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Isaac Stewart

As Brandon has mentioned, we have some scenes from The Lopen viewpoint [in Dawnshard], and I'm going to show you The Lopen chapter icon.

I don't know if this will wind up in the actual main books, but if we have a Lopen chapter, we might.

Brandon Sanderson

So far, for Lopen, we've been using the generic Bridge Four icon, because usually what's happening is I have a whole section where we get a bunch of different Bridge Four viewpoints, and it makes more sense. But we needed one for The Lopen.

Questioner

Will you ever consider writing a TenSoon or kandra book or series?

Brandon Sanderson

I could see doing a novella. Will there be a full series? There are way too many full-series things that need to happen already in the Cosmere. Chances that you get kandra viewpoints in upcoming books or that you get a novella, is much higher than an actual book series. That said, there's also the experiment we're planning to do; we're having Isaac write some Cosmere stuff. It's gonna start as graphic novels and things like that. Isaac has been in this from the very beginning, and he's one of the few people I would trust to do Cosmere stuff. Maybe Isaac will do this.

Isaac Stewart

You asked the question, and I wrote a note down here. Because we're playing with Mistborn stuff. Knowing what people are interested in seeing might spur something cool.

Brandon Sanderson

I got a really cool kandra character that I'm waiting to slot into a book eventually that's going to be a lot of fun when I can find a spot for him.

Questioner

[Lift, her abilities] how might that apply to elements? Fire, air, rain.

Brandon Sanderson

She just changes friction, so however it would interact with it in our world it will interact that way.

Questioner

So fire would... I don't know how that works.

Isaac Stewart

She could keep someone from lighting a match, possibly.

ArgentSun

How much do you know about Nazh, and how much control do you have over what he does in the Cosmere?

Isaac Stewart

I run everything by Brandon and we discuss it, even with Nazh.

Isaac Stewart

We're going through and trying to fix all of those things for a later version that Dynamite will put out, just small inconsistencies. We will get rid of the boombox, we will get rid of the second IV because we got it in the first one. I don't how we missed it in the closeups. For all I know we told them to erase it, and that one they just didn't get to, so that's funny.

spectria.limina (paraphrased)

On the broadsheets distributed at the con, there's this glyph in the bottom right corner of the map. But in [The Lost Metal] there's writing instead of the glyph.

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

Oh yeah, I used to sign my art, but I felt it didn't fit in-universe, so I started using that glyph instead, then eventually I stopped doing that. It doesn't mean anything.

R'Shara (paraphrased)

Could you show me the equator line on the Scadrial map?

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

It runs very close to Elendel. *Points to it on the map*

And the Prime Meridian runs through Elendel.

Robert Moreau

Is there a single Alomantic symbol for “survive” or would it need to be spelled out?

Isaac Stewart

It would need to be spelled out. The Elendel Scadrians have an alphabetic system rather than a symbolic system.

ArtemosHyre

The Steel Alphabet is interesting in that each symbol represents a letter, a number, and a metal. When a Scadrian is reading a sentence with words, numbers, and metals, how do they know which of the three each symbol refers to?

Isaac Stewart

It's all related to context, similar to how we usually know which "they're, their, or there" is being used, even if we sometimes don't know how to spell each.

Wubdor

Hi Isaac, I asked this on Twitter but can't hurt asking here too! Is there any chance of the Taldain map print coming out for purchase? I'd love to add it to the collection!(Bonus question: and perhaps a Nalthis map too?😇)(Bonus bonus question: and what about Threnody and First of the Sun?👀)

Isaac Stewart

1) I'm currently making revisions to the Taldain map since I was never satisfied with how I'd painted it. (It was the first physical map I'd made in quite some time.) When that's done, we'll offer it as a small print on the store again.

2) We contemplated doing a Nalthis map for the 10th anniversary leatherbound of Warbreaker, however we realized that we need more information. This map is likely to happen whenever there's a sequel to that book. That said, I just finished getting approval on the map of the Nalthian star system, so expect to see that soon.

3) We'll likely create maps for Threnody and First of the Sun at some point, but I don't think it'll be any time soon.

Snoxcatko

Roshar--it's obviously, it is or it seems to be in the Southern Hemisphere. Is there something else in the world?

Brandon Sanderson

There are no other continents. It's not completely--it is Southern Hemisphere--but I think we inch up above the equator, don't we?

Isaac Stewart

Just a bit, just the islands. They kinda curve over the equator.

Brandon Sanderson

There are no other continents but there might be other smaller landmasses.

Gamerati

What's going on with the "diya, tiya, niya, siya" at the bottom [of a prototype Steel Alphabet chart] there?

Isaac Stewart

This was based originally, the sounds, and we kind of diverted from this direction... So, I was a missionary in the Philippines, and I speak Tagalog, and I was really interested in the way that old Tagalog has this symbol system, where they would put marks in different places, depending on which vowels and things. So those are Tagalog sounds right there, that they use in their language, and I just threw those in there as extra letters. I didn't know what we were gonna do yet.

The "diya" actually is a "J" sound. Tiya is a "CH" sound. "Ñ," we find that in Spanish, we find that in Tagalog. And then "Sh." But we didn't really go down that path completely. That was more experimentation. You can see here there's a letter "NG," which is another very common letter in Tagalog.

Kaldonis

Will we ever be seeing an ancient Scadrian symbol for harmonium/ettmetal. I know it didn't exist back then (as far as we know!) but many fans use those style of symbols to represent Hemalurgy.

Isaac Stewart

I don't think we'll see an official version of the ancient symbol for harmonium anytime soon. I believe, in-world, that the Hemalurgists use the Allomantic symbols for the metals.

Questioner

Is Khriss in the Secret Project?

Brandon Sanderson

That's definitely a RAFO. But Nazh is there, so who knows? But Nazh has had a lot of different adventures with a lot of different people through a lot of different places. Nazh, we should point out, is Isaac's character that I'm borrowing for this book with Isaac's permission and understanding. You can look forward to a lot more Nazh with Isaac and his things. He's on loan, shall we say.

Isaac Stewart

It's fine. The big questions are things like, "Well, how does he get to this point?"

Isaac Stewart

The process of me coming to write more in the Cosmere is very organic. I've been in writing groups with Brandon since probably 2005, off and on. I was there reading Mistborn from very early on to be able to make the maps, but also giving feedback on the manuscripts and giving Brandon ideas on how to expand the world visually. So I've been kind of part of the creation process. I don't want to take more credit than credit is due, but designing Luthadel (the map), designing symbols for that world, and working really closely with Brandon on that.

When I started working at Dragonsteel, we hit a point with Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning where there wasn't enough time to finish the broadsheets for that. And I saw, with all of the projects, that was a very busy year for us with Shadows of Self coming out three months before Bands of Mourning. I saw that I needed to step up and do the broadsheet, possibly. So I started putting it together, talked to Brandon, he's like, "Yeah, why don't you try. Give it a shot." I sat down and I wrote an Allomancer Jak short, Gentleman Jak in the City of Fountains. And I thought it turned out really fun; I think I was able to capture the voice of Allomancer Jak. It was a little bit wacky, which I always infuse my stories with a little bit of wackiness. And it was a lot of fun, and so Brandon was like, "Yeah, this turned out great. Let's do the next broadsheet." So I started really kind of writing in the Mistborn world with the broadsheets, so it's just kind of grown organically over time.

I've had a bunch of stories in my head that I'd wanted to tell for a really long time, and I realize that a lot of the underpinnings of magic and things that are in my stories are similar, or maybe have been influenced by Brandon. Because at this point in my life, my fantasy writing is just influenced by what Brandon has already done because I'm just exposed to it all the time. So we started talking about the idea of porting some of the ideas that I had into Cosmere worlds. And one of these was Boatload of Mummies, which was actually inspired by a Lego set. I had this big giant ship that my brother and sister-in-law had given me one year for Christmas, and that sort of spurred me on to starting to get more Lego sets again, because I loved them when I was a child. But somehow, we also had all of these Egyptian Lego sets, and I had tons of mummies. And I'm like, "What am I gonna do with these mummies?" So I put them all on the boat, fighting the British Empire on this boat. And I'm like, "Huh, this is really interesting. I kinda want to see what that story is. It's kind of like Snakes on a Plane, but it's Mummies on a Boat." So that inspired that, and I started writing that set in our world. And I didn't get very far before I had to do other things; I usually am always working on a fiction project, and that's probably about the time that I was working on Jacob's Journal of Doom, and some of these other things. So I put it on the back burner. But Brandon and I decided that that story was a lot of fun, and how could that work in the Cosmere? And so we started brainstorming some ideas. We already had this character, Nicelle Sauvage (which Allomancer Jack calls Nicki Savage.) I already had this character that I had sort of started developing in the Mistborn world, and we'd seen her through the broadsheets. And so we thought, "What if she was the main character of Boatload of Mummies?" And then, where would this book be set time-wise, and what are the events, the Cosmere underpinnings that are going on there?

...

Atfer I finished that [the White Sand omnibus], I'm like, "Okay, Boatload of Mummies. Let's do that, now." So that's where we're at right now. How do we make a mummy in the cosmere? That's a question, right? What are they doing, why are they there? All these questions come together, and we're forming a story around that. I'm about 90,000 words into it. I massively overwrite, so it'll probably be a fairly long book that we'll then trim down to around 100,000 words. And then we'll see; we'll run it through betas, we'll run it through groups here at work. We'll see if it's something that's good enough to publish. I'm interested in seeing if I can whip it into shape.

Koh-the-face-Stealer

What's your favorite piece of art that you've done for the Cosmere?

Isaac Stewart

My favorite piece of art I've done for the Cosmere would have to be the oil painting of the Roshar map, with the Shadesmar map and Surgebinding charts probably close seconds. Thanks for asking!

spectria.limina (paraphrased)

On [the Wax and Wayne deck of cards distributed as con swag], on the Joker, there's a figure that looks like it might be Autonomy, with a symbol in it that's kind of like the harmonium symbol but different. Is that symbol for trellium?

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

That's just a later version of the symbol for harmonium. Part of how the symbols evolved between eras. There are other differences too, like with the spikes. It's also the symbol for Scadrial.

The figure does look like they might be related to Trell, huh...?

Brandon Sanderson

Hey, Isaac. Do you think there’s time dilation going on in the graphic novel?

Isaac Stewart

No. Part of that is, if you take a look when you get to the climax, there’s certain things that happen there that make me think there’s not a lot of time dilation going on.

Katelyn

Is there an official cosmere coloring book? I feel like this should be a thing.

Isaac Stewart

I've been investigating this possibility and already have an artist interested if everything lines up nicely.

Pagerunner

Are we gonna see an accompanying Khriss essay [for Nalthis] anytime soon?

Isaac Stewart

I suspect it will be awhile. Sorry.

Questioner

Alloy of Law leatherbounds? Have you made any decisions?

Isaac Stewart

Alloy of Law and Shadows of Self will come together. They will be separate leatherbound books, but they will be packaged together, not in a slip case. They will probably be, together, around $150 as a package.

We're gonna try to keep elements of the design from the Mistborn books, so that they look good in a line, but have something that is a little bit different about them.

Because of our contracts, we will not sell them separately.

Oudeis16

How many spoilers do you generally get for unreleased things? Do you have access to the DS Wiki? Do you try to not find out things and only ask questions about things that are required for the art, or do you find out what you can?

Can you tell us a thing you knew long before it was released, which has since been released, that the fans were going crazy over wondering or were stunned to learn?

Isaac Stewart

I normally get as many spoilers as I want for unreleased things. In order to work on the books and do it right, I need to know as much as I can. I still have to rely on Peter and Karen to check the details, because I often forget things, so their work is as vital to the art as it is to the continuity of the text. I do have access to the Wiki, and I use it often in looking up details, especially when sending art briefs to other artists we're working with.

As for the second question: At Nasfic in 2005, which I believe was in SeaTac, Washington, Brandon and I shared a hotel room. I remember discussing Mistborn with him, which I'd recently agreed to do the maps for. I'd already read the first book, I think, and was partway through reading the second book at this point. I don't think he had started writing The Hero of Ages yet, though. He looked up from whatever he was doing and said, "Isaac, I don't think Vin and Elend are going to survive the last the book. What do you think?" At the time, I was floored, and I remember contending for their survival. But now, almost fifteen years later, I'm struck by how right his decision was to end Book 3 that way. It's just a better, more poignant ending. And I love those books, and Vin and Elend, so much more because of the sacrifice they made to save Scadrial. True heroes, both of them.

Joe_does_Calculus

Is there (or will there ever be) a key or something for the written color language/alphabet in Warbreaker? I have just started the book but it seems like it could lead to some cool fanart stuff with how it's described.

Isaac Stewart

We tried a few things to develop the color language/alphabet (Artisan script) for Warbreaker, but partway through, we realized that none of us here are of the correct Heightening to be able to read the script were we even able to develop it. (One has to be able to distinguish between colors in a way that we ordinary humans can't physically do.) However, if you look closely at the upcoming Warbreaker leatherbound you might find hints at how un-Heightened people in T'Telir and Idris might read and write.

Cosmere.es

I think that you will be the one who might write the story [for The Arcanist]. Will you be shaping it like a novel? Or more like thinking, because you have all of the experience with the graphic novel, into something that is going to be translated into a graphic novel, as well?

Isaac Stewart

I don't know yet what we will be doing with that. I have a lot of notes for what we're calling The Arcanist, but it might wind up having a title that has echoes of White Sand so that it feels like a duology. But also, we want people to be able to pick up The Arcanist and be able to say, "You can read this one without reading White Sand, if you want to."

We've batted around several different ideas of: do we do it in a graphic novel? Do we do it as a novel and a graphic novel that comes out at the same time? And I don't know if we've really landed on anything that we're going to do at this point, for that. I would like to write it as a novel, and see what happens. There's also something fun about the idea of developing it as a novel and a graphic novel simultaneously; I know that there will be people who have read the graphic novel who would like to continue that story in graphic novel form. So, I wouldn't be surprised, if we get to this one, if it winds up being in both forms. But I don't know exactly at this point what we will do with that.

Questioner

This is for Isaac, actually. What are you working on right now? Are you working with anything with Brandon or with someone else?

Isaac Stewart

Yeah, I am. I just finished a version of the Feruchemical table. If you’ve seen the Allomantic table, it's very similar to that. New frames. I actually created it a different way, and I think it looks nicer than the other one. It makes me want to go back and redo the other one, but it also has new symbols and some new information.

Brandon Sanderson

That'll debut in the Mistborn RPG, and then we'll sell prints.

Isaac Stewart

Art director Isaac here with an art reveal today. Recently Brandon, Kara, and Adam have been discussing publicity for Rhythm of War, and one thing that Tor has asked for is a simplified symbol to represent the Stormlight Archive on certain marketing materials.

Now, to be clear, we love the original Stormlight Archive symbol, and we are in no way abandoning or replacing it. Many readers have bought shirts and decals or have even gotten tattoos of it. We are using it in The Way of Kings leatherbound and will continue to use it as a chapter icon in Rhythm of War and future Stormlight books. So rest assured that we are not retiring this tried and true iconic symbol.

However, the symbol is complex, and it doesn’t read well at small sizes, so at Tor’s request, we’ve sought a simplified design. During this search, it occurred to Brandon and me that eventually we’ll need simplified symbols for all of the Cosmere worlds—symbols that will need to be easily recognizable from far distances—basically, space-era versions of our current symbols.

So, after hundreds of drawings and thumbnails, we’re unveiling to you now the space-era symbol for the Stormlight Archive.

We’ve built this on the skeleton of the original symbol, preserving the relationship between the sword, circle, and main focal point. Instead of extra swords, we have rays of light. Instead of the complex double-eye of the Almighty, we’ve chosen the burst of light from the original Cosmere symbol.

Going forward, we will actively use both this symbol and the original in promoting the Stormlight Archive, and eventually you can expect space-age versions of many of the current Cosmere planetary symbols.

Pagerunner

And I noticed on the Coppermind that we haven't seen any Feruchemical symbols for [the four unknown Allomantic symbols]. So it's got me wondering if you've designed any Feruchemical symbols to go along with these four Allomantic symbols?

I know these symbols are used to fill out letters in the actual alphabet, and that there are no canon metals assigned to them; that's not what I'm asking about. I'm more curious if the symbols even exist to round out the Coppermind's table.

Isaac Stewart

We created Feruchemical symbols for those four metals at one point, and I think this is the latest.

Questioner

Where does Dawnshard fit, time-frame wise?

Brandon Sanderson

Three months after Oathbringer, which puts it in Rosharan terms seven months-ish before Rhythm of War. (Ten-month years.)

Isaac Stewart

But we should probably mention that you don't have to read this one to read Rhythm of War.

Brandon Sanderson

You do not. I have written Rhythm of War in such a way that, if you haven't read this, you will not really be confused. There will be a few things where you're like, "Oh, that's probably what that's referencing." And if you read this after, it's not going to ruin either story.

I did something very specific with the Rysn interlude in Rhythm of War that allows us to preserve most of what happened in Dawnshard, so far, so that you will not have it spoiled when you get to that interlude. I've done something very different for that interlude, let's just say. And I did that because I hadn't written Dawnshard yet, when I wrote the Rysn interlude. In fact, it's the last thing I wrote for the book, was that interlude. And let's just say that interlude is from a different viewpoint. We'll just say that.

And references to what happened are in the story, but they're mostly kind of vague, because even most of the people in the main storyline don't know the specifics of what happened in the novella. It's kind of like what happened in Edgedancer, where what happened to Lift is not really generally understood and known by everyone else, because she was off on her own.

It is done. First draft is finished. It is The Lopen and Rysn.

AutonomousJoy

Will there be a map of all the countries around the Inner Sea in the Warbreaker Leatherbound? It would be cool to see the distribution of the Tears of Edgli on the map!

Isaac Stewart

There won't be a map of this in the Warbreaker leatherbound, but if there's ever a sequel, that's the likely place we'll put this.

eyeswulf

I wanted to ask about the process of creating in world symbology, specifically the Allomantic/Feruchemical/Hemalurgical symbols in Mistborn and the Radiant Orders in Stormlight.

Edit 1: I see you've answered some of these already. I know you just recently showed us the Hemalurgy. Symbols, so insight into that would be oh so cool.

Isaac Stewart

Hemalurgy stole their symbols from Allomancy. But in the early books, we go back in time with the symbols. First showing Allomantic symbols, then showing in Well of Ascension the symbols as they were used maybe in Terris at some point, and then we see the proto-symbols from before the Lord Ruler, and at that point, they look a lot more organic. Over time they morphed to what we see now. From the symbols in Well of Ascension, the Feruchemical symbols developed separately, but still look related to Allomantic symbols due to their similar roots. The more angular style is due to the influence of the Terris people on their development. In my mind, their visual aesthetic is punctuated with hard angles and triangles.

Questioner

When do you think Alcatraz... The next one... Do you have a release date for that?

Brandon Sanderson

I hope it's next year.

Do you have any idea?

Isaac Stewart

We're probably a year to a year and a half away. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. We have to wait on the art. Whatever the art takes. Tor hasn't seen it yet either. We have just finished it and Janci wrote half and I wrote half and it turned out pretty well.

Zeke3dt

What is a piece of art that you've made for the Cosmere that you like, but that was never used and likely never will?

Isaac Stewart

I have tons of little sketches and things of symbols that I would count. And I don't know if I have a favorite in there, but I can tell a story about when we were doing the Cosmere symbol. Because we did a ton of different ideas with that. And for a while there... when we do symbols, I do books full of symbols; I want to find something iconic. I'll immerse myself in symbology for a while. And I was kind of thinking we haven't used something with a hand, so I was coming up with these stylized hands for a while that had different things on them. But the logo, it was just getting too complex, and it wasn't falling all together all that well. But I have these cool drawings of symbolic hands, like the hands idea which is one of the things in our world which is very similar to that. Kind of drawing on that sort of iconography the way that Robert Jordan drew on the wheel and the worm Ouroboros and things like that.

Byron King

Has there been any discussion about making the Allomantic Table print with the foiling process from the Roshar map?

Isaac Stewart

We haven't discussed this. But maybe that's something we could do down the road once the Hemalurgic Table has been released.

Extremepayne

Are the shash glyph on Kal's forehead that means "dangerous" and the shash glyph for the Lightweavers related? If so, how?

Isaac Stewart

I don't believe that they're related. I think these are words like, in English, where we have "to," "too," and "two." There is also, I think, a shash somewhere else in one of the other books; it might have been Warbreaker. And it's just a recurring sound.

With the two glyphs, they're not related. They're as related as the words "too" and "two" are.

Code4Medic

Since you made the Alethi script for Stormlight. I'm curious if it is a phonetical transcription or alphabetical. Specifically with the -tion letter/sound. Would it be spelled as is or pronounced?

Isaac Stewart

Alethi script is mostly alphabetical. English speakers would just spell -tion.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Honestly? I just, these days, say "It kind of looks something like this" and he [Isaac Stewart] reads the book and finds any references I've made and comes up with something. I can trust him to the point that I don't have to worry too much about it. On some I'll give him a shape. On Roshar I gave him the shape, and said "It's like this" and then I split things up. Because that one shape was very important to me. But like Mistborn I'm like "It looks kind of like this. Go for it."

Isaac Stewart

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah I sent an MS Paint thing.

Questioner

White Sand ombinus?

Isaac Stewart

I’m gonna have to be careful with what I say here, because we’re working with Dynamite, and I want to give them an update.

But I will say that that’s kind of the big thing that I’m doing around Rhythm of War artwork and Kickstarter stuff. When I have time, I’ve been making adjustments to White Sand. Continuity adjustments…

There are some things that I can tell you. I can tell you that we are adding 38 new pages of artwork that comes at the very beginning. There may be more. This depends on discussions with Dynamite. But we have a really great artist working on that. He’s almost done with it. I want to announce who it is, but I want to talk to Dynamite first. But I just want to say that he’s doing an amazing job. We’ve got a great colorist, we’ve got a great letterer. In fact, the colorist and letterer did work on some of the stuff that’s in the original White Sand.

It’s coming together really nicely. I think fans are gonna be really happy with the adjustments. And it’s going to place it more firmly in the cosmere than it has with the previous versions. Which were just fine; we loved working with the artist and the writer at Dynamite. I consider Rik a friend. This is just taking something that was already good and making it a little bit better. And a little bit more just continuity-wise fit in with the cosmere. We want to do more things with these characters, and so we wanted to make sure the continuity was working correctly.

Pagerunner

I developed a lexicon of shapes to use in the creation of glyphs.

How do you determine which shapes to use when creating a glyph? Is that phonetic? Are there shapes that only appear in proper nouns, or for abstract concepts?

Isaac Stewart

I don't get to say this very often, but RAFO. :)

Wubdor

Any news on the Taldain print by any chance?

Isaac Stewart

Do you mean the Taldain map print? If so, we've got a new map of Taldain in the works, and I think it will make a fantastic print. More soon on that.

Argent

When did Nazh and Khriss meet?

Isaac Stewart

RAFO

Questioner (paraphrased)

What's the most challenging part about art?

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

He said he has lots of things in his head, but the problem was getting his hands to reproduce the images in his head the way he imagines them. Often they end up looking quite different and that can be frustrating. It took a lot of practice to produce what he wants.

The_Second_Best

When you're designing the look of something like a chasmfiend how many iterations do you go through?

Isaac Stewart

It really depends on the creature and project, honestly. @Inkthinker is the artist on the chasmfiend and the whitespine, for example, and he is absolutely a fantastic artist. I think he submitted three versions of the chasmfiend, we chose one, and then he pretty much got it spot on for Shallan's illustration of the beast in Words of Radiance. He had already come up with a paradigm for these types of critters (a la the axehound) back in Volume 1, so that might've helped this one come together so quickly.

The whitespine, however, was a tougher nut to crack. He submitted ten or eleven different designs before we found the general shape that looked correct to Brandon, and then there were several smaller revisions after that to get different parts of the whitespine's body correct. But again, we were developing a different creature paradigm here. The chasmfiend was based off crustaceans, and the whitespine was more shark- or ray-like in the way its body was supposed to work. A landshark with spikes.

Katelyn

Will we ever get the symbols of Austre?

Isaac Stewart

Possibly. It really depends on Brandon's plans for Nalthis and what he decides to focus on should there be a sequel.

Gamerati

Have you ever considered making [the Steel Alphabet] into a TrueType font so people could just type in symbology?

Isaac Stewart

So... we have one. We just haven't released it yet. And it's actually the Alloy era that we have in the font, because we needed it for the broadsheets that we do in those books. So we actually have that as a TrueType font that we use internally, but we haven't gone through all the things that we need to do to make it work nicely.

Argent

Does Nazh work for Khriss because she's hired him, or because they share common interests?

Isaac Stewart

They share common interests, and Nazh is fiercely loyal.

PaleoCrafter

I've a got a question about the Steel Alphabet and its use on Scadrial: here on Earth we've got people who are obsessed about beautiful typography, neat fonts and ligatures included.

Is that something you ever thought about doing for the Steel Alphabet? You've told us before that you've got further designs for new variants like a handwritten form up your sleeve, which of course makes we wonder whether Scadrian typography nerds will get their share, too.

(btw, any chance we could get a sneak peek of those designs? :P)

Isaac Stewart

This is a fun one!

When we were working on The Alloy of Law, we tried a few different typefaces for the Steel Alphabet. I don't know if we'll use any of these variations in the future, but we might. As for the handwritten form, here's a sneak peek. Neither of these images are canonized, so they're apocryphal at this point and maybe a tiny bit spoilery.

WeiryWriter

Brandon mentions in the postscript for "Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell" in Arcanum Unbounded that we still don't know Nazh's name. Peter has since confirmed that "Nazrilof" is his surname and that Brandon was referring to his given name. Since Nazh is from Threnody my theory is that Nazh has some super embarrassing/convoluted Puritan given name, which is why he goes by a pseudonym derived from his surname. Would you mind revealing his full name, or at the very least tell me if I'm on the right track?

Isaac Stewart

Your ideas are sound.

Isaac Stewart

So the last thing we're going to be revealing is the artist for Secret Project 4. The artist is Ernanda Souza, she is from Brazil. The way that I met her is through Dan dos Santos' SmartClass that he does. An artist class, and this is made up of students and working professionals who go to people like Dan; there are other artists who run these sorts of things too through SmartSchool to get better and improve their craft. And they often have a visiting art director who gives them an assignment and then comes in and checks in on the artist. We kinda run it like you would an assignment in the real world.

Anyway, we were doing Skyward pieces and I noticed that Ernanda's Skyward piece was really well done; so well done we actually bought it from her. And then later on I was looking for an artist for Secret Project Number 4, and started seeing Ernanda's art around. At first I didn't make the connection. I showed Brandon some of the art and then I'm like, "wait a second! I already know this artist." That was a nice reveal. So, I contacted her, and she's excited about it.

I asked her to send me a few things about herself, and she says she has worked for Hit Point Press, Paizo, Upper Deck; she's illustrated for Magic the Gathering, has done cover art for Marvel Comics. You can see her breadth of style, that she can go very realistic like a Magic card, and then go over and do very comic, bright style, so she's very versatile. She also works as a concept artist and fantasy artist for video games and other projects that she can't announce. She did graphic design at a Brazillian university, but there she met other people doing digital art and that kinda set her off to going into the videogame market to work for indie RPG companies. She says: "I love to do art, I love the amount of possibilities to create something that sometimes can't be described through words, how drawing and painting can easily describe what words can't. Art and design are the first thing to call eyes' attention. Funny, since the world is driven more and more by technology and fast-paced rhythm, our inner selves still know how to appreciate color, harmony and draftsmanship."

So, very excited to be working with Ernanda on Secret Project Number 4.

Gamerati

What's interesting about the difference between the classic era Allomancy symbols and the Alloy of Law era ones is, when you get to Alloy of Law, the rusty nails become railroad spikes almost, right?

Isaac Stewart

Yep, they do. We codified that, we decided, "Okay, now they're turning these things into typefaces, they're turning them into fonts." We even have some that hopefully we'll use later in the 1980s era trilogy, Era 3, where we've made them really thick. They're just different font, too, we've been playing with different ideas of, "How would they use the Allomantic symbols as typefaces?"

Argent

None of the Alethi names seem to have a "ch" sound in them - except for Chana / Chanarach, the Herald. Do they have a sound and written symbol for it? And if not, would they use a different sound when saying or writing Chana's name ("sh" maybe?)?

Isaac Stewart

I could be wrong, but I think there is a symbol for "ch" in Alethi women's script.