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Interview #1052: WOR Signing Table Q&A, Entry #12

EHyde

I was wondering, on Roshar, what sort of plants and animals do they use for fabrics, since they don’t have a lot of wooly animals and the plants are different?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them are plant-based. I think I’ve mentioned one of the plants.

EHyde

They have silk though, right?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It’s called sea-silk, they grow it in the water. It comes from the coasts.

EHyde

So they don’t have anything like our silk, then?

Brandon Sanderson

If you looked at it, you would call it silk, but it is being produced in a very different way.

EHyde

Our silk comes from insect cocoons, and they have a lot of that there, but they don’t use it for fiber at all?

Brandon Sanderson

Insect cocoons on Roshar are either, they melt in water from the highstorm cycle, or they have stone in them, so they don’t work really well for textiles. There are certain rockbuds you can shred the inside of the shell to get a textile, there’s sea silk that grows out in the ocean, and there are other plants of a similar nature.

EHyde

I was also wondering about the Steel Alphabet in the Mistborn books, each letter aesthetically looks like it’s built from a cuff, a spike, and a bead, and was that intentional to reflect the magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Do remember that that writing system was developed by the Final Empire. They actually took the ancient Terris symbols and made them more to their aesthetic over time.

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