Chasm Kata

[Lopens Tenth Cousin he/him]

Does anyone know if the Chasm Kata was based off of a real life Kata, or if it was purely Brandon's brainchild?

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Lopens Tenth Cousin said:

Does anyone know if the Chasm Kata was based off of a real life Kata, or if it was purely Brandon's brainchild?

The only WoB on the topic is not specific to this kata, but still applies. 

Spoiler

John Robert Dax Dyson

Where did the inspiration for Kaladin's fighting style came from?

Brandon Sanderson

Classic spearman fighting is based off of rank and file spear formations. Nothing too spectacular. I did mix it with a little bit of Eastern spear-fighting, specifically some Chinese spear-fighting, but really your classic spear-fighting technique is pretty multicultural, what you're gonna want to do with a spear. I add flourishes, which come more from katas now and than than they do from actual real-world fighting.

Though a good resource for this is Matt Easton's channel on YouTube, Schola Gladiatoria, because what he will do is he will have people doing historical martial arts, and they will do ten bouts of a person with a spear versus a person with a spear. Most of these are European, but spear-fighting tends to be pretty similar across cultures. And just watching some short spear fights, or spear versus sword... I specifically watched a bunch of those bouts for Adolin's spear-versus-knife fight that we had in Oathbringer. Just really handy, the fact that he films large bouts like that and puts them on the internet.

YouTube Livestream 2 (Jan. 20, 2020)

There are many IRL katas similar to most of the descriptions from both Kal's spear practice, and Zahel's kata (as seen by Adolin, Azure and Kaladin). 

Hope that helps