DiePie Posted December 4, 2020 Posted December 4, 2020 I think the best way to start this out is to establish the relationship between the 3 things in the title, Imperialism, Roshar, and the Cosmere's "Endgame". the reason Imperialism and the Cosmere's Endgame are related has to do with the political entities as large as planets: Spoiler im·pe·ri·al·ism /imˈpirēəˌlizəm/ noun a policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force. Spoiler w0rkaround From what I understand, Sanderson has basically decades of books planned, and the next Mistborn era should be coming out after this first Stormlight series is done, which will be 5 books in total. I forgot the source on this, and honestly this is more from multiple interviews of his, so take it with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that he writes each series in chunks, so his writing timeline would look something like this: Stormlight Archive Part 1 (Books 1-5) Misborn Era 2 Trilogy (1980s cyberpunkish) Stormlight Archive Part 2 (Books 6-10) Mistborn Era 3 (Futuristic SciFi setting) Final Cosmere book focusing on a central character to all these books. So Mistborn won't be coming out until the 5th Stormlight book is done, and so on down the line. If you expand the schedule, we can expect almost yearly Sanderson books until 2040! Guy is a machine. Brandon Sanderson You've got this mostly right, though we've just gone ahead and renamed the 1980s one "Era Three" because of confusion, and Wax and Wayne Era Two. (People didn't really take to my Era 1.5 philosophy on that one, so we are just going with the easiest method of discussing it instead.) Era Three will be a little more Tom Clancy spy thriller than cyberpunk. And Era Four is the same as the final cosmere books. (But you forgot Dragonsteel, which will happen right before it--Hoid's origin story.) V_Spaceman I hope you don’t mind me asking, how do you think you’ll approach balancing out knowledge self-contained to the Mistborn series with the audience’s need to know about the larger Cosmere? Do people who only read Mistborn have to brush up on Roshar stuff beforehand? Brandon Sanderson For the final Mistborn trilogy, they will have to. That will be the cosmere equivalent of Endgame or something--the series that won't really work for you unless you've followed most everything up to that point. Dragonsteel, Era Three, etc should still work as stand-alones. Is_Meta That will be the cosmere equivalent of Endgame or something This sentence alone gives me shivers. I can't wait for all of it. And I hope that everything comes together as you plan and hope. Brandon Sanderson I'm always hesitant to make Avengers comparisons, as the cosmere endgame is less about individuals coming together (though there will be some of that) and more about the clash between philosophies and cultures. But who knows? That is several decades away. Right now, I just need to keep working on Stormlight Four. V_Spaceman How thick do you think you’ll go for the Era 4 books? Stormlight level word count or keeping with Mistborn’s general length? Brandon Sanderson I would anticipate Era Four going Stormlight length. (Though Era Three should be regular Mistborn length, I think.) General Reddit 2019 (Dec. 10, 2019) I've highlighted the relevant part of the WoB, which is relevant because it details that the Cosmere's Endgame will be a conflict between planets (since conflict between planets is really the only way to make MB era 4 both a Space Opera, and a conflict that has it's roots in cultural/social differences). And so the question is, why are they fighting? Well in modern history countries primarily fight over 2 things: resources and markets. And so it makes sense that MB era 4 would be about Imperialist powers (planets) competing over influence in smaller or less developed planets. I don't think I need to convince anyone that Roshar is going to be important but here's a Relevent WoB just in case: Spoiler cadebengert Do you have any plans that you can tell us about for when the events of the rest of the Cosmere will become evident in Roshar? Brandon Sanderson Roshar is an important part of the cosmere. Really, the question should be "When will events on Roshar effect the rest of the Cosmere" as opposed to the other way around. Stormlight Three Update #5 (Nov. 24, 2016) While the connection between Roshar and imperialism can be established just by association, I have more to add. First of all, here's an excerpt from the as-of-yet unreleased Sixth of the Dusk story: Quote https://wob.coppermind.net/events/448/#e14408, which, to those who don't want to spoil anything more, basically confirms that the Rosharans are competing for influence on the planet. Something else I want to explore as well is how perfect Fabrials are for establishing an imperialist empire, because they can only be powered using Stormlight. So the Rosharans can manufacture and sell Fabrials to the Cosmere, who then have to continually buy Stormlight from Roshar in order to use the Fabrials. Fabrial technology could cause a planet to establish a modern standard of living in <50 years, and so Roshar would definitely be able to leverage the economic power in gains from holding the key to the functioning of entire societies in order to effectively control those planets politically as well. So, Imperialist competition between planets. How do we get there? I think Roshar has an easy answer to that near the end of RoW. Right after Todd ascends he realizes that he can "save" more than just Roshar, and thinks that being bound to Roshar is a bad thing. The combination of Honor and Odium is called War for a reason, and the book reaffirms repeatedly that Odium is here to stay, and so will influence and corrupt Roshar's Honor-dominated investiture (personally I think that Sja-Anat is going to corrupt all of the spen so that they have Odium's influence to them in the same way that the spren are divided between Honor and Cultivation). I think the other (or at least one of the other) major factions is going to be Scadrial, because they are the most technologically advanced civilization (the north is approaching turn of the 20th century USA, though it's hard to place Roshar because Magitec development isn't really analogous to IRL history), and also because the books where this is all set to go down is literally named after the Scadrians. So, in summary, I think that MB era 4 (or maybe the back half of the SA, I don't see what other conflict could go in there, but there's probably something), will detail a conflict between Scadrial and Roshar for political and economic dominance over the Cosmere. On another note, I don't think that either side will be the "bad guys" because I really want a bit of moral ambiguity in a BS book, and I think that showing us that neither conflict of a fight like this is truly the "good guys" is a theme he has not yet explored enough. 5
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