in Era 4. I'm sure that he'll keep some characters around that aren't just the usual suspects, and he'll make some characters in his current works undying and maybe have them show up elsewhere. 

[+Invocation]

44 minutes ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

tbh, a big thing I'm wondering is how many current characters will still be around come Era 4. Obviously the likes of Hoid and Khriss are basically guaranteed, and Kelsier and Nightblood likely, and other undying characters like Vasher too potentially, but I'm wondering about the characters who are not undying as we know them and if they'll still be around in Era 4. I'm sure that he'll keep some characters around that aren't just the usual suspects, and he'll make some characters in his current works undying and maybe have them show up elsewhere. 

Probably won't be any of the main W&W crew, sadly. The fact that Wayne has comic books about him in Era 3 implies he and the majority of those who knew him are either far enough off world to be irrelevant or dead. My money is on dead. 

[Weltall]

2 hours ago, aneonfoxtribute said:

but I'm wondering about the characters who are not undying as we know them and if they'll still be around in Era 4. I'm sure that he'll keep some characters around that aren't just the usual suspects, and he'll make some characters in his current works undying and maybe have them show up elsewhere. 

Well, while most of the Mistborn characters in Era 2 and the still unwritten Era 3 will presumably be long dead of old age by the time Era 4 rolls around, we know that you can do some one-way time travel into the future with sufficient reserves of cadmium and you could probably extend that even further if the allomantic grenades can produce a comparable overlap effect, so it's vaguely possible that Marasi could still be around in Era 3 or maybe even 4 (though that would be much more of a stretch) if for some reason she felt it was necessary to go to those lengths.

Beyond that we've got Vivenna who's joined the Worldhoppers Club and has at least one homegrown method of potentially extending her own lifespan if Brandon wanted to keep her around. Then we've got the members of the Seventeenth Shard who use a method to slow aging that's not dependent on any one magic system and can apparently be learned by anyone. Thus, there's an avenue for Brandon to bring characters into later works if they work out this method on their own or are taught it. It seems like it involves the Cognitive Realm (we're told you do age there... asterisk) which might be a bit of an issue for Rosharans just now...

Anyhow, it's not necessary for characters to become actually immortal for them to potentially show up in Era 4. That said, we have Word of Brandon that he's not really intending Era 4 to be the Cosmere equivalent of The Avengers with characters from this work and that appearing so much as it is the worlds we've seen coming into contact with a few characters we'll know so at the end of the day there probably won't be all that many familiar faces in Era 4.

[aneonfoxtribute]

I didn't even take any of the Wax and Wayne characters into consideration solely because it wasn't initially planned. That makes things a lot harder. MeLaan is the only one who really has any sort of chance. Though he might show descendants of one of theirs, and maybe make them important, which would be possible. I also wasn't specifically talking Mistborn, but extending it to the other series as well, most notably Stormlight. And yeah, I figure it's not likely to be much, but I feel like there will probably be at least a few others. 

[Karger he/him]

6 hours ago, Ookla the Nameless said:

Beyond that we've got Vivenna who's joined the Worldhoppers Club and has at least one homegrown method of potentially extending her own lifespan if Brandon wanted to keep her around

Vivenna has returned breath and should be able to live indefinitely if she figures out how to "stroke" it. 

[Weltall]

5 hours ago, Ookla the Prolific said:

Vivenna has returned breath and should be able to live indefinitely if she figures out how to "stroke" it. 

I'd forgotten that the annotation on what Vivenna could learn to do (this one) mentioned age, but now I'm wondering how that works mechanically. It seems like it would be something of a cheat and a violation of Brandon's second law to have a means of immortality without an associated limitation. The Returned need to feed their Divine Breath to live indefinitely, Fifth Heightening Awakeners need to amass enough Breath, atium compounders need their metal, it's exhausting being an Elantrian etc. So indefinite age manipulation just feels off. I'm wondering if by that what Brandon had in mind wasn't that she could remain a given age indefinitely but that she could affect her apparent age, so that she looks whatever age she wants to regardless of her actual biological age. We know that your Spiritual aspect 'knows' how old you are and unless you have a method of tricking your soul you'll eventually drop dead even if you're in perfect health as a result of this. I wonder if what Vivenna has is more of a Physical cosmetic ability, while she would continue to age in Spiritual terms. She'd still live longer than normal due to having a lot of Breath and could become functionally immortal if she hit the Fifth Heightening but wouldn't be able to prolong her life indefinitely on just her fragmentary Divine Breath.

That's where I'm thinking, anyways.

[StarrFall]

There has been quite a bit of "varying Investitures in the same room", but no real "Investiture v Investiture".  You get to see a hint of a crossover when Hoid gives Kelsier a beat-down in Secret History .  I suppose the presence of the Ire would count too.  Nightblood being on Roshar is a definite crossover as well.  These are NOT great demonstrations of 2 different Investitures going head to head, though. 

Also, In terms of potential future battles between the more 'persistent' characters in the Cosmere, let's not forget that Marsh will be in the game for quite a while too and is a Hemalurgically-built pseudo-TLR where abilities are concerned, and so he could be a force to be reckoned with.

My money on the first release showing really solid interaction between magic systems is Stormlight 4.  Guessing Vasher or Vivenna will use some Awakening at some point, or that 17th Shard members will start making more appearances and flexing their invested muscles.

Edited December 6, 2019 by StarrFall

[aneonfoxtribute]

2 hours ago, Ookla the Nameless said:

I'd forgotten that the annotation on what Vivenna could learn to do (this one) mentioned age, but now I'm wondering how that works mechanically. It seems like it would be something of a cheat and a violation of Brandon's second law to have a means of immortality without an associated limitation. The Returned need to feed their Divine Breath to live indefinitely, Fifth Heightening Awakeners need to amass enough Breath, atium compounders need their metal, it's exhausting being an Elantrian etc. So indefinite age manipulation just feels off. I'm wondering if by that what Brandon had in mind wasn't that she could remain a given age indefinitely but that she could affect her apparent age, so that she looks whatever age she wants to regardless of her actual biological age. We know that your Spiritual aspect 'knows' how old you are and unless you have a method of tricking your soul you'll eventually drop dead even if you're in perfect health as a result of this. I wonder if what Vivenna has is more of a Physical cosmetic ability, while she would continue to age in Spiritual terms. She'd still live longer than normal due to having a lot of Breath and could become functionally immortal if she hit the Fifth Heightening but wouldn't be able to prolong her life indefinitely on just her fragmentary Divine Breath.

That's where I'm thinking, anyways.

The wording never says it could give her immortality. He says specifically in that annotation that she can only change her appearance. When he mentions age, I imagine he means she can change her age to look X age, but she'll still be the same age. So even if she made herself look 7, she would still be 20 or 30 something.

[Weltall]

@aneonfoxtribute That's pretty much what I was arguing. I was responding to @Ookla the Prolific's suggestion that it could give her immortality on its own if she could figure out how to work it.

[Karger he/him]

On 12/6/2019 at 3:03 PM, Ookla the Nameless said:

Breath, atium compounders need their metal, it's exhausting being an Elantrian etc. So indefinite age manipulation just feels off

It is not particularly powerful and remember it can also be used to cure another being.  As long as you have it you are not helping someone else who could realy use it.  Finally Kandra have it with basically no problems and it is not as if you can get this perk with effort you either have it or don't.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 06/12/2019 at 6:38 AM, Ookla the Quill said:

Probably won't be any of the main W&W crew, sadly. The fact that Wayne has comic books about him in Era 3 implies he and the majority of those who knew him are either far enough off world to be irrelevant or dead. My money is on dead. 

The Kandra should probably be still alive. Also there apparently is a perpendicularity on Scadrial somewhere in the southern mountains. Felt and Demoux should also still be around.

OK, I admit it, I want to see Allomancer Jak touring Roshar and Shadesmar.