Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

In Words of Radiance, we have Vasher showing up. One of his aliases on Nalthis is Kalad, which is very similar to the name of one of the Heralds on Roshar. So I was wondering how far back this connection between him and Roshar goes.

It goes pretty far back, in fact I wrote Way of Kings, the 2002 version; he was a main character and was Kaladin’s sword master. I wrote Warbreaker to jump back and write out his back story, so to me Warbreaker actually came after Way of Kings. But the connection goes back pretty far, further than you would first guess.

vasher

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roshar

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a way of kings

Did he [Vasher] actually come from Nalthis and not Roshar?

I’m not going to actually answer that one. Well I can answer that: yes he does come from Nalthis. It’s pretty obvious that the way that the Breath’s working, the reason he moved is because it’s easier to get Stormlight than Breaths, and Stormlight can fuel being a Returned like him. And so yes, he was born on Nalthis. Becoming Returned without being born on Nalthis would be really hard.

vasher

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returned

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nalthis

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stormlight

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investiture

Can I ask you about the body of a Shard in the physical realm? About the different states of matter, what determines the state of matter that they are in? Because I’ve read the relevant sections carefully, haven’t noticed much about temperature difference.

The idea for me working on this is that they transcend, they permeate everything. They permeate all life on all the realms. And that there are manifestations of them that leak out, and it’s kind of like they appear there in the various states. When you say that you’ve got the gas, you’ve got the liquid, you’ve got the solid: but you’ve also got inside of you, inside of that plant, like they’re everywhere. And so what determines it? In my head it’s just like when some of that power permeates, some of it distils, just like water. There’s some water in the air, there’s some that freezes: that’s temperature. But it’s not always temperature whether it’s in the air, or whether it’s falling. Imagine a spiritual version of humidity, that is influenced by what’s happening on the Spiritual Realm and the Cognitive, and that’s what you get.

shards

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physical realm

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metaphysics

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realmatic theory

Because you’ve talked about alloying the god metals, I was wondering whether you would be able to melt them down as you would with normal metals.

If you could distill the god metal: you could distill it out of the mist, that’s theoretically possible.

god metals

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allomancy

Because you’ve talked about alloying the god metals, I was wondering whether you would be able to melt them down as you would with normal metals.

If you could distill the god metal: you could distill it out of the mist, that’s theoretically possible.

god metals

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allomancy