Warbreaker (86 page)

In Idris, if a man breaks his leg and can’t work the field, a monk will come and take his place on the job. The wages for that work still go to the family of the man who has been hurt. Sometimes, if a father dies and cannot support his family, a monk is assigned permanently to take his place at work duties and provide for that man’s family.

They go wherever they are needed, forbidden to own or possess anything themselves, giving all they have to the people. Now, of course, not everyone who becomes a monk fits the ideal. Without the pressures of needing to feed one’s self or acquire goods, some of them can be kind of lazy. But many are very diligent, like Fafen.

One Last Note on Reversals

We have a nice moment in this chapter rotating around a single word. Siri begins the chapter thinking about how she was supposed to be useless, and how she wishes that she still were. Then Vivenna ends her section thinking about how she’s
become
useless. That terrifies her.

Back to Chapter Two

Annotations for Chapter Three

Similarities Between
Warbreaker
and
Elantris

And finally, we arrive at my personal favorite character in the book. Lightsong the Bold, the god who doesn’t believe in his own religion.

I had the idea for Lightsong a number of years ago. My first book,
Elantris
, dealt with the concept of men who were made gods. However, in that book, we never actually get to see men living as gods. The gods have lost their powers and have been locked away.

This time I wanted to tell a different story, a story about what it is like to live as a member of a pantheon of deities. Yet I didn’t want them to be too powerful. Or even powerful at all.

I realize that there is some resonance here with
Elantris
. I hope that the concepts don’t seem too much alike. What I wanted to do with this story was look at some of the same ideas in
Elantris
, but turn them about completely. Instead of dealing with gods who had fallen, I wanted to look at gods at the height of their political power. Instead of dealing with people who were ridiculously powerful, I wanted gods who were more about prophecy and wisdom.

I made it so that the Returned couldn’t remember their old lives as a way to distinguish them from the Elantrians. However, I can’t help the fact that the ideas had the same (yet opposite) seed. However, I’m confident that there’s plenty of room in the idea to explore it in a different direction, and I think this book comes out feeling very much its own novel.

First Line and Lightsong’s Origins

Lightsong’s character came from a one-line prompt I had pop into my head one day. “Everyone loses something when they die and Return. An emotion, usually. I lost fear.”

Of course, it changed a
lot
from that one line. Still, I see that as the first seed of his character. The idea of telling a story about someone who has died, then come back to life, losing a piece of himself in the return intrigued me.

The other inspiration for him was my desire to do a character who could fit into an Oscar Wilde play. I’m a big fan of Wilde’s works, particularly the comedies, and have always admired how he can have someone be glib and verbally dexterous without coming across as a jerk. Of course, a character like this works differently in a play than in a book. For a story to be epic, you need depth and character arcs you don’t have time for in a play.

So, think of Lightsong as playing a part. When he opens his mouth, he’s usually looking for something flashy to say to distract himself from the problems he feels inside. I think the dichotomy came across very well in the book, as evidenced by how many readers seem to find him as their favorite in the novel.

Llarimar

Llarimar is based on a friend of mine, Scott Franson. Back when I was working on
Hero of Ages
, my local church group had a service auction for the local food bank. The idea was that church members would offer up services—like a car wash, or some baked cookies, or something like that—and then we’d all get together and bid cans of food for them.

Well, I offered up for auction naming rights in one of my books. The idea being that if you won the auction, you’d get a character named after you and based on you. It was a big hit, as you might imagine, and ended up going for several hundred cans of food. The guy who won was Aaron Yeoman. (And you can see him in
Hero of Ages
as Lord Yomen.)

Well, the other major bidder on that was Scott. He’s a fantasy buff, a big fan of classic works like Tolkien and Donaldson. (Though he reads pretty much everything that gets published.) He really wanted the naming rights, but I think he let Aaron have it, as Aaron was very excited and vocal about wanting to win.

About a year later, I discovered that Scott, being the kind soul he was, paid for Aaron’s cans himself and donated them on the younger man’s behalf. I was touched by this, so I decided to put Scott into
Warbreaker
. It happened there was a very good spot for him, as I’d already planned Llarimar to have a very similar personality to Scott.

I decided that Franson wouldn’t work for the name. (Though you do see that one pop up in
Hero of Ages
as a nod to Scott as well.) Instead, I used Scott’s nickname, Scoot. I thought it worked pretty well, as it’s only one letter off from his first name, and his brother claims that they always used to call him that.

So, there you are, Scott. Thanks for being awesome.

Lightsong Feeds on the Child

Why a child? It doesn’t much matter, truthfully. An adult, or even someone elderly, could provide a Breath that would keep a god alive.

But the Breaths of those who are aged aren’t as vigorous as those of those who are young. If Lightsong was given one of those to feed on, he’d survive for another week—but he wouldn’t feel as vibrant or alive as he does after feeding on the Child’s Breath.

The people of Hallandren are faithful. Even if Lightsong himself doesn’t believe, they do, and they want to provide the best for him. Hence, they use children. Old enough to know what they are doing, yet young enough to give a powerful, vibrant Breath to their god.

Back to Chapter Three

Annotations for Chapter Four

Naming in This Book

The names in this novel, particularly in Hallandren and Idris, follow the concept of repeated consonant sounds.

I wanted to try something a little more distinctive in this book than the names were in
Mistborn
. In that book, I intentionally backed away from the insane craziness of the names in
Elantris
. I’ve written entire essays on how I devised the languages in that book. The names were appropriate for the novel, since the language was so important to the story. However, I know that the number and oddity of many of the names in
Elantris
was off-putting.

So, instead, in
Mistborn
I chose names that were much easier to say, and gave everyone a simple nickname. When it came time for
Warbreaker
, I wanted to try something else, to take a step back toward distinctiveness in the language, but not go as far as I had in
Elantris
.

I’ve long toyed with using double consonants as a naming structure. I played with a lot of different ways of writing theses. I could either use the letters doubled up, with no break (
Ttelir
). I could slip a vowel in the middle and hope people pronounced it as a schwa sound (
Tetelir
). Or I could use the fantasy standard of an apostrophe (
T’telir
).

In the end, I decided to go with all three. I felt that writing all the names after one of the ways would look repetitive and annoying. By using all three, I could have variety, yet also have a theme. So, you have doubles in names like Llarimar. You have inserted vowels like in Vivenna. And you have apostrophes like in T’Telir.

I think it turned out well. Some members of my writing group complained about fantasy novels and their overuse of apostrophes in names. My answer: Tough. Just because English doesn’t like to do it doesn’t mean we have to eschew it in other languages. I like the way T’Telir looks with an apostrophe, and the way people will say it. So it stays. ;)

Siri Approaches T’Telir

And we finally get to see T’Telir. I’m still a tad bothered that it’s chapter four before we get to see the city. I worry that people will read the book and have trouble getting grounded in it, since we’ve now had five viewpoints across five chapters and have been in a lot of different locations.

However, I think that the groundwork in the first four chapters is needed to make the book work. I just couldn’t figure out a way to cut it all out and still have things work. Perhaps (just perhaps) I could have moved the Vasher prologue into the middle and made it a regular chapter, then moved the original Siri/Dedelin chapter to a prologue. Then, with the decision to send Siri into the city made, I could have jumped straight to this one. However, we’d have lost too much in that. Doing it this way isn’t perfect either, but I think it’s still the best way the book could have been done.

Hawaii

Why, yes, I did visit Hawaii in the middle of writing this book. Did you notice?

Following
Mistborn
, I wanted to do a book set in a place that looked very different from the Final Empire. What’s different from a burned-out wasteland? Why, a tropical paradise of course! One of the great things about being an author is the ability to justify going to Hawaii just so I could do research on how to properly describe the plants, landscape, and atmosphere in a place like that. It’s really a tough job, but I’m willing to sacrifice for you all. No need to thank me.

Undead

I’d been toying for a long time with doing a book with “technological” undead in a fantasy world. A place where a body could be recycled, restored to a semblance of life, then set to work. I’m always looking for ways to explore new ground in fantasy, and I’ve seen people sticking to the same old tropes with undead. (Mindless, rotting zombies or dynamic, goth-dressed vampires.)

I wanted to play with a middle ground. If you’ve got a magic that can make a stick figure come to life, what could it do with a dead body? How could a society make use of these walking corpses, treating them as a realistic resource?

The Lifeless grew out of this desire. I developed something like them for use earlier in a completely different novel, but I abandoned that plan years ago. They returned to the scrap pile of my mind, from which I draw forth and recombine ideas to create novels.

Other Notes

Yes, there are Returned in Idris. There are Returned everywhere in this world that there are people. (The name of this world is Nalthis, by the way.
Mistborn
takes place on a world called Scadrial, and
Elantris
on a world known as Sel. See the fun things you learn by reading annotations?)

I’d like someday to do a sequel to
Warbreaker
, in part because I want to show off all of the different ways people in Nalthis deal with the Returned. They’re treated in very strange ways some places. For instance, just across the mountains there’s a kingdom where when someone dies in a way that might be heroic, the corpse is immediately purchased by a nobleman hoping to hit the jackpot and get a Returned. You see, since Returned can heal people, keeping one around to act as an emergency insurance plan to restore your health is a great idea.

Also, just in case you’re wondering, the Bright Sea and the Inner Sea are both the same place. It’s another Idris/Hallandren thing. Most mountains, oceans, and lakes have two names—the Idrian one and the Hallandren one. Originally, this happened because there was bad blood between the two kingdoms, so they’d call things different names in order to differentiate themselves. Ironically, in a lot of cases both names have stuck, and both kingdoms have found themselves alternating between the two names.

Inner Sea was the Idrian name for the body of water, renamed because they wanted to downplay how important it was. (Idris is landlocked, after all.) Bright Sea was the original name.

Back to Chapter Four

Annotations for Chapter Five

Vasher Watches Siri

We get back to Vasher. Showing his viewpoints in the book was tricky. I wanted him to remain an enigma—I didn’t want you to know if you were rooting for him or not. But I did want you to think he was interesting.

Nightblood Origins

I’ve been wanting to do a book with a talking sword for some time. Sentient objects are a favorite theme of mine from fantasy books I’ve read, and I think you’ll probably see more of them in future books from me.

The magic sword is its own archetype in fantasy, even if there haven’t been any good magic sword books among the big fantasy novels of recent years. Perhaps that’s because Saberhagen and Moorcock did such a good job with their books in the past. I’m not sure. (I don’t count appearances of magic swords like Callandor in the
Wheel of Time
. I mean books with major parts played by swords.)

Anyway, that’s a tangent, and I’m certain that half the people reading this can think of examples and exceptions to what I just said. Either way, this is a theme I wanted to tackle, and the magic system of this world lent me the opportunity.

Nightblood is another favorite character of the readers. I think his personality works the best out of any non-viewpoint character I’ve ever written. He doesn’t get that much dialogue in the book, but it is so distinctive that it just works.