The night Aether and the forgotten

[Koloss17]

So I have just finished the Aether of Night and I loved it!!!! But one thing bothered me: what the heck are the forgotten?

it was made clear these were created by the Dari to sate one twin’s wants, but the problem is that it was also  made clear that these were ancestors. From what I understand, which might be very little, the Dari, with the help of one of the twins, made the ancestors get pulled from what I can only assume is the spiritual realm, into the physical realm with a bit of tainting. That would be really cool, because so far, there has been no evidence of any meddling with the spiritual realm. 

Another question is are these guys night Aethers or not? They rose from the night pool thing and they are pitch black, but they are created by the Dari, who are being controlled by the twin that is not the one in the Aether of Night (my understanding is that Makkal is the person that was “unimprisonned” by Raeth when the pool touched him, leading me to believe that that is his prison). 

Also, unrelated question, are the Aethers god metals, making the Aether pools large enough concentrations of them, making them perpendicularities, meaning there are  four shards on this planet!?

[Eternal Khol]

1 hour ago, Koloss17 said:

So I have just finished the Aether of Night and I loved it!!!! But one thing bothered me: what the heck are the forgotten?

it was made clear these were created by the Dari to sate one twin’s wants, but the problem is that it was also  made clear that these were ancestors. From what I understand, which might be very little, the Dari, with the help of one of the twins, made the ancestors get pulled from what I can only assume is the spiritual realm, into the physical realm with a bit of tainting. That would be really cool, because so far, there has been no evidence of any meddling with the spiritual realm. 

Another question is are these guys night Aethers or not? They rose from the night pool thing and they are pitch black, but they are created by the Dari, who are being controlled by the twin that is not the one in the Aether of Night (my understanding is that Makkal is the person that was “unimprisonned” by Raeth when the pool touched him, leading me to believe that that is his prison). 

Also, unrelated question, are the Aethers god metals, making the Aether pools large enough concentrations of them, making them perpendicularities, meaning there are  four shards on this planet!?

Brandon took the Night Aether in this book and kinda turned it into the Midnight Essance of the Stormlight Archive. You'll notice lots of similarities there.

Makkal was trapped in Chaos, or Night.

Agaris was trapped in Order, or Illuminous, which is what the Vo-Dari use to Send.

They were both still in their prisons, but they were capable of seeing and influencing the world through the people.

 

They were only let out of their prisons in the epilogue

I never got the impression it was the actual Ancestors, I think they were just saying that to mess with their minds.

 

Agaris isn't really "Controlling" them. They believe he's their god and they do what he says

The Forgotten were made from the Aether of Night but not Aethers themselves. I think the Aether of Night can be used to make anything, but the humans just used it to make soldiers to kill each other like the twins wanted. Tools of destruction.

There's one chapter where Raeth forms the night to save Darro from falling hundreds of feet. 

Raeth asks Makkal what he can do with the Night, and Makkal says "what can't you do?"

 

Only the source of Night and Illuminous were counted as perpendicularities. 

"Ferrous and Bestarin canceled one another.  More was necessary.  Amberite and Verdant canceled one another.  Then my sons did that which was forbidden, granting men Order and Chaos in pure forms.

 

Macen

I have read White Sand and Aether of Night, and I don't know why they're not published because I loved both of them.

Brandon Sanderson

White Sand is not published because I don't feel that for one, Kenton has the depth of character that I like to have nowadays.  He's more an old school character of mine where he just isn't, personality wise, doesn't have quite enough.  Beyond that I feel that White Sand as a narrative meanders a little too much.  I feel if I cut back about a thousand words and fix him, we would have a good book.  Aether is not published because I feel that I wrote two different books and didn't blend them together very well.  There is the kind of farcical, Shakespearean, switched places, silliness, and it's fun, but it's like a mistaken identity almost sort of stuff and romance and things like that mixed with these dark things are coming out of the shard pool and destroying the world.  And those two stories never meshed together well enough for me to want to publish them.  

 

Words of Radiance Omaha signing (March 13, 2014)

 

 

Questioner

Is Re-Shephir related at all to the Midnight Essence in Aether of Night?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's me, like-- Related in that Aether of Night isn't canon, and I really liked how that worked in the cosmere, and I ported it to this instead. So that's like--

Questioner

So you're not gonna write Aether of Night?

Brandon Sanderson

Aether of Night, I might eventually write, but the Mid--

Questioner

It may be different?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Eternal Khol

[Honorless]

No, the Forgotten are not the Aedin ancestors. They are not the souls of those tossed into the proto-Perpendicularity as a form of execution. They are... astral bodies of the Vo-Dari priests. That's why the Vo-Dari priests themselves were immobile, they were each piloting a different body.

The Forgotten are not themselves the Aether of Night, they are formed from it. They are the product rather than the thing itself.

Yup, you're on the money there. It was Makkal. Did you catch which twin was Slaughter and which twin was Despair?

The Aethers were not godmetals. Perpendicularities are usually the liquid form of Investiture.

The number of Perpendicularities is not necessarily indicative of the number of Shards. A single Shard can have multiple Shardpools. We have seen an instance where there is a permanent stable perpendicularity on a planet with no Shard in residence. The Fell Twins seem like very powerful Splinters rather than Shards themselves. There only seem to be two proto-Shards on the Aethers planet: The Former (the verb not the adjective, as in 'to form', rather than 'the one before') and Decay 

Edited May 21, 2020 by R J