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Hidden Things in Map of Roshar?


RShara

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I've been staring at the WoR map of Roshar for too long, I think. I keep seeing things that look like letters in the texture of the map, but considering the clearest "word" (just above "Reshi Sea") somehow looks like "Sylphrena" and "Highspren" simultaneously, I think it's just my mind playing tricks on me.

 

Other observations:

 

--There's a phantom river running from the mountains southwest of Kholinar, down past Karanak, all the way to the Longbrow's Straits.

 

--Aimia looks like a shark about ready to eat Steen.

 

--The texture of the water on this map reminds me of those Magic Eye books that used to drive me crazy. You know, where you look through the acid trip of a picture and see a 3D image? Yeah, pretty sure there's nothing hidden in Roshar's oceans, but the Reshi Isles really screw with my eyes. @_@

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image.jpg

Seriously what is this? It's probably nothing.

I think the same glyph shows up on the fighting stances scroll. I haven't examined it closely (on the phone atm), but ot looked similar. Nazh's name as a glyph maybe?

EDIT

@tareth, I believe the reason physical land corresponds to cognitive ocean and vice versa is because even on the smallest piece of land, there are MANY things with cognitive aspects. Take a beach - it's possible that every single grain of sand is an individual sphere in Shadesmar. Add some buildings and other non-animate matter (furniture, for example), and it's easy to see why Kharbranth, for example, would be an ocean. There are just too many spheres.

Furthermore, when Shallan Soulcasts the ship, she drops on what looks like ground made of obsidian. Devoid of cognitive aspects. Or, if you want to think of it this way, the entire ocean is a single gigantic cognitive piece; we don't think of oceans, lakes, and seas as a collection of drops of water, we see it a single entity. Plus, the small minds she sees there, what she speculates to be fish, float beneath the obsidian surface.

Edited by Argent
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I've been staring at the WoR map of Roshar for too long, I think. I keep seeing things that look like letters in the texture of the map, but considering the clearest "word" (just above "Reshi Sea") somehow looks like "Sylphrena" and "Highspren" simultaneously, I think it's just my mind playing tricks on me.

 

Other observations:

 

--There's a phantom river running from the mountains southwest of Kholinar, down past Karanak, all the way to the Longbrow's Straits.

 

--Aimia looks like a shark about ready to eat Steen.

 

--The texture of the water on this map reminds me of those Magic Eye books that used to drive me crazy. You know, where you look through the acid trip of a picture and see a 3D image? Yeah, pretty sure there's nothing hidden in Roshar's oceans, but the Reshi Isles really screw with my eyes. @_@

 

I've been thinking these exact same things all day.  Well, except for Aimia, which is just you ;)

 

I'm seeing what looks like Alethi script right above Marat and Jah Keved.

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Am I the only one who doesn't see anything even remotely close to words?

 

I'm 90% sure what I'm "seeing" just comes from the fact that people like seeing patterns in randomness. Also, pixels. :P

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@tareth, I believe the reason physical land corresponds to cognitive ocean and vice versa is because even on the smallest piece of land, there are MANY things with cognitive aspects. Take a beach - it's possible that every single grain of sand is an individual sphere in Shadesmar. Add some buildings and other non-animate matter (furniture, for example), and it's easy to see why Kharbranth, for example, would be an ocean. There are just too many spheres.

Furthermore, when Shallan Soulcasts the ship, she drops on what looks like ground made of obsidian. Devoid of cognitive aspects. Or, if you want to think of it this way, the entire ocean is a single gigantic cognitive piece; we don't think of oceans, lakes, and seas as a collection of drops of water, we see it a single entity. 

 

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say (or I did a bad job of explaining. Probably that). 

 

Let me try to expand a bit:

 

 

My thinking is that oceans of cognitive aspects/beads don't work like oceans in the normal physical sense. Instead of simply following gravity and collecting in, say, a basin, these cognitive beads are bound more by their relative position in the physical realm. 

 

Let's pretend for a moment we're standing over a flat slab of obsidian that spreads as far as the eye can see in the physical world. If you were to dump an oceans worth of water over it, the water would eventually spread out over this surface (we're going to pretend like dumping an ocean on top of obsidian wouldn't do any damage to it...). 

 

Now let's do the same thing in Shadesmar. Except, instead of water, we're going to pretend that a continents worth of cognitive beads materializes on top of us. Instead of spreading out over the obsidian, the beads are going to stay clustered around their relative positions in the Physical Realm. I sort of imagine the "ocean" of beads to look more like a very large cluster of bubbles bubbling up over the surface of Shadesmar.

 

Plus, the small minds she sees there, what she speculates to be fish, float beneath the obsidian surface.

 

 

This almost tripped me up, but the quote from the book (hardback page 119) is:

 

Smaller ones were scattered about her feet, dozens upon dozens, but so small she almost couldn't make them out. The minds of fish?

 

 

That doesn't sound like they're floating beneath the surface to me.

 

Anyway, again, my reasoning for all this is the way the oceans in Shadesmar look like they were drawn on top of an existing surface, which gives me this visualization of the oceans bubbling up over the obsidian instead of an ocean sitting in some continent sized basin.

 

Especially given the mountains underneath the Purelake. Which, except maybe for the center, should not be mountainy.

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I think we are mostly of the same opinion, but express those similarities differently. We both agree that there is some geography to Shadesmar - how closely it resembles that of Roshar is a subject to (a pointless, for now) debate. Still, let's assume that at least the general shape of the "land" is the same, because that's kind of what the map suggests. This is cognitive realm with no connection to the physical one. Now, we add the physical realm, with all its things that have a cognitive aspect, and roughly link the two, so that an object at location (x0, y0) in the physical realm - say, a ship called Wind's Pleasure - can be found at a location not far away from (x0, y0) in Shadesmar. There is perhaps something odd going on with the z-axis, but I am going to handwave that for now. 

 

Regarding the fish though, I maintain that I am correct. The minds of living - sapient, I should say - things from the physical realm are reflected as lights in the cognitive one, not spheres. Human minds float in Shadesmar, they don't seem subjected to the cognitive gravity thing going on. Actually, since the text is not clear, I am going to say we are both wrong about this. Perhaps the minds of fish are not actually underneath the obsidian "floor," but they are certainly not spheres rolling around Shallan's feet either. 

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I recall somewhere someone mentioned the strange symbol that was scattered all throughout the maps. It's faint in the shattered planes, and it was within the compass (NSEW marking, I've forgotten what it's called).

I mention this because it's on the Stormlight archive shirt in a darker blue behind the double eye of the Almighty and the five swords.

Thought people would like to know.

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I could be insane, but I thought that the symbol that pops up everywhere (the one near Karbranth on the Shadesmar map) is the cymatic symbol of the Shattered Plains. Or, actually, now that I compare the two, they're at least similar in shape. (Talk about a trippy map to look at... It's like a Rorschach test...)

Also, Dalinar's vision of the obsidan tower in the Purelake... Sounds like a Shadesmar mountain, if you ask me.

 

Also also, I'm really curious to know how the Reshi Isles are represented in Shadesmar, considering they're enormous great shells. On the map they look like bodies of water in Shadesmar, however the biggest island (Kadrix?) seems to have a symbol inside.

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Ok guys, Can someone else take a look at this to see if you can find some significance to this as well? If you look at the colored map of Roshar on WOR there are two things( possibly unrelated) that could be our hidden goody.

 

One: if you look at the golden lines from the compass rose/ sun thing in the bottom left, you can see that the lines that extend go under the map in a straight line, but in some places it intersects a letter in a word that letter seems to look slightly different than the ones around it. Prime example is the R in Reshi Isles. its harder to make out on the rest of them but it seems that one letter on each bisecting line seems to be slightly emphasized. Take a look at the South in Southern ocean, the s at the end of Ocean of origins, the L in Purelake, etc This has to be somewhat significant, the ones I have trouble with in this theory are the lines through the main body of the continent any one else see anything.

 

The Second thing I noted was that there are different fonts for different things on this map. This seems deliberate, but are there any exceptions to the rules in the fonts, Most of the fancy letters are only at the beginning of the countries name, example Azir, or the first letter in an ocean ex, Endless Ocean. But why then are the o's fancy no matter where in the map they are found,

 

Lastly does anyone else think that the E in Emul and Endless looks like an Allomantic symbol ?

 

Edit: Shameless spelling mistakes :P

Edited by PunSpren
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I think you are overlooking the thing about the fonts - I am pretty sure that's just how the font was designed, so it can feel unique and all.

 

The part about the letters intersected by the compass' lines, that you may be onto something. Now that I look at it, there are many letters that look different - to the point where I have to wonder whether you are onto something, or what you (and I) are seeing is just a product of the map's coloring. I am going to assume, for now at least, that this is the major thing Peter said we hadn't noticed, and look into it. Going ray by ray is probably the most organized way of enumerating all the weird letters.

 

Also, I think what we are looking for here is lack of shadow behind the letters, or a much lighter shadow than is present in the other letters of the given name. Yulay, for example, fits the pattern, but Azir and Zawfix don't. So I don't know, seems a little erratic...

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I'm inclined to say the letters thing are just a trick of the light, buuuuuut a slim chance is still a chance. So these are the letters that look distinct to me:

 

On Lines (working clockwise by ray):

Aimia (I)*

Reshi Isles ®

Icewater (All/part of the word)

Liafor (F)*

Purelake (L)

Yulay (A)

Tukar Marat ®*

Ocean of Origins (S)

Southern Depths (SOUTH)

 

*Indicates letters that I'm not confident actually fit the pattern.

 

Between Rays:

Shinovar (H)*

Alm (M)

 

And this is why I'm not convinced there's a pattern. The H in Shinovar is questionable, but the M in Alm is more distinct than most of the other letters. (Especially the letters on land, since the ones over the ocean/water seem more distinct.) I'm also suspect of the strings of letters (South in Southern Ocean and most/all of Icewater down by the compass rose.) That more than anything makes me think it's a false pattern.

 

But to Gyth and Maresia: I think there's some significance there. I'd noticed the symbol in the corners that matches the one on all the other maps, but I didn't realize the others match the cymatic pattern for Akinah. I don't know what that tells us (unless this map is painted on a ceiling in Akinah? Or the Akinah Oathgate?) But it's something.

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In what manner? 

 

Also, is there any relevance to there being 16 rays from the compass? 16 is an important number in the cosmere, and to Scadrial in particular.

 

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, It just strikes me as strange to see 16 as a significant number on a Rosharian document (where 10 clearly rules)

Edited by Ryshadium
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I think the 16 rays simply correspond to the basic sixteen compass directions (i.e. N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, and NNW).  It is more curious to me that they are not equi-angular.

That makes sense, but the lack of equality in the angles makes me wonder, too. It just doesn't look "right" to me.  

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I think the 16 rays simply correspond to the basic sixteen compass directions (i.e. N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, and NNW).  It is more curious to me that they are not equi-angular.

 

In what manner? 

 

Also, is there any relevance to there being 16 rays from the compass? 16 is an important number in the cosmere, and to Scadrial in particular.

 

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, It just strikes me as strange to see 16 as a significant number on a Rosharian document (where 10 clearly rules)

 

i dont know if its important or not, but its the same pattern that the other simbol. 

 

http://brandonsanderson.com/beta/wp-content/gallery/stormlight-2-maps-and-illustrations-2/WoR_MAP-FROSTLANDS_v02_fmt.jpeg

 

16 rays come from those too

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I just noticed that in the other map, there's a compass in the top right corner, that also has lines coming out of it.  Was this discussed before? Perhaps they all go in different places on the map and the lines intersect to form...something?

 

I am apparently blind, because they're all over that Frostlands map, and not necessarily in sensible places either. 

Edited by Ryshadium
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i dont know if this was already discovered, but that map (http://brandonsanderson.com/beta/wp-content/gallery/stormlight-2-maps-and-illustrations-2/WoR_MAP-FROSTLANDS_v02_fmt.jpeg)  it appears to be PRE-recreance, because it shows where the city of STORMSEAT is.

. So, where did Nazh get that map?

 

CPwYLtc.jpg

 

 

(stormseat is the city with the crown flag, apparently) 

 

oh, nvm, maybe its where the Alethi forces are.

Edited by Maresia
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