ROSHtafARian Posted October 12, 2012 Posted October 12, 2012 Okay, full disclosure, I found an early release of Emperor's Soul and it did prompt my thoughts in this direction but there are NO spoilers for it here. Really, a couple throwaway lines in it made me look back at Elantris and a few things that Brandon's said about Sel over the years. This topic assumes a knowledge of Mistborn and Way of Kings, so look away if you haven't read those books, though I don't think I've included any specific spoilers. Also, apologies if I'm stepping all over anyone else's theory or duplicating thoughts. I've looked through a lot of the more recent topics and didn't see these ideas repeated anywhere, but I might have missed some older topics. So first off, we've talked a lot in the Mistborn forums about how snapping is the way to access Allomancy because its the magic user acting in preservation of himself or others, ie he's acting in accordance with the intent of the Shard who powers his particular magic system. It's basically understood that Preservation set it up to work that way, right? Same thing with the Shaod here. I think before she died, or way back in Sel's history, Aona set up the Shaod as her version of snapping....it seeks out those whose Devotion to particular tenets or ideals are in accordance to her intent and 'opens the channel' as it were, to the Dor. If you think about it, all the Elantrians are Devoted to learning and higher ideals like the betterment of their fellow man, etc. They're about as selfless a group a people as you can find, really. But I don't think aimless, generalized Devotion is enough to do it. I think that the required Devotion has a....patriotic aspect to it, for lack of a better word. We've speculated a lot about shapes and symbols being the focus for magic on Sel the way metals are on Scadrial, but I don't think that's precisely accurate. Look at Scadrial...metal is the focus for magic. Specific types of metal and their structures, frameworks are what differentiate how the magic takes form, and why burning pewter has a different output from burning steel, etc. Basically, I don't think shapes/symbols are the focus for magic on Sel. I think geography is the focus. The shape of the land...with the different magic systems corresponding to the shape of the lands they originate from, and then the various symbols that achieve specific effects all stemming from those initial, root geographic shapes. I'm not quite sure how or why yet, but I think this is tied into why accessing Shadesmar is dangerous around Sel. Because as we've seen in TWoK, the geography of Shadesmar is related or reflective of the geography of the physical realm....and if the geography of Sel is the focus for magic on Sel, then I think there could be some definitely dangerous aspects to the way the geography of the cognitive realm, and the way the people of Sel view or think about their planet...I dunno. This is where it gets fuzzy for me as I'm not sure we know enough yet, and there are a few things from Emperor's Soul that play into this idea that I don't want to get into yet, but I think there's definitely a connection. I mean, we saw how the Reod, a physical disturbance to the land, had a very real and catastrophic effect on Sel's magic. What I'm wondering is....what effect did the Reod have on Shadesmar? I can't help but think that an earthquake on Roshar or Scadrial wouldn't effect Shadesmar near those worlds nearly as much as it must have on Sel, where geography is obviously so important, and I think that's a big part of why Shadesmar is dangerous there. Anyway, this brings me back to Devotion. If I'm right, and geography specifically is the key to magic, then I think that its Devotion to the land, or one's homeland, that's the trigger for the Shaod, rather than just Devotion in general. All the Elantrians have very strong emotional connections to their homelands, and Raoden in particular is an example of that....both before and after the Shaod, it was always made clear that his devotion to his land and his people was his defining characteristic. 1
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