Shai's age

[rzgwong]

There is a fair amount of evidence that suggests that Moonlight is Shai from The Emperor's Soul. If that is true, Shai would have to be at least hundreds of years old during the events of The Lost Metal. We know that the events of The Emperor's Soul occurred some time after Elantris, both of which occurred before the events of the first Mistborn Era. While we don't know exactly when Era 1 Mistborn occurs after Elantris, we do know that the events of the second Mistborn Era occurs almost 350 years after the first. That alone would put Shai at almost 400 years old. How can this chronology be reconciled? Does Shai have access to some sort of magic that allows for de-aging? 

[Frustration]

Most worldhoppers have some for of immortality. Additionally there is some evidence to suggest that Self is experiencing extreme time dilation.

[StormingTexan he/him]

Most Worldhoppers should be too old to be alive . There is a WoB on this. 

 

 

Quote

 

Questioner 1

So you mentioned earlier that a lot of the characters that we see in multiple books are functionally immortal-- that interact between the different stories are functionally immortal. Can we-- But some of them when we saw them in actual just books, before we saw them jumping between worlds, were not functionally immortal at that time. Can we then take that to mean that they somehow became functionally immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

You can take that to become that. Now--

Moderator

Correctly. There's an implied correctly.

Brandon Sanderson

You can correctly. Now here's the distinction. Some of them are not. Some of them are using tricks of *searches for correct word* relativistic time travel to move forward in the future. Some of them are not aging and others are just aging really slowly. And those are three separate things among characters you have actually seen.

Questioner 2

And which are which? *laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

...I will give you hints as you read the books.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)

 

 

[Treamayne]

On 11/17/2022 at 4:50 PM, StormingTexan said:

Most Worldhoppers should be too old to be alive . There is a WoB on this. 

There is also this WoB that correlates:

Spoiler

Iceblade44

So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.

Faera

Implying that some are actually immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

• Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)
• Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)
• Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)
• Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)
• Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)
• Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)
• Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

 

[lacrossedeamon]

Shai just forges her date of birth one year later every year.