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So I was looking at this by @Eri:

And I realized I'd forgotten to ask something... where exactly did the Feruchemy symbols from the table of Feruchemy come from? When did these symbols start being used at all? That's not Ancient Terris, though the symbols could've come from there, as they do share some resemblance, and the Steel Alphabet, which was derived from Ancient Terris, is the only Northern Scadrian script that survived the Final Empire anyway. Were the symbols created only to represent Feruchemical metals or did the Terris in era 2 create their own script? Is this from a future era where this happens?

Table_of_Feruchemy.thumb.jpg.762ac6f68b669b8a29860bbb61f1eb88.jpg

 

Scadrial Steel Alphabet Symbols.jpg

Terris letters.jpg

Edited by Honorless
hyperlink broke, added normal link; some images wouldn't upload, added different images
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I think that Harmony used his knowledge during his first few moments of ascension to derive the Feruchemical symbols. I am sure they the keepers knew bits and pieces, and when Harmony ascended, he was able to collect it all together and then fill in the gaps with supremely well-educated guesses.

Edit: Hero of Ages spoiler

Spoiler

I just remembered, the kandra were literally the Terris people. I am sure they remembered it and passed it on to new generations of kandra. They would have shared the knowledge with Harmony after he took up the Shards.

 

Edited by Chinkoln
Remembered something
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1 hour ago, Chinkoln said:

I think that Harmony used his knowledge during his first few moments of ascension to derive the Feruchemical symbols. I am sure they the keepers knew bits and pieces, and when Harmony ascended, he was able to collect it all together and then fill in the gaps with supremely well-educated guesses.

Edit: Hero of Ages spoiler

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I just remembered, the kandra were literally the Terris people. I am sure they remembered it and passed it on to new generations of kandra. They would have shared the knowledge with Harmony after he took up the Shards.

 

Are you saying the Feruchemical Symbols are in Ancient Terris? They aren't. They look like they're derived from Ancient Terris, like the Steel Alphabet. They couldn't have been from some other Classical Scadrial era script, I don't think, since Feruchemy ran in Terris blood. Although... they could be even older than Ancient Terris...

Edited by Honorless
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1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Are you saying the Feruchemical Symbols are in Ancient Terris? They aren't. They look like they're derived from Ancient Terris, like the Steel Alphabet. They couldn't have been from some other Classical Scadrial era script, I don't think, since Feruchemy ran in Terris blood. Although... they could be even older than Ancient Terris...

Maybe it is the evolution of writing over time. On Roshar it is made clear that over time the glyphs have changed and adapted to the culture and environment. Perhaps as time progressed on Scadrial a similar process happened, resulting in a seemingly new language that is actually just a drastically altered version of the original.

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33 minutes ago, Chinkoln said:

Maybe it is the evolution of writing over time. On Roshar it is made clear that over time the glyphs have changed and adapted to the culture and environment. Perhaps as time progressed on Scadrial a similar process happened, resulting in a seemingly new language that is actually just a drastically altered version of the original.

But the Steel Alphabet is all that survived the Final Empire, isn't it? No other N Scadrian script was used in the Empire, or the Elendel Basin Post-Catacendre. Why would they diverge? (assuming from the Table of Allomancy, which used the Steel Alphabet symbols) When did they even diverge? Did the Terris have a different script in the Final Empire? It could happen but wasn't it their script in the first place that was adapted into the Steel Alphabet after the Lord Ruler's Ascension? Did it happen Post-Catacendre? The Terris did isolate themselves

Edited by Honorless
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57 minutes ago, Honorless said:

But the Steel Alphabet is all that survived the Final Empire, isn't it? No other N Scadrian script was used in the Empire, or the Elendel Basin Post-Catacendre. Why would they diverge? (assuming from the Table of Allomancy, which used the Steel Alphabet symbols) When did they even diverge? Did the Terris have a different script in the Final Empire? It could happen but wasn't it their script in the first place that was adapted into the Steel Alphabet after the Lord Ruler's Ascension? Did it happen Post-Catacendre? The Terris did isolate themselves

The steel alphabet is the only thing that survived in common culture, but the terris/keepers had some records and the kandra had ALL the knowledge. If you look at an evolutionary tree, you can see that one thing can evolve into a different thing AND into something by that is similar to the original.

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3 minutes ago, Chinkoln said:

The steel alphabet is the only thing that survived in common culture, but the terris/keepers had some records and the kandra had ALL the knowledge. If you look at an evolutionary tree, you can see that one thing can evolve into a different thing AND into something by that is similar to the original.

I'm not arguing that. Just where and when did this divergence happen? Is this script a natural evolution or sort of designed by the Terris, like the Steel Alphabet was? (the script looks like it changed due to medium, Ancient Terris looks like it was written with brushstrokes, while the Steel Alphabet looks like it was engraved) Is this an actual Terris Alphabet that's in use or just Feruchemical symbols?

Do we have any info on this at all from Brandon? 

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I can explain the brush strokes and engraving part pretty easily. In Ancient Terris they didn’t know that Ruin could change text, so they wrote everything. The Lord Ruler knew that Ruin could change text so he ordered everything important to be engraved.

I found this

Quote

FireOx

Do we know the exact purpose for creating 3 different symbols for each book's metals (chapter symbols)? Is it for the 3 metallic arts? If so, which belong to which?

Isaac Stewart

Hi FireOx! The three sets of symbols show the progression of the Allomantic text through the ages. The earliest script is from Hero of Ages. It was changed and modified into the Terris script symbols we see in Well of Ascension. After more time, the Terris script morphed into what is now known as the Allomantic Alphabet or the Steel Alphabet, which are the symbols used in Mistborn: The Final Empire. We've extrapolated the Steel Alphabet into a script that's more-standardized and refined for the chapter headings in Alloy of Law, which takes place 300 years after Hero of Ages.

Miscellaneous 2012 (Jan. 24, 2012)

 

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Okie-dokie, I found these two WoBs:

Quote

i_do_stuff

Do the Allomantic and Feruchemic symbols for the metals have any extra meaning to them? More specifically, were they given those symbols on Scadrial for a reason?

Brandon Sanderson

As for the symbols, they go WAY back to before the Lord Ruler's ascension. So perhaps, perhaps not. (On other words, RAFO.) :)

Mistborn: Secret History Explanation (Jan. 31, 2016)
Quote

Kurkistan

Looking more closely at the [Steel Alphabet] font, it looks like we're missing some information. Note that the tin symbol for 'e' and 'i' are slightly different: the dot is in a different location. I suppose that the dots are diacritical marks, then.

Any other diacritical information we should know about the Steel Alphabet (or Alethi, for that matter), Peter?

Peter Ahlstrom

Moving the dot to distinguish vowels is a modern innovation, within the last 100 years by ALLOY OF LAW. I suspect that dots may be gone entirely (except for the two changed vowels, and maybe "capital" letters) in many fonts by the time you get to the second trilogy. Numbers might get a moved dot too. The placement of the dots in the original symbology has to do with Allomancy, but they're largely superfluous in writing.

The Feruchemical symbols (which are in the RPG) are evolved from the same root (the ancient symbols you can see in MISTBORN 3), but I don't know about their use in modern writing. It could be something like the hiragana/katakana distinction. But that's just speculation right now.

Miscellaneous 2012 (May 7, 2012)

So, the Feruchemical symbols are older than the Final Empire, so it is possible that they might be older than what's called Ancient Terris, especially given the origin of Feruchemy

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teknopathetic

I have a Reddit PM WOB that says the Terris were given Feruchemy as a gift, and that Brandon may get into how that occurred at some point.

Brandon Sanderson

It was more of a gift than an accident, but I do plan to someday dig into it more.

General Reddit 2018 (April 30, 2018)

 

Okay, so, I expected this to have a way more definite answer than this, which is why I originally posted this on Cosmere Q/A. I'll ask the mods to move it to the Mistborn forum to get our tinfoil hats on.

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