Jump to content

Adonalsium


Recommended Posts

I personally think it is similar to building names, too, like "coliseum." But the prevalence of metallic representations of magical/divine forces, in the Cosmere, makes me think the "building" would be metallic, or even that it is because it's metal it's a building that it has such a name. But somehow this metallic building has to have a consciousness of its own---not entirely difficult, granted---or, perhaps, having Shards as it does, it's like... Crenshinibon(sp.?), the evil shard(!) from the Drizzt stories.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, TheManKnownAsHoid said:

But why would it be the Shard name and not the holder? Wouldnt it be Rayseium? Thats how its been done for Ati and Leras. Harmony didnt like the sound of Sazedium so its called Harmonium, but thats an exception.

Because, in the same way that the stick has been so overdone as to strip any humor from it, people like silly things. 

If he has a metal, it's Raysium (however you want to spell it). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Calderis said:

If he has a metal, it's Raysium (however you want to spell it). 

To be fair, I think it's whatever people decide to call it.  Doesn't seem like it's really a hard rule, as much as something decided by someone knowledgeable about what was going on behind the scenes in Scadrial (or given to the people by the shard(s) themselves along with the prophecies and such).

I guess another option is that "Atium" and "Lerasium" are actually random words on Scadrial which get translated to those names for the books; but then we probably would have got Sazedium even if he didn't like the sound of it.

Edited by Journey Before Pancakes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sazedium and Harmoniun doesn't sound right to my ears no matter how many times i listen to it. So i'll just call it ettmetal(if that was really Harmony's metal) till the end of cosmere  regardless of how people call it lol

Atium and Lerasium has a weight to it. Even Raysium sounds good. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's a metal or not, but I do suspect that Adonalsium in and of itself is NOT a God or even a being, anymore than its Shards are. I don't know exactly what the correct word would be for the Shards sans a holder, but regardless, I think that the unShattered Adonalsium would have likely needed a Holder as well. The question would just be: who or what was the original Holder of Adonalsium, whatever it was? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, we have seen that nothing short of a shard can shatter or "kill" another shard. Why would something that is more powerful than a Shard let its self be shattered by a bunch of lesser creatures?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Gasper said:

Ok, we have seen that nothing short of a shard can shatter or "kill" another shard. Why would something that is more powerful than a Shard let its self be shattered by a bunch of lesser creatures?

Maybe something vaguely reminiscent of pandeism?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe that Adonalsium had no Vessel. It was a mind that arose directly from, and a part of, the power. 

In so doing, it's mind would not have been limited in the same way the the mortal Vessels for the Shards have been. It would be a truly infinite being.

That would also mean though, that it cannot truly be killed, just torn apart. 

I believe that the intents are what is left of the mind of the being that was Adonalsium. The personality, as a thinking being was destroyed, but the parts that made it are still imprinted on the power in a fundamental way that cannot be removed. These fractions of an infinite mind are what the Vessels are warped by. 

4 hours ago, Gasper said:

Ok, we have seen that nothing short of a shard can shatter or "kill" another shard. Why would something that is more powerful than a Shard let its self be shattered by a bunch of lesser creatures?

Because it was not human, or mortal in any way. "death" does not mean anything to it. I fully believe that it knew what was coming, and it chose not to prevent it. Whether out of some grand vision of the future, or curiosity, or apathy I don't know. I think that assuming it's motivations were at all similar to ours is flawed. 

Edited by Calderis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Because it was not human, or mortal in any way. "death" does not mean anything to it. I fully believe that it knew what was coming, and it chose not to prevent it. Whether out of some grand vision of the future, or curiosity, or apathy I don't know. I think that assuming it's motivations were at all similar to ours is flawed. 

Honestly, I don't really think that's a good motive. It's basically equivalent to the way that Greg Bear in the Halo Forerunner novels handwaved away the absurdity of the Forerunners being able to somehow exterminate the infinitely more powerful Precursors by saying that "They were powerful but naive, and merely revelled in awe at the brutality of their creations as they were being exterminated" (paraphrased). I think the parallel with Adonalsium here is pretty striking to be honest, since you basically have a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power being effectively destroyed by what were presumably its creations. It just seems like a really lame way of explaining how, essentially, monkeys rose up and eradicated modern humanity with sticks and stones. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but I think there must be more to it than that.

Edited by Fanghur Rahl
Typo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Fanghur Rahl I disagree, because as I said, that's looking at it from our perspective.

Adonalsium may not have seen what happened to it as "death." 

In many ways Adonalsium is still here and didn't "die." Adonalsium is investiture. All of it. 

That's why I still think that this WoB refers to the shattering itself, and not to a different event. 

Quote

imriel452

Tell me something about the cosmere that has not been previously mentioned.

Brandon Sanderson

Long ago there was a plot to destroy Adonalsium. It failed.

source

They may have killed the personality that it was but, in my opinion at least, it can't be destroyed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/28/2018 at 0:36 PM, Fanghur Rahl said:

Honestly, I don't really think that's a good motive. It's basically equivalent to the way that Greg Bear in the Halo Forerunner novels handwaved away the absurdity of the Forerunners being able to somehow exterminate the infinitely more powerful Precursors by saying that "They were powerful but naive, and merely revelled in awe at the brutality of their creations as they were being exterminated" (paraphrased). I think the parallel with Adonalsium here is pretty striking to be honest, since you basically have a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power being effectively destroyed by what were presumably its creations. It just seems like a really lame way of explaining how, essentially, monkeys rose up and eradicated modern humanity with sticks and stones. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong, but I think there must be more to it than that.

I'd like to point out that beings made of investiture don't think of death like we do.

There's a point in WoK (or maybe WoR, I forgot) where syl says something along the lines of: "when spren die, they become shards of spren. Humans are weird because death is such a dramatic change instead of just a shattering." 

So I can only assume that Adolnasium would think similarly. Would shattering it be "killing" it? No. Shattering it wouldn't really mean anything drastic, as much as it would just constitute a re-structuring of the power. And since this being arose (presumably) from pure investiture, it's entirely possible that it could have been apathetic or even in favor of the process.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

Isn't there a WoB that goes, "Adonalsium was Shattered because he was killed," though?

Yes there is. Adonalsium was killed. So were the Spren that became blades. 

Death is not a term that is universally the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we assume that Adonalsium WAS some entirely non-physical entity from the start, I might agree. But personally, my suspicion is that this was not the case. I tend to favour the view that Adonalsium started out as a mortal human being (or dragon), and then somehow ascended to a god. I think this because from what we’ve been able to tell, Adonalsium did not seem to be a universal force/entity; it was localized to the Cosmere. Or at least that’s where it was when it was shattered. 

It’s pure speculation on my part, but I kind of see it as potentially being analogous to the post-physical civilizations of Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga; maybe Yolen has or once had some Investiture-equivalent of the Anomine’s elevation mechanism. Brandon has hinted that magitech has long been a important part of the Cosmere after all, so who’s to say that someone didn’t figure out how to create something that allowed them to absorb a huge amount of Investiture from the Spiritual Realm and effectively turn themselves into a god? Hoid does seem to imply that Adonalsium, whatever it was, was not truly God after all.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do we know (one way or the other) if there was anything around that Predates Adonalsium?

Adonalsium IS Investiture the Investiture of the Cosmere, and one Cosmeric Law is that if you let it gather, Investiture will eventually become Sentient.  So what if that's exactly what happened: What if the Cosmere's Investiture crystallized that way and gained an Emergent sentience?  It would have been a, no THE Godspren, and by spren rules it's personality would have been some sort of aggregate of what all the sentient races and people thought such a being would be like.  I can easily see why a group of people might view that sort of God-by-committee to be a Danger, not the Source or the Creator but simply a hazardous and arguably unnecessary accumulation of Power, something best dealt with by dispersing said accumulation.  They did so by tearing it apart along several axis, and since tearing is at its most abstract an act of Polarization, they ended up polarizing that Power into 16 Intent vectors, all focused around (I suspect) the primary motivating Intent of each of the participants. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem with that is what I said before: the Cosmere is only a minuscule part of a much larger universe, as Brandon himself has confirmed if I’m not mistaken. So it would seem that if that explanation is correct, they were almost have to be countless other examples of it throughout the larger universe. Which could very well be the case, but there certainly isn’t any evidence of it so far, unless the ‘Other’ is a rival ‘Adonalsium’. Of course, this would be the case even if I was correct I suppose. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...