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Some questions and a theory from a new reader


twinsuns7

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Hello all.  I came across Sandersons works a few months ago and have been working my way through them, and encouraging friends to do the same, and I've finally decided to ask some questions of the brains trust that is this forum.  Apologies for character names that I've forgotten and other such things.

First, When talking to a friend, who is multi lingual, and talking her into reading the Cosmere she came across the German audio books for Mistborn.  This made me wonder what they did for the translations, since German will allow you to create new compound words. Did they put words like "allomantic" straight into the book, or did they work out the compound word translation?

 

Second, How does the magic work on Sel? I only have a fairly basic understanding of the rules of magic in the Cosmere, but what I know is that there are three types of magic on each world. Scadrial has allomancy, ferrochemical abilities and hemalurgy. Sel, though, has drawing the symbols that the Elantrians use (can't remember what they were called, Ahn Do?) the chanting and bone spikes that the priests use and the martial art that the nobleman used at the end of Elantris. But, Sel also has the forging and bloodsealing from The Emperor's Soul, which brings it up to 5 magic types, unless I'm misunderstanding something which I probably am.

 

Third, is more of a theory.  Adonolsium is killed and the shards of his body are split between the sixteen individuals who killed him. We don't know much about that whole situation, but my thought is that those that did the killing had been living with Adonolsium as their god for awhile and where opportunistic when they killed him and divided his power.  Since then, they've all struggled to emulate Adonolsium, in their own ways, and one of the ways has been through magic. None of the sixteen understood how Adonolsium performed his magic/miracles and they had all, pre murder, developed their own theories as to how it worked.  That's why different worlds have different ways of doing the same things, they didn't understand how Adonolsium could fly so on Scadrial they push against metal and on Roshar they use surgebindings. They had seen Adonolsium grant power to ordinary people and, perhaps, some of the eventual murders had speculated about how he had done so and come up with the theory that he had inserted some type of spike that grants a measure of power, and so on Scadrial that turns into hemalurgy and on Sel the cultish priesthood uses it to create monstrous super soldiers.  So, my theory is that the 16 original shards were attempting to emulate Adonolsium with their magic systems and created their own systems based on the speculations of their pre shard personas and channeled by the laws of a universe that they hadn't fully understood when they gained their powers.

 

Finally, to lighten the mood. Would Shallan consider a lace glove to be scandalous lingerie?

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Hey, welcome!

I can't speak much about translation (plus, every language will handle things differently; I imagine, as a rule, most versions will preserve as many of Brandon's made-up words as they can), but I can say a few words about your other questions.

5 minutes ago, twinsuns7 said:

Second, How does the magic work on Sel? I only have a fairly basic understanding of the rules of magic in the Cosmere, but what I know is that there are three types of magic on each world. Scadrial has allomancy, ferrochemical abilities and hemalurgy. Sel, though, has drawing the symbols that the Elantrians use (can't remember what they were called, Ahn Do?) the chanting and bone spikes that the priests use and the martial art that the nobleman used at the end of Elantris. But, Sel also has the forging and bloodsealing from The Emperor's Soul, which brings it up to 5 magic types, unless I'm misunderstanding something which I probably am.

So, you are slightly off here. Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy are - as you correctly understand - three distinct magic systems (or Invested Arts, as they are sometimes called in-world). The reason there are three of them is because that's (apparently) what would happen when you get two Shards together - each will create its own Invested Art, and a third one will come into existence just from the interaction of the other two (or of the Shards, I am not clear on that). Sel, however is... weird. As we understand it, everything we see there is just different manifestations of the same magic system; a system that involves visualizing elements of the landscape in order to access the power. But you are right, the fact that there were two Shards there should mean that there are three magic systems (unless they did things differently) - so maybe we've only seen the different manifestations of one of them, and don't know anything about the other two. Or maybe, with Devotion and Dominion now essentially one, the Dor, there is essentially a single magic system on the entire planet, and it's just a matter of how it manifests in the different places. It's definitely something worth asking about.

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Okay, so as the previous people answered the 2nd and 3rd one, I can tell you something of the translations. 

Well, yes, they try to keep many of the made-up names. Or at least create something sounding similar. (I am Polish by the way, as you might start wondering as I give some examples.) The Allomancy is just 'Allomancja' - so they just made this word sound Polish. But actually more often (and it is a horrible problem as I try to get your theories) they translate it. Words such as Stormlight (Burzowe Światło, if anyone wanted to know...), names of the Shards (all but Odium, actually) are meaning more or less the same. Yeah, so I kind of have to keep up with two names of everything and for now I feel like I am in a big mess trying to understand what I can. (And also I am kind of afraid that I might have missed something just because they were unable to translate the double meaning - it was kind of a problem with Warbreaker, we have two versions of the translation of the title, by the way. Funny.) 

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7 minutes ago, twinsuns7 said:

Hello all.  I came across Sandersons works a few months ago and have been working my way through them, and encouraging friends to do the same, and I've finally decided to ask some questions of the brains trust that is this forum.  Apologies for character names that I've forgotten and other such things.

First, When talking to a friend, who is multi lingual, and talking her into reading the Cosmere she came across the German audio books for Mistborn.  This made me wonder what they did for the translations, since German will allow you to create new compound words. Did they put words like "allomantic" straight into the book, or did they work out the compound word translation?

 

Second, How does the magic work on Sel? I only have a fairly basic understanding of the rules of magic in the Cosmere, but what I know is that there are three types of magic on each world. Scadrial has allomancy, ferrochemical abilities and hemalurgy. Sel, though, has drawing the symbols that the Elantrians use (can't remember what they were called, Ahn Do?) the chanting and bone spikes that the priests use and the martial art that the nobleman used at the end of Elantris. But, Sel also has the forging and bloodsealing from The Emperor's Soul, which brings it up to 5 magic types, unless I'm misunderstanding something which I probably am.

 

Third, is more of a theory.  Adonolsium is killed and the shards of his body are split between the sixteen individuals who killed him. We don't know much about that whole situation, but my thought is that those that did the killing had been living with Adonolsium as their god for awhile and where opportunistic when they killed him and divided his power.  Since then, they've all struggled to emulate Adonolsium, in their own ways, and one of the ways has been through magic. None of the sixteen understood how Adonolsium performed his magic/miracles and they had all, pre murder, developed their own theories as to how it worked.  That's why different worlds have different ways of doing the same things, they didn't understand how Adonolsium could fly so on Scadrial they push against metal and on Roshar they use surgebindings. They had seen Adonolsium grant power to ordinary people and, perhaps, some of the eventual murders had speculated about how he had done so and come up with the theory that he had inserted some type of spike that grants a measure of power, and so on Scadrial that turns into hemalurgy and on Sel the cultish priesthood uses it to create monstrous super soldiers.  So, my theory is that the 16 original shards were attempting to emulate Adonolsium with their magic systems and created their own systems based on the speculations of their pre shard personas and channeled by the laws of a universe that they hadn't fully understood when they gained their powers.

 

Finally, to lighten the mood. Would Shallan consider a lace glove to be scandalous lingerie?

Firstly, welcome to the Cosmere.

On your first question I'm not sure.

2) You misunderstand 3 magics on a world is not a given. In the case of Scadrial it is a quirk of the combination of the two shards interactions.

3) Extremely doubtful as the magics follow the shardic intents that were created by the shattering.

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10 minutes ago, twinsuns7 said:

Second, How does the magic work on Sel? I only have a fairly basic understanding of the rules of magic in the Cosmere, but what I know is that there are three types of magic on each world. Scadrial has allomancy, ferrochemical abilities and hemalurgy. Sel, though, has drawing the symbols that the Elantrians use (can't remember what they were called, Ahn Do?) the chanting and bone spikes that the priests use and the martial art that the nobleman used at the end of Elantris. But, Sel also has the forging and bloodsealing from The Emperor's Soul, which brings it up to 5 magic types, unless I'm misunderstanding something which I probably am.

where did you get the information that exactly three magic systems exist on each planet?

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On 20/05/2019 at 0:54 AM, twinsuns7 said:

Hello all.  I came across Sandersons works a few months ago and have been working my way through them, and encouraging friends to do the same, and I've finally decided to ask some questions of the brains trust that is this forum.  Apologies for character names that I've forgotten and other such things.

First, When talking to a friend, who is multi lingual, and talking her into reading the Cosmere she came across the German audio books for Mistborn.  This made me wonder what they did for the translations, since German will allow you to create new compound words. Did they put words like "allomantic" straight into the book, or did they work out the compound word translation?

 

Second, How does the magic work on Sel? I only have a fairly basic understanding of the rules of magic in the Cosmere, but what I know is that there are three types of magic on each world. Scadrial has allomancy, ferrochemical abilities and hemalurgy. Sel, though, has drawing the symbols that the Elantrians use (can't remember what they were called, Ahn Do?) the chanting and bone spikes that the priests use and the martial art that the nobleman used at the end of Elantris. But, Sel also has the forging and bloodsealing from The Emperor's Soul, which brings it up to 5 magic types, unless I'm misunderstanding something which I probably am.

 

Third, is more of a theory.  Adonolsium is killed and the shards of his body are split between the sixteen individuals who killed him. We don't know much about that whole situation, but my thought is that those that did the killing had been living with Adonolsium as their god for awhile and where opportunistic when they killed him and divided his power.  Since then, they've all struggled to emulate Adonolsium, in their own ways, and one of the ways has been through magic. None of the sixteen understood how Adonolsium performed his magic/miracles and they had all, pre murder, developed their own theories as to how it worked.  That's why different worlds have different ways of doing the same things, they didn't understand how Adonolsium could fly so on Scadrial they push against metal and on Roshar they use surgebindings. They had seen Adonolsium grant power to ordinary people and, perhaps, some of the eventual murders had speculated about how he had done so and come up with the theory that he had inserted some type of spike that grants a measure of power, and so on Scadrial that turns into hemalurgy and on Sel the cultish priesthood uses it to create monstrous super soldiers.  So, my theory is that the 16 original shards were attempting to emulate Adonolsium with their magic systems and created their own systems based on the speculations of their pre shard personas and channeled by the laws of a universe that they hadn't fully understood when they gained their powers.

 

Finally, to lighten the mood. Would Shallan consider a lace glove to be scandalous lingerie?

Welcome to the Shard! First off, where did you get the information of the multiple magic systems on Sel and so on?

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On 5/19/2019 at 7:54 PM, twinsuns7 said:

Finally, to lighten the mood. Would Shallan consider a lace glove to be scandalous lingerie?

Interesting question.  We see that woman of ill repute sometimes have gloves with the fingers showing (gasp) so yes lace gloves would most likely be somewhat scandalous.

 

On 5/19/2019 at 8:10 PM, not an Evil Librarian said:

where did you get the information that exactly three magic systems exist on each planet?

Three magic systems is common but it is defiantly not a rule.  We only know of one magic system on Taladain for example although another one is rumored and 6th of the Dusk's planet seems only to have one.

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In my experience, in spanish, they translate some words and leave some others. It's rather complicated 'cause spanish doesn't exactly have compound words, except sometimes. Maybe. For example "spren" are left like that, but "fearspren" is translated to "miedospren" (which is kindda fun sounding for native spanish speakers cause we usually don't do that)
Also "Allomancy" is translated to "Alomancia" where "Allo", from alloy, should be "Aleo", from "aleación", and "mancy"="mancia" (from greek both words). What I wanna say with this is that it's not only a matter of the language translated to but also of the word itself and the translators decition or lack of realization.

As for the magic systems, it's defintely not that every world has three magic systems. Magic is really complex in the cosmere. Each shard "has it's own system" but each one depends (a bit) on the way people think about it (they mold it through the cognitive realm) and the interactions between shards can result in "new systems". So what it may seem like ten magic systems might just be a veriety of manifestations of two shardic systems through thought or interaction.

And last, I don't think so. Shards have "intuitive knowledge" of lots (way to many) of things and it would be rather strange if one of those things wasn't how their magic system works. Also, as explained, what each system can do is heavily influenced by user's perceptions of it (Kaladin not healing his slave scars and many more examples) 

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