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I just finished rereading Elantris and found myself craving some "new" Aons (that is, Aons with the chasm line included.) As far as I can tell, no one's ever drawn them. (Aside from these--which look awesome, but don't fit with the "correct" placement of the chasm line, as seen in Brandon's drawing here.) So I'm going to fix that. It'll take a while (so far I have half of them sketched but only seven cleaned up and ready to post. I'm going to go ahead and assume that the chasm line goes with only the "prime" Aon--upright, not flipped, and (if there are more than one in the right orientation) most central. This seems to fit with the text, e.g. when Raoden first releases the Dor with Aon Ehe. Aon Ehe has 10 iterations of the three basic lines, but evidently only one chasm line. (Which is kind of a shame, because it looks cool with a bunch of extra lines...) I'll be posting side-by-side comparisons and Aons with multiple chasm lines on my Tumblr, but I'll keep it to just the new standard Aons here for now. Aan: Aha: Ala: Aon: Are: Ashe: Ata: More coming soon.

I was perusing the list of Aons for enjoyment today, and I noticed something that I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere. The Aons hold a fair number of references to other Cosmere doings. Some fun things I've found: [edit] Ashe is "Light, Illumination." Illumination is a surge on Roshar. I find it odd that Raoden's illusion trick was through using Aon Shao, when Shallan's lightweaving seems more based on illumination than transformation (see Shao below). As a lightweaver, though, she has both of those surges, so I suppose the lightweaving itself uses both (I just got the feeling from the book it was mostly illusion and not transformation). [/edit] Are is "Unity, Cohesion." Cohesion just so happens to be one of the surges on Roshar. I presume Surgebinders with access to cohesion will have similar abilities to what Aon Are does (not that it is shown in the novel). Ata is "Grace, Smoothness." This reminded me of the abrasion surge and how slicking works. Perhaps it is similar? Ati is the aon of Hope. Hope isn't exactly how I would describe Ruin, but I thought it was interesting his name was also the name of an aon. Deo is "Gold, Metal." Though I think this one simply exists due to the language needing a word for metal, I thought it was interesting that it is an Aon specifically mentioned, and Brandon had a metal based magic system in a later book. Ene is "Wit, Cleverness." Makes me surprised Hoid went by Hoid in Elantris, and not Ene. As we all know Wit is a common name he takes. Eshe is "Gift, Endowment." That's interesting that the exact name of a Shard shows up... Also, given the almost exact wordings of some of the Surgebinding parallels, I wonder if this could be used to Awaken after some jury-rigging. Mai is "Honor." Yet another exact name of a Shard... Shao is "Transform, Change." Yet another parallel to Surgebinding. Tia is "Travel, Transportation." Another parallel to Surgebinding. I'm willing to bet this is one way Elantrians get to the Cognitive Realm. So I thought those "coincidences" were interesting. The parallels to other magic systems (namely Surgebinding and my possible Awakening tidbit) means that hints to the rest of the systems could be hidden away in the current list/complete list that I'm sure Brandon has. In addition, the inclusion of two Shard names got me to thinking that the names of the other Shards could be in here too. Though I am usually opposed to us wildly guessing, some interesting candidates are "Wit, Cleverness," "Loyalty," "Chastity" (this would be a little odd), "Intelligence," "Affluence," "Punishment, Retribution," "Love," "Justice," "Solemnity," "Wisdom," "Mercy, Forgiveness," "Willpower, Endurance," "Protection, Safety," "Stability, Security," and "Bravery." Also of interesting note is Ati's name being an Aon. There are various theories floating around that could explain this. I've read that some think Aona and Skai were directly in contact with the Selish people's prior to being splintered by Odium (explaining the occurence of both Aona's and Skai's name being in world). This would also explain why so many other interesting Cosmere "coincidences" occur. Another theory was the origins of the shardholders, and whether they were all from Yolen or not. Could Ati be from Sel? This would depend on whether Sel and it's peoples were made by Aona and Skai (I can't find any information regarding this, though it seems likely given the importance of Aon Aon). Anyways, I simply thought all this was interesting, figured I'd share. Have fun reading into this way more than we probably should (like I am).

We're still not entirely clear on what Splintering a Shard entails and what effects it has on both the magic and the Shardworld in general, but this has been swimming around my head for a while now. What if, when a Shard is Splintered, the Splinters are in the form of the Focus for that Shardworld? Seons are formed around an Aon, and those Aons are Splinters of Devotion (WoB). This means that Seons are an instance of a Splinter both being related to the Focus of a magic system and sentient. The second piece of this is the spren - and specifically Honorspren. Honorspren are Splinters of Honor (WoB) and are sentient. Where they fit in in relation to Roshar's Focus is as yet unknown, because all magic on Roshar that we know of in any detail uses both Stormlight and spren. If this theory was to hold any water, spren would have to be Roshar's focus rather than Stormlight. There's not a lot to go on here, and I'd appreciate that if someone had WoB that contradicts this to point me along to it.

(This thread is mainly for the discussion of the hint and trying to use it to figure out the Elantris worldhopping puzzle...) I was going to revive the Sel worldhopping topic http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/2515-sel-and-worldhopping/ , but since it was last posted in way back in January of 2013, I thought that perhaps it might not be wise... Sometimes necromatic powers don't work that well, I guess (or I need to learn the one-Breath command for Lifeless again)! --- So, a few days ago, Brandon revealed that apparently Raoden had misinterpreted one of the Aons. (source) On page two of this topic, Argent mentions that he thinks that it's related to the Aon Tia, and that Aon Tia doesn't need distance, only a destination. This is based on an old theory of his (one I've read, but, at the moment, can't remember where the link is), and might explain why this is such an important hint and will help us to better understand worldhopping...(and yes, worldhopping might be my major. I have three topics somewhat related to it!) I think that the Aon misinterpreted is either Aon Rao (kind of was the idea behind my one ill-thought out theory a few weeks back) or Aon Tia. Perhaps, even a combination of the two. I agree with Argent that it is probably Aon Tia, though, here are my reasons: 1. Aon Tia is one of the few Aons that Raoden really takes time to interpret/explain to the readers. This is first done in Chapter 25 (343-346) and later on when he travels to rescue Sarene. Both times, he added modifiers that specify location and the person himself. What Raoden says specific is this: The book he was getting this information (on the AonDor) only really gave him hints on what to do and how Aons (like Tia) worked. Now, if it is Tia, it might be just destination that is needed (as Argent suggests), but it might also be modification based. If it's modification based...we have to consider what modifiers Raoden thinks he needs. He thinks he needs one that specified that it only should work on him (which seems right) and distance specification. But, Aon Tia means travel, what would happen if one just drew Aon Tia without a specific destination (where would you go, it seems unlikely to be nowhere), or, if one added different modifiers that programmed Tia to bring one into the Cognitive Realm/Across the Cosmere a certain distance. Really, if one wanted to have fun with Tia, you could even use the distance modifiers to travel LIGHT YEARS, if you could just figure out the correct distance and some other things of the sort! If it is Aon Tia, the modifiers could be another Aon...such as Aon Rao or the Aon related to cognitive things, Aon Mea. However, what ever the specific modifiers would have to be for this to work is still unknown at best, if this is even the one Brandon was talking about... 2. It could also be Aon Rao. However, despite it's prevalence in the book (since Elantris and the surrounding landscape is AonDor), I feel that it's still unlikely. If you can think about it, Raoden doesn't understand it well or how it works though, so there is that, I guess... 3. It could also be the two Aons that are on the device they used to enter the area where the Pool is. However, it's Galladon who sees these Aons (Aon Rao, perhaps, and Aon Tae [352]). The later, Aon Tae, is the one they push to open the "secret" passage. Anyway, while this could be it and Raoden could've misinterpreted what Aon Tae really meant in this instance and what effect it could have on the pool (or even as a modifier of Aon Rao), I don't think this is the secret, and the only reason I even brought it up was because it was related to the Pool... Anyway, those are just some suggestions about what this WoB could mean... Since this was only a clue (and really, one that isn't that obvious...I think), but now, we can prove how good we are at figuring stuff out! I trust that now we can figure this out...perhaps in less than a month!

I hope this topic can focus specifically on speculation about interacting magical systems. The topic should be general enough to allow meandering thoughts. Let me kick off with a few quick theories: A forger can create essence marks that can change a misting or ferring into a full mistborn or feruchemist: The idea here is that the cognitive realm can influence the spiritual realm just as it can change the physical. All current mistings and ferrings are descendants of full mistborn or feruchemists. The forger creates an essence mark that changes their history so that the power was passed in full rather simply in part. I imagine that the essence mark would be more involved the more generations that separate the individual from their mistborn or feruchemist ancestor. Bonus: A twinborn can have an essence mark created that grants them both full mistborn and feruchemist powers. Scary. An Individual with a bonded Seon on Roshar can manifest effects based on the Seon's Aon: Seons and spren are very similar in nature and form a similar bond to humans. The idea is that they are similar enough that the Seon bond would allow a human to absorb stormlight just as the Nahel bond does. A necessary supporting theory is that the region locking of Aons is due the process that the Dor is brought forth; however, the shaping of the investiture is independent of region, thus investiture fed directly to an Aon would cause a region independent effect. So an individual full of stormlight could feed it through the Aon in their Seon in order to create effects.

We have seen the aftermath of splintering on both Sel and Roshar. In both cases we ended up with some pretty strange magical entities with semi-sentience: Spren on Roshar and Seons on Sel. Why were these created? I've been wondering if raw investiture naturally seeks out cognitive forms to merge with. So when any shard is splintered the unbound investiture combines with things like spren or Aons which represent that planet's cognitive forms. It could be a random thing and not really directed by anyone. Another possibility, the investiture could already have a spiritual form and would seek out the cognitive form that matches best. Perhaps splintering creates an imbalance where pure investiture doesn't have enough substance in the cognitive or physical realms. It needs to combine with a cognitive form and a human host to restore realmatic balance. Without this balance the Shardic power cannot be controlled and if left unchecked will lead to catastrophic consequences.