Cause of the chasm (spoilers)

[GreyPilgrim]

Actually Odium's Splintering of Aona and Skai was long before the Reod. It doesn't mean he was not involved, but probably not directly. I expect the sequels to deal with what really happened during the Reod.

[Miyabi]

I forgot about this line.  It still doesn't mean for sure that it was a vehement action, it just says it's probable. Though Brandon isn't one to throw a ton of red herrings around, so it probably was.  Thank you for the quote.

[Moogle]

Actually Odium's Splintering of Aona and Skai was long before the Reod. It doesn't mean he was not involved, but probably not directly. I expect the sequels to deal with what really happened during the Reod.

I looked it up and found this:

 

Kogiopsis

How long before the events of Elantris did Odium kill Aona/Devotion and Skai/Dominion?

Brandon Sanderson

Same time as the origins of the Seons.

I think it's possible that Splintering just took a very, very long time and when it was finally done, then Odium did the earthquake. My theory definitely looks far less likely, though. I don't suppose there are other relevant quotes I missed?

[GreyPilgrim]

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I think it's possible that Splintering just took a very, very long time and when it was finally done, then Odium did the earthquake. My theory definitely looks far less likely, though. I don't suppose there are other relevant quotes I missed?

I don't think there is anything else you missed there, but I suck at quotes so there could well be something else.

[Shardlet]

Seons had been handed down from generation to generation for some time before the events of Elantris.  They were a well established aspect of life and society well before the Reod.  Couple that with the fact that the seons contain splinters of Devotion and that Brandon places the time of the origin of the seons at the same time of the death of Aona and Skai we see that the splintering of Devotion and Dominion was long before the earthquake.

 

For my part, until there is some indication that the chasm was caused by someone's will or actions, I attribute it to nature.

[Miyabi]

For my part, until there is some indication that the chasm was caused by someone's will or actions, I attribute it to nature.

 

Brandon himself has said the earthquake wasn't natural, but the effects of the Reod on Elantrians were.

[Shardlet]

You are right.  I haven't looked at the thread for a while now.  I forgot about the quote Windrunner brought to the discussion.  Okay, not natural.  But, it still seems to be a rather substantial separation in time between the splintering of Devotion and Dominion and the earthquake.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Shardlet

[Moogle]

You are right.  I haven't looked at the thread for a while now.  I forgot about the quote Windrunner brought to the discussion.  Okay, not natural.  But, it still seems to be a rather substantial separation in time between the splintering of Devotion and Dominion and the earthquake.

 

Sorry if this comes across as pedantic, but we only know there seems to be a substantial separation in time between the deaths of Devotion and Dominion and the earthquake. The Seons did start to appear with their deaths, but I don't feel that necessarily proves that the Splintering was accomplished by that time, only that it started.

 

What's involved in Splintering a Shard? As I recall, the best theory I heard (and half-expanded on) was that you had to make a Shard go against its Intent, or perhaps use its own Investiture in a way that violates its Intent. (For example, if every Surgebinder were to start being horrible horrible people. Oh, hey...) This causes 'strain' for a Shard, and the only way for the Shard to deal with it is to split its Intent so that there is no more internal conflict. We do have a WoB somewhat supporting that:

 

Josh

Do Splinters have their own Intent, in addition to the Shards'?

Brandon Sanderson

Splinters often have their own intent.

 

I suspect this means that every Splinter will have an Intent that is a specific part of the more general whole. Splinters of Devotion, for example, seem to more or less exemplify whatever 'letter' is at their heart. Ashe is bright and cheerful, Ien tends to be wise. I admit these don't seem entirely like parts of Devotion, but the vast majority of the Aons do sort of fit (like Love and Faithfulness). A Splinter of Honor might have an Intent relating just to truth. Because each Splinter is now a more defined concept, it is likely near-impossible to Splinter each individual Splinter even more - and, bonus, each Splinter now seems to be self-aware, almost as a defensive mechanism. I strongly suspect that while a human is wielding a Shard, it can't be Splintered, because the mind can deal with the contradictions you might want to introduce.

 

You might be able to find contradictions in the Intent of Honor, (can one lie and still be honorable?), but Truth is so specific that it's likely to be impossible. This can likely end up with Splinters of a Shard having wildly different Intents than the Shard, or so I would guess. Or, perhaps not different than the Shard (the Aons as a whole do seem pretty devote-ey), but merely entirely different from other Splinters. Consider the difference between Aon Ehe, Warmth, and Aon Dio, Cold.

 

Anyways, that's fairly crackpot. The point I'm trying to make is that if it were true, Splintering would be a long process. Each time you find a contradiction, or find some way to make a Shard go against its Intent, you Splinter it just a little. Hence a slow creation of new Aons, until finally there are no more.

 

Then, the earthquake happens? I admit there's a lack of a connection here. Odium might just have finally finished his long Splintering and decided to take an angry swipe at the planet before leaving. It'd fit.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Moogle

[Vortaan]

Sorry if this comes across as pedantic, but we only know there seems to be a substantial separation in time between the deaths of Devotion and Dominion and the earthquake. The Seons did start to appear with their deaths, but I don't feel that necessarily proves that the Splintering was accomplished by that time, only that it started.

 

What's involved in Splintering a Shard? As I recall, the best theory I heard (and half-expanded on) was that you had to make a Shard go against its Intent, or perhaps use its own Investiture in a way that violates its Intent. (For example, if every Surgebinder were to start being horrible horrible people. Oh, hey...) This causes 'strain' for a Shard, and the only way for the Shard to deal with it is to split its Intent so that there is no more internal conflict. We do have a WoB somewhat supporting that:

 

 

I suspect this means that every Splinter will have an Intent that is a specific part of the more general whole. Splinters of Devotion, for example, seem to more or less exemplify whatever 'letter' is at their heart. Ashe is bright and cheerful, Ien tends to be wise. I admit these don't seem entirely like parts of Devotion, but the vast majority of the Aons do sort of fit (like Love and Faithfulness). A Splinter of Honor might have an Intent relating just to truth. Because each Splinter is now a more defined concept, it is likely near-impossible to Splinter each individual Splinter even more - and, bonus, each Splinter now seems to be self-aware, almost as a defensive mechanism. I strongly suspect that while a human is wielding a Shard, it can't be Splintered, because the mind can deal with the contradictions you might want to introduce.

 

You might be able to find contradictions in the Intent of Honor, (can one lie and still be honorable?), but Truth is so specific that it's likely to be impossible. This can likely end up with Splinters of a Shard having wildly different Intents than the Shard, or so I would guess. Or, perhaps not different than the Shard (the Aons as a whole do seem pretty devote-ey), but merely entirely different from other Splinters. Consider the difference between Aon Ehe, Warmth, and Aon Dio, Cold.

 

Anyways, that's fairly crackpot. The point I'm trying to make is that if it were true, Splintering would be a long process. Each time you find a contradiction, or find some way to make a Shard go against its Intent, you Splinter it just a little. Hence a slow creation of new Aons, until finally there are no more.

 

Then, the earthquake happens? I admit there's a lack of a connection here. Odium might just have finally finished his long Splintering and decided to take an angry swipe at the planet before leaving. It'd fit.

 

Again I have to ask: why? What is Odium's profit? How does he benefit? He disrupts one of a multitude of region-locked magic systems on a planet where Worldhopping is pretty dangerous. What exactly does the earthquake do to further the being the strongest being around plan?

[Windrunner]

Personally, I don't think Odium is responsible for the earthquake beyond having Splintered the Shards which created the spiritual pressure. That being said, Odium is hatred. It wouldn't be out of character for him to just screw with the people a little bit.

[Moogle]

Again I have to ask: why? What is Odium's profit? How does he benefit? He disrupts one of a multitude of region-locked magic systems on a planet where Worldhopping is pretty dangerous. What exactly does the earthquake do to further the being the strongest being around plan?

 

I would go so far as to say that Worldhopping is only dangerous because of the double Splintering/earthquake, but I may be wrong on that. As for how it furthers his plan... Odium is not rationally and dispassionately looking to advance his plans. He's the very embodiment of hate and loathing. I honestly don't think he needed to benefit to casually set up the murder of an entire city. He's a godlike entity, and it was likely nothing more than a brush of his fingers across the landscape. I would go so far as to guess that he does benefit if the earthquake causes Worldhopping to be harder. Obviously that didn't stop Hoid, though.

[Miyabi]

Odium, due to the fact that he is so strongly made of hatred has the ability to see fairly far into the future in order to exact his plans.

I'm guessing that the Splintering, and potentially the earthquake, were a part of this long drawn out plan.

Traveling to Sel through Shadesmar is tricky, even dangerous, due to the fact that there aren't enough releases for the Spiritual Pressure.

This is caused partially by the fact that the magic systems don't pull too much from them and could be further compounded by the fact that nearly all of the Elantrians (One of the major magic users) were wiped out and their magic was made inaccessible for a long period of time.

[Shardlet]

I suspect it also has to do with the fact that the power of two shards is now unguided/unharnessed by a conciousness.  Brandon said it was a good thing for Scadrial that Kelsier temporarily took up the power in HoA.  This suggests to me that unguided shard power is hazardous.

[Miyabi]

Of course it is, especially when you consider that one Intent is now split into who knows how many separate Intents which could then unwittingly be working against each other.

[Vortaan]

I think the danger is more about the unharnessed Shards than the fact that Elantris was rendered impotent. In the grand scheme of things, one region-locked magic is pretty unimportant Cosmere wise. 

 

I also disagree with Odium not necessarily being a cold planner. Hatred can be a cold thing, and Odium's shown, to me at least, a capacity for planning and marshalling resources that rivals Preservation. He killed two Shards, but didn't expend the power to destroy their world, probably because he didn't see a need. He then goes to Roshar and does his deal there. He didn't interfere on Scadrial because it appeared that there was no need, which turns out to have been wrong, but even the best laid plans go awry. I honestly don't think he's throwing power around unless he needs to, because his ultimate goal (being the strangest Shard around) requires an extremely long and careful game.

[Miyabi]

Well Odium would know that Shards coming together would be able to overthrow him and ruin his plans, so he has at least some plans to cause this to not be possible.

RE: Sel;

Odium destroying the Shards here was 2 fold. One because they were now Splintered and it would be a lot more difficult to unite the Shards. Two because the magic was broken, creating a large amount of pressure within the Spiritual Realm, which would make it hard for anyone (i.e. the 17th Shard) to enter Sel in attempts to unify the Shards to create a power which could rival him.

Re: Scadrial;

I would guess that here he either had some form of agreement with Ruin, or saw that the two were causing each other so much trouble already he wouldn't need to destroy them.

Re: Nalthis;

Endowment is the only Shard here and she seems to be expending a lot of energy to influence her world, which would make her not much of a threat to Odium, so he left it be.

Re: Roshar;

This is his biggest threat currently. Honor and Cultivation seem to be likely allies and likely to combine their power when they realized what Odium was doing in order to stop him. So Odium took a preemptive step and took out Honor as soon as he could.

[Wonko the Sane]

I like the idea that a Shard takes a considerable amount of time and effort to splinter. It would help to explain what the heck Odium is still doing on Roshar.

[Oudeis]

Why would Odium have any interest in Sel post Shattering? As far as he is concerned, job well done, moving on to that troublesome Tanavast guy...

 

Marry me.

 

I wonder if there is a correlation between the chasm and the difficulties with accessing Shadesmar from Sel.

<b>INTERVIEW: 2013

Twitter 2013 (Non-WoT) (Verbatim)

VANESSA (23 JANUARY 2013)

Does the chasm on Sel have a counterpart in the cognitive realm?

BRANDON SANDERSON (23 JANUARY 2013)

Yes, it does. But moving around there is really tough... <b>

It could be that he meant it was really tough trying to get around the area of the chasm in Shadesmar, specifically.

 

I wonder if the Chasm is something that happened to the physical body of Opelon when someone did something to it's cognitive aspect (i.e. Shadesmar itself). If someone set off the cognitive equivalent of a nuclear bomb in Shadesmar, what effect would it have on the physical world? Could THIS be by it's so hard to travel via Shadesmar from Sel? Because the landscape there is literally damaged by something powerful enough to hurt the environment itself, something so big it actually affected the physical land?

 

(p.s. if I ever have the chance to ask Mr. Sanderson a question, it might well be, "Did the Reod on Sel happen concurrently with any big events on any other Shardworld, currently-known or otherwise?)

 

Alternate theory: I disagree with the notion that it was Odium. It just feels wrong to me. However, there's a quote somewhere about how Odium is Invested in Roshar, that leaving would cause him to rip out his power. What if he did Invest in Sel to destroy Devotion and Dominion? What if him "ripping out" his Investiture has something to do with the earthquake? What if Odium didn't cause the earthquake just for grins and giggles, but it's a side effect of some larger thing he DID intend to do?

 

Lastly, and this gets into Stormlight Archives, so I'll throw it behind a spoiler just in case.

 

The map of Shadesmar in Roshar is an inversion of the land. Tall mountains become deep seas, oceans become peaks. So... if that holds firm, what would that look like in Shadesmar? An ocean with a massive gap? Water (or tiny beads of glass) constantly falling into a never-quenched abyss?

 

 

FINAL RANDOM THOUGHT. If someone ever closes the Chasm, would the Reod happen again until an Elantran erased that extra line from Kae?

 

EDIT: to fix typo.

Edited October 2, 2013 by Darnam

[Oudeis]

I might be accused of trying to bump this topic, or double-posting, so my apologies if I should have just editted my previous post, but this is a different idea. If this is actually against the rules, my apologies, and I'll know for next time.

 

When Baron Edan is first introduced in Chapter 11, it's mentioned that his lands border the Chasm, and that the earth is no longer fertile there. Is that a thing that happens in normal earthquakes in our world? Or is that a subtle extra clue to the Chasm?

[Wonko the Sane]

Well, we know that Elantris radiated fertility, and that when it fell, crops throughout Arelon suffered. I have no idea why it would intensify near the Chasm, though.

[name_here]

I think what he meant was that there's a gigantic line of cracked rock right down the center of the fields. That area is now basically unfarmable. Really productive cropland generally needs to have deep soil, and efficient farming techniques require it be relatively flat. This does depend on the type of crop, but I expect that whatever the area previously grew is not even remotely suited to the new conditions.

Edited November 16, 2013 by name_here

[Swimmingly]

I might be accused of trying to bump this topic, or double-posting, so my apologies if I should have just editted my previous post, but this is a different idea. If this is actually against the rules, my apologies, and I'll know for next time.

 

When Baron Edan is first introduced in Chapter 11, it's mentioned that his lands border the Chasm, and that the earth is no longer fertile there. Is that a thing that happens in normal earthquakes in our world? Or is that a subtle extra clue to the Chasm?

I think that this has to do more with the fact that farms are now marred by an enormous cataclysmic scar. Suddenly, you need to build bridges to access half your lands. Earthquakes shook up soil. Some of your lands just tumbled into an abrupt void, and you can't let livestock get too near or they'll tumble down. Irrigation is doubtless disrupted, and nobody want to get too close. I see problems.

[Oudeis]

So... is that based on real-world science that you guys both know? When earthquakes happen in real life, that actually reduces the fertility of fields? Or are you just guessing based on what seems reasonable to you?

[Shardlet]

I could see a reduction in fertility due to an earthquake only in cases where the topography was rendered unsuitable, good soil was displaced by bad soil, or when something was released into the soil that affected fertility.  I can't see any way that fertility would be directly affected by an earthquake.

[cem]

Guys, the book doesn't say the Reod caused fertility to be reduced around that area, just that the land around the Chasm isn't very fertile. For all we know it's always been that way.

 

 

his holdings border the Chasm, and the lands nearby just aren’t very fertile.