Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

These are things that I overheard.

Kelsier was not spiked.

Part of the Lord Ruler's motivation for setting up The Final Empire was revenge against the people he viewed as encroaching on his people's land. He was also obsessed with creating order, which Ruin later exploited.

The Ars Arcanum in the books were all written by one person.

The author of the Ars Arcanum is either Hoid or a member of the Seventeenth Shard. Brandon also pointed to an annotation on the map of Elendel that's relevant to this question.

There's just the one system in Warbreaker, and it's also a world with only one Shard on it.

This one is a personal favor... See, for metals that have Feruchemy, this verb is "charge". A metal is Feruchemically charged. But, you've been using the term "charge" for Hemalurgic metals, too, which I think is confusing. Before HoA I called Hemalurgic metals "Imbued" metals. I humbly petition to have that be the official term, because it's just confusing otherwise.

The Seventeenth Shard members use the term of Invest for all of those type of things. However, what they use in world is different on each world. For example WoK is infuse.

While I was thrilled to hear the excellent, excellent intro to Alloy of Law, I was a little sad that we didn't get to the Q&A part of the session. So I headed over to the Harvard Bookstore, where he would be signing and answering questions. Now, this bit was a little strange for me. I've met Brandon before (probably a dozen times or so between '06 and '09), all at varying levels of fame, I listen to writing excuses every week, and I follow his blag, so it wasn't "oh my gosh, I get to meet him" jitters. I feel like, in all the ways that I want to, I already know Brandon.

The jitters were probably a combination of a couple of things: (1) I had no desire to have him sign anything, I just wanted to ask Brandon a couple of questions. I've never a big "sign things" person, especially when the signer is a person to me, and not a Figure (if that makes any sense). And (2) this was the first time that I had one-on-one interaction with Brandon while considering myself an agent for a higher group (namely, the 17th Shard). It was a bit nerve-wracking in a way that was completely new to me. Anyway, ending my indulgent self-psychoanalysis...

I figured out the way to overcome (1). Instead of having him personalize it to me, I asked him to write a clue about the Cosmere in my worn copy of Elantris (it's my first Sanderson, and is literally falling apart; the cover is scotch taped on ).

He wrote "Do not go to Shadesmar on this world (really, I'm not kidding)" on the title page, then said to me "You guys can chew on that for a little while."

I like that. I think that I'll bring in all of my books to his next New York/Boston signing and ask him for Cosmere clues instead of signatures.

I dislike double posting, but I have one question that came up recently from your tweet. You said that there are "multiple" people from Mistborn in WoK. Does this include Hoid?

Yes, it does.

CORWIN01

Are they just vague allusions?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Vague, no. But I wouldn't say they, save Hoid, have any important impact on the events of the book.

How did the whole cosmere come about?

Oh that's a good question, the cosmere came about because- there's really two genesis' of it. First off I'm a big fan of Asimov's work and if you know Asimov's work he tied his two universes together later in his life and I thought he did a brilliant job of it, though patching it together later in his life as he did there were certain continuity problems in doing it and I always thought "Boy, I bet he wished he'd done it from the beginning".

So, as I started to work on things, I thought "Well why don't I try something like that from the beginning." Once again I got to see what one of the masters did and learn from them, stand on their shoulders.

The other thing is early I realised that if I were writing mini-books then writing them all in the same series would be a bad for getting published, let's say I wrote five, I'm gonna write five books and a publisher rejects the first one. If the other four are in the same series, it's going to be very hard to convince that publisher to read book two if they've already said no to book one. However, if they are five standalone books, set in different worlds, then I can say if someone says "I liked this book but not enough to publish it," I could send them another one and say "Hey this one is different but similar maybe you'll like that." It just increased my chances.

The problem with that is I grew up reading the big epics and I love big epics and they are the books of my heart, like the Wheel of Time. I wanted to write big epics and so I started writing a secret big epic. It started with Elantris, which is the first one that I wrote in the Cosmere and right after it Dragonsteel, which is actually a prequel but in a different universe. I started putting characters from each of these books in the other books to have what I call a hidden epic, mostly for myself, because I had all these books I was going to be selling and marketing separately. But when Elantris sold, all of that stuff was buried in there, and I said "Well, I love it, I'm not gonna cut it, I'm just gonna put it in there to see if people notice." I'm going to keep telling my hidden epic because eventually I will be telling the greater story with Dragonsteel and the third Mistborn trilogy dealing with these things and so that's where the idea for the cosmere came from, those two pieces.

Will there be other crossover characters like Hoid?

There already have been.

LEXIE

Really?

BRANDON SANDERSONM

Yes.

LEXIE

Can you tell?

BRANDON SANDERSON

I cannot say more than that, I think that they’re placed quite obviously, they were not very obvious before this book, they do exist, other crossovers do exist. But none so obvious as Hoid. I think there are several obvious ones in this novel, no one has yet found them that I know, but I think once they see them- once you look closely they’re there

History and Use

Some scholars have expressed amusement that this symbol should come to mean intelligence in a broad sense, as the classical meaning of Aon Ene was far more narrow. Ene was the Aon which represented cleverness, the ability to outwit and outthink opponents. It was often applied in stories and tales to those who had a slyness about them, and often was the symbol which represented the trickster figure. Indeed, those who played tricks on others were said to be Enefels—literally, Wit Killers, or those who kill with wit.

During the Middle Era, when Elantris's influence expanded and the kingdom of Arelon began to take shape, Aon Ene was attributed to the guild of storytellers who brought tales of the marvels in Elantris. It was often rumored that these people, who took upon themselves the Enefel name, were agents of the Elantrians. Their purpose was to spread good will about the city and its inhabitants, calming the rural populace, who regarded Elantris and its magics with suspicion.

Over the centuries, this guild of storytellers transformed into a more scholarly group who gathered stories and histories from the people. By the dawn of the Late Era—about two centuries before the fall of Elantris—the group had burgeoned beyond its origins into several distinct sects of scholars and philosophers. By the time of the fall of Elantris, the constant association of this group with Aon Ene expanded its meaning into the more familiar use, representing scholarly intelligence and study.

Some still remember the original meaning, however. Most of those are themselves scholars, and find the entire transformation to be something of a humorous joke played by history itself.

Good question. *gives Newan a RAFO card* In upcoming Mistborn books, you are going to get to know a lot more of the kandra, so you will have a lot more options.

Newan

Ooh. When the kandra worldhopper is off-world, er off-Scadrial, does she take the form of a human female?

Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

Not all of the time.

Newan

Has she spoken a word of dialogue in a non-Mistborn book?

Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)

I can't remember.

No, they have other stuff. It is something grander than that.

Question

He's just one of many priorities?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They are very worried about what he's going to be doing.

Question

But there's others they're worried about as well?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. [...] So they have a task, they have goals, and they are worried that he is going to be at cross purposes to them, so they are trying to hunt him down.

Tags

Brandon Sanderson

That’s… not as far off as people laughing think that it is. [More laughter] It’s not a space station, it’s not that futuristic, but there is a place in the Cosmere where a lot of worldhoppers have settled, is where Iyatil is from, even though her ethnicity is not from there.

Question

Clarifying question. Is that place in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

[laughs] RAFO!

Question

It’s the Cognitive Restaurant At The End Of The Universe? [many references to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy follow]

Mason Wheeler

that could mean a wide range of sizes...

Brandon Sanderson

a lot bigger than a village. Not saying yet exactly how many people are there, [RAFO card,] but they're not all Worldhoppers. There are people who are born there, live out their whole lives and die there.