Treamayne Posted February 20, 2016 Report Share Posted February 20, 2016 Luck as a trait has a fair literary history. Example: Correia's Grimnoir series features luck magic. Ringworld also dealt heavily with luck as a trait. They even used lottery-based reproductive rights to "breed" luck into people as a trait So it is possible that, in the Cosmere, Luck is a trait and there could be a Fortune Shard because of that. That said, having it in the same Feruchemical "group" as Connection, Investiture and Identity, and knowing that those three traits are world/shard generic, seems to imply that Fortune is a trait that everyone on every world can/does have and that the trait can be manipulated by magic systems. If you take the quote and replace "Fortune" with "Investiture" or "Connection," for example, it would make sense that the feared unknown "intruders" would be using some magic system to manipulate a spiritual trait. So, I think, Fortune is another spiritual trait that is largely untapped, but can be manipulated by some magic systems (including Feruchemy) but that the Ire were not necessarily talking about Chromium Feruchemy specifically. Has anyone made a timeline of how far after the events of Elantris this would have taken place? It seems it would have been difficult to impossible for the Elantrians to have studied Scadrial enough to know much of Feruchemy (when TLR had all but wiped it out at this point) unless they had been studying it prior to TLR's Feruchemist purges. It would seem the chances of that quote being a Feruchemical reference are rather slim. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormgate Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 While we're talking about Shard names... Anyone think the Survival Shard might be called Endurance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thek9 Posted March 4, 2016 Report Share Posted March 4, 2016 If there is a Shard that pulls on the entropy, why not a Shard that plays with the laws of probability? Think Mat Cauthon from a certain sister universe who always rolls what he needs in dice. We know that some other processes in Cosmere do follow laws of probability (we've seen a normal distribution somewhere I think, and we've seen Preservation play with what used to be a random process to make it more deterministic). There may be many ways in which Fortune can manifest its properties. Since a person can perform Cosmere "magic" only when Invested, Fortune may choose to grant Investiture to people based on a certain random (or not so random) process. Imagine getting a very temporary boost to your abilities that comes at random. This would be doing things Endowment-style - everyone is equally subjected to bouts of Fortune. Another option (Preservation-style) is to pick certain people and grant them access to Investiture. Given Brandon's style of magic systems - you'd need some sort of a trigger: so, for example certain people acquire Investiture when they perform certain actions - roll dice, or haggle at a marketplace, or try to catch a fish. Remember also, that the actual things one can do with granted Investiture need not have anything to do with the Shard's Intent - why a walking piece of rope is of Endowment, while a flying piece of iron - of Preservation? Similarly, the actual "magic" that Invested by Fortune people can do may be completely unrelated to Fortune/Luck - maybe they can scry, maybe they can fly, maybe they have a mean battle cry. (now this is largely me being Devil's advocate - I am actually not that certain that there is a Shard named Fortune there, just thinking out loud what they Shard would do). While I would tend to agree with the Ferruchemy interpretation, rather than the shard interpretation of Fortune, this would make an awesome book. A shard of Randomness or perhaps Uncertainty that grants random powers to random people at random times. Would love to see Brandon write that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b4dave Posted March 7, 2016 Report Share Posted March 7, 2016 While we're talking about Shard names... Anyone think the Survival Shard might be called Endurance? I think I saw a WOB that we had misinterpreted this. I think he said it's not a Survival Shard, but a shard that just wants to survive...I could be wrong though, wouldn't be the first time lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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