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How does anything happen?


Farnsworth

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How does any form of magic happen on planets with no shards? How is there any investiture? I would understand if the two planets had the exact same sort of magic, but they are different enough that there has to be two different things going on. What are those things that are different if they are not shards?

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It could be something like the law we have that nothing can be eradicated completely. If a Shard has been splintered, or even if there was never any Shard there at all, everything still leads back to Adonalsium. Therefore, everything has at least some form of Investiture. That being said, the reason magic cannot be used--only interacted with (WoB)--in Shardless worlds may be because that connection is not being renewed. Only the aftereffects are left over.

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The universe of the cosmere is different from real-life, even without the influence of Adonalsium. On these planets, there is still the Cognitive Realm and the Spiritual Realm, and there are phenomena relating to these realms that don't come from Shards, but from ambient Investiture. On Threnody, there's a phenomenon in the Cognitive realm, which results souls not moving Beyond and staying as Shades. On First of the Sun, the birds have natural interactions with the other realms (like hiding someone in the Cognitive realm, or seeing the future using the Spiritual realm). Souls are made of Investiture, so that might be the source of this ambient Investiture.

The planets also appear to have unique elements to them in how they interact with Shards and magic. In other words, if Harmony went and Invested in a different shardworld, it would manifest a new magic system, which would be distinct from what was seen on Scadrial. So, that's how different minor Shardworlds can have different manifestations.

So, it's kind of like how RL earth has different ecosystems, even at the same latitudes/longitudes. Life in the Sahara desert is very different than in Central America, even without human interference and civilization to build cities and all that stuff. The South Pole got penguins, and the North Pole got polar bears. The different environments on different Shardworlds can result in different kinds of life and different ways to interact with native Investiture.

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7 minutes ago, CosmereQuestioner said:

Also remember the Adonalsium created most of the cosmere (including roshar).  So even if a shard isn't specifically invested there, there will still be bits of Adonalsium power there (just like shattered shards are still invested in their planets) simply because he created them.

Yes there are bit of free investiture in many place in the Cosmere.

Simply they are usually meaningless if compared to the Investiture who cycle in a Shardworld thanks to a Shard. In the minor Shardworld you may have some magical effect but you will not find a Magic User...There is more "interact with Magic than use magic"

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I was a bit confused by this as well, until I realised it was as explained above. My own personal understanding was the ambient Investiture being sort of like background radiation for the Cosmere, and just interacting with the planets without Shards differently than those with them.

So instead of a specific kind of magic that's almost completely limited to humans/humanoids with sentience, we get magic interacting with nature and ecologies, causing magical birds, or issues with the natural life cycle alá Shades.

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On 20/10/2016 at 2:11 AM, Figberts said:

Is it possible that these world were invested as such before the Shattering by Adonalsium?

Probably also Sel or Nalthis were in the same situation before their Shards arrived.

To answer to your question, actually I don't know...We don't know yet how the magic worked in the ancient times. Maybe Adonalsium spreaded his Investiture in every place of the Cosmere, maybe only specific localtions (like Yolen) was ultra Invested and the rest have almost no magic, maybe Adonalsium didn't spread Investiture as the Shard do.

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