Weltall

@bdoble97 Don't worry, we've all been there.

Hoid. The man is effectively unkillable and he's already got (or is strongly implied to have) half the Lord Ruler's powerset via the lerasium bead, plus lots of other stuff. I'll gladly take all that in return for the 'no harming people' restriction that Hoid has. Might be a good thing actually, less temptation to go mad with power that way. Your life depends on winning a game. Would you rather have to play Tarachin against Lightsong or a hand of Kabers against Yalb?

Lifeless cat. If Lightsong can give ridiculously complicated Commands to a squirrel, imagine how much fun you can have with a cat that will actually do what you tell it to. Where would you rather go on your Cosmere summer vacation, T'Telir or the Reshi Isles? And you don't get to pick up any Investiture as a souvenier.

If he does, I'm pretty sure the answer would be 'Adonalsium, and by the way He's dead'. I'm also sure that Brandon would RAFO any question along those lines and tell us we're just gonna have to wait for Dragonsteel. Or possibly, Hoid is truly in on the secret, that all the Cosmere is just words on a page (like he says his own existence began, in The Way of Kings) and he's trying to spread the knowledge of this in a very subtle way by encouraging belief in the God Beyond whose holy name is Brandon Sanderson. xD

Brandon has said that the star charts are accurate in terms of showing relative position but they're not necessarily accurate in terms of scale. (Source) Apparently Team Sanderson has that sort of data but we're not getting it, or at least not yet. He explains the AU charts as being made by people who aren't spacefarers, who are making their observations from the Cognitive Realm. I suspect that if we were to ever get 'proper' to-scale maps, it would be in Mistborn Era 4 since that will involve space travel in the Physical Realm. That said, I imagine that Braize (and Ashyn) should be visible from Roshar.

His powers, especially now that we know what they can do when one is actually trying. But on the subject of knowledge... Would you rather have every essay Khriss has written up to the point of the Arcanum Unbounded texts or a chance to ask Brandon one question, anything you like, and he would have to answer it completely honestly?

Withering, it's got a small window of survival and if I don't make it, at least I can go 'boo!' and scare the pants off people for a few years as a Shade. Or possibly get shot out of a gun by Nazh, however that works. Would you rather be locked in a room with a bored Ham for an hour or a monologuing Sadeas for ten minutes?

I'm not sure Forton really tells us anything one way or the other. He's from a region that's technically located within Fjordell but has access to a different magic system. We don't know how long that region has been part of Fjordell but the text suggests that neither its people nor the Derethi priests really see Hrovell and Fjordell as 'the same land'. The former apparently don't visit the latter that often and still think of them as heathens (Forton still believing in the Mysteries for example) and the latter are described as 'oppressed' and 'living in fear'. So it's very doubtful that there could be any kind of Cognitive 'synthesis' of the two lands at this point. Ergo, it doesn't necessarily disprove the theory and it also doesn't prove it. Similarly, we know how long JinDo has been part of Fjordell (about a century) but they clearly retain a sense of separate identity and obviously have their own magic system. I like the idea, though on the assumption that cultural synthesis or assimilation can influence the magic systems I'm not sure we'll get a long enough timeframe on Sel to see whether or not such a thing is possible. Brandon's announced plans for the followup Elantris books give us a decade worth of timeskip while I imagine that something like this theory would take a lot longer. A couple generations at least where everyone thinks of themselves as a single culture. Even then I'm not sure the result would necessarily be a merging of the systems but perhaps what you'd get is that Initiation would change. So for example, let's say that Arelon, Duladel and JinDo merged (the latter two booting Fjordell out) somehow. What I'm thinking is that after enough time of thinking of themselves as a single entity, you'd have JinDo who could be taken by the Shaod and Aonic people could learn ChayShan.

Drop a pile of Cosmere books on his head. I understand from Alcatraz that they're very good as emergency bludgeoning tools. Problem: The Borg are coming to assimilate your world.

Ahh, I had to reread the exact text of that scene with a cadmium bubble from Bands of Mourning, I'd forgotten exactly how they explained what went on there. Very nice read, that thread. As for gravity, we know it acts normally from the perspective of anyone inside a bubble (either type) when it's established on the ground, or someone would have commented on the wonkiness in three books. Assuming this holds true for bubbles set up in midair, you may appear to fall slower from the perspective of an outside observer but from your perspective inside the bubble you'd still be falling at the same rate as normal and when you hit, you'd go splat.

Gravity is still A Thing inside speed bubbles so your ship would go up with the Steelpush, then the speed bubble would go up, then the ship would crash very quickly from the perspective of those inside it. Let's see, 9.8m/s^2 times whatever the multiplier is for the Cadmium bubble, divided by the square root of Hoid's favorite number... And that's assuming you could get a large enough bubble to begin with to completely enclose your ship, and the allomancers doing it were skilled enough to set up a bubble capable of moving with them. Brandon has said that sort of thing is theoretically possible but difficult. Otherwise you'd have a very short-lived bubble as parts of the ship fell out of it, briefly started moving at very different speeds and caused the entire bubble to collapse. Then crash even more spectacularly. It's a nice bit of lateral thinking but it wouldn't work.

Reckoners doesn't really have a good Cosmere comparison. A better way to think of them would be like comic books. Imagine a word with super-powered villains but no similarly empowered heroes. That's The Reckoners in a nutshell. Alcatraz could sort of be summed up as 'What if Harry Potter wrote his own books? And was really really snarky. Also, librarians are evil and secretly control the world'. Alcatraz is more obviously aimed at younger readers but is fun no matter what your age as long as you don't take yourself too seriously, while Reckoners is aimed a bit older. And while both have magic systems that aren't 'scientific' to the extent that we understand magic in the Cosmere to be, they still operate on some kind of rules (albeit looser ones) that can be understood and operate as plot points when characters start to study them in detail. I'd say something about Rithmatist but it's one of the few Brandon Sanderson works I haven't read yet. Don't forget Codex Alera for all the stuff that's good about Butcher's writing in a more 'fantasy' setting. I actually got started with The Aeronaut's Windlass (currently a series of one) because that's the one Brandon named, then I started reading everything else. Definitely worth every minute.

http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-Elantris-Chapter-10/ http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-chapter-four-part-2/ http://brandonsanderson.com/annotation-warbreaker-chapter-fourteen/ Here's a couple annotations where he discusses the topic to a degree. When it comes to signings, it's not that he's been asked about his use of undead tropes as an author (if he has been, I haven't seen it) but more the results of people asking him questions about specific mechanics that touch on the matter. I'm not sure if you've read everything so, going crazy with the spoiler tag just in case. Mistborn: Secret History, Warbreaker, Stormlight Archive, Shadows for Silence

I figure we should at least consider the possibility that Dalinar's trusted man Bordin is a member of one, because he was in a position to make the Shardblade switch. If so he could be a Ghostblood or Diagramist (both have potential issues but aren't impossible) but not a Son of Honor, otherwise the second switch trick wouldn't have worked on Amaram.

That would explain everything... and don't forget Scott Lynch too.

He has a real account that he seems to use mostly for announcements and he has no need to lurk just to see what we're all thinking. He may be an Aes Sedai Grandmaster in the art of twisting the truth without actually lying but keeping a secret account just to mess with us doesn't seem at all like him. But if we want to play the game of 'Guess Brandon's secret account' as an intellectual exercise, we risk starting down the same path that dooms all discussion of A Song of Ice and Fire, where it has been conclusively proven that every character is actually a Faceless Man pretending to be someone else. We are all Bavadin. We are all Brandon.

I started reading Jim Butcher because Brandon was asked what he was currently reading at a signing I went to and recommended his newest book. Haven't regretted that choice since and you've got a couple of series you can pick from. That would be my first recommendation.

Very nice looking. How long did it take you to carve the seal?

How familiar are you with what Brandon has said at signings and such? Because there's a common thread to most 'undead' types in the cosmere works but he hasn't come out and said it in the books themselves. For a real-world explanation, in the annotations for Warbreaker he mentions that he likes finding new spins to put on the undead when he uses them. He specifically mentions that the Lifeless came from a desire to create 'technological' undead in a fantasy setting. Then that same work had the Returned who are sort of like vampires except that they don't prey on anyone but need someone to willingly give them their Breath and outside of Hallandren they don't have an infrastructure built to support them (or people with a desire to donate Breaths) so they tend to only 'live' for a week. The same kind of thinking can be extended to his other examples. For Mistborn, I'm not sure either of those is really quasi-undead. The Kandra might be closer, if only because the process of initially creating them involved a kind of mind-death which was later reversed but left them no longer human, and while they can't kill people they can eat their bodies and use their bones for transformations.

Have you read Secret History yet? We get a clue there. Secret History spoilers

We don't actually know what properties it would have if you tried to use it in the Metallic Arts because the 'it blows up when it gets wet' thing makes it impossible to safely use in Allomancy or Hemalurgy and very risky in Feruchemy. It's possible that Sazed made his godmetal like that deliberately or it might be a natural side-effect of Harmony's nature as a fusion of two opposing Intents. That only the southerners have it suggests that Sazed did at least one thing deliberately when it comes to Harmonium so if controlling it's reactivity was within his powers I wouldn't be surprised to learn eventually that its volatile nature was also deliberate.

Uhh, same here. But it sounds really cool so I'd love to see it whenever you're able to link to an image of it.

- The Vin/Marasi thing really comes to a head in Bands of Mourning when Marasi has a brief opportunity to be Vin on steroids, with all the powers of Allomancy and Feruchemy... and realizes that just isn't who she is. Hmm, Marasi and Alendi could probably have an interesting chat about that sort of thing. Or her and Dalinar. - Hrathen and Jasnah meeting would be a very interesting conversation. One is a very devout priest who maintains faith in his God even when he learns that the church that serves that god is corrupt, and he is all about logical argument. Jasnah is an atheist from a world where the dominant church was corrupt (and at least some of it is looking that way now too) but she also loves logical argument and is open to the possibility of a truly convincing one. I'm sure they could argue theology and logic for hours. For bonus points, they both come from a world where the resident 'God' has been murdered by Odium. - The real reason Taldain is currently inaccessible is that Autonomy doesn't want any outsiders sneaking into her awesome Darkside rave parties, after that one time when Kelsier, Hoid and Lightsong crashed one. It took months to clean up and they never did find out what happened to the chicken. - Shallan's final truth that she will tell Pattern is 'I am the one. I killed Asmodean."

Welcome to the Shard! Brandon was asked about the possible application of Shardblades to another one of the Metallic Arts and his comment there seems like it would be relevant. He was asked if you could turn a Blade into a hemalurgic spike (which we know can be done with a regular sword, per Hero of Ages) and he said that while it's theoretically possible, a Shardblade would probably be too 'full' with Investiture already and so you couldn't fit a hemalurgic charge into it. That means that it's probably so full with Ivestiture (of a completely different Shard) that a Mistborn couldn't burn it, even assuming for purposes of argument that they could burn the godmetal of another Shard without some sort of hack. And we know from another interview that Shardblades are one of the hardest things to push or pull with Allomancy so they would probably be very resistant to burning anyways.

Yeah, he has an account but he rarely uses it. Here's Peter's immediate followup post in the aforementioned Secret History continuity topic for an explanation why: