2. Hoid:
Page 445 of the
Elantris hardbackPage 269 of the
Mistborn hardbackPage 231 of the
Warbreaker 4.2 PDFChapter 1 of The Liar of Partinel (book 1 of the
Dragonsteel/Aether series)
This is not an exhaustive list, but he pops up (unobtrusively and generally forgettably) from time to time. We don't know what his overarching purpose is (besides being a way for Brandon to tease us).
3.
Dragonsteel:
The book Brandon wrote right after
Elantris. (He also started coming up with a very early version of the story when he was a teenager but didn't get very far.)
Dragonsteel was the first book of Brandon's that I (and a few other TWGers who knew Brandon at the time) read, making us Brandon converts. He used the book as his Honors English Thesis, and the one bound copy is available at the
BYU Library. Last year Brandon decided to go back to the
Dragonsteel world to start a longer series of which the original
Dragonsteel book, heavily rewritten, would make up book 3 (or something like that).
The Liar of Partinel, which Brandon has finished writing and of which he released one chapter on the website, is the first volume of the new
Dragonsteel series (which also uses elements from another of his cannibalized novels,
Aether of Night). When Brandon decides that an early book he has written just can't be revised into a workable form, he cannibalizes it, taking the good parts and characters and adding other elements to get a better ultimate result—elements from four different books (
Mistborn Prime,
Final Empire Prime,
Mythwalker, and
Aether of Night) were cannibalized into
Mistborn and more of
Mythwalker was cannibalized into
Warbreaker.
The first draft of
The Liar of Partinel needs a lot of revision, but Brandon is busy and won't get back to it for a while. Because of the high-profile nature of
A Memory of Light, he wants his next book released after that to be the start of a major epic;
The Liar of Partinel was meant as a sort of backdoor pilot into the
Dragonsteel series rather than the true start of a major epic. So Brandon is going to concentrate instead on
Way of Kings as his next big series.
Dragonsteel itself is also a super-valuable metal (that starts off as a liquid that distills in a certain place rather like atium does in the Pits of Hathsin) in the novel
Dragonsteel. (Note: Anything known about the old drafts of
Dragonsteel is subject to change; it's not canon until the book actually comes out.
Warbreaker's current form is final-candidate canon.)
4. Shards:
That's the big mystery that we have found out about only in the last couple days. Brandon has apparently used the same cosmological underpinnings for all of his adult fantasy novels that are out so far (and possibly
Alcatraz too, but that seems problematic to me since it's set in our world, more or less). However, most of the characters in these novels are not aware of these cosmological underpinnings at all; if they are aware, it is of how the cosmology affects their own planet only. Aspects of Adonalsium (the Creator?) have been broken into shards, two of which are Ruin and Preservation, the only two shards "on Scadrial at the moment" (which may indicate Hoid is not a shard himself, though he is obviously related to the hidden overarching plot somehow). Brandon says we have met four other shards in his published books (including
Warbreaker). The dissolving pool in
Elantris is a manifestation of one of these shards like the Well of Ascension was a manifestation of Preservation.
"Shards" are also important throughout
Way of Kings. However, it's been years since I read it last and I don't know if these are the same type of shards or are at all related.
Way of Kings has its own complex theology and, while it's possible it ties into the overarching cosmology of the other books, I wouldn't pigeonhole Brandon into only writing books in one universe. He has too many creative ideas to pigeonhole himself. We will have to RAFO.