The "Shards"

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

The end of this novels seems very similar to the end of Mistborn Era 1. Was this the original idea behind mistborn?

[Weltall]

Yes, Brandon cannibalized things from Aether to create the Mistborn series we all know.

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WeiryWriter

Wait, really? That's pretty big news, even just possibility of it happening. I presume the Shards of the world would change then? Since Decay got reworked to be Ruin and such?

Peter Ahlstrom

Yeah, Decay is essentially Ruin, so lots of things would change there. But the magic of the Aethers, especially, could get their own book later.

There is a reason that Aethers are already canon. I don't think anyone has figured that out yet. But the backstory Brandon gives them could change in the future, or could end up never materializing.

General Reddit 2014 (Dec. 18, 2014)

The Former and Decay essentially became Preservation and Ruin, the Fell Twins are... well they're presented with Shard-levels of power but they'd probably be something more like super-Slivers if Brandon kept them in a rewrite and the conclusion is straight out of Hero of Ages.

There's lots of other cannibalized elements Brandon took from Aether and worked into other stories. The Forgotten for example inspired the Midnight Essence in SA, Wyndle and cultivationspren generally seem inspired by Verdant, Aedin familial hierarchy might have inspired the Horneaters' customs about birth order determining one's role and in more speculative territory there's stuff like the Shentis (possibly proto-Siah Amians?) and the Dari (Vorinism/Hierocracy?).

Oh, and while it didn't come from Aether of Night directly, Brandon's abortive plans for another book using the concept led to the creation of Syl and his first attempt to cannibalize the aethers for The Liar of Partinel seems to have been a stepping stone on the way to the Nahel Bond, since we see a character in the released chapters holding a conversation with their aether similar to how a surgebinder would with their spren.

Edited September 11, 2020 by Weltall

[LewsTherinTelescope]

20 hours ago, Weltall said:

the Fell Twins are... well they're presented with Shard-levels of power but they'd probably be something more like super-Slivers if Brandon kept them in a rewrite

Personally, the way I want to see them is a Vessel (who presumably is still their parent) splitting the Shard they hold into two, and giving it up. I'm curious how that would work: could you get two smaller intents covered by the first (for example, Ruin -> Destruction and Entropy)? Because these would each have half of infinite power, I'm curious if they'd end up with still infinite power, but with the amount already Invested in any one location cut in half, or something.

Edited September 12, 2020 by beewall