Concept Artist Adrian Sallusti Shows Off Designs For Wheel of Time’s Rand al’Thor, Moiraine Damodred, and More

By John F. Trent

·August 17, 2020

Concept artist Adrian Sallusti recently uploaded a number of Wheel of Time concept designs featuring Rand al’Thor, Moiraine Damodred, Thom Merrilin and more.

Sallusti uploaded a dozen concept designs to his Art Station page.

His first upload was of the interior of The al’Thor Farm.

Robert Jordan, the author and creator of the Wheel of Time series, described the interior of the farm house as such in The Eye of the World book, “Tam had been extravagant with the candles, and a fire crackled in the big stone fireplace, so that the main room had a warm, cheerful feel to it. A broad oaken table was the main feature of the room other than the fireplace, a table long enough to seat a dozen or more, though there had seldom been so many around it since Rand’s mother died. A few cabinets and chests, most of them skillfully made by Tam himself, lined the walls, and high-backed chairs stood around the table.”

He added, “The cushioned chair that Tam called his reading chair sat angled before the flames. Rand preferred to do his reading stretched out on the rug in front of the fire. The shelf of books by the door was not nearly as long as the one at the Winespring Inn, but books were hard to come by. Few peddlers carried more than a handful, and those had to be stretched out among everyone who wanted them.”

Jordan then provided some details describing how reassuring the home was, “If the room did not look quite so freshly scrubbed as most farm wives kept their homes—Tam’s piperack and The Travels of Jain Farstrider sat on the table, while another wood-bound book rested on the cushion of his reading chair; a bit of harness to be mended lay on the bench by the fireplace, and some shirts to be darned made a heap on a chair—if not quite so spotless, it was still clean and neat enough, with a lived-in look that was almost as warming and comforting as the fire.”

“Here, it was possible to forget the chill beyond the walls. There was no false Dragon here. No wars or Aes Sedai. No men in black cloaks. The aroma from the stewpot hanging over the fire permeated the room, and filled Rand with ravenous hunger,” Jordan added.

Next he showed off a design of the exterior of Tam’s Farm.

As you can see below, it appears to be after the Trollocs attacked as the farmhouse is ablaze. If you look closely enough you can also see a Trolloc in the doorway.

Here’s how Robert Jordan described the farmhouse in Chapter 5 of The Eye of The World before the Trollocs attacked, “The sun stood halfway down from its noonday high by the time the cart reached the farmhouse. It was not a big house, not nearly so large as some of the sprawling farmhouses to the east, dwellings that had grown over the years to hold entire families.”

Jordan elaborated, “Here most of the rooms were on one floor, a neat rectangle with no wings or additions. Two bedrooms and an attic storeroom fitted up under the steeply sloped thatch. If the whitewash was all but gone from the stout wooden walls after the winter storms, the house was still in a tidy state of repair, the thatch tightly mended and the doors and shutters well-hung and snug-fitting.”

He then detailed the layout of the farm, the barn, and the sheep pen, “House, barn, and stone sheep pen formed the points of a triangle around the farmyard, where a few chickens had ventured out to scratch at the cold ground. An open shearing shed and a stone dipping trough stood next to the sheep pen. Hard by the fields between the farmyard and the trees loomed the tall cone of a tight-walled curing shed.”

Next he shared his design for the Heron marked blade that Rand obtains from his father Tam during the initial battle against the Trollocs.

Here’s how Robert Jordan first described the blade in Eye of the World, “When Tam came back, Rand stared in surprise. A thick belt slanted around Tam’s waist, and from the belt hung a sword, with a bronze heron on the black scabbard and another on the long hilt.”

He later fully described the blade, “Slowly Tam drew the weapon; firelight played along the gleaming length. It was nothing at all like the plain, rough blades Rand had seen in the hands of merchants’ guards. No gems or gold adorned it, but it seemed grand to him, nonetheless. The blade, very slightly curved and sharp on only one edge, bore another heron etched into the steel. Short quillons, worked to look like braid, flanked the hilt. It seemed almost fragile compared with the swords of the merchants’ guards; most of those were double-edged, and thick enough to chop down a tree.”

Sallusti then shared his design for the Horn of Valere

The first time the Horn of Valere is mentioned is from a tale woven by the gleeman Thom Merrilin inside the common room of the Stag and Lion. The gleeman detailed, “The Great Hunt of the Horn rides forth, rides to seek the Horn of Valere that will summon the heroes of the Ages back from the grave to battle for the Light. . . .”

As for what the Horn of Valere looks like, Jordan described it as thus, “A curled, golden horn nestled within. Despite its gleam, it seemed plain beside the chest that held it. The only markings were a line of silver script inlaid around the mouth of the bell.”

Later, the Ogier Loial would read the script and translate it, “His eyes went wider and wider, and his ears stood up straight. ‘Tia mi aven Moridin isainde vadin,’ he whispered. ‘The grave is no bar to my call.’ He then identified the horn as The Horn of Valere.

Next Sallusti shared a design of the exterior of the Queen’s Blessing.

Here’s how Jordan described the building, “The nearer they came, though the clearer the instruction, until at last they stood before a broad stone building with a sign over the door creaking in the wind. A man kneeling before a woman with red-gold hair and a crown, one of her hands resting on his bowed head. The Queen’s Blessing.”

He followed the exterior up with one of the The Queen’s Blessing’s interior.

Here’s how Jordan described it, “The common room was large and paneled with dark wood, and fires on two hearths warmed it. A serving maid was sweeping the floor, though it was clean, and another was polishing candlesticks in the corner. Each smiled at the two newcomers before going back to her work.”

“Only a few tables had people at them, but a dozen men was a crowd for so early in the day, and if none looked exactly to see him and at Mat, at least they looked clean and sober. The smells of roasting beef and baking bread drifted from the kitchen, making Rand’s mouth water,” he continued.

Sallusti then shared some character designs beginning with Rand al’Thor first.

Jordan described Rand, “He was a head taller than his father, taller than anyone else in the district, and had little of Tam in him physically, except perhaps for a breadth of shoulder. Gray eyes and the reddish tinge to his hair came from his mother, so Tam said.”

Next, he shared concept designs of Moiraine Damodred, who will be played by Rosamund Pike.

Jordan first described Moiraine through Ewin Finngar first describing her cloak and looks, “And hers is blue, like the sky, and ten times fancier than any feastday clothes I ever saw. She’s ten times prettier than anybody I ever saw, too. She’s a high-born lady, like in the stories. She must be.”

Jordan would later detail her through the eyes of Rand, “When he had heard she called Nynaeve child, he had pictured her as old, but she was not. At least, he could not put any age to her at all. At first he thought she was as young as Nynaeve, but the longer he looked the more he thought she was older than that. There was a maturity about her large, dark eyes, a hint of knowing that no one could have gotten young.”

He continued, ” For an instant he thought those eyes were deep pools about to swallow him up. It was plain why Mat and Ewin named her a lady from a gleeman’s tale, too. She held herself with a grace and air of command that made him feel awkward and stumble-footed. She was barely tall enough to come up to his chest, but her presence was such that her height seemed the proper one, and he felt ungainly in his tallness.”

Her description continued, “Altogether she was like no one he had ever seen before. The wide hood of her cloak framed her face and dark hair, hanging in soft ringlets. He had never seen a grown woman with her hair unbraided; every girl in the Two Rivers waited eagerly for the Women’s Circle of her village to say she was old enough to wear a braid.”

“Her clothes were just as strange. Her cloak was sky-blue velvet, with thick silver embroidery, leaves and vines and flowers, all along the edges. Her dress gleamed faintly as she moved, a darker blue than the cloak, and slashed with cream,” Rand’s description elaborated.

Jordan added, “A necklace of heavy gold links hung around her neck, while another gold chain, delicate and fastened in her hair, supported a small, sparkling blue stone in the middle of her forehead. A wide belt of woven gold encircled her waist, and on the second finger of her left hand was a gold ring in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail. He had certainly never seen a ring like that, though he recognized the Great Serpent, an even older symbol for eternity than the Wheel of Time.”

Next Sallusti shared his concept for the gleeman Thom Merrilin.

Jordan described him as thus, “The white-haired man whirled, cloak flaring. His long coat had odd, baggy sleeves and big pockets. Thick mustaches, as snowy as the hair on his head, quivered around his mouth, and his face was gnarled like a tree that had seen hard times.”

“He gestured imperiously at Rand and the others with a long-stemmed pipe, ornately carved, that trailed a wisp of smoke. Blue eyes peered out from under bushy white brows, drilling into whatever he looked at,” the description concluded.

He then shared a piece of concept art for a Tinker’s wagon.

Perrin first described them in The Eye of the World, “Their wagons were small houses on wheels, tall wooden boxes lacquered and painted in bright colors, reds and blues and yellows and greens and some hues to which he could not put a name.”

More specifically Jordan would describe The Seeker’s wagon. He wrote, “The Seeker’s wagon was yellow trimmed in red, and the spokes of its tall, red-rimmed wheels alternated red and yellow.”

Last, but not least he shared his concept for Whitecloaks.

Here’s how Jordan described the Whitecloaks, “Three men in breastplates and conical steel caps, burnished till they shone like silver, were making their way down the street toward Rand and Mat.

He continued, “Even the mail on their arms gleamed. Their long cloaks, pristine white and embroidered on the left breast with a golden sunburst, just cleared the mud and puddles of the street.”

“Their hands rested on their sword hilts, and they looked around them as if looking at things that had wriggled out from under a rotting log. Nobody looked back, though. Nobody even seemed to notice them,” he added.

What do you make of this concept art from Adrian Sallusti? Is this what you are expecting from Amazon’s upcoming live-action Wheel of Time series?