Cosmere summary

[the shard master]

I would like to know the basics about the cosmere i have read all of brandon's books.

[Weltall]

For a very quick summary, here you go: The Cosmere is Brandon's term for the shared universe that most of his books take place in. At some point in the distant past, humanity arose on the planet Yolen. There was an entity or power named Adonalsium which traveled the Cosmere, creating some worlds like Roshar and tinkering with others, spreading life. Adonalsium is the source of Investiture, the underlying element of all the magic systems in the franchise. For reasons we still don't understand, roughly ten thousand years ago sixteen individuals somehow killed Adonalsium (an event referred to as the Shattering) and divided up his power into sixteen pieces, the Shards. These people, known as the Vessels, took the Shards, ascended to godhood and set out across the Cosmere, eventually most of them settled on planets which they then Invested in. Each of the sixteen embody some aspect of Adonalsium and we know ten of these Shards by name right now.

Another principle that underlies the Cosmere is called Realmatic Theory. The universe is composed of three Realms, the Physical, the Cognitive and the Spiritual. The first is easy to understand, it's the world we live in. The Cognitive Realm is the world of thought and is shaped by the thinking of living creatures. How things are viewed by others and how they view themselves forms their Cognitive identity. This Realm is how most characters travel from planet to planet, as it and the Physical are linked spatially but areas in the Cognitive where no thought is occurring in the Physical are greatly compressed. The Spiritual Realm is the one we know the least about, but we know that it's where most of the power of the Shards reside, it's where everything's connection to all other things can be perceived and time and space are meaningless here. There's also a concept called the Beyond, which is where souls go after death. It's somewhere even the Shards can't see and don't understand. We don't know (and Brandon has stated that we never will) exactly what the Beyond is.

To generalize somewhat about worlds, there are two types of planets in the Cosmere. Shardworlds are places where a Shard is actively Investing, such as Scadrial or Roshar. These worlds have magic systems that humans can directly access. Minor shardworlds are planets which lack the active presence of a Shard; though they can have magic systems, they're generally interacted with through an intermediary.

People who travel between worlds are generally referred to as worldhoppers. There are organized groups of them appearing in various works, such as the Seventeenth Shard. There is also a city called Silverlight which exists in the Cognitive Realm and is a place where worldhoppers have gathered to live and to share knowledge. A couple of major worldhoppers to keep an eye out for are Khriss (an arcanist who studies the various magic systems of the Cosmere and is the author of the Ars Arcanum sections) and her assistant Nazh (look closely at the in-book artwork and you'll often find annotations he's written) and of course there's Hoid. He's present in almost every story and while we know some tantalizing things about him (namely, he's been around since before the Shattering of Adonalsium and knew all sixteen Vessels personally) we don't know what his goals are. He tends to occupy a minor role in the story and occasionally nudge characters in the right direction, though he's taken a more prominent role in Stormlight Archive so far.

As an out-of-universe aside, Brandon has written the Cosmere as a sort of 'hidden epic' where the various series can be read and enjoyed as standalone works, with most of the connecting details and underlying elements being meant as a treat for observant readers wanting to put all the pieces together. Most of what we know of the wider Cosmere comes from things that Brandon has said outside the books themselves, at least for now.

...okay, maybe that wasn't a very quick summary, was it? xD

Edited January 10, 2018 by Weltall

[Wandersail]

There's a pretty good article in the Coppermind about the history of the Cosmere, the Shattering of Adonalsium and all that here

[Pagerunner]

Brandon has a pretty good summary of the cosmere here on his website.