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Mistborn Adventure Game: A House of Ashes
Witness the rise and fall of House Bylerum
Based on the best-selling novels by Brandon Sanderson, A House of Ashes is a companion piece to the upcoming Mistborn Adventure Game.
Originally commissioned as part of an extensive portfolio of fiction, and a gateway for novel readers and roleplayers alike, this 150-page digital release presents new characters, places, and twists on the Final Empire you think you know.
Based on the best-selling novels by Brandon Sanderson, A House of Ashes is a companion piece to the upcoming Mistborn Adventure Game.
Originally commissioned as part of an extensive portfolio of fiction, and a gateway for novel readers and roleplayers alike, this 150-page digital release presents new characters, places, and twists on the Final Empire you think you know.
150 pages, ebook
Published November 23, 2011
2 people are currently reading
433 people want to read
About the author
Brandon Sanderson
397 books283k followersI’m Brandon Sanderson, and I write stories of the fantastic: fantasy, science fiction, and thrillers.
The release of Wind and Truth in December 2024—the fifth and final book in the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive series—marks a significant milestone for me. This series is my love letter to the epic fantasy genre, and it’s the type of story I always dreamed epic fantasy could be. Now is a great time to get into the Stormlight Archive since the first arc, which begins with Way of Kings, is complete.
During our crowdfunding campaign for the leatherbound edition of Words of Radiance, I announced a fifth Secret Project called Isles of the Emberdark, which came out in the summer of 2025. Coming December 2025 is Tailored Realities, my non-Cosmere short story collection featuring the new novella Moment Zero.
Defiant, the fourth and final volume of the series that started with Skyward in 2018, came out in November 2023, capping an already book-filled year that saw the releases of all four Secret Projects: Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man. These four books were all initially offered to backers of the #1 Kickstarter campaign of all time.
November 2022 saw the release of The Lost Metal, the seventh volume in the Mistborn saga, and the final volume of the Mistborn Era Two featuring Wax & Wayne. Now that the first arc of the Stormlight Archive is wrapped up, I’ve started writing the third era of Mistborn in 2025.
Most readers have noticed that my adult fantasy novels are in a connected universe called the Cosmere. This includes The Stormlight Archive, both Mistborn series, Elantris, Warbreaker, four of the five Secret Projects, and various novellas, including The Emperor’s Soul, which won a Hugo Award in 2013. In November 2016 all of the existing Cosmere short fiction was released in one volume called Arcanum Unbounded. If you’ve read all of my adult fantasy novels and want to see some behind-the-scenes information, that collection is a must-read.
I also have three YA series: The Rithmatist (currently at one book), The Reckoners (a trilogy beginning with Steelheart), and Skyward. For young readers I also have my humorous series Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, which had its final book, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, released in 2022. Many of my adult readers enjoy all of those books as well, and many of my YA readers enjoy my adult books, usually starting with Mistborn.
Additionally, I have a few other novellas that are more on the thriller/sci-fi side. These include the three stories in Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, as well as Perfect State and Snapshot. These two novellas are also featured in 2025’s Tailored Realities. There’s a lot of material to go around!
Good starting places are Mistborn (a.k.a. The Final Empire), Skyward, Steelheart, The Emperor’s Soul, Tress of the Emerald Sea, and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. If you’re already a fan of big fat fantasies, you can jump right into The Way of Kings.
I was also honored to be able to complete the final three volumes of The Wheel of Time, beginning with The Gathering Storm, using Robert Jordan’s notes.
Sample chapters from all of my books are available at brandonsanderson.com—and check out the rest of my site for chapter-by-chapter annotations, deleted scenes, and more.
The release of Wind and Truth in December 2024—the fifth and final book in the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive series—marks a significant milestone for me. This series is my love letter to the epic fantasy genre, and it’s the type of story I always dreamed epic fantasy could be. Now is a great time to get into the Stormlight Archive since the first arc, which begins with Way of Kings, is complete.
During our crowdfunding campaign for the leatherbound edition of Words of Radiance, I announced a fifth Secret Project called Isles of the Emberdark, which came out in the summer of 2025. Coming December 2025 is Tailored Realities, my non-Cosmere short story collection featuring the new novella Moment Zero.
Defiant, the fourth and final volume of the series that started with Skyward in 2018, came out in November 2023, capping an already book-filled year that saw the releases of all four Secret Projects: Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man. These four books were all initially offered to backers of the #1 Kickstarter campaign of all time.
November 2022 saw the release of The Lost Metal, the seventh volume in the Mistborn saga, and the final volume of the Mistborn Era Two featuring Wax & Wayne. Now that the first arc of the Stormlight Archive is wrapped up, I’ve started writing the third era of Mistborn in 2025.
Most readers have noticed that my adult fantasy novels are in a connected universe called the Cosmere. This includes The Stormlight Archive, both Mistborn series, Elantris, Warbreaker, four of the five Secret Projects, and various novellas, including The Emperor’s Soul, which won a Hugo Award in 2013. In November 2016 all of the existing Cosmere short fiction was released in one volume called Arcanum Unbounded. If you’ve read all of my adult fantasy novels and want to see some behind-the-scenes information, that collection is a must-read.
I also have three YA series: The Rithmatist (currently at one book), The Reckoners (a trilogy beginning with Steelheart), and Skyward. For young readers I also have my humorous series Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, which had its final book, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, released in 2022. Many of my adult readers enjoy all of those books as well, and many of my YA readers enjoy my adult books, usually starting with Mistborn.
Additionally, I have a few other novellas that are more on the thriller/sci-fi side. These include the three stories in Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, as well as Perfect State and Snapshot. These two novellas are also featured in 2025’s Tailored Realities. There’s a lot of material to go around!
Good starting places are Mistborn (a.k.a. The Final Empire), Skyward, Steelheart, The Emperor’s Soul, Tress of the Emerald Sea, and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. If you’re already a fan of big fat fantasies, you can jump right into The Way of Kings.
I was also honored to be able to complete the final three volumes of The Wheel of Time, beginning with The Gathering Storm, using Robert Jordan’s notes.
Sample chapters from all of my books are available at brandonsanderson.com—and check out the rest of my site for chapter-by-chapter annotations, deleted scenes, and more.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 7, 2020
I initially thought House of Ashes was some type of rule book for the Mistborn pen-and-paper RPG game, but it’s actually more of a companion piece to the game. Its aim is to apparently help people understand the world and magic system of Scadrial a little better through 16 short stories! I’m not positive if the story is canon to the overall series since it’s not actually written by Brandon Sanderson or if it’s just canon for the version of the Mistborn universe the game uses. Either way, I enjoyed being back in the Mistborn world and thought it accomplished what it set out to do, even if the stories were pretty boring.
2 - 2.5
2 - 2.5
October 16, 2013
I understand that game fiction is hard to write, but house of ashes just does a lousy job of it. It starts off with having a PoV character as a gold misting, which is something that (as far as anyone knows publicly in-universe) doesn't actually exist. In fact, the existence of gold mistings would spoil a twist at the end of book three - so the fact that a guy has this ability and doesn't find it unusual is... well, dumb. And they get the mechanics of that ability wrong too.
There's a leaflet from the skaa resistance, telling other skaa about what different allomantic powers do. Alright, I'm down with that, except suddenly they're blurting out information that nobody should know (like where atium comes from), they have altogether too much accurate description; in canon the information skaa have about allomancers is sparse, and they are surrounded by a cloak of superstition. To get all this super-accurate information (let alone stuff that's closely guarded secrets) just doesn't make much sense.
Oh, and plantation skaa are illiterate, so handing out leaflets is dumb too. Now, what they COULD have done there to save it is simple - have a bloodstained skaa-written leaflet describing a lot of things inaccurately, and a big old inquisitorial note on top of it detailing the capture, and noting all the misconceptions in it. That would also help establish the oppressive feel of setting - and since this is distributed as a PDF, it isn't like you can't put a big red stamp across the text.
You also have hazekillers (in the original series, ultra-awesome guys who can face superpowers without flinching) who are idiots. I mean they fight like morons, wear 'custom' armor that is horrifically ill-concieved, kill their own guys, and have a strategy which is LITERALLY 'weigh our enemies down with our dead.' Also, the fees they charge are ridiculous - buying twenty swords is apparently the same price as killing a full mistborn. That's just dumb.
There's what's apparently a steel inquisitor POV. You really can't tell his inner voice from that of any other characters. These guys are creepy, psychotic, incredibly devoted to the Lord Ruler, and have no eyes. It should be obvious when you've got their viewpoint. Instead we've got a guy stomping silently through the woods, and it doesn't even mention the fact that he's got massive steel spikes driven into his eyesockets for four pages. These are supposed to be the most deadly threat you can be expected to face. Play them up. Make them creepy.
House of Ashes ends with a pretty ridiculous scene at an evil lake, which doesn't make too much sense in setting (though you could strain one incident to work), or with the rpg's mechanics. It tries to be creepy but fails.
In summary: I really like mistborn, but it feels like this spinoff was phoned in. It's game fiction, I don't expect something great, but I'd at least like competent action scenes. Or a well-executed heist. Or *anything* that makes me say 'I would love to play this in the game'.
Instead, it's a cold mishmash of decent ideas that could have been way better in the proper hands. I actually passed around the hazekiller chapter as a joke, because instead of being a bunch of total badasses it comes across like the three stooges.
There's a leaflet from the skaa resistance, telling other skaa about what different allomantic powers do. Alright, I'm down with that, except suddenly they're blurting out information that nobody should know (like where atium comes from), they have altogether too much accurate description; in canon the information skaa have about allomancers is sparse, and they are surrounded by a cloak of superstition. To get all this super-accurate information (let alone stuff that's closely guarded secrets) just doesn't make much sense.
Oh, and plantation skaa are illiterate, so handing out leaflets is dumb too. Now, what they COULD have done there to save it is simple - have a bloodstained skaa-written leaflet describing a lot of things inaccurately, and a big old inquisitorial note on top of it detailing the capture, and noting all the misconceptions in it. That would also help establish the oppressive feel of setting - and since this is distributed as a PDF, it isn't like you can't put a big red stamp across the text.
You also have hazekillers (in the original series, ultra-awesome guys who can face superpowers without flinching) who are idiots. I mean they fight like morons, wear 'custom' armor that is horrifically ill-concieved, kill their own guys, and have a strategy which is LITERALLY 'weigh our enemies down with our dead.' Also, the fees they charge are ridiculous - buying twenty swords is apparently the same price as killing a full mistborn. That's just dumb.
There's what's apparently a steel inquisitor POV. You really can't tell his inner voice from that of any other characters. These guys are creepy, psychotic, incredibly devoted to the Lord Ruler, and have no eyes. It should be obvious when you've got their viewpoint. Instead we've got a guy stomping silently through the woods, and it doesn't even mention the fact that he's got massive steel spikes driven into his eyesockets for four pages. These are supposed to be the most deadly threat you can be expected to face. Play them up. Make them creepy.
House of Ashes ends with a pretty ridiculous scene at an evil lake, which doesn't make too much sense in setting (though you could strain one incident to work), or with the rpg's mechanics. It tries to be creepy but fails.
In summary: I really like mistborn, but it feels like this spinoff was phoned in. It's game fiction, I don't expect something great, but I'd at least like competent action scenes. Or a well-executed heist. Or *anything* that makes me say 'I would love to play this in the game'.
Instead, it's a cold mishmash of decent ideas that could have been way better in the proper hands. I actually passed around the hazekiller chapter as a joke, because instead of being a bunch of total badasses it comes across like the three stooges.
June 26, 2014
I've loved reading the Mistborn series, but lord, was I disappointed by this "novella". I enjoyed being in the universe of Mistborns and Mistings again, but I disliked jumping from character to character with so tenuous a link between them. If you're expecting a grandiose development like in Mistborn, flee, you won't find it in this novella!
January 14, 2012
A look into the world of the Mistborn books, but nowhere near as good as the original trilogy or the Alloy of Law.
August 25, 2012
Love the Mistborn series!! Plus LOVE the cover artist! :)I must admit I only read the book I'm not a gamer. I might some day learn the ways of multi-sided dice.
June 17, 2013
Book #20 of 52 Books 2013.
Review pending!
Review pending!
April 17, 2015
A fun novella showing more of the world of Mistborn and some of the other houses and cultures. A nice intro to the RPG.
September 29, 2018
Good enough but it made me miss Sanderson's writing more than anything.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews