Argent

I mean, it would have to be the soul, wouldn't it? When you use Investiture, it doesn't pass through your mind, through your Cognitive Self (usually?), it rubs elbows with your soul, your Spiritual Aspect. So once you are gone, that soul imprint stays behind, and your mind either get anchored to it instead, or it gets a new mind. But it's confusing, I agree. Here's a couple of relevant WoBs:

I think the misunderstanding here is that Brandon has used the word "soul", which I think he uses a little loosely when he's not paying attention. It's a good thing to clarify nonetheless. I think we know this to be the case, yes. As always, my own list is in my signature (though I am not fully done scratching out the questions I asked at JordanCon).

It's more than he doesn't like people just grabbing random questions from "the list". As long as you like the question you are asking, and you have a reason to be asking it (whether it is because you are pushing for some theory or just because you think it's cool), I think he'd be fine.

Why don't you get acclimated then, and in the future I might bribe you with tacos for pretty lines on a page.

Oh, no, that's not right. What I can do is sit down and try to guide you to whatever book I think you'd enjoy the best (if you want an opinion different from @Jorville's), and let you create whatever you feel like creating. Only then would I, as you put it, offer "loving incentives that may or may not have an alternate motive" - though with the love of a patron of the arts.

What I am getting all of this whole thing is that you need to bemoan more if the current course doesn't work out.

Uh, you need to enjoy these books because I need your art to pick them up...

This might be of interest to you.

Closed captions are pretty terrible right now, but Google is making pretty incredible progress in the field of natural language processing, so I actually wouldn't be surprised if they beef them up before too long. Maybe you can make that work.

Huh. Can't say that I've ever thought about this. It doesn't fit quite as nicely - the Vorin don't really worship the Stormfather, and they definitely don't worship the Nightwatcher, so Szeth wouldn't call the Lifebrother "one of your Vorin gods" if he were putting him on the same tier as the other two. But the naming pattern does fit, and it fits well. Additionally, the Vorin religious doesn't really have "gods", it has the Almighty, and it has the Heralds. So why would Szeth say "one of your Vorin gods" if he knows - or should know - that the Vorin doesn't have gods? I think my initial read of this had me assuming that Szeth doesn't really understand Vorinism, and so he calls the Heralds gods - but since Taravangian brings up the name, that requires him too to refer to one of the Heralds as "Lifebrother", which he wouldn't do in his native language; the conversation could still be in the Shin language (which they had just both used, so that could work), and the Shin could have names like this for the Heralds... but at this point it's getting convoluted. There's also the problem with the Sibling's apparent gender neutrality in Oathbringer, but maybe they weren't as fleshed out in The Way of Kings. So I think there are problems with this idea, but I really really like it, and it could yet work. Also, I am moving this to the OB spoiler board.

Except looking super fly!

Hey, welcome! A Shardblade tattoo sounds like it could be pretty amazing, but also a little difficult to find good art for. Outside of the art pages inside the books, I can't think of another good example - especially since those drawn by fans will probably be too detailed for ink. But I'd be curious to see what you come up with. As a glyph nerd, I endorse all sorts of Stormlight tattoos! Also, as a moderator, I feel like I should mention a couple of small things to watch out for. Posting multiple times in a row is generally considered bad forum etiquette, and while it's a huge deal, we'd prefer if you edited your most recent post instead of adding a new one. In the case of quotes, specifically, there is a multi quote button at the bottom left of each post, looks like a plus sign, you can use that to add multiple replies you want to quote and respond to - which is what I think you wanted here. I've gone ahead and merged your last few replies.

Señor Brandon? Es is me, Argenito, unrelated to that fool Argent. Spare a few WoBs?

Let's use the cover announcement as a hub for general conversation, at least for now.

That's cheating, I spent more time making my own topic pretty, and so you beat me to it

Skyward, the first book in Brandon's next Random House series (also, not Cosmere), just got a cover reveal, and man, is it gorgeous! Take a look: If you haven't read the synopsis for this new story, here it is: In addition to the cover, you can go read the prologue (which Brandon has read at events in the past), as well as the first two chapters over at io9.

Sure, I think all of these are cool.

*grabby hands*

I don't know if you've seen this, but I shared... some version of what you were looking for.

That's a low bar for achieving completeness in life. We are not that important in here.

Quick heads up, folks! Isaac saw the write-up and had a couple of things to say about. Most importantly, the final image I had up, the one with the glyphionary translations, was never meant to be shared publicly (one of the reasons being that the translations themselves were not quite finalized), so I've taken it down from both this post and the corresponding gallery. If you saw it, I'd urge you to treat anything on it as even less canon than the other not-quite-canon images still up. If you downloaded it, obviously there isn't anything I can do, but I ask you not to share it (you can also rename it to something like argent_messed_up.png). Much of what makes our little community amazing is the implicit trust Brandon's team puts in us, and I would really hate it if my screw-up tarnishes that trust.

Hey there, (fellow) nerds! I've got some stuff to share with you, hot from the JordanCon oven (well, lukewarm at best by now, 'cause it's been a couple of weeks, but still!). Those of you who have either read my recap of the (the second day of the) event, or listened to my recap of the event in the most recent episode of Shardcast will know that one of the awesomest things that came out of JordanCon was Isaac Stewart's workshop on creating Stormlight glyphs. I, along with a few others (notably, @Pagerunner, @Jofwu, and @yulerule) attended, learned a lot about glyphs, created our own (I made the "argent" glyph look like a banhammer ), and I promised to get all of this sweet sweet knowledge into your brains - pending approval by Isaac and the JordanCon team. And this is where the good news come in! I heard back from both parties (I mean, I contacted them both today, so I guess I could've gotten this done sooner, but I am a procrastinator, get off my case!), and we are in the clear! The slightly less good news is that the audio of the workshop, along with the few short video clips I took will take a little longer yet, but you'll get to see them eventually. But before we talk about glyphs, and pictures, and workshopping, some credit is due. Obviously, to Isaac Stewart, art director at Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC., for creating all of this amazing work. But also to Deana Whitney, Director of Workshop at JordanCon, moderator for Isaac's workshop, creator of awesome cakes, designer of the "Happy birthday" glyphs (seen further down in this post), and a bit of a forum lurker as @DeanaMCW. Without JordanCon, and her specifically, none of this would be happening - not for many many years, at least Now, onto glyph things! You can find all of these in the Creating Stormlight Glyphs gallery album, but I wanted to go over them in greater detail here. First, a doodle Isaac (or, possibly, one of his kids) did in Silk - an artiste sketch, as he calls it. It would eventually turn into the Alethi glyph for "family" - abara, shown further down, but for now it's just a freestyle doodle meant to capture what family feels like. To him, the vertical lines are like "protective tendrils" around an inner "core." And here is the final version of abara, the Alethi glyph for "family": You can see the similarities between the original sketch and the final version. Full disclosure, if Isaac were to put glyphs like this in the canon, he would "straighten them out and clean them up more before they wind up in the books." Interesting trivia about this particular glyph is that, like many other glyphs, it derives inspiration from (ancient) Arabic and Hebrew. For this one, Isaac drew on these languages' words for "family" - 'aylah (Quora told me it might be عائلة, but I have no idea!) and baith is how he pronounced those words respectively, but he also acknowledged that he is probably saying them wrong. A quick check with Peter, and we have abara. Along similar lines, we have the Alethi glyph for "physician" - tafar: Those of you familiar with certain physicians - doctors, you might say - may recognize what inspired this one... But let's move on to the two glyphs here not designed by Isaac. These two come from Deana, but have Isaac's stamp of approval. They read "happy birthday": I'm afraid I don't know what they sound like. And finally, the main handout we used in the workshop - a two-sided printout, Nazh's glyphs page from Oathbringer on one side, and several glyph examples on the other: The first page is nothing new, though it is worth mentioning that both the Oathbringer version of it and this one have one small mistake Isaac mentioned during the workshop - the glyph for "eternal" is actually supposed to be kalak, not kalad (as it appears here). The shape of the glyph remains the same, only the name changes. The second page is a little more interesting, as it does talk about Isaac's glyph creation process, as well as the way the Alethi language qualifies nouns (Bridge Four > Four Bridge). It also includes the Alethi words for the numbers from one to ten, as well as the symbol for zero (though, perhaps, they don't have a name for it?) - a lot, if not all, of which we already knew thanks largely to @Harakeke. What is more interesting about it is that it gives us the translations for all the glyphs from the Ironstance scroll from Words of Radiance! The big glyphs there spell out "Iron Stance", the small ones presumably outline a dueling technique specific to this stance - "stance", "lure", "trap," - culminating with "finish." The red seal/stamp is the symbol of the Calligraphers Guild, as reported by @Jofwu in this post. Technically, it spells Isaac's name (as Izyk), but in-world it wouldn't be that, it would be some Alethi word (presumably) that either stands for or represents the Guild. [There was another image here, but Isaac says it was never meant to be released publicly, so I am taking it down. If you saw it, don't consider anything on it anywhere near canon] Aaand that's it! Man, but have I been itching to share all of this with you guys! So what do you think? Are you thinking about geting all inked up now?