To clarify:

The Axis and Anvils, Infinite Dungeon, and the Cairn RPG were all run by a man name Mike Nystul.  Ross was a independent writer that was hired to come in and write for the Cairn RPG, which he immediately fell in love with (who wouldn't?). When Nystul started having some issues, Ross bought the Cairn IP off of him in order to move the project forward.

Ross outlines all of this in his SoulJAR blog (which is posts to frequently) here http://souljar-games.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-message-to-all-backers-of-cairn-rpg.html

I certainly hope that you don't associate Ross with Nystul, the man behind those other projects. If you have any questions, feel free to send him a message (or me a message here). We are very open about our process and about Cairn.

Hello everyone! I'm Jack from the SoulJAR team who is running the Cairn Cards Kickstarter!  Thank you for your comments and feedback on the project, we have been wanting to hear what people think.

As far as the costs and funding and RPG tie-in, Ross Isaacs explains in his SoulJAR Games blog about that when the project was launched:
http://souljar-games.blogspot.com/2013/08/souljar-grows.html

It's true we haven't revealed the number cards yet, but we plan on showing more and more cards with future updates.
As of currently only the face cards will be full color, but if we can fund well, we hope to color the whole deck

We have tons of artwork by Jeff Laubenstein that are being used, and we are making sure the suits are thematic within the deck, as well as keeping the soul of the Cairn RPG as well

In addition to the Kickstarter page and blog page, we the team also updates on Facebook and Google+ if anyone wants to ask any questions of give feedback directly to us!