Denial [Discuss - Warbreaker Spoilers]

[Treamayne]

Separated from another thread here - so that we don't divert the original Thread. 

My post:

8 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

WaT Ch 56 Epigraph confirms:

Spoiler

Quote

I have kept my part of the bargain, and will not be budged. I have stayed upon my land, bringing blessings to the people of Nalthis—gifting them the power of gods, as I was so long denied. I do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

 

Concur that this is the most likely interpretation, going by other questiosn Brandon has confirmed he dodged. 

If she was part of the bargain to only have 1 shard per system, she has to be the original vessel. Wonder how she was denied creating Nalthis for so long (or if she was denied elsewhere and created Nalthis to circumvent whatever was stopping her). 

 

So, my first impression was that Edgli had been denied the ability to share Splinters with people to give them access to "the power of Gods" (which an Intent like Endowment would really need). That's obviously not the only interpretation:

Initial Response:

3 minutes ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Bit of a tangent, but my interpretation of that line was Edgli was implying the power of the gods had long been denied her....as in pre-Shattering, perhaps. And that's why she's so intent on making sure everyone on Nalthis has the potential to wield power and do magic. From what I recall of Yolen's magic systems, what little we know suggests it might have been more like Scadrial....not everyone was born with the power to access the magic system or utilize Investiture, and I suspect that may have been the case with Edgli, and she's still nursing some bitterness about that.

 

My assessment was based on Vasher's Comment that his world was so young it had no Fossil Records. Combine that with the math that the Many War was approximately 300 years before WoK, and Awakening had only been discovered a few centuries before that implies that there were a few thousand years between the Shattering and Nalthis' creation. Why?

Thoughts? Ideas? Am I insane?

[Returned he/him]

I don't see the basis for interpreting the epigraph to mean that Endowment was somehow prohibited from creating Nalthis (if she indeed did create it, which seems likely but not clearly the case); could you elaborate on that assessment? Use of "as" seems clearly to be a conjunction here, which would link the previous clause about "gifting the power of gods" to that which she was denied. The em dash might complicate things a little bit, but I would interpret "gifting them the power of gods" as a clarification of "bringing blessings to the people of Nalthis", so it should resolve to the same meaning. If that is the case then it seems to me that the only reasonable interpretation of what was denied to Edgli was "the power of gods" pre-Shattering.*

So the timing of the creation of Nalthis is separate from that quote. I think that the best context we could get for why she waited so long to create Nalthis (or just go there and start endowing people with Breaths) would be to look at how much time passed between the Shattering and the Shardic creation of any planet. Specifically, was Endowmnet unusually slow or quick to create or begin operations on Nalthis? I'm not sure we have the information to assess that, though if anyone does they'll probably be here to correct me.

Absent that context, the most immediate suggestions for why such a long delay that come to my mind are:

• Time is not meaningful to Shards. A century isn't much more important than a year or an hour or a second unless they are interacting with things for which time is more meaningful (like individual mortals)
• Time still moves in one direction for Shards, and they still require some time to get a handle on their powers (which we know from Rashek, Vin, and Sazed). Perhaps Edgli created a planet and people to live there as soon as she was sure she could do so successfully. This item would be greatly helped by knowing when other Shardworlds were created
• Retribution has conclusively shown that "duration" isn't meaningful without a frame of reference. Maybe the Shattering caused time dilation, and a few thousand years from Roshar's perspective was a much shorter period of time for the Shatterers

 

*That interpretation is interesting because, while all Nalthians have one innate Breath, that Breath isn't enough to do much of anything by itself and so power still accrues to a small number of people rather than being usefully accessible to everyone. This suggests that perhaps the whole Breath magic system might be more about sustaining those powerful few, such as the Returned, than it is about granting power in an egalitarian way.

Or, alternatively, it might be that, pre-Shattering, most people were the equivalent of drabs with no divinity to them and no accessible way to gain any. She may have determined Nalthians all get a bit of divinity for free, even if it's mostly useless (per our current understanding). But becoming an Awakener is still something that can be denied to individuals because the only way to get Breath is for others to choose to give it to you, and becoming a Returned is something that Endowment chooses to do or not do on a case-by-case basis. Something isn't adding up here, and I hope that it isn't simply a case where Edgli's complaint is that she, a deserving person, was denied godly power by authorities on Yolen and her fix for that is to use her superior judgement to more correctly choose who gets powers on Nalthis.

Edited January 8, 2025 by Returned

[NotLiamRoss He/Him]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

This suggests that perhaps the whole Breath magic system might be more about sustaining those powerful few, such as the Returned, than it is about granting power in an egalitarian way.

This is a nice thought and I think it aligns with the Intent of Endowment pretty well. Similar to how Honor only cares about Oaths being kept, not what the Oaths are, it stands to reason that Endowment cares that gifts are given, not what's done with them after. The shardic Intent of Endowment would be displeased if once the power was given, it could just be held by individuals with no incentive to give the gift up and pass it along. Endowment wants to give the people power, but then it also wants them in turn to give it to each other (even if it means multiple people giving to one person). Ensuring that Awakening only works for individuals with multiple breaths ensures that there will always be SOME "endowing" if anyone is going to get anything out of the system.

That said I don't doubt that Edgli's Intent here was to make things more egalitarian (and in fact, parts of the system are very equalizing, no-one can forcibly take someone's breath for example, it must be given with Intent), but Endowment the power could have baked in this incentive under the hood as we've seen happen with other magic systems as well.

[Leuthie]

Edgli was denied the power of the gods when Adonalsium was whole. It's a hint as to why Adonalsium was Shattered. That's it. Edgli was denied magic before getting a Shard, so now she just wants to give magic to others and stay out of everything.

I don't think it's any deeper than that.

A planet that is 12,000 years old wouldn't have much of a fossil record and we already know Endowment created Nalthis. And just because the Manywar occurred in the recent past isn't evidence that Endowment waited to create Nalthis. History often has breaks. Vo being the First Returned while discovering Hallandren and Tears of Edgli is a very convenient confluence of events to begin a history while forgetting all previous history. Vo wasn't the first Returned and the history of Nalthis didn't begin with his discovery of the current superpower.

Edited January 8, 2025 by Leuthie

[alder24]

20 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Wonder how she was denied creating Nalthis for so long (or if she was denied elsewhere and created Nalthis to circumvent whatever was stopping her). 

I don't think the text says she was denied creating Nalthis, she was denied powers in the past like the ones she's giving now to people. She's most likely talking about pre-Shattering times and she considers that whoever denied her powers of gods, made a mistake. Adonalsium perhaps? He specifically prevented spren on Roshar from accessing Surges so it's possible he was reluctant to grant powers to people and he denied to give them to Edgli. 

Spoiler

Pod (paraphrased)

You said at the Starsight release that [Adonalsium] was intentionally preventing the spren from accessing Surges through fabrials and such pre-Shattering. Was this a passive or active effect?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It was kind of both - the way [Adonalsium] worked was just that the way he saw the world [magic] was the way the world [magic] worked. He didn't want the spren to be able to do that, so they couldn't.

Pod (paraphrased)

So did [Adonalsium] want to die?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

*makes face along with various non committal hmings*

Pod (paraphrased)

That at least gives credibility to the theory.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yeah, it gives credibility to the theory.

Footnote: *I don't know how to describe the face - it definitely wasn't confirmation but it looked incriminating to me. Brandon corrected ’world’ to ’magic’ after I left.
American Fork High School Signing (Dec. 12, 2019)

 

20 hours ago, Treamayne said:

So, my first impression was that Edgli had been denied the ability to share Splinters with people to give them access to "the power of Gods" (which an Intent like Endowment would really need)

That is also a possible explanation and that would explain the timeline. 

20 hours ago, Treamayne said:

My assessment was based on Vasher's Comment that his world was so young it had no Fossil Records. Combine that with the math that the Many War was approximately 300 years before WoK, and Awakening had only been discovered a few centuries before that implies that there were a few thousand years between the Shattering and Nalthis' creation. Why?

Although the Divine Breath was first given fairly recently, we don't know if Breaths were similarly not present before in Nalthian history. I wouldn't say that Nalthis was created recently, it would have been too big of an event to pass unnoticed throughout Cosmere and nobody has ever mentioned that a new world just popped into the existence not so long ago. One important factor is that Edgli is most likely a non-human Vessel (probably Sho Del) and she has problems understanding humanity, which might explain why there is such a gap between creation of Nalthis/Nalthians and the First Returned. 

However this is not something unheard of as a similar gap existed on Scadrial - while the Mists were creating Mistings every 1000 years, Allomancy itself was discovered only by Rashek during his Ascension and since then it became a common knowledge. On Roshar Honor was totally surprised when spren started to bond with people and grant them Surges. We know that despite the near omniscience of a Shard, it takes a conscious effort to discover some piece of knowledge and while the power of Endowment was aware how to create Returned, Edgli herself might have just recently discovered that this possibility exists.

Spoiler

Trae

Previously, you've revealed that the mechanism that determines the Returned on Nalthis is a decision of a sapient entity... Is the determination by which the entity that selects the recipient of a Divine Breath to come back as a Returned predicated on that recipient fulfilling some purpose in the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

...Basically they are asking... "Why does the entity that picks who Returns, why did they pick who they did?" And, your question kind of implies there's, like, specific tasks to fulfill. I'm gonna say, there aren't specifics, but there are certain things this entity is looking for--

Trae

In the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There are certain things that they are looking for. Now, sometimes-- let's just say this entity is not necessarily the most consistent of entities in the cosmere when it comes to making decisions like this. But there are certain things they are looking for.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Trae Cooper

In the past we deeply discussed the mechanism with which Breaths are decided to be doled out or endowed on Nalthis. And you said that there is an intellect that is doling them out, but that their intentions or that their goals are difficult to predict or nonstandard. And my question is: are they nonstandard because the base Vessel behind them does not have, at its core, a standard human psychology? 

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Good question. Excellent question. RAFO, I like the way you're theorizing. I have said before, that there are multiple nonhuman Vessels in the Cosmere. So, your theorizing perhaps is going to bear fruit. 

Did someone say "chulls"? No, it's not the chulls. There are no chulls that are holding Shards in the Cosmere. 

Footnote: The questioner is referring to this WoB.
JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

[Treamayne]

Thank you everybody. Interesting to note that the most common interpretation seems to be that "denial" is regarding the vessel pre-shattering.

That was not in my top three interpretations at all - mostly be cause the phrase "I was so long denied" in the context of this situation implies (to me) centuries or millennia of "denial" rather than years or decades that it would be if it was a mortal reference (why, after 10,000 years, would a decade or three of her former mortal life be described as "so long denied" - and if she had been denied Investiture when that time frame would not have been the centuries most Ageless experience).

I understand why many of you came to that conclusion - but that conclusion still does not make sense to me in-context. (Doesn't mean it's wrong though - hence "discuss")

 

Mostly I had interpreted this as something to do with why Awakening is such a "new" art (relatively speaking) - but as many of you pointed out - Awakening might not be new - just Returned. 

Another thought - what if Edgli did not create Nalthis - what if she found it, uninhabited? We know there was at least some level of human diaspora through the Cosmere from Yolen (not all humans started there, but many did). What if she wandered for a long time - found the planet she wanted to make hers. Then led migrants to find and settle there? Would that account for the large time gap between the Shattering and recorded history on Nalthis? 

Good discussion all, thank you. 

Edited January 13, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[TheoreticalMagic]

Don't forget that as Shards, the Vessels perceive time VERY differently. Centuries can pass for them while feeling as if barely any time has passed at all. Tanavast made that clear. So IMO its actually MORE likely that Edgli would regard however long she lived as a mortal as though it encompassed a long duration than talking about a length of time she spent as a Shard as though it included an intolerable waiting period.

Also too, Endowment insists she's one of the only Shards to abide by the non-interaction policy the original Vessels agreed to. I find it hard to imagine how any power could have imposed limitations on her AS a Shard without at least some kind of proximity to her, based on the conflicts between other Shards requiring some form of contact or closeness between them.

All told, even if her lifespan as a mortal, pre-Shard, only comprised a fraction of the time she's spent as a Shard, I think as long as she looks back on that time THROUGH the lens of having experienced and perceived that passage of time in a normal mortal fashion, that's gonna fit the "long-denied" phrasing just as easily as if she were talking about some limitation that had been placed on her for centuries as a Shard.

[Ripheus23]

I used to think that Edgli was a dragon, but between our knowledge of Cultivation's Vessel and a WoB, that apparently can't be.

So why all the dragon themes in Endowment's world/system?

The Coppermind says stuff about dragons posing as deities before the Shattering, and Endowment seems to have a positive opinion about Valor, which was held by a dragon at some point.

Edgli's system of giving Breath is reminiscent of dragons giving boons to people.

What if Edgli wanted to be/come a dragon???

Or act like they did. Maybe she's Sho Del (@alder24, this idea came to me kinda at random but there's been discussion of this option already???), so fainlife, like dragons in that way already, but she wanted to emulate their culture more. What with the colorfulness of Nalthis, this bit of info is a bit interesting:

Quote

Fain flora is bone-white and Tanavast describes fain animals as likely to be timid upon encountering a significant amount of color for the first time.^[7][8]

Maybe what she was denied before the Shattering was dragon-like status ("an honorary dragon" instead of "an honorary degree"), maybe she was denied such a status even after getting her Shard, or has been using her Shard to try to become a dragon.

Or if she already was a dragon at some time, now she isn't, and is trying to get back into that state (maybe she shape-shifted into a Sho Del during the Shattering, got stuck in Sho Del form, and has been trying to revert ever since).

[TheoreticalMagic]

Not really relevant, but since reading the book I've been laughing my ass off at Tanavast's description of Edgli as one of the most compassionate people he'd ever met. It really speaks to Hoid's ability to annoy people that one of the most compassionate people the Vessel of Honor had ever known in his millennia of existence just flat out can't stand Hoid to such a degree that it practically oozes off of her letters to him. That's just so funny to me and I had to comment on it somewhere.

[Leuthie]

3 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Not really relevant, but since reading the book I've been laughing my ass off at Tanavast's description of Edgli as one of the most compassionate people he'd ever met. It really speaks to Hoid's ability to annoy people that one of the most compassionate people the Vessel of Honor had ever known in his millennia of existence just flat out can't stand Hoid to such a degree that it practically oozes off of her letters to him. That's just so funny to me and I had to comment on it somewhere.

Edgli gives schoolmarm/librarian vibes. Tanner strikes one as a teacher's pet. Hoid is the class clown.

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Not really relevant, but since reading the book I've been laughing my ass off at Tanavast's description of Edgli as one of the most compassionate people he'd ever met. It really speaks to Hoid's ability to annoy people that one of the most compassionate people the Vessel of Honor had ever known in his millennia of existence just flat out can't stand Hoid to such a degree that it practically oozes off of her letters to him. That's just so funny to me and I had to comment on it somewhere.

19 minutes ago, Leuthie said:

Edgli gives schoolmarm/librarian vibes. Tanner strikes one as a teacher's pet. Hoid is the class clown.

We also know that Edgli is likely non-human, and does not understand humans - part of her reason for the way Nalthis works is to learn to understand humans better (just not Hoid). WoB Already referenced:

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

 

Spoiler

Trae Cooper

In the past we deeply discussed the mechanism with which Breaths are decided to be doled out or endowed on Nalthis. And you said that there is an intellect that is doling them out, but that their intentions or that their goals are difficult to predict or nonstandard. And my question is: are they nonstandard because the base Vessel behind them does not have, at its core, a standard human psychology? 

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! Good question. Excellent question. RAFO, I like the way you're theorizing. I have said before, that there are multiple nonhuman Vessels in the Cosmere. So, your theorizing perhaps is going to bear fruit. 

Footnote: The questioner is referring to this WoB.
JordanCon 2021 (July 17, 2021)

 

 

[Sophrosyne He/any]

For what it's worth when I first read the quote I wrote in my reading log (Don't judge they're helpful!)

"Is this why they killed 'em!?"

I suspect that this is one of those things that was meant to provoke that response. I don't know if the perspective shards have on time is something that would have been considered when Sanderson was writing but now that you've brought it up it seems like it'd be a big oversight. I do think it needs to be said that WoBs aren't 100% Cannon s Sanderson could decide to take back the 'only one dragon statement' and suddenly the time aspect becomes a weaker point.

Question.: Do we know the life span of Sho Del?

[alder24]

20 hours ago, Treamayne said:

That was not in my top three interpretations at all - mostly be cause the phrase "I was so long denied" in the context of this situation implies (to me) centuries or millennia of "denial" rather than years or decades that it would be if it was a mortal reference (why, after 10,000 years, would a decade or three of her former mortal life be described as "so long denied" - and if she had been denied Investiture when that time frame would not have been the centuries most Ageless experience).

Why would you assume she was a mortal before the Shattering? She could be a dragon thus immortal (I want to point out that before WaT Brandon said in WoBs that there was only one dragon Vessel, but in WaT it was revealed that Valor's Vessel was also a dragon, which leaves a possibility that Edgli was a dragon as well - now I can't find that WoB, instead I keep finding WoBs where he said there was at least one dragon so that's probably my mistake), or she was a Sho Del like Uli Da and we don't know anything about their lifespan (I haven't read Dragonsteel). It is also likely that she had found a way to slow down her aging before Ascension and there are methods commonly used by Worldhoppers that don't require invested arts. Moreover, out of 17 people involved in the Shattering, there were 4 Dawnshards - there is almost a 20% chance that she was a Dawnshard before the Shattering and thus she was immortal, just like Hoid was (it also makes a perfect sense why she was denied powers if she was a Dawnshard). I've got the impression that Hoid predates the Shattering by hundreds, if not thousands of years and it's possible some of the 16 were also as old as he was (this WoB suggests that in the non-canon Dragonsteel, Hoid and others became Dawnshards more or less together).

21 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Another thought - what if Edgli did not create Nalthis - what if she found it, uninhabited? We know there was at least some level of human diaspora through the Cosmere from Yolen (not all humans started there, but many did). What if she wandered for a long time - found the planet she wanted to make hers. Then led migrants to find and settle there? Would that account for the large time gap between the Shattering and recorded history on Nalthis? 

This is what I believed happened. We only know that Brandon suggested humans on Nalthis were created just like they were on Scadrial and that Nalthis is a relatively young planet that doesn't have any fossil record. But to have fossils you need to have life and if Endowment just found a lifeless planet and settled on it creating life (you could say she Awakened it to life), there would be no fossils created in just 10000 years. All checks out in my mind. 

Spoiler

Questioner

Is there like a Cosmere-significant reason why, on Scadrial, the Investiture is hereditary, but that that doesn't really seem to be the case on any of the other worlds?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes there is, but it has to do more with the fact that on Scadrial, human beings were directly created by Ruin and Preservation. And most of the Cosmere worlds you've seen don't have that same sort of aspect. It is the case on Nalthis, but it's not the case on Roshar, it's not the case on Taldain, it's not the case on Sel. And so because of that instance, that's how I'm kind of working, that changed the way people interact with magic directly. But there is some wiggle room there for me. But that's your answer, that's the actual... there's.. I'm not hiding anything there, there is wiggle room. What I'm saying is don't extrapolate that that has to happen every time that the Shards were directly involved in the creation...

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 1/8/2025 at 9:34 PM, Leuthie said:

A planet that is 12,000 years old wouldn't have much of a fossil record and we already know Endowment created Nalthis.

At the risk of being pedantic: There is no evidence that Edgli created Nalthis. A world being too young to have macroscopic fossils is meaningless. Earth's oldest fossils are from the Ediacarian, maybe, maybe Tommotian. That is less than 800 million years in the oldest case. This planet is 4.5 billion years old.

[Eahlendell]

My head cannon since the Nalthis essay is that the cognitive anomaly is what is left of Nalthis 1.0 and that the current planet was Endowments second attempt. I’m unsure why I came to that conclusion but it’s stuck in my head!

[Treamayne]

17 hours ago, Eahlendell said:

since the Nalthis essay

Nalthis Essay?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

10 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Nalthis Essay?

It's not in the Arcanum Unbounded cause there wasn't a short story for it. But Brandon did have it written and have the solar system map for it drawn and shown.

[Treamayne]

9 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

It's not in the Arcanum Unbounded cause there wasn't a short story for it. But Brandon did have it written and have the solar system map for it drawn and shown.

Yes, I've seen the Starchart - but the quote I referenced implied they had read the Essay, and as far as I know that is not available (and only tentatively scheduled for AUL/AU2) - it was supposed to be in the Warbreaker Leatherbound, but I thought that didn't happen.

I was trying to confirm if @Eahlendell did read the essay, and if so - where. 

WoBs:

Spoiler

Quote

luckat

What is something that you would have put in the Nalthian essay if you had one in there?

Brandon Sanderson

I probably would have talked about how close some of these scholars are on Nalthis to understanding all of this. They're probably the closest to understanding the nature of the cosmere of anyone outside of the people who are actually worldhoppers. I probably also would have given some hints where the pool is.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

Quote

esh99

I know there isn't a short story from Nalthis in the collection, but I still would have liked a Solar Map and Brief overview of the system in the Arcanum Unbounded. Maybe it could have just included the Warbreaker prologue and a link to the free download? The fact that even White Sand (an unpublished book/unfinished graphic novel) had one but Nalthis doesn't is a shame...

Brandon Sanderson

Truth is, part of me felt I'd find time for a Nalthis story at some point, but it never worked out. Edgedancer's length and involvement in the main Stormlight story sucked away the time for doing a Nalthis story. Maybe it would have just been better to stick one in, with no story, but it felt weird to me. Hindsight, looking at the book, I probably would do it if I had the chance over again.

fixer1987

Could the map and Khriss essay for Nalthis perhaps be released on your website/Tor's website sometime after Oathbringer's release or during the revision process for it.

Brandon Sanderson

I was thinking maybe we release it around the time of the paperback of the collection, if I can find time to get it done. But the Oathbringer release would be another good idea--maybe I'll do that instead.

General Reddit 2016 (Nov. 28, 2016)

Quote

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

The Nalthis essay and star chart (similar to the ones Khriss put together for the other Shardworlds in Arcanum Unbounded) are in the works, but we don't know when we'll release them. Warbreaker's 10th anniversary next year is a good candidate, but it may happen even earlier.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

Quote

Questioner

How are the Warbreaker leatherbounds coming?

Brandon Sanderson

They're looking great! Oh man, the artists loved Warbreaker, for obvious reasons. We're getting the best art for any of the leatherbounds we've ever gotten, for Warbreaker. It is gorgeous!

Questioner

The Nalthis essay?

Brandon Sanderson

What's that? Oh, the Warbreaker leatherbound essay. Yeah, I should put that in, shouldn't I. We'll see.

Orem Signing (March 16, 2019)

Quote

Paleo (paraphrased)

Will the Warbreaker leatherbound contain the Nalthis essay?

Isaac Stewart (paraphrased)

No, but the Arcanum Unbounded leatherbound will contain it.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

Nalthis Starchart

 

Edited January 13, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG