Aether and Essences

[cometaryorbit]

I think the correspondence is imperfect.

Halfway through Tress when Ulaam made the comment about primal elements, I fully expected the aethers to be 10 Essences + 2 special ones (Midnight and something). Especially since Zephyr is the name of the air Essence and emerald is the gemstone matching Pulp/plant Essence.

But on that basis I was expecting Crimson to make fire.  Blood would also fit. But  I don't think spikes fit any Essence super well, especially since Roseite is already crystalline.

Unless Spark (fire) =Sunlight, Lucentia (crystal)= Roseite, Talus (stone)=Crimson? I don't know, still doesn't feel like a good fit.

Edited January 20, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[lacrossedeamon]

6 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think the correspondence is imperfect.

Halfway through Tress when Ulaam made the comment about primal elements, I fully expected the aethers to be 10 Essences + 2 special ones (Midnight and something). Especially since Zephyr is the name of the air Essence and emerald is the gemstone matching Pulp/plant Essence.

But on that basis I was expecting Crimson to make fire.  Blood would also fit. But  I don't think spikes fit any Essence super well, especially since Roseite is already crystalline.

Unless Spark (fire) =Sunlight, Lucentia (crystal)= Roseite, Talus (stone)=Crimson? I don't know, still doesn't feel like a good fit.

I assume the sunlight aether corresponds to spark essence. As for Crimson essence we don't really know what the spikes are made out of, could be Blood. But Blood as described in the Ten Essences would be weird in the aetheric system for the same reason slatrification was decanonized. 

[Dreamwa1ker]

On 1/20/2023 at 8:06 PM, lacrossedeamon said:

I assume the sunlight aether corresponds to spark essence. As for Crimson essence we don't really know what the spikes are made out of, could be Blood. But Blood as described in the Ten Essences would be weird in the aetheric system for the same reason slatrification was decanonized. 

I also was thinking of Crimson bring blood. But maybe the spores are not producing spikes made of blood (for reasons of not being able to make something so water-based because of magic system implications as you mention). What if it is really that the spores make spikes that seek to spill blood? Getting pin-cushioned would definitely do that. In fact it's the closest thing I can think of as some basic element that could fit with red spikes at all.

And could this also then fit with the behavior of the rain in the Crimson sea also seeming like it was seeking out life forms - to spill their blood? It would not be unheard of for their to be some basic awareness here as the midnight aether can make things with basic awareness.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 1/11/2023 at 0:43 PM, teknopathetic said:

But shards may be able to tamper with the magic system. Preservation was able to do some swapping with a couple of metals. I wonder if that was something extremely taxing to do, or if it is essentially at a shard's whim to make changes like that to whatever magic system they are saddled with. 

Preservation did't actually swap metals, as people are so fond of saying. A mistborn could have burned bendalloy, etc. if they'd had a way to. What he changed was what mistings were snapped by the mists, which were his creation in the first place. (And that assumes atium mistings weren't just electrum mistings, etc)

On 1/20/2023 at 11:17 AM, cometaryorbit said:

I think the correspondence is imperfect.

Halfway through Tress when Ulaam made the comment about primal elements, I fully expected the aethers to be 10 Essences + 2 special ones (Midnight and something). Especially since Zephyr is the name of the air Essence and emerald is the gemstone matching Pulp/plant Essence.

But on that basis I was expecting Crimson to make fire.  Blood would also fit. But  I don't think spikes fit any Essence super well, especially since Roseite is already crystalline.

Unless Spark (fire) =Sunlight, Lucentia (crystal)= Roseite, Talus (stone)=Crimson? I don't know, still doesn't feel like a good fit.

I agree.

Talus could be crimson, I initially thought they were made of organic material, but at some point switched to thinking of them like rocks. However, in another thread someone claimed they were glass, which is another type of crystal.

[Atlas333]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this Wob yet, although it is kind of new. 

Shardcast Interview (July 30, 2023)

Quote

Comatose

Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.

Brandon Sanderson

What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a 1 to 1, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a 1 to 1.

Comatose

But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.

Brandon Sanderson

Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.

So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.

Shardcast Interview (July 30, 2023)

To me, it seems like this is a confirmation that there is a connection between aethers and essences with a little bit of "wiggle room." So maybe instead of a blood/water aether we'll get like an ice aether or something. 

I think that because there are only 10 essences and 12 aethers (based on Lumar's 12 moons) I think two won't match up. Probably Midnight Essence and one other one.