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Planets not Invested by Shards


Soulcaster05

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(Apologies if I'm not using the right Cosmere terminologies, I'm pretty new to the Cosmere!)

Are there planets out there in the Cosmere which have not been Invested by Shards, where humans live as they used to before and during the Shattering of Adonalsium? (I mean specifically, descendants of humans that lived during the Shattering of Adonalsium, or humans that witnessed the Shattering of Adonalsium)

Would their religions speak of Adonalsium, perhaps? Would these humans be able to perform magic?

How would they power their magics without the power of any Shard to fuel it?

Edited by Soulcaster05
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There are worlds that have humans and magic systems that are not directly powered by Shards, but all magic in the Cosmere orginates from Adonalsium and therefore the Shards now that they have his remains.

Adonalsium set up some magic system and when he was Shattered those existing magic systems got transferred to the Shards. So even though they aren’t Invested in said planet and arent involved with the magic, it still comes from them

i dont know if they will know of Adonalsium, but there would probably be Echoes, or just some kinda innate knowledge

so there are worlds that have had magic systems made by Adonalsium that exist after the shattering(and the presence of a magic system indicates that there should be sapient beings using said magic systems before and after the Shattering)


 

 

Phantine

Are there any magic systems in the cosmere that aren't shard based?

Brandon Sanderson

This depends on definitions. The effects of Adonalsium permeate everything, and Adonalsium is also the source of the Shards. It is possible to find a magic that isn't DIRECTLY powered by a specific shard, however, though most of these would have been set up before the shattering and would be much smaller in scope than things like Allomancy and Surgebinding.

/r/fantasy AMA 2013 (April 17, 2013)

Edited by Eternal Khol
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4 hours ago, Soulcaster05 said:

(Apologies if I'm not using the right Cosmere terminologies, I'm pretty new to the Cosmere!)

Are there planets out there in the Cosmere which have not been Invested by Shards, where humans live as they used to before and during the Shattering of Adonalsium? (I mean specifically, descendants of humans that lived during the Shattering of Adonalsium, or humans that witnessed the Shattering of Adonalsium)

Would their religions speak of Adonalsium, perhaps? Would these humans be able to perform magic?

How would they power their magics without the power of any Shard to fuel it?

Yeah, they're called minor Shardworlds, as in they don't have any of the 16 Shards of Adonalsium in residence. Ashyn, First of the Sun and Yolen are examples of that.

Look at the original inhabitants of Roshar: the spren, Greatshells, the Singers. The magics from before the Shattering would be a part of the ecosystem.

When Adonalsium was Shattered, all Investiture in the Cosmere got assigned to a Shard. For example, Ruin's Investiture isn't just on Scadrial, it's spread across the Cosmere. Not all of the power of a Shard is concentrated in one place by a Vessel.

Religions don't all have to come from the Shards. In the real world there are or have been cultures who've worshiped their ancestors, spirits of the land & water etc. Not all religions on Scadrial and Roshar correspond one to one with the Shards either. They might perhaps believe in the God Beyond.

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15 hours ago, Soulcaster05 said:

or humans that witnessed the Shattering of Adonalsium

There are still people living on Yolen (but not many and we don't know how much of that is fainlife vs non-fain) so there are at least descendants of people who were around the place where the Shattering happened and might remember it in much greater detail... especially since Yolen is also home to at least one dragon and he was there. It's possible other dragons survive from back then (they're naturally immortal) but Frost is the only confirmed dragon so far and the only person other than Hoid and the Vessels who we know was around for the Shattering.

Speaking of which, the scholars of Silverlight (a city that exists somewhere in the Cognitive Realm populated by people from many worlds) know a lot more about the Shattering than we as readers do, so there are people with a good working knowledge of the topic.

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Would their religions speak of Adonalsium, perhaps?

We know of at least one religion that does have echoes of Adonalsium and the Shattering in the form of the Iriali and The One. Brandon has confirmed that they don't know of the Shattering specifically but there are echoes of it in their religion, albeit more recent events that they also don't quite remember the specifics of are more influential.

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Would these humans be able to perform magic?

Yes and no. Brandon distinguishes 'minor' Shardworlds from 'major' ones in two ways. The most obvious is that major ones have at least one Shard in residence but the other big distinction is how you interact with the magic On a major Shardworld like Scadrial, Roshar or Sel, you can directly use magic and it's much more powerful. On a 'minor' world like First of the Sun the magic is more a part of the environment it's more common to interact with it indirectly. Here's a (truncated) WoB where Brandon discusses the subject. The full quote also goes into quite a bit of detail on how the magic systems on minor Shardworlds are still associated with the Shards even if they never 'go' there.

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I still consider one of the major dividing lines between "major" and "minor" Shardworlds (other than Shard residence) to be in strength of access to the magic, and control over it. I intend the minor Shardworlds to involve interactions with the magic as setting--coming back to spren, you could have a minor Shardworld with people who use, befriend, even bond spren. (Or the local equivalent--Seon, Aviar, etc.) But you'd never see power on the level of the city of Elantris, the actions of a Bondsmith, or even the broad power suite of a Mistborn. General Reddit 2018 (March 18, 2018)

First of the Sun is an example of how things work on a minor Shardworld: The Aviar are the ones who are magical and the human inhabitants have learned how to use their Talents for various purposes, but they can't gain Talents themselves. The disease-based magic on Ashyn (not canonized yet but we have a fairly good idea how Brandon intends it to work) involves the same fundamental forces that magic on Roshar does, but instead of bonding spren and doing impressive things with Surgebinding, you have disease-causing agents that have found a brilliant survival strategy by which they give you a power while you're sick, which encourages you to stay sick and pass on the disease to other people. So that's more direct than First of the Sun's magic but it's temporary in duration (because eventually you'll fight off the infection regardless and can't be infected again) and you only get one specific power per disease.

Hopefully that helps some.

Edited by Weltall
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