JordanCon 11

[Argent]

So, somehow there wasn't a thread for this. Obviously, it is now after the fact, and only the Ahlstroms were there to represent Dragonsteel, but I figured this is still a good place for a quick recap.

• Warbreaker anniversary leatherbound is still being worked on, and both Dan dos Santos and Peter showed off some of the art that will go into it. Both panels had a no-photos policy, so I can't show you anything, but I can say that the goods are very very good! Dan is doing all of the endpapers, and they feature Vivenna, Siri, a bit of Vasher with Nightblood, and Susebron. 
• He also revealed a few concept pieces that won't be making it in the book, but he might put them up on a "the making of" kind of blog post on his website once the book is out. Crossing my fingers here, because there was an amazing Siri there.
• Dragonsteel has also done some work on the script they use in Warbreaker, and there will be a small sample of it in one of the endpapers; its meaning (Created by Dandos the Oilsworn) is not meant as an in-world canon, Dandos' name in Warbreaker does not imply that the Rosharan artist is actually a worldhopper, or anything like that, it's just Dan signing his work. I am only sharing this because it may be useful to have this if there is any kind of translation effort.
• Howard Lyon, the illustrator for the Vedel & Jezrien endpapers for Oathbringer, is doing another piece (at least) for Warbreaker. Dan showed me a not-quite final version of it on his phone, so I don't even know if I should say what it is about, but it's pretty incredible.
  • And speaking of Howard, I got to meet and ask him about the symbolism in the Vedel piece. The keys are obviously Vedeledev's Golden Keys (though whether they are meant to be canonically four is unclear) and they symbolize the unlocking of all the knowledge in the four corners of the world. The instrument in her other hand is a compass, and it's tied to several ancient (Earth) cultures, where the circle drawn by a compass represents all the knowledge... of mankind? meant for mankind? mankind can acquire? I don't remember the exact meaning; but everything outside of that circle is forbidden knowledge. Her coming down the stairs represent her descending to give all of this knowledge to mankind.
  • And while we are on the note of symbolism, I asked Dan about how much of what what's in his endpapers is meant to be symbolic and how much is references requested by Dragonsteel. He didn't go into specifics, but generally speaking Dragonsteel doesn't request specific things. For example, Shalash's dress design was his ideal, with the long sleeve maybe serving as an in-world inspiration for the safehand idea. He didn't say anything about the moons in the Ishar piece, but shared that the composition is meant to invoke a feeling of him bringing people together; and because I know you people, he did not use the world "unity".
  • Both illustrators mentioned that the pieces are meant as religious pieces in-world, so they are loaded with symbolism rather than lore.
• I asked Peter about the Tension/Cohesion apparently contradiction we touched in the most recent episode of Shardcast (short version, the Stormfather appears to contradict the Ars Arcanum). He reaffirmed his previous answer to @Pagerunner that it's a mistake and the Stormfather's words either have been updated in the ebook, or will be at some point. I take this to mean that the Ars Arcanum is correct in its assignment of Cohesion to Willshapers and Tension to Bondsmiths is correct.
• I had a chat with Karen about her work on both the wiki and the timeline. Nothing of substance I can reveal (because there was nothing of substance to reveal). There was a spreadsheet on her desktop called "Master Cosmere Timeline" but she didn't open it  

Of less import to the community is a whole is that I got to hang out with @LittleGreyDragon and her sister a lot, who were both cosplaying a lot, and it was absolutely brilliant! I'll probably have some photos sometime soon too. I spent a lot of time with @FelCandy too, and she is just as marvelous in person as you might already suspect from interacting with her online. She and LGD did a bit of art-ing together, so I imagine stuff will show up somewhere on their accounts at some point; go give them a follow so your eyes can feast upon the things I saw with mine too. Our own @Kaymyth was dressed up as a Mistcorn (that's a Mistborn unicorn) and it was traumatic. Other notable cosplay, just off the top of my head, included a couple of Doomslugs, a few members of the Skyward Flight, a Shalash (different from last year's Shalash, IIRC), your standard smattering of main characters (including a Vin with a truly gigantic koloss sword; that thing was easily 10 feet long!), plus a ton of Wheel of Time cosplay. A few people came up to me because they recognized my from Shardcast, and that was really cool too. 

The JordanCon anthology includes Brandon's reading of The Traveler (a few pages of Hoid meeting with Frost after the events of Hero of Ages), which Brandon read during last year's JordanCon, as well as another few pages of the short story that was meant to bridge Mistborn Era 1 and the 1980s Mistborn trilogy (now Mistborn Era 3, back then Era 2), which eventually morphed into the Wax & Wayne books; I believe there is a reading of it somewhere as well. I am yet to check the exact wording of these two against their earlier readings, but I will let you all know if there are noteworthy changes. 

And I think that's all! Some friends are nagging me to do a panel next year, so we'll see whether and how that pans out...

[+Extesian]

Quote

Shalash's dress design was his ideal

Not a bad Crusade 

But seriously great update dude, must've been such a blast!

[Kaymyth]

Because I am a shameless wretch, have a link to my costume contest entry - the Mistcorn!

It's every bit as terrible and amazing as the title makes it look. I won a Judge's Choice award. There's an outside chance I actually deserved it.

https://www.facebook.com/rosemary.williams.33449/posts/1014614785409184?notif_id=1556842180211681&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic

 

(Note this does lead you to my Facebook. Few of my posts are public like this one is. I must know you pretty well to accept a friend request, and I will not accept such requests at all from minors.)

[Wander89]

Really hoping to make it to a con however I'm in the UK and it'd be damnation expensive to do!

[Argent]

20 hours ago, Wander89 said:

Really hoping to make it to a con however I'm in the UK and it'd be damnation expensive to do!

Yeah, I hear ya. Some conventions - JordanCon being one of them - are totally worth it, but international travel can be rough.