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Brandon's been answering some questions on Reddit, and he just said some pretty cool stuff.

NEPENE:

Would Ruin be more compatible with Rayse, would he pick up that shard had he visited Scadrial and shattered him? All the shards we have seen that he has shattered seem rather different in intent than him- Honor, Cultivation, Love, Dominion. But Ruin seems more in line with Odium. Rayse has ruined the days of quite a few people.

 

BRANDON:

Technically, Ruin would be most compatible with Cultivation. Ruin's 'theme' so to speak is that all things must age and pass. An embodiment of entropy. That power, separated from the whole and being held by a person who did not have the willpower to resist its transformation of him, led to something very dangerous. But it was not evil. None of the sixteen technically are, though you may have read that Hoid has specific beef with Rayse. Whether you think of Odium as evil depends upon how much you agree with Hoid's particular view.

That said, Ruin would have been one of the 'safer' of the sixteen for Rayse to take, if he'd been about that. Odium is by its nature selfish, however, and the combination of it and Rayse makes for an entity that fears an additional power would destroy it and make it into something else.

This quite clearly implies that Hoid wrote the letter, personally my mind is made up on the matter.

 

Many thanks to Nepene for so quickly letting us know about this revelation...

 

Also, Shadesmar!

BRANDON:

There are many ways to enter Shadesmar. You'll see more of this in the future. One thing to keep in mind about Shadesmar is that space where things are thinking is expanded, while space where there is nothing to think is contracted. In other words, in an empty void, you get almost no Shadesmar. This makes distances as we think of them very different there.

As for the symbols making up the heads of the cryptics, those are not glyphs. But it's possible you would recognize them...

 

This info comes from here.

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It's funny because Josh and Mi'ch and I got into a big argument on how Cultivation is really Ruin's opposite. I was adamantly opposed :P But okay.

But this is so amazing. Absolute confirmation there are sixteen Shards, and almost confirmation on Hoid writing the letter (after all, the grudge against Rayse is only mentioned in the letter).

And also that Shadesmar info makes total sense and matched my conception of it. Empty space is contracted severely, so there's less "distance" to travel when worldhopping.

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This also makes sense for why all the other "Expanses" border Roshar's expanse (Wish we had a name for that). There's very little cognitive stuff going on between the two, so there's very little space between them in Shadesmar.

 

Also, I'm still saying Ruin and Preservation are opposites :P

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There were some other good finds.

 

It says that it's dangerous to travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Why?

Brandon: It has to do with the Dor and the lack of an entity controlling much of the power Odium left in his wake on Sel.

Windrunner17

 

This is an awesome answer!

If you wouldn't mind answering, does Roshar have a similar problem, with Honor being Splintered?

Thanks!

 

No, Roshar does not have the same problem. There are some differences going on. (One reason being that the spren are far more extensive on Roshar, and provide something of a "release valve." The Seons and the Skaze on Sel are not numerous enough to fulfill a similar function. Though, of course, that's only one part of the puzzle. Raw power is dangerous.

It's one reason everyone should be thankful Kelsier was around on Scadrial.

 

I was always curious why Shadesmar was inaccessible. This explains a lot. Thanks for getting that answer.

 

I did intend to put it here, though I was hoping for an answer to my question on whether Odium is morally ambigous by common standards. Sadly it is not meant to be.

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You missed another tidbit, by the way.

Woah, that's interesting. I had no idea odium left little bits of his power on Sel... I guess it kinda makes sense for evil monks to be powered by pure hate, though.

Odium did not leave his power behind, one should note. He left several other powers which are now, to a large extent, mindless...

Hmm... given how shadesmar is described, it seems like the shortest distance between any two points would be 'as the mole digs' - that is, straight through the unpopulated and compressed core of the planet. Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Well, now we know why Shadesmar doesn't exist in interplanetary space! What an interesting explanation for why Shadesmar was a "special case".

Brandon's comments about the mindless powers rampaging through Shadesmar on Sel also make a lot of sense. I wonder if we'll ever get to see an in-story attempt to enter Shadesmar on Sel anytime soon.

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Ah yeah, I did miss that. We knew that he'd left behind shattered shards, but we didn't know that he'd left behind none of his power. Cool.

I may be reading too much into this, but 'several' usually implies 'less than a dozen or so'.

And I'm not ENTIRELY convinced this isn't an Aes Sedai truth, and that odium didn't drop off a few splinters from some other world. What better way to prevent a shard from coming back together than mixing up the pieces, eh?

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I may be reading too much into this, but 'several' usually implies 'less than a dozen or so'.

And I'm not ENTIRELY convinced this isn't an Aes Sedai truth, and that odium didn't drop off a few splinters from some other world. What better way to prevent a shard from coming back together than mixing up the pieces, eh?

 

http://xkcd.com/1070/

 

I hope this clears things up for you.

 

If Odium did drop off some splinters that would mean that if he ever had to engage in a shard vs shard battle he would be weaker and might lose, as with Preservation and Ruin.

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I think the "not glyphs" that we would probably recognize are probably Aons. How this connects and what this means, I have no idea, but this was my first response to this.

Could be Aons, but they're described as being angular, which most Aons aren't particularly. Sounds more like feruchemical symbols to me.

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If Odium did drop off some splinters that would mean that if he ever had to engage in a shard vs shard battle he would be weaker and might lose, as with Preservation and Ruin.

I said splinters from some other world. Grab a couple chunks of, I dunno, Gluttony and toss them onto Sel
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Could be Aons, but they're described as being angular, which most Aons aren't particularly. Sounds more like feruchemical symbols to me.

Except most Aons are full of corners on account of Aon Aon. I think they definitely qualify. Also, the comment about spren being "more extensive" is interesting in that it implies that they exist elsewhere.

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I said splinters from some other world. Grab a couple chunks of, I dunno, Gluttony and toss them onto Sel

 

Ah I see, I thought you mean he'd toss some odisplinters from offworld.

 

I'm not sure random splinters would do that much to prevent reconstitution of Devotion and Dominion. They're both powering numerous individuals who can defeat any singular magical threat without too much problem. What could Gluttony do?

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Except most Aons are full of corners on account of Aon Aon. I think they definitely qualify. Also, the comment about spren being "more extensive" is interesting in that it implies that they exist elsewhere.

They do have a few corners but I don't know that I'd classify that as being angular in a description, feruchemical symbols are pretty much entirely angular whereas aons have many smoother curves.

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Ah I see, I thought you mean he'd toss some odisplinters from offworld.

 

I'm not sure random splinters would do that much to prevent reconstitution of Devotion and Dominion. They're both powering numerous individuals who can defeat any singular magical threat without too much problem. What could Gluttony do?

Well, Sazed apparently is having issues because his shards aren't (HA) in harmony with each other. I figure that combining a few splinters from the same shard would be a lot easier than combining a bunch of splinters from different shards. So you take a few chunks of devotion and drop them on gluttonyworld, take some pieces of gluttony and toss them onto sel, so if anyone DOES get the bright idea of reuniting all the splinters on a shardworld, they'll end up with an incohesive mess of gluttonminion.
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They do have a few corners but I don't know that I'd classify that as being angular in a description, feruchemical symbols are pretty much entirely angular whereas aons have many smoother curves.

But do we have any reason to believe the the Feruchemical symbols would be this cosmere relevant. We know that Aons are at least somewhat shardically connected as the specific forms already existed before AonDor was developed/discovered, and the early practitioners learned the Aons rather than inventing them. However, if the Allomantic symbols are any indication, then the Feruchemical symbols are probably just some in world alphabet that even seems to have followed some other line of adaptation from the mist based symbols in HoA that the Allomantic symbols ultimately derived from.

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Well, now we know why Shadesmar doesn't exist in interplanetary space! What an interesting explanation for why Shadesmar was a "special case".

I'm so happy I guessed this one :) although it was one of the simpler things to guess at. Maybe it'll inspire me to guess weirder things...

I wonder what effect it has on cities vs. countryside? Are cities in Shadesmar just huge? Or maybe only a little bit bigger, because all life has cognative presence, not just human life.

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I'm so happy I guessed this one :) although it was one of the simpler things to guess at. Maybe it'll inspire me to guess weirder things...

I wonder what effect it has on cities vs. countryside? Are cities in Shadesmar just huge? Or maybe only a little bit bigger, because all life has cognative presence, not just human life.

 

I would personally still imagine cities being bigger than wilderness - even though plants and animals have a cognitive presence, I'm would expect it's less of a presence than self-aware beings such as humans, kandra or parshendi.

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As far as distance in Shadesmar is concerned, I'd be willing to bet that planets, as a whole, have a cognitive aspect that is more significant than empty space.

Thus going through a planet would be noticably further than a true vacuum.

I mean, if even goblets have a non-trivial cognitive aspect, shouldn't mountain ranges?  Or perhaps the costituent parts of mountain ranges?  If nothing else, they probably see themselves as mountain ranges.

Not to mention that in the real world, the Earth's subsurface is loaded up with bacteria, which could well exist in the cosmere, where they would probably also have cognitive aspects.

I suspect that empty space is much easier to move through in Shadesmar than any of the planets.

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As far as distance in Shadesmar is concerned, I'd be willing to bet that planets, as a whole, have a cognitive aspect that is more significant than empty space.

Thus going through a planet would be noticably further than a true vacuum.

I mean, if even goblets have a non-trivial cognitive aspect, shouldn't mountain ranges?  Or perhaps the costituent parts of mountain ranges?  If nothing else, they probably see themselves as mountain ranges.

Not to mention that in the real world, the Earth's subsurface is loaded up with bacteria, which could well exist in the cosmere, where they would probably also have cognitive aspects.

I suspect that empty space is much easier to move through in Shadesmar than any of the planets.

 

Gaia_Soul.jpg

 

I do believe Brandon Sanderson has said that he was a fan of final fantasy. I can quite imagine that his planets have souls and a cognitive presence.

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Hi, first time poster, but I was an old fellow in TWG and I've been lurking since the creation of the 17th shard.

 

I must be wrong because there are so many people here who will jump to any tiny bit of info found and chew it to the end but, based on the Q&A below...

 

There were some other good finds.

 

Quote

Quote

It says that it's dangerous to travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Why?

Windrunner17

Brandon: It has to do with the Dor and the lack of an entity controlling much of the power Odium left in his wake on Sel.

 

Quote

This is an awesome answer!

If you wouldn't mind answering, does Roshar have a similar problem, with Honor being Splintered?

Thanks!

 

Quote

iv

>

No, Roshar does not have the same problem. There are some differences going on. (One reason being that the spren are far more extensive on Roshar, and provide something of a "release valve." The Seons and the Skaze on Sel are not numerous enough to fulfill a similar function. Though, of course, that's only one part of the puzzle. Raw power is dangerous.

It's one reason everyone should be thankful Kelsier was around on Scadrial.

 

 

Hasn't BS all but confirmed that spren are Splinters?

 

Maybe he already did but, last time I checked, it was theory.

Edited by Alatar
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^I'm of the fairly firm opinion that they are not Splinters, per se, but still manifestations of Honor's power.

 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1999-writing-for-charity-interview/

But the spren you are running into are all (something) ofeither Honor or Cultivation, or some mixture between them. And you can usually tell the ones that are more Honor, and the ones that are more Cultivation. That should be able ot be (something).

 

So they are "attuned" with Honor's power, and can access it easily.

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