Timewaster's Guide Archive

Hm.

You know, Brandon's said before that the basis of the story, the "elevator pitch" if you will, is the question, "what if a Hero rose to defeat the Dark Evil... and he failed?".

Are we 100% certain he's talking about the Lord Ruler and his encounter with Ruin/Preservation? What if he's talking about the story as a whole?

I've got confidence that Brandon's not writing a tragedy, but he does love to take expectations and give 'em a twist. He's talked about that more than once on Writing Excuses, and I wouldn't put it past him to do it again.

It definitely looks cool. However, I think that the only spikes pretty much everyone knew about were the ones in the eyes—indicating that the other spikes are usually hidden by clothes.

And honestly, I don't know if I care for the bare-chested look anyhow, so some sort of crossed robe/tunic or something seems like a good idea.

One thing I try not to do, unless directed to, is make a costume too plain or uniform. For instance, I would give most Steel Inquisitors the cloak, but I might change up their robes or other clothing elements in small ways... different accessories, maybe the occasional tattoo outside of the Inquisition tatts around the eyes, that sort of thing. So maybe one Inquisitor would go around shirtless showing off his nails, while another would wear a full tunic. Even amongst uniformed groups like police or military personnel, there's usually minor variations.

Thanks! Here's what I came up with:

http://inkthinker.deviantart.com/art/Mistborn-Steel-Inquisitor-96465004

Sorry I can't post it in-line, but I'll see what I can do after I get home and can access my server. I'll probably put it into the regular Fan Art thread, though, just to keep things tidy

If anyone else comes up with more details, feel free to post about 'em. I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll want to draw one of these guys.

-EDIT-
posted in the fanart thread. Check it out.

I'm going to guess that Kindle pricing is out of our man Brandon's hands... that sort of call is usually made at the publisher level, or possibly even in the ivory towers where shadowy Amazon and Tor executives meet to set prices while stroking white cats and summarily executing hapless staff who fail to put exactly four cubes of sugar in the tea.

I'm frequently bewildered by the pricing of digital content, which you would think obviously belongs at a price point well below that of print editions, both because of the ephemeral nature of the product being purchased AND as a competitive edge to support a new format, but no... it rarely seems to drop much below the price of physical media, leading the consumer to feel that somehow, somewhere, someone's being a greedy prat.

My one issue with that is that Elend could not beat 10,00 Koloss with 2,000 untrained untested farmers, Mistborn or not, and he certainly wouldn't rush them out in the open.  If he is willing to become a tyrant, even temporarily, then why is he not willing to trick people into following him by staging a glorious victory over a terrible enemy? 

But they're not "untested"... Fatren tells Elend that they've been in battles before, when various rogue groups tried to take over the city from the skaa. They're not trained soldiers on the same level as a standing army, but neither are they a bunch of farmers who don't know which end of the sword to hold.

Two additional points: Elend's attack has the advantage of surprise... the koloss are tired from marching and in the middle of setting camp, and I don't think that koloss are particularly used to being charged at all. And Elend has stated that he has an army on the way... they don't need to defeat 10,000 koloss, they just need to route them, unnerve them, trim them down and freak them out a bit until Vin and the rest of his backup arrives.

I don't expect anyone except Vin has the power to still the koloss. We haven't really been given an indication of how powerful a Mistborn Elend really is, and even Vin was barely able to push hard enough for a stilling. But just the same, Elend is (presumably) well-charged and equipped himself, and more than capable of putting a hurt on even an army of koloss.

I think some of you guys might be over thinking it. Elend has grown up and matured, and this chapter shows it. We know there were more bands of random, raging koloss wandering the Final Empire than just those from the army that hit Luthadel, and it makes sense that one of the first things Elend & Co. would do is to stop them, and build up his own side to defend his people from the other Dominances and the forces of Ruin.

As for him being a tyrant, he would come to that conclusion after his earlier attempts at a more democratic government nearly ended in disaster. Democracy (as has been well illustrated on our own world) does not work well in a war zone. For the good of others, Elend will be a tyrant. I just hope he doesn't grow to like it.

If this is just a ploy to trick people into following him by suddenly "stilling" the koloss, I think that would be out of character for Elend. I have faith that, inside, he's still an idealist. He's just an idealist that's had a heavy dose of harsh realism pounded in, now.

And facial hair, depending on how he wears it, can look tres cool.

Inkthinker, did you message Brandon yet?

I have. It's not for me to talk about, though.

Edited version of the koloss is up now, folks. I've overwritten the older version, so as to not double-post the image.

I know (now) that the immature koloss come as small as 5', but to pull the smaller one down much further would end up pulling the lines in such a way so that it'd look reduced, like seeing a xerox copy placed in there. Rather than do that, I put him on the upper range of the smaller koloss. I also made their eyes a bit more of a burning orange, to reflect what Sazed sees as "eyes the color of the sun at dusk" (TWoA, p215). And there's some small changes to the text and the numbers were fixed to reflect the more proper sizes. I could stand to build the contrast in blues better, 'cause darker is harder to work with, but hey... it's 5AM and I just spent 13 hours drawing animation. Cut a brother some slack.



Actually reading the text (most of the descriptions run from pages 212-217 of the paperback edition), shows me a couple other things I might do better next time, such as making them a bit stockier at full growth and misshaping the facial features more to reflect the stretched "sack of skin" effect. I would probably also do a bit more with the sword-and-coinsack harness, such as it is... the koloss carry their weapons "...bound to their backs with leather straps. And tied to those straps [are] pouches" (TWoA. p216)

Brandon describes the pouches as being both "tied to their swords" and "tied to the straps", but if you have the coin pouches actually attached TO the sword, it leads to some practical issues. Just tying the sword to your  back with straps also presents some functionality concerns, but there's any number of slipknot ties or other methods by which a character might tie or strap a sword while still making it easily drawn in short order. Figuring out little details like that is part of the fun, but for now I'm doing a more liberal version of "tied to the straps".