The world with an ocean in the sky

[Atlas333]

Quote

“Did you know,” he whispered, “there is a world out there with an ocean in the sky?" (ch 119)

The above quote comes from Mraize when he is telling Shallan about the worlds he wants to see. 

I'm curious, could he be referring to Lumar (Tress's planet)? Technically the ocean falls from the sky (or more accurately the moons). It fits but not completely. I just struggle to imagine how else an ocean in the sky would work. 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

I guess that is so major a construct that it should be a major Shard World. We can start a process of elimination.

Shards whose residency we are unsure about at the time of Wind and Truth:

• Virtuosity -> presumably already on Komashi
• Reason -> the Shard that hides itself
• Invention -> "The Grand Apparatus"
• Mercy ?
• Whimsy ?
• Valor ?

By a gut feeling I'd say that he was talking about Valor's world.

[3udier]

I don't remember the exact WoB but I remember there being a world with a culture and invested art that revolves around flying kites? Perhaps an ocean in the sky populated with kite ships?

Edit: 

Quote

Questioner

Any new concepts for anything in the cosmere in the works?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, always, lots. I was developing a kite-based magic system earlier this year. That one, I'm really excited to do at some point.

Orem Signing (March 16, 2019)

 

Edited December 13, 2024 by 3udier
Relavent WoB

[Elite01]

I thought Mraize mentioned both the kites and the ocean in the sky, but almost like how someone would list countries or examples. In the same sentence but not necessarily connected. 

I would guess whimsy cause that seems pretty random

[Atlas333]

2 minutes ago, Elite01 said:

I would guess whimsy cause that seems pretty random

But I feel like whimsy would be the kite planet (who else would it be?) and I agree I think that the kite planet and the ocean in the sky are two separate planets.

[3udier]

1 hour ago, Elite01 said:

I thought Mraize mentioned both the kites and the ocean in the sky, but almost like how someone would list countries or examples. In the same sentence but not necessarily connected. 

I would guess whimsy cause that seems pretty random

Yeah, my bad. I just reread that part and saw that they were totally separate .

[TheoreticalMagic]

Well we know that Autonomy has managed to Invest herself in more than one world in sizable ways, though that's largely due to her use of avatars. I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one other Shard that had a major presence or hand in the creation or development of more than one Shardworld, and Whimsy would be my first guess for another Shard with that kind of multi-planetary influence. While we know next to nothing about Whimsy or its Vessel, I could easily imagine different directions they could be taken....for instance, imagine Whimsy as a Shard who plays a huge role in setting up or developing a Shardworld, then randomly gets bored and decides it wants to move on and do something else now and so rips enough of its Investiture out of that Shardworld to allow it to move on and start fresh or meddle somewhere else.....perhaps leaving all kinds of odd Shardworlds with baffling "natural" phenomena or aspects born of a Whimsical creator....who got tired of playing with this toy and didn't particularly care what happened to them once it was gone.

Which I imagine could lead a lot of those Shardworlds or civilizations to totally collapse without its presence or active/continuing Investiture....while other Shardworlds might have odd natures that actually stem from the fact that Whimsy ISN'T there anymore....so whatever role it played in that planet's original design or nature left a gaping hole IN that original design or how the planet was SUPPOSED to work or function.....thus leading to inhabitants trying to shore it up or compensate for that in whatever manner they could think of, no matter how desperate or bizarre.....or altered natural forces or functions collapsing around the wound left by Whimsy accidentally falls into such a formation as to allow the Shardworld to continue to exist....but only in a truly unique, one in a million chance of things working out like this kind of way. Creating the kinds of forces or phenomena that would never really make sense for someone to have designed that way INTENTIONALLY....and instead are just a result of the dominoes falling where they may, luckily enough in a formation that still allowed for the continuation of life.

Point being, I could definitely see the kite world being one Whimsy is actively and currently Invested in.....while one of its previous Shardworlds is left with the inexplicable phenomenon of an ocean in the sky, somehow managing to still support life through some lucky chance or by some extremely outside the box thinking by its inhabitants or perhaps another Shard trying to "fix" things.

But alternatively, my next best bet would be its Invention's design....a world where Invention contrived some way to make the seemingly impossible happen, perhaps simply because the world was so flawed or inhospitable that the only design Invention could come up with to make it inhabitable required some divine mechanism that led to or created an ocean in the sky. Or maybe Invention just wanted to see if it could create such a phenomenon, or did so as part of some experiment.

Then again, I do also think we could all just be overthinking it and the talk of oceans in the sky is more metaphorical or maybe due to it being a world where the line between the Physical and Cognitive Realms blurs or is fine enough that some aspect of Shadesmar's strange inversion effects is apparent or mirrored in the sky of that world in the Physical Realm as well.

[The Stick]

I think there was some reference of the some part of the kite story going into isles of the emberdark.