Windrunner

I don't think the color acts as a fuel. That would imply that when an item is Awakened it would have to continue sucking color out of the world to keep the Awakening going. Breaths are spiritual in nature, and every other Investiture is powered by something spiritual (The Dor, Stormlight, Preservation, etc). Think about it like Allomancy. The metal isn't being broken down into pure energy (That would actually be a huge waste of power.). The power is being drawn through the metal, it's acting as a doorway. Now, it's not perfectly analogous, but it seems more likely to me that for whatever reason, color is what allows a Breath to be transferred to a non-living object.

It's nothing to worry about Stroniax, Joe was giving the wiki a tune-up. It's back now.

You're spot on with that one, Rags. Hoid definitely has some precognition abilities. However, I don't think being a Sliver is very useful in seeing the future. Vin was one after all and so was Rashek. They didn't seem to have any abilities of that nature (or at least not without atium). The only affects being a Sliver seems to have on a person is that they follow the Shards intent (Rashek "Preserving" the Final Empire in the same way for a millennium) and that some people can identify Slivers simply by looking at them. Splinters on the other hand, (perhaps this is what you meant?) definitely have some future sight abilities attached to them, as evidenced by the Divine Breath, a Splinter of Endowment, giving Returned visions of the future.

I just thought I'd let you guys know that there isn't such thing as an Honorshard. There are Dawnshards, which you've listed, and Honorblades (which I think is probably what you meant). Honorshards and Dawnblades (another common error) are not things in TWoK.

Well regardless, we don't know what Dawnshards are. At least one "binds" things, which doesn't sound much like Nightblood to me, considering how destructive he is.

Rayse holds the Shard Odium. The name is only mentioned in the epigraphs of TWoK, but Brandon has confirmed that Rayse is the Shardholder. It's onerous to go through the chapters one at a time, so here's a link to the wiki where we've compiled them. We refer to these epigraphs collectively as "The Letter" in case you were wondering what we're talking about.

Observer, I know you probably didn't mean for it to sound this way, but this comment comes off as pretty rude. We're all learning here, and Stroniax hasn't been on 17th Shard for long. Perhaps the best way to do this would have been to actually explain what we know to him? No biggie dude, it's not something that's easy to catch. If you remember a certain conversation that Hoid (aka Wit) had with Dalinar at one of Elhokar's parties. Hoid mentions something called Adonalsium and Dalinar doesn't know what it is. (It's a quick event so if you don't remember it, don't worry, neither did I) Adonalsium is basically this supershard you're referring to, although it's probable that it's a tad more complex then that. Honor, Cultivation, (She was only mentioned once in TWoK) Odium, and Endowment (Warbreaker Shard) are all technically referred to as Shards of Adonalsium. Long ago in the cosmere, Adonalsium Shattered just like you said, for some unknown reason. (Hoid was there) It broke in 16 pieces, which are the Shards we all know and love now. Does that make sense? You'll see more of this in Mistborn and Elantris when you get to reading them as well. You can always swing by the chatroom and I can practically guarantee that myself or someone else knowledgeable will be on, who would love to answer any questions you might have and discuss it all with you. Hope to see you there!

Well, if you want to get technical, the main Dragonsteel sequence does not take place before the Shattering. The way I understand it is that Dragonsteel is divided into two sections. Liar of Partinel and The Lightweaver of Rens are sort of a duology that take place before the Shattering, with Hoid as a character. These are presumably the books that will contain the Shardholders as characters. Fast-forward a couple of centuries and you'll get the main Dragonsteel storyline, a series of five books that are also set on Yolen. The first book of this set of five is the one Brandon wrote for his thesis that is now at BYU. He often refers to the seven collectively as Dragonsteel, but unless I'm very much mistaken, the first two are the only ones before the Shattering.

Or perhaps Stormlight. I think a good question to ask would be if there are any less spren visible on Roshar during the Weeping, when highstorms stop for a while.

Yes it does indeed. I'm chopping them up and tagging them in the same way he did, so they're also getting a length boost from that.

I would like to announce that while compiling all the questions Brandon's answered so far for the Interview Database, I decided to count how many pages it fits into. Part of this length comes from formatting, but right now it's 53 pages long! Thank you Brandon!!!

I gotcha covered! I only know where it was because of a lengthy search when I saw this brought up before.

Hey Patrick, good to have you here I'm Windrunner, or David, and I help run the Brandon Sanderson boards in the forums. It's nice to meet you and I hope yo see you around!

I would like to announce that I successfully grabbed a screenshot of a milestone as Brandon's Q&A began EDIT: I just realized the Brandon's profile was made on the 16th! That's so REDACTED awesome!

Hey Brandon! Thank you so very much for coming here to answer our questions, I know this'll probably be taking some time away from Stormlight 2, so I appreciate you being here very much. You're my absolute favorite author, the logic of your magic and the way your stories and characters ring true is beyond compare in my opinion. I've got 4 questions, but if that seems like too many feel free to skip the later ones. Thanks again so very much Can all Investitures be classified as end-positive, neutral, or negative? Why does Devotion's Shardpool act so differently from Preservation’s? Did people exist on Nalthis prior to Endowment's arrival there? Is the Dor made up of both Devotion and Dominion’s power? Also the TWoK nerd in me is totally embarrassed that I didn't ask any questions on that.(It was the first of your books I read, and my favorite) I can't wait for Stormlight 2 though, and will hopefully be at the release!

As we’ve seen through all the cosmere books, there has seemingly been an interesting contradiction that I’ve noticed. Preservation and Ruin (and presumably other Shards that have created people too) gave of themselves, their spiritual energy, in order to create humanity. But if having a lot of spiritual energy implies sentience, then why would Shards, whose power is exponentially larger than the fragment that gives human sentience, be unable to truly think for themselves? Why would a being so rich in spiritual energy need a human to control it? I hypothesize that a being’s Cognitive aspect arises due to an interaction between its Physical and Spiritual aspects. I’m going to work my way through the Spiritual Constructs we’ve seen so far, in an attempt to explain them in terms of this theory. I want to make one thing clear, I’m going to simplify some things. I’m very sure that the way the Spirtual aspect of an object is built around it’s Physical aspect (like the Spiritweb in a human) has a lot to do with the specific ways Cognition arises. I'm going to put these in spoiler tags, because some of the images are quite large. This is how I visualize this concept. The red color is an object’s Physical aspect, the blue its Spiritual and Purple its Cognitive. This would represent a regular object in the cosmere, everything from rocks to goblets, like the one Shallan talks to. The Physical and Spiritual aspects are in perfect balance, but they don’t create a very great Cognitive aspect. It’s barely there. This next image represents a human. They’ve got a Physical aspect, just like anything else. However, they’ve now got a larger Spiritual aspect, thanks to the Shard that created them. The two are able to interact better. It’s kind of like the Physical aspect is more saturated with spiritual energy. This creates a being that is far more capable of consciousness and thought. This is a representation of a Shard. It has a Physical aspect, sure. For example, Preservation’s Physical aspect could be seen in the mists, the Well of Ascension, and lerasium. However, physically that’s a tiny bit of matter when compared to the truly enormous Spiritual aspect of a Shard. Thus the Cognitive aspect produced isn’t very powerful, just that tiny sliver of purple. In a Shard, I believe that Cognitive bit basically is what drives a Shard’s intent and its search for a holder. (I’m not going to get into why each Shard has a certain intent, because I quite frankly have no idea) Now lets look at this one, a Shard with a holder. This Shard now has a person, which is still not very much Physical. However, the Shard has an incredible amount of spiritual energy. I think this helps it overcome part of the lack of Physical there, as well as the fact that the person is bringing their own Cognitive to the table. Now lets look at a spren bound to a person. Kaladin and Syl for example. Kaladin is just a regular guy. He doesn’t have an unusually large Spiritual aspect (Like say a Mistborn would) so he can’t do magic. He doesn’t have enough of a connection to Honor to Surgebind. (Yes I know we haven’t confirmed Honor is behind Surgebinding, but I’m just assuming) And then we have Syl. She’s got almost no physical aspect. She’s (probably) a Splinter, so she’s got more Physical aspect then the average spren, able to interact with small objects and whatnot. But her Physical aspect is small, and like a Shard, all she knows to do is to seek out someone who follows the Ideals of the Windrunners. Then they finally meet and the Nahel bond forms. Syl latches onto Kaladin’s Physical aspect. (I know some say she’s borrowing Cognitive power, but I disagree) He acts as a stand in for her Physical aspect. The interaction between these two gives rise to the return of her Cognitive aspect. Slowly her personality and memories come back to her. Now Kaladin gets a boost from Syl’s Spiritual power, almost like a Hemalurgic spike that grafts an extension onto his sDNA. Now he can access Surgebinding. Nightblood is a similar case, his Breath’s that have (quite possibly been bound into a Splinter with its own intent and) been attached via a specific process to something physical, in this case a sword. Now that Nightblood has Physical aspect his Cognitive part can come about. I think the process by which Nightblood was created is also important here, creating almost an artificial Spiritweb. If you look at Clod a similar, if lesser thing has happened. He has a few Breaths in him, but not enough to make him sentient. There’s a little bit of extra spiritual, and that along with Clod having a shape that is one of life, allows the energy to give Clod a little bit more consciousness than the average lifeless. The last Spiritual constructs I want to speculate on are Seons (and this probably goes for Skaze as well). They are a Splinter for sure. But so are Divine Breaths and they aren’t sentient.So what’s the difference? I believe the secret lies in the Aon. (The person a Seon is bound to may play a role acting as Physical as well) They are a physical representation of the land. I think the which Aon is used probably has some bearing on on the Seon’s personality as well. It helps shape the Spiritual aspect into a unique Cognitive shape. The Divine Breaths don’t increase the sentience of a Returned because it’s not bound the Returned in the same way. I'm probably going to be updating this in the days to come as well, if I see problems or new ideas pop into my head. Thanks to everyone who made it this far, you rock!

By Dawnshard do you mean the swords carried by the Heralds? Because, I'll eat my hat if those aren't called Honorblades. TWoK doesn't make it explicitly clear, but it does say that no one knows what a Dawnshard is, while Honorblades are quite obviously swords. The only possibility I see is that the Honorblades are the swords of the Heralds. I don't think Nightblood is like a lesser Honorblade though. They're both swords that have spiritual energy, but I think of the two Nightblood has more energy, simply because he can think, while there's no indication that an Honorblade has sentience. It's great that you've spotted a connection between the two though, the cosmere is full of them.

Sorry, that's totally my bad. I avoid reading TWoK very often because I love it too much, I would make it tired quickly. So sometimes details get fuzzy. (I once totally forgot where Shallan's plot occurred in reference to the rest of them) But anyways, I don't think it's really off topic for to discuss what about a character we didn't like, and for others to discuss why those traits didn't bother them. But anyways, we can be done with this conversation if you wish.

That doesn't really make much sense to me, Satsuoni. He had no motivation to kill Taravangian before Taravangian was revealed to hold his Oathstone. Szeth didn't want to kill the king who built hospitals for his people. So he wouldn't have had any reason to hurry, in hopes that someone would stop him. After Taravangian told Szeth not to kill him, then Szeth found out about the Silent Gatherer's and Taravangian's slaughter. Then he couldn't do anything. Anyway, Szeth didn't really bug me. I really saw him as someone who's honor was the most important thing he had left, the only thing he could hold onto. I get the sense that he believes that breaking his Oath as Truthess would be worse then the slaughter he commits. I see where you're coming from, but I think I'd be pretty whiny too if I was forced to slaughter innocent people all the time. Also, you say that he should have gone crazy, and I think he actually has, at least a little bit. His irrational hatred of those he kills for not being able to stop him seems rather insane to me.

Hoid is definitely not a Herald, Brandon explicitly confirmed it. The Coppermind should have done a pretty good job. Any further questions?

17th Shard has been infiltrated...

I disagree. I feel very strongly that Stormlight is the fuel for Surgebinding. Compare two Allomantic powers, tin and bendalloy for instance. But the power comes from Preservation.(or through Preservation if you follow PoC) Shallan and Kaladin do two vastly different things, but their power source is the same as well, Stormlight.