#KNIGHTS RADIANT ARCHIVE#

I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. Some of these blend together-the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)ДЄnd then, of course, there's Hoid. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.) (The Sleepless.)Д«its of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be 'destroyed' in specific ways. Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)Дoesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.) Implying that some are actually immortal? :DДepends on which definition of immortal you mean.Дoesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. I'll explain it eventually we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal? And the problem is we all work from the same stories for so long that is part of the reason why fantasy is starting to feel so stale. So the thing is, you want every culture to be new and original but you are working from somewhere. The Herdazians are launching off some of the original Hispanic concepts.

The same way Shallan is based a little off of Western American/Europe culture. They are meant to be sort of in the same way that the Alethi are inspired by Korean culture, mashed up with this sort of concept of medieval knights. So she challenged me to put a Hispanic culture in my books because I had never done it before, and so Lift is an outgrowth of that, so are the Herdazians. You see a lot of these things but where are the Hispanics?' It also came partially from my wife reading a lot of fantasy and complaining that she's like, 'you know the Asians show up in fantasy a lot, Asian culture inspires a lot. 'Cause you say knight and they think of white dude in armor, and I wanted something very different from that. Lift was partially developed out of me wanting to build a character who was awesome but was so different from what everyone would think of. And so I said 'Well, what is somebody who does not fit that mold?' That you would say is not a knight. What you don't imagine is a thirteen-year-old Hispanic girl, right? And I said 'I want to have the people that are in the Knights Radiant to not be the standard what you think of.' They are the entire world's cultures having different people.

#KNIGHTS RADIANT ARCHIVE#

With Lift part of the inspiration was- Boy, what was the inspiration for Lift? When I was building The Stormlight Archive I said, 'I want the Knights Radiant to run the gamut of different character styles, ages, and types of story.' And when you say 'knight'-when I say knight you imagine one thing.

Knights radiant