Tamriel Wolfsbaine Posted August 17, 2023 Posted August 17, 2023 I am very curious how many athers can you be bound to at once ? Could an atherbound have more than one Bud? I don't remember seeing anything indicating a limitation. We know radiants can bond multiple spren but things like scadrial are 1 or all.
Quantus he/him Posted August 17, 2023 Posted August 17, 2023 Hard to say. Assuming there is no realmic/mechanical reason that one person could not maintain two Luhel Bonds, it would require two of the Prime Aethers to be willing to Share the person... <insert Fremen Voice> and their Water. This WOB indicates he is inserting differences just to make them unique from Spren and Seons, so it's hard to predict. Spoiler Quote simonthekillerewok How much have the aethers changed since Aether of Night? Brandon Sanderson The big change I made to the aethers, other than adding this other world... A couple things going on with the aethers. First off, when you finally meet people who bear the aethers (which we're calling aetherbound, currently, and I like that term), you will find that, in order to differentiate them from things like seons and things like spren bonds and things like that, I've decided that one core aether bonds a lot of people, and it's one entity that you are all bonding with. So, if you meet five aetherbound who have bound to the Verdant aether, they are all bound to the same individual, at least on the core aether world. And that just adds a different nuance to it. There is lore and worldbuilding that is different that I will leave. There's a lot that's the same; there's a lot that's different that I'll leave to you to discover. I am working quite a bit on this planet for future projects (which, no, I haven't secretly been writing yet). But that's the big change. And the other change is that I decided that aethers would be able to... I would have different things happening with them, different strains. In their own lore, they were not... the aethers themselves don't believe they were created by Adonalsium. And so they're, like, a different sort of thing, a different entity, so to speak. And this goes back, even, to way back when I tried to write them into Liar of Partinel, them predating things like the Shattering and what not, and it feels right for how I want to treat them. Those are a few little tweaks that you will eventually get. But the basic mechanics of how they work is the same as they worked in Aether of Night. I think that one of the things that really worked in Aether of Night was the mechanics of the aethers. I thought they had a lot of interesting storytelling play, I thought that they did different things than some of the other magics that I was writing did. And they have remained solidly a part of my brain for how the Cosmere will proceed. And that's why you see Mraize having a chunk of an aether and things like that in his trophy case. simonthekillerewok We know there are multiple planets with aethers, so do both of these worlds exist simultaneously? Or is this one an evolution of The Aether of Night's Vaeria? Brandon Sanderson They do both exist simultaneously; this one came from that one. The answer to both is "yes." Secret Project #1 Reveal and Livestream (March 8, 2022) 1
Tamriel Wolfsbaine Posted August 17, 2023 Author Posted August 17, 2023 12 minutes ago, Quantus said: it would require two of the Prime Aethers to be willing to Share the person... <insert Fremen Voice> and their Water. This is exactly why I pose the question. I have been playing with the idea of some fan fic aetherbound and how they would fit into the the world stacking systems. I know shardic magic mix and match is sort of taboo in the cosmere and most don't like it. But... aethers aren't shards and I believe they have their own rules they play by. And my head cannon seems to paint this picture that they are greedy for water and willing to trade power for it. Playing off of that and the all to obvious synergy from bendalloy compounding it made me wonder if multiple Aethers would be happy to form a bond with the same person. A compounder could potentially give them more hydration than all of their other aetherbound combined... though I recognize that it would be dangerous. The dangers of tapping too much of any metalmind at once aside, I did like the idea of the aethers looking at that specific combination of powers as almost a "chosen one" form of battery pack. In my mind the Aethers work backward from a shard almost. The users of traditional magics sort of take from the shards (though I see the infinite loop and how it is returned and recycled ultimately). Where as the Aethers are making a trade and they want the water from you even more than you really need to use them. I see aethers as being insatiable. In the case of this character, and this could be totally wrong, I almost picture the Aethers as Nightblood-ish in their desire to be used. Except they don't just want to be used to fulfill their purpose it is to gain more water specifically. Not entirely sure how Harmony would enjoy seeing his systems be abused to feed power and water to the aethers as compounding is fueled by preservation but it struck me as interesting.
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