Holy Grottos and Foci *Minor MB Spoilers*

[Chaos he/him]

So, here's a quick theory for you.

Look at page 170.

Foreigners were so stupid. Of course Nu Ralik was their god, but you always pretended that he wasn't. Vun Makak--his younger, spiteful brother--had to be tricked into thinking you worshipped him, otherwise he'd get jealous. It was only safe to speak of these things in a holy grotto.

This immediately reminded me how Ruin and Preservation can't see things through metal. In effect, metal creates holy grottos, which is why the storage caches were in places with metals. I think the same blindness principle applies on Shards on Roshar.

So, naturally, a holy grotto for Ishikk is where Odium can't hear you. I wonder just what those holy grottos would be made out of. On Scadrial, metal was easy. Remember also that metal was the focus for Ruin and Preservation's magic. I wonder what would be a focus for the magic on Scadrial? The best guess, I think, would be Stormlight itself. So I guess a holy grotto would be surrounded with Stormlight-infused gems?

What do you think?

(Also on foci, they don't have to be physical. Aons are the focus for AonDor, and Brandon had said that the Commands are the focus for Awakening)

[Munin he/him]

I think it'd be stone. Keep in mind that the Shin, at least, consider stone to be sacred.

It's also possible that Ishikk's gods aren't real. In fact, I think that's more likely in this context.

[Chaos he/him]

Or, those two gods are two different reflections of the same deities we know now. The Terris people called Preservation "Terr", after all. All we know is these gods names. We can't really exclude the possibility.

[Ryan he/him]

Gemstones might be foci. They store Stormlight.

It's hard to say what foci exist on Roshar. Air might be the focus for stormlight, based on how surgebinders operate, and the fact that it comes from storms with very high winds. But then, whatever god whose power is the source of stormlight would be quite blind on Roshar.

Also, what of spren? There's a spren for pretty much everything.

My somewhat-unfounded conjecture is that the focus of power exists in the spiritual realm. People hold stormlight, though imperfectly. Gemstones seem to have some sort of spiritual power on Roshar. Shardblades damage the soul.

Or does it exist in the cognitive realm? Shadesmar is very obviously linked to soulcasting. Gah. I know too little about realmatic theory to effectively theorize about this.