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Cosmere 101


Zas678

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I don't know which book that is, but I have guesses.

Dragonsteel? or Aether of Night?

Oh and this is sort of off topic but is Dragonsteel at the BYU library the same as Liar of Partinel? I've been meaning to go to my local library to request an inter-library loan cause the capacha you have to fill in to do it online is broken. Anyway I was just wondering if I waited a few years if I would be reading a better version of the same book or if it's an entirely different story that will never be published.

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As far as I understand Liar is part of the Dragonsteel series (right?) , but is not the same story as the BYU Dragonsteel. He's going to publish both of them eventually. Dragonsteel will be very different from its current form, if only because he stole the Shattered Plains for SA, and is a better writer now.

Anyway, I don't remember anything from Dragonsteel that sounds like Hoid's "distant place," but I only read it once a long time ago.

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Here's the deal with Dragonsteel: it's one of Brandon's huge epics he's been planning since forever. That shouldn't be too surprising, since Brandon's company is Dragonsteel Entertainment. It was his honors thesis at BYU, and apparently the first book where Peter really knew Brandon could do this whole writing thing. Dragonsteel was the first of a five book arc.

However, Brandon wasn't satisfied, because he was biting off too much that he couldn't chew. So--from what I understand--Brandon had changed Dragonsteel around a bit. What was originally "Dragonsteel" would be the third book, something like "Dragonsteel: The Eternal War". The first book would now be "Dragonsteel: The Liar of Partinel" I guess with the "Dragonsteel" part removed similar to how "Mistborn: The Well of Ascension" was. I believe the second one was to be "The Lightweaver of Rens". Whatever, not totally important. The important part is that Liar is the first book, chronologically, on Yolen (the name of the Dragonsteel planet). The "main" Dragonsteel book--the one which is in BYU, albeit in a very old form--is book three.

Liar was the book Brandon worked on when the Wheel of Time hit him. He completed a draft, but it was a pretty bad, uneven draft, which he had to pull out of his writing group. If I recall correctly, this was because Brandon was trying to do a lot of discovery writing in it, and didn't work. He doesn't let Liar out. It, apparently, "spoils too much".

But, he did get a draft done, and he posted sample chapters online. They were interesting, to say the least. It opens with Midius's master, Hoid, dying.

Now, this strongly suggests that Liar is Hoid's origin story, so to speak. (Brandon, after all, said Stormlight Archive isn't about Hoid. Well, Dragonsteel deals with it more directly.) Combine this with the fact that Brandon said, "Hoid was there when Adonalsium was Shattered"... Well, put two and two together. "Liar spoils too much". Gee, maybe because Adonalsium is Shattered in that? That's what I strongly believe.

Note that there were no Dragonsteel spoilers in this whole spiel. This is all public knowledge.

Anyways, nowadays judging from Brandon's long post on books that he did recently, Dragonsteel is seven books. Two books, Liar and its sequel, are first, followed by the "main" Dragonsteel sequence, five books in length.

Does that clear things up? Except for my rampant theorizing, however.

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Thanks. Good summary of info. I asked how he would tie in the Cosmere effectively with the other books for the casual reader. I would say, along with all the other answers I got, he will do it with Dragonsteel.

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  • 2 months later...

I've often wondered about this myself. I see two possibilities.

1) Mistborn becomes the series that ties the other series together. The third trilogy will (according to interviews) feature an extremely scientifically advanced Scadrial, with space ships and who knows what else. This seems like good way to tie everything together. Downside would be that it doesn't really change the "Who the hell are these guys" reaction you predicted.

2) Brandon will make a new series that features Adonalsium/Hoid/17th Shard as its primary conflicts/characters/organizations. We already know he has plans for books featuring Hoid, presumably from before the shattering, so this seems likely. This also ensures that no reader needs to know about Adonalsium in order to enjoy his other books. But once they read this Adonalsium series reading his other books suddenly becomes more awesome.

That's what I think anyway.

I actually don't know if I agree with either of these ideas. Here's why:

1) I have two problems with this idea--first, interstellar travel (necessary to get from Scadrial to another shardworld) is hard. Even with allomancy to help out, crossing the vast distances that exist between the stars in a vaguely scientific/magical way is likely to be very, very boring. So far, Brandon's science has been surprisingly accurate, so I doubt he'd go the Star Trek route and hand-wave it all away, either--especially when he has proven that there are better ways to get between worlds. Second, having a Scadrian (?) spaceship crash land on Roshar (for instance) would probably make for bad storytelling. For those who have read both series, explaining how things work is boring, but if you don't, then new readers get thrown off--which is why Brandon has pretty much explicitly said that we won't see a Mistborn/Surgebinder battle in The Stormlight Archive.

2) This is closer to what might happen, but I see two problems with trying to write this book. First, once you write it, you've pretty much let the cat out of the bag as far as the Cosmere goes, and so it hampers your ability to write other intriguing stories in the universe. Second, mythic backstories sound cool, but rarely turn out as well as you'd think they would. Take, for instance, The Silmarillion. The idea is cool, but there isn't much of an actual story--certainly nothing worthy of Lord of the Rings. I think Brandon would make something significantly more readable, but prequels will always be hard, if for no other reason than because everyone knows the ending.

On another note, did the BYU Library ever actually get another copy of Dragonsteel, or find their original copy? Last I heard, someone had walked off with it... :(

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  • 1 month later...

In case anyone wants to know, I've made a massive revision of the Shard topic on the wiki: http://coppermind.17thshard.com/wiki/Shard

I am fairly certain this mentions literally everything about Shards that we know. It's 3300 words long. Fun fact: there are 97 references in that article now.

So take a look, edit if I did anything stupid, and if not, you can now be content that linking to the Shard article won't embarrass all your Brandon-read, but cosmere-uneducated friends.

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Wow, that's wikipedia quality right there 0.o though I'm sorry to say, but there's less references than you think, given that there are a number of them referencing the same thing (They should be collapsed into single references). Epic article though :D

EDIT: yeah, round about 59... poor you :P

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Awesome article. I'm making a few minor typographical edits, but I did have a question about this:

It appears that the bond between human and Shard is permanent. The only evidence of Shards changing hands after the original Shardholders are when a Shard dies.

I actually have two questions about this.

1. What about when Kelsier held Preservation? True, he "snatched" it post-mortem, not while alive (so that's apparently one difference between him and Laras & Vin), but he did hold it, and he apparently abdicated in favor of Vin.

2. "are when a Shard dies." Is that the correct wording? I mean, aside from a splintering in Elantris, is there any evidence that a Shard can die? It can splinter, and its Intent will be gone, replaced by the Intents of its composite Splinters, but a Shard can't truly "die", right? It's the consciousness behind the Shard that can be "killed". (Or so I gather.) That sounds like an important distinction to me.

Edit:

(These things are popping into my head as I read them.)

In "Forms and Subdivisions", when using Preservation and Ruin as examples, it sounds like you're saying "larasium and atium are the Physical Realm manifestations (in the Physical Realm) of these Shards, the Well of Ascension and the Pits of Hathsin are the Cognitive Realm manifestations (read: pools) of these Shards in the Physical Realm, and the mists and the black cloud are the Spiritual Realm manifestations in the Physical Realm of these Shards." I don't have an issue with that, but it does imply that the Well would produce larasium.

Is there any evidence that says the Well did not produce larasium? (Not just the speculation of characters.) I mean, we don't have any idea how long it was between the creation of humanity on Scadrial and the time of Alendi (or do we?). It's possible that the Well could make one nugget of larasium every millennium, which would explain why there was one there when Vin and Elend were at the Well. It would also suggest how long it was from Beginning to Alendi.

Edited by darniil
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1. What about when Kelsier held Preservation? True, he "snatched" it post-mortem, not while alive (so that's apparently one difference between him and Laras & Vin), but he did hold it, and he apparently abdicated in favor of Vin.

Kelsier only looked after the shard, he never became a Holder, just a Sliver like Rashek, (afaik, he'd been instructed by Leras to wait with it for Vin/Sazed).

2. "are when a Shard dies." Is that the correct wording? I mean, aside from a splintering in Elantris, is there any evidence that a Shard can die? It can splinter, and its Intent will be gone, replaced by the Intents of its composite Splinters, but a Shard can't truly "die", right? It's the consciousness behind the Shard that can be "killed". (Or so I gather.) That sounds like an important distinction to me.

that is indeed probably referencing the Shardholder's death rather than the death of the shard it self.

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Kelsier only looked after the shard, he never became a Holder, just a Sliver like Rashek, (afaik, he'd been instructed by Leras to wait with it for Vin/Sazed).

A Sliver is by definition someone who has held at least part of the power of a Shard and given it up. Vin and Rashek became Slivers via the Well of Acension, but Kelsier also is a Sliver, and he didn't use the Well. He may not have held the entire Shard of Preservation, but he somehow at least held part of it.

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"are when a Shard dies." Is that the correct wording? I mean, aside from a splintering in Elantris, is there any evidence that a Shard can die? It can splinter, and its Intent will be gone, replaced by the Intents of its composite Splinters, but a Shard can't truly "die", right? It's the consciousness behind the Shard that can be "killed". (Or so I gather.) That sounds like an important distinction to me.

We are a little bit at odds with Brandon on this point. As fans when we began talking of Shards and Shardholders Brandon said that when a person holds a Shard of Adonalsium they essentially become that Shard and he then refers to them as the Shard. He didn't say we had to do it that way, in fact he graciously gave us license to do whatever we want, but that was his way of doing it. As fans I don't think we have established a firm rule on this yet, though I think we still tend to refer to a Shard and their holder as being distinct and separate.

If someone could find that quote for me I would appreciate it. I have yet to successfully log onto the Brandonothology since the update, my internet being too slow.

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I don't remember where the quote is on that one, but I do know where the quote is on this one:

Is there any evidence that says the Well did not produce larasium? (Not just the speculation of characters.) I mean, we don't have any idea how long it was between the creation of humanity on Scadrial and the time of Alendi (or do we?). It's possible that the Well could make one nugget of larasium every millennium, which would explain why there was one there when Vin and Elend were at the Well. It would also suggest how long it was from Beginning to Alendi.

Never mind, I don't have the quote. Perhaps it's in the annotations....

Nope. Oh well. I remember the wording pretty well.

The Lord Ruler left the bead as a back-up plan. He wasn't sure that the Lerasium was going to last forever, and if something went wrong, he wanted to have another Lerasium bead- just in case.

And that turned out extremely well for the world. TLR not being selfish in that instance, or maybe just being cautious, let Elend be an Allomancer and time his death right so Vin could avenge his death.

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Awesome article. I'm making a few minor typographical edits, but I did have a question about this:

I actually have two questions about this.

1. What about when Kelsier held Preservation? True, he "snatched" it post-mortem, not while alive (so that's apparently one difference between him and Laras & Vin), but he did hold it, and he apparently abdicated in favor of Vin.

2. "are when a Shard dies." Is that the correct wording? I mean, aside from a splintering in Elantris, is there any evidence that a Shard can die? It can splinter, and its Intent will be gone, replaced by the Intents of its composite Splinters, but a Shard can't truly "die", right? It's the consciousness behind the Shard that can be "killed". (Or so I gather.) That sounds like an important distinction to me.

Edit:

(These things are popping into my head as I read them.)

In "Forms and Subdivisions", when using Preservation and Ruin as examples, it sounds like you're saying "larasium and atium are the Physical Realm manifestations (in the Physical Realm) of these Shards, the Well of Ascension and the Pits of Hathsin are the Cognitive Realm manifestations (read: pools) of these Shards in the Physical Realm, and the mists and the black cloud are the Spiritual Realm manifestations in the Physical Realm of these Shards." I don't have an issue with that, but it does imply that the Well would produce larasium.

Is there any evidence that says the Well did not produce larasium? (Not just the speculation of characters.) I mean, we don't have any idea how long it was between the creation of humanity on Scadrial and the time of Alendi (or do we?). It's possible that the Well could make one nugget of larasium every millennium, which would explain why there was one there when Vin and Elend were at the Well. It would also suggest how long it was from Beginning to Alendi.

You make some good points. Feel free to edit the wiki--that's what the wiki exists for, naturally.

I think my intent with #1 was that it's a permanent bond unless you die. Sazed couldn't just throw away his Shards.

We are a little bit at odds with Brandon on this point. As fans when we began talking of Shards and Shardholders Brandon said that when a person holds a Shard of Adonalsium they essentially become that Shard and he then refers to them as the Shard. He didn't say we had to do it that way, in fact he graciously gave us license to do whatever we want, but that was his way of doing it. As fans I don't think we have established a firm rule on this yet, though I think we still tend to refer to a Shard and their holder as being distinct and separate.

If someone could find that quote for me I would appreciate it. I have yet to successfully log onto the Brandonothology since the update, my internet being too slow.

You're right, Thucydides (by the way, a lot of these quotes have been found and referenced in that Shard article. There were 97 references when I finished it). The applicable quote is:

@T.t.: Barring the Almighty, did we seen a Shardholder (like Sazed) in this book?

I think "Shardholder" would get confusing alongside "Shardbearer." Basically, in the Cosmere's terms, when someone holds a Shard of Adonalsium, I call that person a Shard of Adonalsium. They are imbued with the power of that Shard, but they also become the Shard. Fans can use whatever terminology they wish, but this is how I term it.

Darniil brings up a good point with his second question. Do we want to refer to Shardholder explicitly, at all times? I was using Shard, in this context, as the person holding the Shard, like what Brandon would refer to it as. Shardholder is more precise, I think. But as wiki policy, do we want to ensure that everyone refers to them as Shardholders? I don't know. My gut feeling is that we could probably use them interchangeably. After all, when someone says something like I did, that's technically canonical.

If I were to rewrite that line, though, I'd probably use the term Shardholder, but I don't have strong feelings one way or another. I think sometimes using the term Shard can refer to the holder or the power, depending on context.

What does everyone else think?

I don't remember where the quote is on that one, but I do know where the quote is on this one:

Never mind, I don't have the quote. Perhaps it's in the annotations....

Nope. Oh well. I remember the wording pretty well.

The Lord Ruler left the bead as a back-up plan. He wasn't sure that the Lerasium was going to last forever, and if something went wrong, he wanted to have another Lerasium bead- just in case.

And that turned out extremely well for the world. TLR not being selfish in that instance, or maybe just being cautious, let Elend be an Allomancer and time his death right so Vin could avenge his death.

I think that was in the Hero of Ages epigraphs, but isn't that Sazed's speculation on the subject, not necessarily fact?

Here's the quote:

Why Rashek left one of those nuggets at the Well of Ascension, I do not know. Perhaps he didn't see it, or perhaps he intended to save it to bestow upon a fortunate servant.

Perhaps he feared that someday, he would lose his powers, and would need that nugget to grant him Allomancy. Either way, I bless Rashek for his oversight, for without that nugget, Elend would have died that day at the Well.

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Would you mind if I tried to "prettify" the original post a little bit? The information is excellent, but I am a fan of the idea that a good piece of information should be presented with equal level of flourish.

I hope I don't sound like an arrogant know-it-all, this being my first post here. I've been following Brandon's communities for a while now, just never been a very active poster.

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  • 4 weeks later...

2 suggestions for the original post.

1) include a link to the wiki page on Shards.

2) mention in your list of shards which ones have died by WoK. (ie Aona, Skai, Honor, Ruin, & Preservation)

WOAH THERE. "Died" is a pretty useless word right here. The Shard cannot die, it can only be splintered. Aona and Skai have been splintered, and all signs point to Honor being likewise splintered. Ruin and Preservation, however, are still completely whole. All of those shards original Shardholders have died, yes, and if that's what you mean, you need to be really specific and say it that way.

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