Symmetry of Aons

[The Pasta King]

In Elantris every aon has the aon aon at least twice, this leads to the aons having symmetry. Once the chasm line is added to the starter aon(aon aon) should it be added to all the aon aons in the aon? In other words should each aon have multiple chasm lines?

                                    

Edited January 27, 2023 by The Pasta King

[Honorless]

Iirc, in the book, that wasn't the case. Only the base Aon Aon was drawn with the chasm line...

but... that might still have been an incomplete Aon, just complete enough to work.

I think the Aons might work even better if the chasm line is drawn for every Aon Aon

[Quantus]

3 hours ago, The Pasta King said:

In Elantris every aon has the aon aon at least twice, this leads to the aons having symmetry. Once the chasm line is added to the starter aon(aon aon) should it be added to all the aon aons in the aon? In other words should each aon have multiple chasm lines?

                                    

All Aon's are drawn by starting with a single Aon "Aon" and then adding more shapes, usually at least one more Aon, other abstract shapes, occasionally specific other geographic features).  But since Raoden only had to draw a single Chasmline to make Elantris' Aon Rao work again, I think it only needs to be added to that first foundational Aon, note every additional one.

 

Aon Eno is another good example, it include a single instance of the River squiggle, even though it's built of four Aon Aon's. Ditto with Aon Mea and the weird Life density mark corresponding to a fertile valley, even though it's built of six Aon Aon's.  

[Treamayne]

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8 hours ago, The Pasta King said:

In Elantris every aon has the aon aon at least twice, this leads to the aons having symmetry. Once the chasm line is added to the starter aon(aon aon) should it be added to all the aon aons in the aon? In other words should each aon have multiple chasm lines?                                

There's a WoB for that:

Spoiler

linkhyrule5

Why is there only one Chasm line per Aon? Since each Aon is made up of repetitions of Aon Aon, shouldn't there be a Chasm line per repetition?

Brandon Sanderson

The Aons aren't JUST made up of repetitions of Aon Aon. There's a lot more to them than that. Some follow a repetition pattern, others do not. The only requirement is using the initial Aon once, then building from there. Because of this, I made the new requirement be only one use of the chasm line.

Aons can actually have multiple forms and still work. For example, if you drew the chasm line on each one of those Aons, they'd work fine. (Maybe even better, in some cases.) What is happening in the books is that the Aons are ALMOST functional, and the Dor is straining to come through them. The chasm line brings them the one step further they need to be functional. However, further tweaking could make them more efficient.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[AFdooda]

What I feel we're going to get in future Elantris books is some kind 'science' of Aons.

Spoiler

The new Elantris created at the end of book Elantris would certainly be a prime place for such a thing.

The art of 'refining' your Aon would not only grant it extra effect but also an advantage over an enemy (looking at you Fjorden). Creating better Aons would be vital and make for interesting drama and purpose in a book (think how science works in real life where everything has to be a race).