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Do you already have designs for the spren we didn't see in the Cognitive Realm (such as angerspren or musicspren) or will those be fleshed out if you need reference in a future book?
They'll be fleshed out as we need them for future books.
What is the Aon for communication.
I don't know it, but there is one.
The thing I do is, if somebody asks me those, I go and look at the Aons that we already have, and see if there's one that is close.
If it's not named yet, and then we give it to you. So we can do that.
Some stars are yellow, while others are red - is that significant?
Yes. There are other colors in there too.
Creating the Hemalurgic table in its final form. Will be creepier and released next year.
Part Seven: News from My Company
Many of you have asked how the Nicki Savage novel has been coming along, so here’s an update. The first draft is finished, clocking in at 118k words, about the same length as Shadows of Self. It needs a lot of revision before I show it to Brandon—he and I have discussed the story, but he hasn’t seen the manuscript yet—so getting it ready for him to read is my next step. As we build out Dragonsteel’s Creative Development department, I foresee more time to work on the revision.
So what does the future hold? So many wonderful secrets. Dark One is tentatively planned for 2025. A very cool [REDACTED] is planned for 2024. And of course my first Cosmere series is deep in pre-production; I’ve built an extensive outline, and I’m working with Brandon and Isaac on some amazing worldbuilding, and I love it all. This is a story I’ve wanted to write for literally years, and having the opportunity to co-write it with Brandon is a dream come true.
You mentioned that half(-ish) Shards are whole at-- during Shadows of Self. Is that counting Splinters?
Okay, one more time.
You mentioned that half-- like I think it was at the Bands of Mourning release party-- you said that "half-ish Shards are whole" during Shadows of Self.
"Half-ish Shards are whole?"
Yeah, you didn't want to do the math, because it was-- *interrupted*
Oh, I get it. You're saying-- Okay, so I'm sorry. I'm trying to think of Shards that are half-powered. That's not what you're saying. Half of the existing Shards.
Yes, yes.
Okay, got it. Yeah.
And does that-- is that counting Splinters? Splintered Shards?
Um, no. I mean, a-- Splintered is one of the ways that they are not considered whole.
Like completely Splintered as in Dominion and Devotion.
Yeah. That's what-- That's the opposite of whole.
But having a Splinter, like Endowment...
Because I-- I was kind of going with "Shattered" <and> "Splintered". So Shattered would be kind of what I was going with Devotion and Dominion.
Okay.
And then Splintered would be more like... You mentioned that Honor kind of Splintered himself off to create the spren before--
Oh, and that's mentioned isn't it?
Right, but you've got to keep in mind that-- um... So in Scadrial, Ruin and Preservation did the same thing. Their bodies are part of the world. They-- if their exist-- like, the things on the Spiritual Realm don't matter where they are in relation to each other and things like this. All those <piece> spren are still Honor, when he was alive. Does that make sense? Like, yes those are little Splinters of Honor, but they are still Honor. It's not like he's diminished, because his whole essence is the world, right? There is no diminishing that. And so that thing is we're talking about the fracturing of the mind and the killing of the Shard. That's the distinction between whole and not whole as I was making it for you there.
I know some of us have heard the story of how you came up with the symbols for Mistborn, but tell those of us who haven't how they came about.
I'd drawn about a half dozen pages of symbols inspired by my first reading of the book. Pages with dozens and dozens of tiny, intricate symbols—maybe someday I'll write a post about the process: Failed Allomantic Symbol Designs. But nothing was really working for me or Brandon.
I'd collected a lot of reference material for the steel inquisitors—nails, railroad spikes, those sorts of things—and one day when I was looking at a picture of a rusty pile of bent up nails, I saw the symbol for iron. It was a Beautiful Mind experience. The symbol just jumped out at me. Glowing and everything.
After that initial experience with the symbol for iron, it was easy to come up with the others. The bent nail part eventually became the crescent shapes used in the final book.
White Sand has an interesting background. Many of you know that it was the sixth novel Brandon wrote–Elantris–that was picked up by Tor and published as his first novel, but by the time Tor released Elantris in 2005, Brandon had written more than thirteen novels. Mistborn, which came out a year later in 2006, was Brandon's fourteenth.
But White Sand was Brandon's first novel. His third novel–Lord Mastrell–was a sequel to it. When Brandon wrote his eighth novel, right after the infamous Dragonsteel, he went back to White Sand Prime and Lord Mastrell and rewrote them both from the beginning, combining them into the White Sand we now give away for those who sign up for the mailing list. I believe this was also the novel that got his agent Joshua's attention, and while Joshua didn't offer representation just yet, he did offer some suggestions for a revision. Brandon also had a list of things he wanted to accomplish were he ever to have the chance to return to White Sand and revise it. But when Elantris came out, turning around and revising an old novel was just not in the cards.
When Dynamite proposed a three-part graphic novel several years ago, Brandon met with Team Dragonsteel and laid out his vision for White Sand. We pulled out his revision notes along with Joshua's commentary from so long ago. We re-read White Sand and made our own notes, and together as a team we fleshed out what Brandon would have liked to have done were he to revise White Sand today without the luxury of rewriting the book from the beginning. We clarified character motivations, we strengthened character arcs, we changed the gender of one of the main characters, and we brought in stronger elements from the cosmere at large. Together, under Brandon's direction, and with Dynamite's help, we crafted this into the canonical version of White Sand.
How do you decide what scenes get depicted in the books?
With the Alcatraz books, I read it, I would fill out a list. The editor read it and filled out a list of different scenes that we would want. And then the artist would do that, as well. And then we would discuss and kind of narrow it down from there.
On these leatherbound books, I will usually approach an artist, and I may have a scene in mind. If the artist is already a fan, I will ask them, "Are there any scenes that you particularly like?" And we'll go from there. But I can't do that with every artist, because they all want to paint Dalinar freeing the slaves, things like that.
Beyond that, I start looking at moments that haven't been depicted before, but ought to be depicted. One of the examples in this one was Navani's painting of the thath glyph. We hadn't seen that done before. (And of course, about the same time, Brotherwise was doing their own version of it, as well. So ours and theirs came out at the same time, and they're both fantastic. Another one of those that's like that is, we had Micah Epstein paint the Heralds leaving their swords behind. And then Brotherwise also did a fantastic rendition of that, using our canonical Blade designs, which turned out really nice, as well. And it was so cool to see the same scene, painted in different ways by different artists.) But that's one of the things I do. And of course, there are these candy bar moments that you want to show somehow in the book.
One of the challenges with these books is that we already had, like, thirty pieces of art in them, in the form of grayscale pieces. For these books, they're two-color pieces. The same artwork that is in the other one; there is one replacement. You'll know which one it is. We'll talk about that one. We do have a few new ones. Ben McSweeney did a Sadeas's bridges piece. I think this is one that we probably should have had in the original book, anyway. We also, in the trade paperback of the Way of Kings, Ben did a piece of the cryptics. And we have taken that and added that into this one as a canonical piece by Shallan. And then we have a replacement for one of the old pieces.
That's sort of the process. I also go to Brandon and say, "Hey, are there any scenes you want to see? If there's something that he feels really strongly about, then we find somebody to do that. So, it's kind of approaching it from all these different angles., and then narrowing it down. Because there's always more pieces than we have time or funds to do. Or even space.
I would like to know the process of working with other artists, like Isaac. And I saw there was a very big list of credits in the start of Oathbringer. Does the artist also affect your writing? Or you write first, and then the artists do their artwork?
For each Stormlight book, we have twenty or thirty pieces of art, and I can't do them all myself. We've had a bunch of people waiting in the wings, a bunch of artists that we send the art to. I read the book, I make notes, Brandon gives me notes of what he would like to see in the book. We combine it into a big list. I assign out to different artists. And then we have art reviews, where I get art from the different artists, and Brandon and I go over it and say what they got right, what maybe they could change. And then we go back and forth with the artist until it's just exactly what we want it to be for the book. The same thing happens when Brandon and I are working on maps or symbols. That's basically the process.
So it never affects your writing?
It does affect my writing. I can give a couple little examples of this. The American cover for Elantris, I love. It's done by Stephan Martinière. It's this gorgeous cover, it’s a very distinctive, different sort of style. But the actual scene he painted wasn't in the book. And I liked it so much... And that doesn't matter that much. The cover of the book, think of it more like a movie poster for the book. The actual scene doesn't have to occur, that doesn't bother me. But I realized I could change one little part, and have Sarene and Hrathen on the wall, looking like they did on the cover. So I rewrote the passage to match the cover. So that has happened before.
For instance, Isaac has inserted a character named Nazh into the books, who is kind of one of the people in-world-- It's important to me, particularly in Stormlight, that all the art you're seeing is something from in-world. I don't want it to be-- The covers are different. The covers are one thing. But the other stuff that we wanna have in there, we want it to be what we call ephemera. It's a map that actually existed in Roshar. It's sketches done by a character from the books. This is to not break the immersion. You're not going into the book and getting it illustrated for you. You are getting the scraps of drawings and things that were in-world. Because I feel like-- Tolkien started this. The map that you got in The Hobbit was the map they carried. It's not like someone came along and drew a map. And I liked that way better. So Nazh is one of the characters gathering these maps, and bringing them together. So I wrote him into the books.
Other things that Isaac has done like that, or an artist has sent us something and I'm like, "This is really cool. Let's work this in somehow." It does happen, certainly. And we do get the art early enough, in a lot of the cases, where I'm still doing revisions, and I'll add tweaks and things like that.
How big do you envision the eye spikes on Inquisitors? I always imagine them as massive, sticking a good five centimetres out each side and not having a nail-esque overhang at the front.
You can imagine them however you'd like, but I do imagine them sticking out the back of the head and the front. I suspect some Inquisitors have nail overhangs like railroad spikes, but others may not.
Has Brandon ever wanted an image of something that you had to tell him wasn’t possible to do for whatever reason?
There's a map we've been discussing since Words of Radiance that we want to put in the books at some point, and it almost made it into Book 2 and Book 3, and it's looking unlikely for Book 4. But we just don't have the information yet to make the map work, so that's really the closest experience to what you're mentioning.
In the Voidbinding chart, do the vertical lines [between the Windrunner/Edgedancer and Stoneward/Lightweaver-equivalent glyphs] mean anything special?
Hm, I don't know... it's been 15 years since I did that so I'll have to remember... I just see things I'd do differently. Like should there only be nine...?
Brandon had me do a bunch of stuff, so there probably is a reason. But it might be the kind of secret where he doesn't tell anybody and then way later explains it. So there might be a reason but I don't know what it is.
At JordanCon, you sharpie’d the aether planet onto my constellation chart and said you couldn’t canonize the planet name until you wrote the book. Having been revealed as a dirty rotten liar to my face, can you now reveal the name of the planet? Has it changed from the prior incarnations of the aether world due to new worldbuilding?
This is not the aether planet. Ha ha! There are aethers on this planet.
The planet where the aethers originate is a different planet in the Cosmere. This is a unique and different strain of the aethers that is doing something different. If you have read Aether of Night, the original aethers still act very similar to what's in Aether of Night. But these are different. You'll still see the same things, like roseite and stuff like that. You'll still see that they do the same things, but it's a different take on the same magic system.
Did we come up with a name for this planet yet?
We're calling it Lumar.
The whole twelve moons thing
Regardless, this is not the actual aether planet. So, yes, I'm not a dirty rotten liar about that specific thing.
How did you get into map drawing?
You know I mapped out things like The Legend of Zelda when I was eight years old. I was fascinated by my dad's paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings and the maps that were in those. It's just, I was doing maps like that for a while but when he asked me to do a map he didn't know that. It's worked out well so far.
Nazh gave Kelsier his knife in Secret History, but Kelsier lost it. Does Nazh know about this, and if so - is he upset?
I don't know.
What special considerations do you have when designing a coin? (compared to other art that you typically do)
I haven't designed a lot of coins, so I had that same question when first talking to Woody and Helen at Shire Post. Once we decided on the sizes for the coins, the biggest issue was designing something that's legible at that size. The images and text need to read well, and for the most part, I needed to keep the text from running over the top of the images (which affects legibility). The only change Shire Post asked to be made after seeing the first images was to separate the text from the images a bit.
Have you gotten to depict or seen depictions of the summoning of Shardplate? Do you think it looks different per Order of KR or is it universal?
This question is way too spoilery. :) I'm going to have to give out my equivalent of a RAFO, which is probably a Now Isaac Can't Say, or a NIX. :)
Our endpapers are going to be probably--I'm pushing the artists more toward symbolic rather than illustrations on the endpapers. I'm thinking these books remind me of books from the early 1900's, not the stories themselves, but how we're presenting them so that they're kind of like these classical books that you would see in libraries. And that's kind of what I have in my head, so I think of very kind of classy endpapers. Each artist is going to do something different. So, I've told the artist, "Hey, if you come back to me and say you just want to do four full color illustrations for the endpaper, great." But I have told them sort of the scope of the project too, so we'll see what they'll do. We're in the middle of it, they're reading the books, they're brainstorming, they're sending me ideas.
Is there, or will there at some point be, a glyph to represent ‘the answer’ to the most important step a man can take?
I suspect a two-word glyph pair for the answer could work, though I don't think we have glyphs for those two words yet.
On Nalthis, there's an "Artisan's script", based on color. Is there a similar thing for mathematical notation?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to this! (Sorry.)
Although I know something similar has been asked before, but could you please share a fun tidbit about Nazh?
Okay, things we know about Nazh: Scottish-like accent, he likes fried Eggplants because they remind him of a similar vegetable from Threnody, he's grumpy, he looks like a young Peter Capaldi (in my opinion). I'm not sure what else I've said about him. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and tell you that his home town will probably be called Cianalis, or some variation on that spelling.
Howard Lyon is doing the art for this first book [Tress of the Emerald Sea] and designing it. So, we're excited to have him on board.
How long did it take you to come up with this writing system? :)
It took several weeks if not months at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 to nail down the basics of the glyph system. There was a lot of back and forth with Brandon at first as we both felt out what we wanted to do with it. In some ways, I feel like we're still filling in some of the blanks as we go, so it's an ongoing process.
Can we expect to see in world drawings or depictions of the various Parshendi forms at some point?
This is a great idea! I'll make a note of it. No plans currently, but now you never know!
Why would anyone give Szeth Nightblood?
Hahaha, hehehe.
He had to so we could make this shirt.
You will learn a lot more about Nale in future books. He's not all there. So you're asking the right question.
How did you meet Brandon?
Kind of in a roundabout way. We were both at a magazine at BYU called The Leading Edge. I didn't go as often. He was the editor; I met him once or twice. He didn't remember me, but I met a lot of other people that worked at the magazine who, now, some of them are my coworkers here at Dragonsteel. But I stopped going to the magazine at some point, finished my schooling, went on to start working, and decided that I needed to go back to school for optometry. I just didn't know if there was going to be a future in art for me, so I went back to school for optometry. I already had a lot of the prerequisites because I had tried a stint at dentistry for a few years before going into animation.
So I went back to school, decided to take the science fiction writing class again at BYU. By this time, Brandon was teaching it. He and I were closer in age than the other students there. This was, like, his second year teaching it. And we just clicked. We became friends. One night at dinner (because we would go out after the class and eat on those nights), I was drawing on the tablecloth at a Macaroni Grill (where they give you the crayons and things), and he said, "Oh, I didn't know you were an artist." 'Cause I was going to school for optometry at the time, I wasn't really advertising that I was an artist. So, doodling on the tablecloth, he said, "Hey, wanna do maps for my next book?" By this time, Elantris wasn't out yet, but it was about to come out. So I said, "Sure, I'll do your maps." He didn't know that I'd been doing fantasy maps on the side just for fun for quite a while, so it was kind of serendipitous.
Hi Isaac! This might not be a question you can answer, but will there be any Herald art in SA4 similar to those in OB?
Wonderful question. The answer is a definite yes.
I should also mention that one other step in between there [Isaac's Mistborn stories] was working on the White Sand omnibus, which was a huge undertaking. I went back and I read all of Brandon's earlier works set on White Sand. His first novel was White Sand; we call that one White Sand Prime. His third novel was a continuation of that called Lord Mastrell. And then his seventh or eighth novel was also White Sand (which is out in the world as an unedited manuscript), which is what the graphic novel's based on. So I went back to all three of those, reread them, created a giant database of names, what happened, what the differences are, things like that. And then I reread the graphic novel with all of this information at my side, and then decided, "Okay, what do we need to do with the Cosmere graphic novel to really update it and bring it really cohesively into the Cosmere?"
At that point, that's when I wrote about thirty-eight new pages of material. Some of that's based on what was in the manuscript. And some of that are new scenes that I added because I felt like we needed a friendlier introduction to certain characters. Like Kenton, I wanted him to be really sympathetic from the get-go, which is something Brandon would have done (as I talked with him) if he were to revise that manuscript. So I developed a scene that I added at the beginning to try to develop him a little bit more. Adapting another scene with Khriss and Baon to develop her as a character a little bit more, and then be able to carry these scenes in the prologue through to the ending.
So, in addition, we have fourteen new Ars Arcanum pages from Khriss that I wrote and ran through beta groups, ran through the company. So I'm working on writing in the Cosmere already.
Nazh was born, as a character and as a concept, out of Isaac annotating maps, and wanting to have somebody... 'Cause Isaac was our original cartographer, been doing the maps ever since Mistborn, of basically all of the Stormlight books, until he started bringing some people in to do some of them. Not just Stormlight, but all of the Cosmere books. So if there's a map, or (particularly in the Stormlight books) ephemera, Isaac has had his hands in those, and he likes to add little easter eggs, and he came up with this persona of this character who was doing this. And we knew we wanted these to be in-world artifacts, but we also knew that we needed somebody who was kind of recovering these for some thing, and I'm like, "Well, this works very well with Khriss, probably compiling these and finding artifacts from planets and bringing them back to Silverlight." And so, that's kind of where Nazh was born. I borrowed him once before for Secret History; he makes a small appearance in Secret History. Larger appearance here. Isaac and I have talked through his history and his future, and as early as years and years ago (probably seven, eight years ago), I'm like, "What about this?" And that's when Nazh joined Starling's crew in his current incarnation.
I think it was with Alloy of Law where we realized we need somebody annotating some of these, now and then. One of the reasons was, when you're doing a map of a city the size of Elendel, we couldn't really put these tiny street names, and things like that. So we're like, "Well, we need somebody annotating this." And many things crashing together, but that was one of them.
Can't wait to get my hands on that new Roshar map! Any chance there's going to be more, not yet released world maps? (i.e. Elendel, Threnody, Nalthis, First of the Sun) I wanna frame them all! Also, having Cognitive Realm versions of them would be sick!
Glad you like the maps! We've talked about creating a poster of Elendel, so I suspect you'll see that at some point. As for the others, we'll continue to map them as Brandon explores them, so I think there's a good chance of eventually seeing a lot of the places you mentioned.
We're announcing tonight that the artist for Secret Project number three is Aliya Chen. She is currently a visual development artist and illustrator in the animation industry, working for studios such as Netflix and Riot Games. She's a long-time fan of science fiction and fantasy. Stormlight is her all-time favorite series for years. She says it's such a huge honor to be working with Brandon and Dragonsteel.
How much older is Wax than Wayne?
Uh... 17... 20 years... Something like that. No, no, no, not quite that much. It's more like 10 years isn't it?
Which one?
Let's see, I'm trying to remember how-- Wax is 40s... Wayne... Yeah, it's about 10 years.
Do the constellations have actual names you can share with us?
Clockwise from Threnody: the Mourner, the Dragon, the Fisherman, the Giver, the Lamp, the Knight, and the One Tree. The names are a bit generic, mostly because they are working names I used to refer to the different constellations during the process of painting the piece. It should be noted that the people from the spot in the Cosmere where the night sky does look like this would not see these pictures in the constellations nor give them these names. The pictures the patron saw in the stars here are based on their own observations and knowledge about the Cosmere as a whole. The locals would see entirely different pictures in their stars, for those who can even see the stars from their vantage.
One tidbit I should mention is that the lamp used to be a constellation called the Lover and was a man receiving breath from the Giver. I dropped it mostly because it's reference to Devotion wasn't working visually. Another thing to note: Not all the stars on this chart are physically within the Cosmere. Some are in the parts of Space beyond the Cosmere.
The images of the Warbreaker leatherbound you posted on Instagram include a circular symbol around the 'W' of the title - would this be "the Nalthis symbol" in the same way we see symbols for other worlds in Arcanum Unbounded, or is that just for style?
Good question! What you're seeing around the W of the title is a halo that the artist Jian Guo used around the Returned when I asked him to design the dropcaps for this edition. I pulled the halos from his drawings and used them as a design element in the text.
The symbol for Nalthis is finished, however, and is on the spine of the leatherbound. We'll reveal this bit of art very, very soon.
I've always wondered if there was any rhyme or reason to the designs of the original Allomancy symbols. Do the number of spikes signify anything? The direction they're point? In, out, the number of dots, etc.
No. For the most part. If I remember right, some of them have the dot inside the circle, some of them have the dot outside of the circle. And that signifies whether they're a Pushing metal or a Pulling metal.
Going hand-in-hand with the maps is the character Nazh, who annotates many of the in-universe maps. How much of Nazh was your idea? What about him appeals to you?
The story behind Nazh is, I was in Brandon’s writing group when we were workshopping The Rithmatist. And there’s a character named Nalizar in that book. I could never remember his name, so I kept calling him Nazrilof. So it became this running gag with Brandon, like… “Nalizar and Nazh are different people. Nazh is your alter ego, Isaac, and Nalizar is a character in The Rithmatist.”
When we got to The Alloy of Law, Brandon and I were firmly in the camp of including maps that are artifacts from the world. And we thought, where are they getting these? And who’s labeling them? Diana Wynne Jones wrote a book called The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, and there’s a map in the front that basically says that if a location is labeled on the map, then by golly you’re gonna go to the place during the course of the story. Fantasy maps have gotten this reputation of being kind of spoilery.
So when we got to the map of Elendel, we were looking at it, thinking if we only labeled the places that were necessary for the story, then we’re falling into this trope of fantasy. So how can we subvert this a bit? So, if the novel is compiled by Khriss, presumably, then maybe she has somebody who goes and gets the maps and labels them for her with pertinent information. It might still feel a little like “these labeled things are the important parts” but at least there’s an in-world reason why that is. That allowed us to develop a character around that. Brandon said, “Why don’t we have Nazh do this?” to which I agreed, and Brandon said, “Isaac, welcome to the Cosmere.”
Since then, Nazh’s role has grown into basically a sidekick for Khriss. Now, when working with Nazh, we think of him as a grumpy James Bond.
That Reddit thread established that the "H" sound is produced by writing another letter, and then marking it to denote that it should be pronounced as /h/ (while still looking like the other letter, for symmetric purposes). And on that note, the name of that traditional Vorin dress is "havah" - how would that get written? Is there a dedicated symbol for /h/ when it's not a "symmetric placeholder", or would the women just pick any letter and mark both instances here? Or something else altogether?
I believe they would just use the dedicated symbol for /h/.
I just got sketches for Herald Pailiah. I don't know what we've said about her in the past, but she is the Herald who is over the Order of the Truthwatchers. Her symbol is the one on the chart of The Way of Kings that is green, it's emerald, it looks like furling grass. So the Herald, there's some beautiful things going on with nature in the background with this one.
If you're like, "Who are all these people, Brandon?" They are mostly going to be in the back five Stormlight books.
In regards to the Infinity Blade book, how did you pick that up out of all the licensed products?
Oh, why Infinity Blade. You know, It’s because they worked so darn hard to get me. They just kept going through every channel they could to get a hold of me. They called up my publicist, they called up Tor, they were trying everybody who possibly had a contact with me, and finally got through Isaac. It was they worked so hard, and also, they offered me a really good deal, meaning the idea that I could do this. And it was less about me looking for a licensed product or something like that, and more of me wanting to test how the digital market worked for something like this, and also, I want to have more to do with video games. And Epic, you know that gives you Unreal Edge, and Gears of War, they are a pretty big deal of a company. And if I ever wanted to do my own video game, straight out of an IP, which I have one I want to do, having contacts there would be really helpful. And so they came to me, they pitched this, they gave me a lot of creative freedom, they gave me a really good deal, monetarily, to make it worth my time, and I got to test the waters digitally and see how it is selling a story in game, and I also got to make some contacts in video games and gain a little more street cred.
I want to build a Skyrim killer one day, is what I really want to do. I have a story, a world that I have built with magic and things that I want to do, that may be a Skyrim killer someday, an Elder Scroll type game. I really like those games. I have problems with some of the things they do, but I really like those games. So I really want to do that someday. That means I have to find some game studio who’s willing to give me 30 million dollars to play with, so I’ve got to have a lot of good street cred in video games before they let me do that. Yeah “30 million, that’s nothing!” That’s one of the big reasons that I’m doing it also. I mean I’m going to pitch this to the guys after a follow up Infinity Blade eventually, and we’ll see what they say.
Why did Infinity Blade try so hard to get you specifically?
Because they are from Salt Lake, and they really liked my books, and they kind of based Inifinity Blade sort of off of my books. Not based, but they were inspired a little bit by my books, and so they really wanted to work with me. So that’s why. They liked the books. And you know, they make really good games. I was really impressed. I am a gamer, I hadn’t played their games. And that’s another reason—I played the games and they were fun. So that’s why they tried so hard. They just liked the books. It is interesting that there is a lot of talk in video games of “Are video games going to grow up storywise?” Like they’ve really come to their own as an entertainment medium in the last ten years, and yet story tends to be a weak point still in a lot of these. Even the games that have great story lines are great story lines for a video game. There’s been a lot of editorials written and a lot of articles written saying “Guys, we need to start hiring top talent to write our stories rather than farming it out to Dave who does our Particle Effects, and moonlights as a writer.” There’s lots of discussion about this. So I think these guys are interested in doing something like this. Do you have something Isaac?
I just wanted to add why they tried so hard to get you. If you want a little anecdote, I was at a Barnes and Nobles on my lunch break, and I look up and there’s this guy that I went to college with. So I said “What are you doing lately?” “Well I own my own video game studio.” He said “What have you been doing?” “Oh, I made some maps for some guys books. It’s right here. ” He decided to buy it and read it, and he became a huge fan. He really loved it.
We want an art book!!!
We do too! It probably won't happen, however, until after the fifth book of the Stormlight Archive.
How do such big dissimilarities in covers compared to things in novels happen? For example in Way of Kings, Dalinar has a red cloak when his colors are blue and Wayne is carrying a shotgun on the cover of the Mistborn book even though a huge part of his character is that he refuses to use guns. I love the artwork btw. Keep up the good work!
We try to catch these things, but for The Way of Kings, if the sky is going to be a blue storm, then a blue cloak isn't going to stand out on it, so a red cloak makes way more sense and looks better. Even if the detail is off, it still gets across the epicness of the books. Book covers are supposed to give the feel of the books, not necessarily get every little detail correct. We try. And things like Wayne's gun slips through now and then. But even then, the cover to Alloy is a pretty good representation of what you get in the book.
I don't know if you knew all the Mistborn metals at the beginning when you designed them or if you really have to think about a new one if Brandon says, "Yeah, well there's going to be another metal."
Right now we have twenty-four symbols because we added the symbol for lerasium, which is also the symbol for-- No, that's not the symbol for lerasium, that's the symbol for Scadrial. So we have twenty-four symbols. Twenty-three of them correspond to the Scadrian alphabet--or at least in the Elendel region. Right now we have sixteen metals and then we had two more that got shifted off the chart. So we have four or five symbols that when Brandon comes up with a new metal we'll just assign that. Assign one of those symbols probably. But when we run out of that we'll find other ways to make the symbols look right.
He clarified that Nazh was caught spren fishing because he was trying to attract a spren to be his stooge and do some work for him. He got in trouble for it because he didn't know that was illegal.
You guys want to try [foil maps] for the other worlds too in the future?
There's a chance of this. We'll see how these go.
Can you give us any hints about Vax's magic system?
No.
*sighs* Okay.
Nope, nope, nope. Big RAFO. *interruption*
It's a magic system based on RAFO. The more RAFO you get, the more Investiture you're able to bestow.
I am currently outlining a Nicki Savage story, but that's obviously a long way off if it ever happens. No details.
I was wondering if you could answer a couple questions about the White Sand omnibus, as I've gotten the impression you're mostly the one running that?
The image for the Ghostbloods from Shallan's sketchbook in Oathbringer is different from the decal sold by Brandon Sanderson on his official site.
Which is correct?
They're both correct. The one from Shallan's sketchbook is just sketchier.
Horneaters are capable [of drinking the Horneater White]. They actually are human-singer hybrids, like the Herdazians, but in a different line. And they have a different physiology. And they actually are not 100% human and are capable of eating and ingesting things that would kill a person.
Can singers?
Yes, singers can drink the Horneater White.
