Isaac Stewart r/Stormlight_Archive AMA

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Name Isaac Stewart r/Stormlight_Archive AMA
Date
Date Oct. 1, 2019
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Entries 51
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#1 Copy

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.

#2 Copy

Pagerunner

What writing system are the squiggles around the circumference of Oathbringer's Oathgate map? Do they have any relation to glyph components?

Isaac Stewart

The squiggles are related to Dawnchant. Probably several generations later as the script started to evolve. And yes, they have a strong relation to the glyph components that we start seeing through cultures later on.

Pagerunner

What do they actually say? Silver Kingdom names?

Isaac Stewart

I think someone somewhere has figured out what they say exactly, but you're on the right track.

#3 Copy

RShara

My question is, would you please line up the Elendel Basin with the map of the Final Empire, so that we can get an idea of where it fits on that map?

Also, could we get or are we going to get a world map for Scadrial? Or even just the entire Northern Continent? I love your maps and I love seeing where everything is!

Isaac Stewart

What a great question, and thank you for your kind words. I've never posted this before, but this is what I used [image with green circle] in laying out the Elendel basin after figuring out how big we needed it to be to produce the amount of crops we wanted and also in figuring out the scale of the rest of the known world. The caveat here is that when we created the new map of the Final Empire--the one found in the leatherbound books and the new mass market paperbacks--we revisited the scale of the Final Empire with the help of our continuity editor Karen.

So while that image is what I used to create the Elendel Basin back in 2010 or 2011, we might have to revise the scale once we start showing more of the world. And yes, I suspect that in future books, we'll be getting more maps of various places on Scadrial, and maybe an entire world map at some point.

RShara

Awesome! So this would be pretty accurate? https://i.imgur.com/lfQkD3g.png [superimposed image]

Isaac Stewart

I would say that's pretty close, though remember that the land might've changed a great deal at the end of The Hero of Ages

#4 Copy

thegatorgirl00

Has Brandon ever wanted an image of something that you had to tell him wasn’t possible to do for whatever reason?

Isaac Stewart

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.

#6 Copy

simon_thekillerewok

How's the Nicki Savage story going?

Isaac Stewart

Thanks for asking about this! The Nicki Savage story has been plotted and planned and is almost ready to be written. It was derailed for the time being, however, by Taldain needing a little love.

Argent

Are you going to tie that to the events of any of the existing Mistborn (or Cosmere?) stories, or will it be like the Allomancer Jak ones, where it exists in isolation?

Isaac Stewart

The Nicki Savage story I've got currently planned deals with Nicki in the real world as opposed to her serialized persona. While it's not in the main sequence of novels, it is not as isolated as the Allomancer Jak stories.

#7 Copy

italia06823834

Are there any scenes (or just things in general) you wish you could have included art for that for whatever reason could not make it into the publications?

Isaac Stewart

This is often the case. Like a kid filling their plate way too full at a buffet dinner, I often have too many pieces of art I'd like to do compared to how much space or time we have to realize those pieces of art. Sometimes the hard part comes when an artist sends you too many amazing pieces and you have to just pick which ones work best for the context. For example, Dan dos Santos gave us several options for the Warbreaker leatherbound endpapers. And every one of them was beautiful! It was an extremely difficult decision to make since we could only have two endpapers, front and back. We wound up picking the art that worked best as endpapers, even though some of the options he presented us with would've made even better works of art to hang on the wall. Dan always makes the decisions difficult because he's one of the best artists working today and is just so storming good.

italia06823834

Well, that just begs the question:

When are we going to get an "Art of the Cosmere" book that has all these left out pieces in it? Hahah

Isaac Stewart

We want to do an artbook! It'll probably happen at some point after Stormlight 5.

#8 Copy

RiedDes

Although I know something similar has been asked before, but could you please share a fun tidbit about Nazh?

Isaac Stewart

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.

#9 Copy

TheFoxQR

Can you shed some light on how you went about designing Roshar's symbol?

Isaac Stewart

We knew that we wanted the Double-eye to be part of the symbol. So it was a matter of finding the right shape for the eye. We went through dozens of ideas of how thick the lines could be, what parts to emphasize, etc. We also knew we wanted swords to be a part of it, so we tried several ways of incorporating those until we wound up with what we currently have. Someday, I'll share the different iterations we went through to land on the current symbol.

#11 Copy

TheFoxQR

What was the process that you went through for designing the various "solar" system charts from Arcanum Unbounded?

Isaac Stewart

I loved making those star system charts for Arcanum. I found an old system chart that I thought looked really cool and combined it with the style of an old Arabic manuscript that caught my eye. I bought vellum, inked the start charts on there, and started painting them. It didn't turn out how I expected, so I scanned the inked lines, turned them into brushes in Illustrator, and created the charts again from there, painting them later in Photoshop and adding textures from the physical vellum projects I'd tried earlier.

TheFoxQR

Okay, that's just cool.

How accurate would they be in-world (they are obviously not to exact scale, but what about planetary colors and look)?

Isaac Stewart

I would say that they're relatively accurate when it comes to the big stuff, but they are also done in a style that would suggest the people of the Cosmere still have a lot to learn about astronomy. Some planetary colors are right, some are just guessed at, so the simple answer to this question is: Your Mileage May Vary.

TheFoxQR

The specific instance I was thinking about was the depiction of the 10 Rosharan Gas Giants. Discarding the glyphs and the names, were the colors of those giants in the star chart a cultural projection, or does it have physical basis in how they appear in the Rosharan sky?

Isaac Stewart

All these maps are products of the cultures and eras they came from. The mapmaker in this instance is probably using reference from all over the Cosmere, and the reference he used for this system came from Roshar itself. Since it's unlikely that the mapmaker has visited all the planets in all these systems, he has to rely on others for much of the information. I suspect he has the same questions you do about this particular map, though he rendered it based on the best information he could find. :)

#13 Copy

Argent

Nazh is, presumably, well aware of Hoid. Have they met, and how does Nazh feel about him?

Isaac Stewart

Nazh and Hoid have met. I suspect that Nazh is just fine with Hoid, though he wishes he would say things in a more direct way. Nazh doesn't care much for riddles or flowery language and wishes people would just get to the point.

#15 Copy

TalenelFPV

I'm getting "Taln's scar" tattooed on my right shin to cover a scar. Any input on the size/shape of the galaxy? (more than just the star map in the front of arcanum)

Isaac Stewart

That's pretty cool! Well, Taln's scar is going to look different from different vantage points in the Cosmere. From the vantage point used on the Arcanum star map, it looks like a curved string of red stars. Elsewhere it's straighter. From some vantages, it will be horizontal, and others it will be vertical. There will be the sides of some planets that won't see it at all, kind of like how the North star isn't visible from the southern hemisphere of earth.

TalenelFPV

Are just the stars red? Is there cosmic space dust around them that's also red? Like a Nebula, but also red?

Isaac Stewart

I honestly don't know if the stars are red or if there is space dust around them making them appear to be red. This is a question better asked of Brandon. However, I don't think you can go wrong making the stars red themselves as they appear on the chart, especially since most of the Cosmere views them as red, too.

#16 Copy

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.

#17 Copy

ArtemosHyre

There was a really neat recent post that showed how they use a rotated Copper symbol like we use the "cent" symbol ¢. Are there any other examples in your mind?

Isaac Stewart

I'm glad someone noticed that we took copper and rotated it to mean "clip." Since Scadrial is the closest planet to being like Earth in the Cosmere so far, it's fun to do little things like that. I could see us doing something similar with one of the other symbols to use it to mean a boxing, maybe the symbol for Gold.

#18 Copy

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.

#19 Copy

Dustbr1nger

When creating something for Mr. Sanderson, is it normally a back and forth? As in, if he sees something you draw that doesn’t quite fit what he imagined but might run with it, or is it more so slightly editing stuff until it resembles exactly what was in his mind?

Isaac Stewart

Good question! It is normally a back and forth. Oftentimes we work hard to get a specific vision he has in mind. Other times, he'll see something he likes better in the concepts I present to him. He's pretty open to new interpretations, if he likes the direction we're going better than what he originally had in mind, so long as we don't contradict what's already been written in the text. There have been several times where the art has informed the text of an in-process book, and we go back through the book to change the descriptions to match the art. But most often, we make sure that the art--as best as we can--matches the text.

Kyrroti

Is there a time when you two felt strongly on a design and disagreed, or are you both very open minded?

Isaac Stewart

This occasionally happens, but we're both very open minded about these sorts of things, and in the end, Brandon is the director of his stories. I would let him know if I thought going a certain direction in the art was a bad idea. He would let me know if thought the same thing about a direction I was taking something. It's a very respectful process.

#20 Copy

jofwu

Brandon mentioned the possibility of a "Girl Who Looked Up" picture book at Dragoncon. Is that something you guys have talked about? It sounds amazing.

Isaac Stewart

We're actively working on "The Girl Who Looked Up." My part in it is fleshing out the descriptions of what the illustrator will draw. I don't know a publication date, but there is a strong possibility of this happening.

#21 Copy

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.

#22 Copy

escapadistfiction

I have a question about how you interpret clothing and costume descriptions.

The example that comes to mind is Sazed's robe from Mistborn, described as made of "overlapping V designs" or "colorful V shaped patterns". I envisioned the Vs as being very wide and coming all the way across the front of the robe, but my husband thought they would be more like small, overlapping scales. Very different looks!

Has that ever happened between you and Mr Sanderson, and if so, how do you resolve it? Have you ever interpreted a description in a way that surprised him but he liked better than his initial intent?

Isaac Stewart

Good question! My interpretation of Sazed's clothing is probably influenced by cosplay and fan art, so I've always pictured it like this or this. That said, however you want to picture it (or however your husband wants to picture it) is fine. You're the director of the book you're reading. You're the set designer, the cinematography, and the production designer. So I don't really think there's a right or wrong way to envision something like this. Both designs you describe could be visually stunning.

Quite often I'll show something to Brandon and he'll say something like, "That fits the description, but that's not what I had in mind," and then we'll refine what he's been imagining. Other times he'll say the same thing and add "But I like this better, so let's go with it." The classic case of this happening was when he was writing the Mistborn books. I drew some little Inquisitors and mentioned that I thought it would be cool if the Allomantic symbol for the metal representing the Allomantic power they had as a misting pre-Inquistor was also a red tattoo on their Inquisitor face tattoos. (That was a mouthful.) Anyway, Brandon liked that idea and added it to the descriptions in the books.

#23 Copy

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!

#24 Copy

dgrath23

Which Radiant Order do you most identify with?

Isaac Stewart

I identify with bits and pieces of most of the Orders. My gut reaction is to say Dustbringers because I love their glyph. :) But I identify with their relationship to responsibility, learning to keep the passion and rage at bay because that is the responsible thing to do. On the other side of the coin, I might identify more with the Edgedancers like Lift, who focus on helping and caring for other people, because that's also a huge part of my personality.

All that said, I took the unofficial test, and it says I'm a Bondsmith.

#25 Copy

ArchKaen

Will we eventually be getting accurate maps of Sel, Nalthis, or Threnody? And will we get prints of all of the known maps?

Isaac Stewart

We've already got a good portion of Sel mapped out, and I can't wait to show it to everyone when the time is right. I suspect we'll also see Nalthis, or a portion of it, when we do the sequel to Warbreaker. We'll also likely see more of Threnody mapped out when we delve into Nazh's backstory, or when we get the other book(s) Brandon has mentioned about that planet.

I hope we will get prints of all the known maps! I'll do my best to make it so.

ArchKaen

Will the Sel map be around the release of the second Elantris book?

Isaac Stewart

I suspect that is around when we would release a Sel map, yes.

#26 Copy

potentialPizza

Who are your favorite characters in the Cosmere?

Isaac Stewart

Dalinar, Nazh, Khriss, Hoid, [Nicki] Savage, Vin, Kaladin, Vasher, and Baon, exactly in that order. :) But honestly, I love them all. Brandon has created such a wonderful universe of characters, and I pinch myself every day that I get to assist in the workings of these worlds.

Araedox

Even Moash?

Isaac Stewart

Moash has become a great tragic character, in my opinion. Yes, people love to hate him, but that still makes a great character. And it's the tragedy of his choices that pulls the emotions from us.

#27 Copy

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.

#28 Copy

ArgentSun

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?

Isaac Stewart

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.

#29 Copy

ArgentSun

Hemalurgy table on the website when?

Isaac Stewart

The Hemalurgic Table almost didn't make it into the leatherbound of The Hero of Ages. As such, I feel that the version I did add is sort of a prototype to a much cooler, much better, probably a littler-bloodier version of the table that will be done for the art print. When the art for that art print is done, then we'll post a better version of the art. I don't want a high-res image of the prototype version floating around the internet, if that makes sense. It's on my list of things to do, and I suspect I'll get around to it in the next year or so. Thanks for asking!

ArgentSun

OOOooo, interesting, I didn't think the changes would be that substantial.

Isaac Stewart

I think the changes will be mainly in the art.

Phantine

since Peter mentioned it's in-universe, I hope your bloodier version gives more clues about who is operating this gruesome hemalurgy lab

Isaac Stewart

Hmm...that's a good question. :)

#30 Copy

Aether-Wind

Given how much Sanderson tend to world build, and how integral for the WBing art seems to be for the Stormlight Archive series, how much influence do you have on the process?

Are there any examples of your input changing the WBing in a substantial way?

Isaac Stewart

I have quite a bit of influence in the process. I've answered some of this in other questions above, but one way I can think of is in the names found on the Alethkar map. We wanted to fill out the land, so Brandon gave me license to place and name a lot of the cities and features on that map, which I then showed him. He tweaked a few of the names, and then we called it good. In book three, the city Rathalas becomes important to a character's backstory. I placed and named that city (named after one of my children), so it was a lot of fun to then see Brandon later use that city for a pivotal point in a character's story.

#32 Copy

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.

#35 Copy

Aurora_Fatalis

Can you shed some insight on the more esoteric design decisions, such as the map of Roshar being based on a fractal, in particular a slice of the Julia set of some seemingly-random 4-dimensional function? How do things like this come to pass? Are designs like this mandates from Brandon? Do you ask mathematicians for something obscure to hide in the map? Is fractal theory the hobby of someone on the team?

Isaac Stewart

This is what Brandon has said concerning Roshar and the Julia Set. He handed the picture to me and said, "Can you turn this into a giant continent?" and I said, "Yes." The process of defining the coastlines, mountains, and islands was quite fun after that.

Araedox

How did the Roshar map being a Julia Set affect the process of creating it?

Isaac Stewart

It really was no different than other maps I've made. I usually am seeing maps everywhere I go: guacamole remnants on lids, stains on restroom floors (ew!!), and random stains in the road or the way a brick wall crumbles. I like these fractal-like images and save pictures for future maps. So I just took the Julia Set and looked at it and said, "okay, now it's a real continent, where are the rivers, how does the coastline go, where are the islands, etc."

#36 Copy

thaistro

When you drew the soul stamp symbol, did you draw what looked cool, then adapt a map to it (if one exists), or draw a map first, then make the stamp?

Isaac Stewart

It's been long enough ago that I can't remember which came first on that one. There is a map, however, and I have used it in creating soul stamps. (We probably won't see the map until Brandon returns to Sel, however.)

#37 Copy

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.

#38 Copy

DoritoJH

I wanted to know, of all the different worlds that Brandon has created, what is your personal favorite to depict (in maps, symbology, or art) and why?

Isaac Stewart

There's a soft place in my heart for Threnody, though we haven't seen much of yet. It also has my favorite of the symbols of the Cosmere so far. I love that the rules of the Forests of Hell are imbedded in the symbology of it. Great question!

#39 Copy

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.

#41 Copy

Oudeis16

Broadsheets of Bands of Mourning: How canon should we take the arcana in the Ghastly Gondola?

Isaac Stewart

As far as taking it as canon, it's about as canonical as the Allomancer Jak pieces. They're in-world fiction, so the characters are the narrators and are going to write things in a way that is entertaining but not necessarily how the magic actually works in certain instances.

#42 Copy

CentralIncisor

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!

Isaac Stewart

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.

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Swahhillie

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?

Isaac Stewart

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. :)

#45 Copy

Aether-Wind

What's your favourite Cosmere character, and why?

Isaac Stewart

Nazh, because he's basically a grumpy Scotsman with a penchant for finding very-hard-to-find things.

Aether-Wind

Well, now I'm looking forward to seeing more of him.

Do you know when (if ever) he'll end up having more of a screen (page?) presence?

Isaac Stewart

Thanks! We will see more of Nazh, if everything goes as planned. I hope you will enjoy!

#46 Copy

Windrunner4thIdeal

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.

Isaac Stewart

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.

#49 Copy

ArgentSun

When Nazh tells Kelsier that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is an "important rite" with "requirements and traditions", is he speaking as a Threnodite (in the context of Shades), or as a worldhopper who has seen more of the Cosmere?

Isaac Stewart

I suspect I know the answer here but would need to get confirmation.

#50 Copy

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.

Event details
Name
Name Isaac Stewart r/Stormlight_Archive AMA
Date
Date Oct. 1, 2019
Entries
Entries 51
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