a litany of questions from across the cosmere

[blushweaver (Kim)]

Hi, I'm new here and to anything online regarding the Cosmere. If these have been answered, please still let me know because I'm so curious. 

1) If shards created the planets mirroring the original, how did the planets and their inhabitants without shards come to be?

 

2) The original planet that the shards mirror is not known. Hoid mentions dogs which I don't recall being in any Cosmere books. Have I missed the any mention of dogs? 

 

3) In Shadows of Silence is the spiritual realm overlapping the physical? If so, does gold hold a specific investiture that wards the dead (harm them)?

 

4) Why don't the heralds inhabit a physical body like the fused do? 

 

5) Since the fused inhabit a body, does that mean that they can go off world, unlike the harolds?

 

6) If the Shards left the worlds would the same lore and investitures exist?

 

7) Would the Lopen and Wax be best friends, or instantly weary of eachother? 

 

8) MY MOST PERTINANT QUESTION: Are there any organizations, dragons, beings, or people, that are trying to gather the shards and put Adonalsium back together? 

 

[Returned he/him]

Welcome! Some of these have clearer answers than others, and some are still mysteries.

 

1. The only planet that we know was created by Shards is Scadrial. More are possible, but we don't know how they came to be or how their populations came to live there.
2. The original planet in the Cosmere (or at least the first we know of) is/was called Yolen. We don't know much about it, including if there were dogs there. Presumably there were, but Hoid's comment is about Rosharans calling axehounds "hounds", so the dog reference could be as recent as Ashyn (where the Rosharan humans came from immediately before Roshar).
3. Something bad happened on Threnody when... certain events took place (I'm not sure how open to spoilers you are, or what would be a spoiler for you, or even if spoilers are allowed in this subforum). We don't have a huge amount of detail about it, though gold having a divine, Shardic property is probably a good guess. I think it's unlikely that the Spiritual Realm is overlapping the physical there (as opposed to the Cognitive, with Shades being Cognitive Shadows), but I don't think we have definitive information on it. If we do, I'm sure someone will post it here soon enough. EDIT: Dunkum corrected that it is silver, not gold, that repels Shades.
4. We don't know a ton about the precise differences, but inhabiting Singer bodies is something that is more about the Singers themselves than the Fused-- Singers have gemhearts, and take spren (and, apparently, spren-like things) into them to undergo dramatic changes. We have no reason to think that Heralds even could do something similar, let alone would want to. There does appear to be a substantial difference in the nature of Heralds and Fused.
5. Maybe, though I would doubt it. It also depends on what you mean by "off-world". Heralds and Fused alike can go to Braize, but we haven't seen any capable of leaving the Rosharan system overall. Anyways, the reason I doubt it is that the Fused are heavily permeated with Odium's essence, and highly Invested individuals in a given locale often have a difficult time moving around the Cosmere. Some can do it, though, like Vasher and Vivenna, plus Ghostbloods and 17th Shard members, so I wouldn't rule it out completely. There are also ways to travel that neither we nor characters in the books know about, so the future might look very different.
6. Lore, almost certainly. Investiture... maybe. In examples we've seen Investiture seems to come from Shards in some way becoming connected to the worlds where they settle, which makes it difficult for them to leave themselves (avatars are a different story). This may be what happened to Odium in becoming trapped in the Rosharan system. Though we have seen Seons travelling between systems, so who knows? And magic from one place should work similarly in another (per a WoB), so maybe the magic would remain even if a Shard did somehow extricate itself from a planet/system.
7. I think they'd get along. Lopen does his own thing, and Wax has lots of experience dealing with a Lopen-like character from Wayne. Lopen and Wayne would get along famously, I think.
8. Maybe. We don't know a whole lot yet about what's going on at the Cosmere level, and have only begun to get a peek at the groups operating that way.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Returned

[Dunkum he/him]

Returned mostly covered it, but a couple additional bits:

2. there are dogs in Mistborn, including a very notable case in book 2.

3. the metal that repels the shades in Shadows for Silence is silver, not gold

5. i'd guess it would be easier for a fused in a singer body to leave the roshar/ashyn/braise system than for a herald to do so.

7. it's not clear. shards are capable of leaving, but the process of doing so involves taking all or most of their investiture with them. this would almost certainly change/reduce the magic systems on a given world

[+Harrycrapper]

Wax also mentions shooting a dog in a very particular place. Scadrial is the planet that most closely emulates Earth, so things like dogs exist there where they don't in a lot of other areas of the cosmere. 

[Anomander Rake he/him]

A few more bits and pieces! 

1 & 2) like Returned mentioned, the OG planet is Yolen, the first known location of humans, and the origin of some but not all of the current human populations.  Scadrial's humans, for example, were created by Preservation and Ruin

4) Brandon has said he's gonna get into the details of herald body mechanics in the back 5