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Making a larger Elantris


Karger

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Why not make a larger Elantris?  The fact that the aon is the size of a city seems to indicate that a larger aon draws more power.  What would be the result of a careful arrangement of road building conducted solely by elantrians acting with proper intent?

Edited by Karger
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Huh, that's really interesting.  I wonder if eventually you would reach a point where it was difficult to patrol and monitor your construction.

I'm imagining something like the following series of events:

  • Group of people gets the idea to create a massive geographic construction granting them godly levels of power
  • Said group of people works for a long time setting all this up
  • They become the most powerful (by a long shot) people on the planet, and as such make enemies
  • These enemies come and try and break down walls, or divert rivers through roads, etc.
  • Depending on how large the construction is, and how may people are in the group, the group may have a difficult time keeping a constant eye on the entire thing and protecting it all.

There's definitely some counters to that, though.  For example, this presupposes that everyone in the world knows how the city of Elantris works.  Which, as shown in the book, they do not.  So if nobody notices the huge construction project, or associates it with the massive jump in power, then I can't see any problem with this.   I mean there's always room for Brandon to jump in and establish a "max bandwidth" on the amount of investiture one can draw, but I'm not aware of any rule like that up to this point.  

Anyways, my two cents.  I could also imagine the logistics of getting a group of people to work together on a massive undertaking increasing exponentially with the size of the project.  But hey, in the real world we built the pyramids, so clearly projects on that scale are possible.

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18 minutes ago, Jozomby said:

Huh, that's really interesting.  I wonder if eventually you would reach a point where it was difficult to patrol and monitor your construction.

I'm imagining something like the following series of events:

  • Group of people gets the idea to create a massive geographic construction granting them godly levels of power
  • Said group of people works for a long time setting all this up
  • They become the most powerful (by a long shot) people on the planet, and as such make enemies
  • These enemies come and try and break down walls, or divert rivers through roads, etc.
  • Depending on how large the construction is, and how may people are in the group, the group may have a difficult time keeping a constant eye on the entire thing and protecting it all.

There's definitely some counters to that, though.  For example, this presupposes that everyone in the world knows how the city of Elantris works.  Which, as shown in the book, they do not.  So if nobody notices the huge construction project, or associates it with the massive jump in power, then I can't see any problem with this.   I mean there's always room for Brandon to jump in and establish a "max bandwidth" on the amount of investiture one can draw, but I'm not aware of any rule like that up to this point.  

Anyways, my two cents.  I could also imagine the logistics of getting a group of people to work together on a massive undertaking increasing exponentially with the size of the project.  But hey, in the real world we built the pyramids, so clearly projects on that scale are possible.

How about getting existing Elantrians to make it? I can see each of them carrying a mini Elantris drawing or something to charge them farther away, if that could even work. and simply making at least an outline of the Rao/Ela shape wouldn't take too long. It could be reinforced after the shape is made.

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Building a Bigger one will have the normal limitations of any other Capacity Expansion Project, which is to say that at some point you would need to take the existing one off line to switch over to the new one.  The driver in this case is that you would need to erase the smaller Rao symbol before you could complete the bigger one, and we've seen that there can dramatic consequences of in the interim, thought just knowing that it's coming and how to fix it will make a huge difference.  

 

Alternative:  Is there any reason that they couldnt just make a Second Elantris?  Or wait, what about FOUR more, so the original is at the center and the other expand out from the cardinal directions?  Would this increase the overall Range of AonDor?  Would this increase the apparent hard population max on Elantrians in existence?

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Use Arelon it’s self as the base Aon. Draw a huge Aon Rao centered on the country. This way, next time someone makes a big crack in the ground, the Aon will just auto update. Only Elantrians can break Aons so it wouldn't matter that parts of it are in Fjordel territory, or that others are in the ocean.

Edited by SwordNimiForPresident
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47 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Dakhor can too.

that takes 50 of them to sacrifice themselves to one who then gains that power, they then have to know what the Elantrians are planning, how it works and stop it before they are obliterated by a single Aon Daa powerful enough to splinter shards.

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3 hours ago, Booknerd said:

that takes 50 of them to sacrifice themselves to one who then gains that power, they then have to know what the Elantrians are planning, how it works and stop it before they are obliterated by a single Aon Daa powerful enough to splinter shards.

I imagine it wouldn't be hard to figure out what was going on and send a single Dakhor (and if you think they aren't going to make that 50-man sacrifice, you're mad, because they wouldn't care) to break a single part of it and then move on. The Elantrians can't be everywhere, and the Dakhor dude could just wander around at random, breaking portions of it like a person who removes semi-colons from code for kicks and giggles. Easy distraction.

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2 hours ago, SwordNimiForPresident said:

While I don’t disagree, I imagine that there must be an upper limit to what they can break, otherwise they would have destroyed Elantris (by breaking the Aon) a long time ago.

I'm not sure they knew they could destroy Aons before. Surely if they'd known that, Dilaf wouldn't have been the only one (or one of few) with that ability.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/9/2020 at 1:22 PM, Invocation said:

I'm not sure they knew they could destroy Aons before. Surely if they'd known that, Dilaf wouldn't have been the only one (or one of few) with that ability.

It costs lives to get that ability.

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3 hours ago, Karger said:

It costs lives to get that ability.

You say that like they'd care. Everything they do costs lives. They're fanatical monks being wielded like a mace by inhuman fragments of a dead pseudo-deity. None of those factors are exactly condusive to caring about human lives.

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3 hours ago, Invocation said:

You say that like they'd care. Everything they do costs lives. They're fanatical monks being wielded like a mace by inhuman fragments of a dead pseudo-deity. None of those factors are exactly condusive to caring about human lives.

No but human reproduction and fanatical monk requirement must both be rather slow.

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42 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Fjordell has been functionally conquering its way across their known areas of Sel. All they have to do is kidnap people to use.

We don't know if unwilling sacrifices will work.  Also how often do you think this ability is needed?

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Just now, Karger said:

We don't know if unwilling sacrifices will work.  Also how often do you think this ability is needed?

I don't know why unwilling sacrifices wouldn't. Asserting their Devotion to the religion by assuming Dominance over people via incorporating them into your magic. We've seen that their transformative things tend to involve a circle, so theoretically their Intent should outweigh the unwilling people, especially if the circle has to be proportional to the amount of death.

Judging from the fact that Dilaf was absurdly effective, I see no reason Fjordell would not juice their people as much as they can. Even with the Elantrians preparing for it, if enough can have that ability and are spread out enough, there'll be no way to focus on getting rid of them unless some people get really good at massively complex Aon chains that can operate under-the-radar enough to not get broken.

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1 minute ago, Invocation said:

I don't know why unwilling sacrifices wouldn't

So far we have only seen willing ones.

2 minutes ago, Invocation said:

so theoretically their Intent should outweigh the unwilling people,

That is generally not how intent works.

2 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Judging from the fact that Dilaf was absurdly effective, I see no reason Fjordell would not juice their people as much as they can

Dilaf was super effective.  If he had been supported by another one or two people like him he might have won but that beyond that why bother?  Also how do you keep control of such people?

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6 minutes ago, Karger said:

So far we have only seen willing ones.

Because to this point it was only worth it to use willing ones. 

6 minutes ago, Karger said:

That is generally not how intent works.

Closest cosmere system to this that I can think of is Hemalurgy, where that's exactly how it works. 

8 minutes ago, Karger said:

Dilaf was super effective.  If he had been supported by another one or two people like him he might have won but that beyond that why bother?  Also how do you keep control of such people?

One or two extra people is good, but you may as well have a few units of two or three of these people running around supporting each other for some pseudo-guerilla efforts against the Elantrians. Why bother is precisely because they're that effective: if another army of Elantrians shows up shooting off Daa blasts, they won't know where to target if you've effectively mixed the more power Aonbreakers into the rest of the Fjorden forces, giving them a larger chance of surviving to blast back. 

How to keep control of them is simple: religion. I highly doubt Dilaf was the only fanatic among them, and I also doubt that their choice of him to be the pioneer Aonbreaker was coincidental. All that needs to happen is they find more raging fanatics and repeat the process. Surely there's no shortage in the death cult monastery. Then you have control over them easily enough, even if you may not exactly be able to reign them back in once you've set them loose, but that's a threat with all soldiers.

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Just now, Invocation said:

Closest cosmere system to this that I can think of is Hemalurgy, where that's exactly how it works. 

With Hemalurgy you need to have intent while stabbing.  However if a person is unwilling no number of people can overwhelm their intent.  You cannot make somone preform hemalurgy without mind controlling them. 

2 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Why bother is precisely because they're that effective: if another army of Elantrians shows up shooting off Daa blasts, they won't know where to target if you've effectively mixed the more power Aonbreakers into the rest of the Fjorden forces, giving them a larger chance of surviving to blast back. 

Elantrians have not been a problem until recently and then they were not a problem anymore.  We know of no other group of comparably powered people that they have to deal with.

3 minutes ago, Invocation said:

How to keep control of them is simple: religion. I highly doubt Dilaf was the only fanatic among them, and I also doubt that their choice of him to be the pioneer Aonbreaker was coincidental

If you expand the number of people too much you are going to make a mistake and Dilaf in his youth actually betrayed the cause.  Imagine what he could do working for the enemy.

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4 minutes ago, Karger said:

With Hemalurgy you need to have intent while stabbing.  However if a person is unwilling no number of people can overwhelm their intent.  You cannot make somone preform hemalurgy without mind controlling them. 

No, but the victim doesn't need to be willing is my point. Who cares, when you're taking from them? What does it matter whether they want their stuff ganked? You just do it. Likely the same for Dakhor.

15 minutes ago, Karger said:

Elantrians have not been a problem until recently and then they were not a problem anymore.  We know of no other group of comparably powered people that they have to deal with.

Elantrians were not a problem before because they were content to be left alone as long as they were left alone. Now they're not, and they're no longer afflicted by the Reod, so now they're an issue.

34 minutes ago, Karger said:

If you expand the number of people too much you are going to make a mistake and Dilaf in his youth actually betrayed the cause.  Imagine what he could do working for the enemy.

If you think there's not a way to shut them down, you'd deluding yourself.

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2 minutes ago, Invocation said:

No, but the victim doesn't need to be willing is my point. Who cares, when you're taking from them? What does it matter whether they want their stuff ganked? You just do it. Likely the same for Dakhor.

Ruin is about breaking things down.  Dominion is about getting someone to agree with you and serve you willingly.

3 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Elantrians were not a problem before because they were content to be left alone as long as they were left alone. Now they're not, and they're no longer afflicted by the Reod, so now they're an issue.

In the future they might make more but up until now they have not needed to.

4 minutes ago, Invocation said:

If you think there's not a way to shut them down, you'd deluding yourself.

The powers might not manifest a nice off switch.  They may have countermeasures but I doubt they are full proof(nothing ever is).

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Just now, Karger said:

Ruin is about breaking things down.  Dominion is about getting someone to agree with you and serve you willingly.

Domination can be easily unwilling, and given the Dakhor leaning toward that side of things, that's what they're doing. 

1 minute ago, Karger said:

In the future they might make more but up until now they have not needed to.

Wyrn has some access to some form of future-sight, which means he was likely preparing for the eventuality that his Aonbreakers would fail initially by making more. At least if he's smart. 

2 minutes ago, Karger said:

The powers might not manifest a nice off switch.  They may have countermeasures but I doubt they are full proof(nothing ever is).

I don't think it's so much of an 'off switch' as it is something about Wyrn being more Invested than the normal Dakhors and a likely failsafe of their method of Investiture that would allow him to cut off their source if they were in direct rebellion. Maybe only via eyesight but it's still probably there.

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13 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Domination can be easily unwilling, and given the Dakhor leaning toward that side of things, that's what they're doing. 

Not really.  It can be coercive but when you get down to it the people involved have to agree with the dominator.

14 minutes ago, Invocation said:

Wyrn has some access to some form of future-sight, which means he was likely preparing for the eventuality that his Aonbreakers would fail initially by making more. At least if he's smart. 

I think he predicted the opposite.  That they would succeed.  That is the problem of future sight reliance.

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Just now, Karger said:

Not really.  It can be coercive but when you get down to it the people involved have to agree with the dominator.

No, they really don't. They have to say they do, because otherwise they get sent to whatever equivalent of the gulags Fjordell has. 

2 minutes ago, Karger said:

I think he predicted the opposite.  That they would succeed.  That is the problem of future sight reliance.

If he predicted they would win, why would he have had what's-his-face go stab Hrathen?

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4 minutes ago, Invocation said:

They have to say they do

And act like they do at which point the difference is minimal.

4 minutes ago, Invocation said:

If he predicted they would win, why would he have had what's-his-face go stab Hrathen?

He did not predict Hrathen and I do not think that they were acting under orders is my understanding.

Edited by Karger
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