Visual Media Document: The Switchboard
Pictures that elegantly encapsulate the visual language of Project Samsara and the Switchboard verse.
Graphic #1
Something of a rather apt depiction of Striders.
Much earlier on in Samsara’s development, I was incredibly focused on capturing something I called the ‘Shape of the Strider’. It was a fairly amorphous thing to begin with, with the intent to incubate it and birth in into solidity, as something with clearly-defined meaning, particularly for the purpose of relaying it to others. The reason for this focus - which later became something of an obsession - was that I envisioned the Switchboard universe as being primarily defined by those who inhabited it; Striders being both its citizens and building blocks.
As with many things in the spirit of Samsara, this concept died and was reborn into new form, though retaining some of the old facets of its earlier incarnations. The easiest way I sought to describe the Strider was through a variety of one-word descriptors; they traveled endlessly and so they were nomads, their powers made them wizards, their weapons made them fighters, the hostile Starwylds made them survivalists, the necessity of cultivating and acting under doctrine made them zealots. And they are pilots, sailors, thinkers, scholars, builders, artisans, destroyers, protectors, storytellers, merchants, priests, healers, assassins, monks, thieves, diplomats, druids; list continues.
But above all, they were adventurers. Seekers and finders. Made so by the endless bounds of the Switchboard.
I feel this image captures this and much of the motifs that surround the canon of Samsara quite well, in the blending of the familiar and the alien, the archaic and the modern, and the placement of human beings at the center of it all as not just surviving, but thriving. It was in this melding of things at the opposite ends of spectra that Samsara was born. I wanted silicon as well as sorcery, and I set about doing much to reconcile the two. I think this image does indeed lean more to the latter more than the former, but there is an implication here that stems from the prevalence of martial weapons that isn’t necessarily eclipsed by the presence of the device in the foreground and the zipping ship in the back.
Perhaps in the true spirit of samsara, the old will always find its way back into the new. And so the denizens of the Switchboard will never truly escape the past even while charging into a future. Because these things are linked beyond merely temporal or technological lines. There is something deeper at play. Or is there really? Is there truly some grand material-transcending reason for spears and supercomputers to define an era? Perhaps not. The first principles of the world that era is elapsed within may never change from favoring range in combat, and favoring machines to offload work upon. But that’s why I say there is something deeper at play. These rules reinforce themselves continually into the future, and they define all that comes after them.
This building upon where one began without ever obscuring that foundation completely is perhaps one of the larger facets of the shape of Striders.
There’s also the fact that I find the capes cool, but that goes without saying.
Graphic #2: The Sign of the Star Corridor
The ‘Star Corridor’ referred to here is discussed in The Astrolabe
The Sign of the Star Corridor - or the Sextant as the former is a mouthful and a half - is the primary symbol that represents Project Samsara.
One of the oldest motifs for the project was one of grand adventure and exploration, and the things that would facilitate such, and thus a secondary motif that followed was one of navigation; a sort of exaltation of the seemingly elementary idea of getting to a destination from an origin. For this reason, I sought to create a logo for Samsara that seemed somewhat representative of that, which led me to look into various navigational and eventually nautical equipment.
The largest inspiration for the Sextant is in fact, the sextant. Used by mariners to determine position based on their position relative to the stars of the night sky, it meshed perfectly with Samsara’s existing motifs, and just that much was enough to bring the idea through many drafts into final product. The large arrow was superimposed as it was evocative of a compass needle, and the circular nature of the symbol ties in neatly to other Samsara motifs such as the Spyndl Academy Wheelhouse, and the halos borne by the Old Danseers, their descendants, the Sil’khan, and other Third Kin that manage to exalt themselves under praxis mechanics.
The Sextant points the way, as it were. Physically towards the Astrolabe, but metaphorically towards the ends of the kin; the ideal futures they deem worth striving for, and the path that must be walked to attain them.