For those who don’t know, this story was brainstormed on an episode of Writing Excuses. We did four episodes where we brainstormed together, then one of us took that idea and wrote a story on it. The initial brainstorming session we did for me ended up failing; I just wasn’t excited about the story. So we tried again, and this was the result.

This is the only story in the anthology where the world wasn’t built into the original Cosmere plan. I did, however, leave myself room in my Cosmere outline for a handful of worlds I hadn’t defined yet—as I knew I’d eventually have stories I wanted to tell that didn’t fit on a planet with a Shard. Our brainstorming session on air wasn’t specifically for a Cosmere story, but as I worked on the outline, I was intrigued by the idea of using symbiosis (in a new way) for a Cosmere Investiture.

I quickly fell in love with the idea, and the resulting story. You’ll likely see more from the people of this planet, though there are no plans for another story or novel in the world. If you can’t tell from the Alcatraz books and the Horneater culture in the Stormlight Archive, I have a fascination with Polynesian culture. The concept of wayfinding through the lapping of waves is just one of those things that won’t leave me alone, and the ability to write about a character out on his own on the ocean—isolated in multiple ways—was intriguing to me. Also, considering how many talkative characters I do in books, it was a pleasure to try something new in someone like Dusk.

This is the farthest forward, timeline-wise, of any of the stories in this collection. So, at the time of Khriss’s writing of the introduction to the system, the events of this story haven’t actually taken place yet.

If you’d like to read the original brainstorming sessions in print form, along with early drafts of this story, they’re available (along with the three stories written by the other hosts of Writing Excuses: Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler) in an anthology called Shadows Beneath.

The Rosharan System

THE
ROSHARAN
SYSTEM

THE ROSHARAN SYSTEM

ROSHAR (which—characteristic of the dominant confidence of its people—is the name of a planet, a system, and the main continent on the planet) is a busy place. As empty as the Scadrian system seems, this one always feels crowded to me. A series of enormous gas giants crowd the outer reaches of the system, though nobody has been able to observe them directly, as their manifestation on Shadesmar is minor.