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Dominion (Elantris Spoilers)


Tarion

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Regarding Paalm not quite adhering to the intents of the suspects, the culprit might not actually want a total puppet..

This actually seems like it would be entirely within the bounds of Autonomy's Intent. 'Please do this thing for me (that you might have done on your own anyways) but you're free to decide exactly how you do it'. And as noted, Shards can act outside their Intent at least for a while (as Vin does when she first takes up Preservation) and any agents they have aren't going to be bound as strictly to the intent as they are, if at all. Humans on Scadrial have innate Investiture from both Preservation and Ruin but they don't have the same difficulty in acting that Sazed/Harmony does, who is those things.

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Cosmere spoilers:

You must have a Shard's Intent as your first priority in order to directly use a Shard's investiture. Vin could only take in the mists when she wanted to preserve her life. Radiants can only inhale Stormlight when they are thinking and acting honorably. We don't know enough about Elantrians to say anything about them, but I have suspicions.

Edited by Moogle
Please mark spoilers from other series in the SoS board.
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You must have a Shard's Intent as your first priority in order to directly use a Shard's investiture.

 

Cosmere spoilers:

I don't believe any of this is true. For example, Kaladin loses Stormlight when he's acting dishonorably, but that is a far cry from requiring him to act honorably to take it in at all. Larkins, Nightblood, and Returned all take in Stormlight without acting honorably as far as we know.

Edited by Moogle
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It's just a general rule. Vasher hacked the magic somehow, we don't know enough about larkins, and Nightblood is so Realmatically twisted that it probably could hack any magic system without half trying.

Any system with gaseous or free-floating Investiture around. So not Allomancy et al. per se, but he'd play merry havoc with the Mists. And I shudder to think what happens if he gets stabbed into a Shardpool.

Edited by Landis963
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It's just a general rule. Vasher hacked the magic somehow, we don't know enough about larkins, and Nightblood is so Realmatically twisted that it probably could hack any magic system without half trying.

 

Would you mind quoting a WoB or where in the novels it is confirmed as a general rule?

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It's a reasonable inference, presuming of course that sucking in Stormlight isn't as intuitive as Kaladin and co. make it look like - at least without spren assistance.  

 

? I never said anything about whether it was a reasonable conclusion to draw.  Just that it can't be held to be a rule, and as such claiming it to be so is conjecture.

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  • 2 weeks later...

To all those who say that some of Paalm's actions violate Autonomy's intent, remember that Leras stabbed Elend. Sure, his greater goal was to prevent Vin from releasing Ruin, Leras still did something opposite to his Shard's intent. On top of that, Paalm wasn't Autonomy. Paalm was at least minorly able to do what she wished, as she was likely a pawn, not a puppet.

 

As I was catching up on this intriguing thread going against the Autonomy/Odium grain I noticed this claim about Leras "going against his Shard's intent" by stabbing Elend.

 

I must disagree that stabbing Elend was somehow not in-line with Preservation's intent. If the goal is preservation then Vin releasing Ruin is far-and-away the literal worst outcome from Preservation's point of view. Killing a human is not even close to that so preserving the prison definitely trumps prolonging Elend's life. Note: I specifically chose the verb "prolong" because Elend will, like all humans, eventually die anyway so Leras stabbing Elend does not disrupt the natural order of things.

 

---

 

On topic: I must say I find the arguments compelling for Dominion; especially with Sel finally clearing the way to easier world hopping recently (I believe there is a collection of WoB that say that Sel was initially hard to worldhop to/from but that the reason for that difficulty has recently cleared).

 

That being said, Autonomy is, in my mind, still the top choice but I was very swayed by the arguments for Dominion. It would be just like Brandon to throw us this kind of curve ball.

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I think I've been convinced on the Dominion Theory.  Everything seems to fit.  The similarity of colors in soulstone and the spike, the beasts in the Kandra homeland, the fact that Trellagism was focused on the location of the world in relation to the stars, the fact that there was a second god in the religion(Nalt) and a second god on Sel(Devotion).  Even the motivations for Bleeder fit.  Dominion doesn't want anyone ELSE ruling over people, he wants to do it.  So lets get rid of Harmony. 

 

Plus Brandon doesn't necessarily write his novels in timeline-order.  So by finishing this era of Mistborn, then backtracking to Elantris 2 and showing HOW they came back, he can set up the Cosmere requirements of recombining splintered shards.

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After reading BoM this feels even more likely to me.

 

Minor BoM spoilers:

 

I believe we've been told that Sel is pretty technologically advanced by era 2, perhaps more so than Scadrial, this might explain where some of the new technology we've seen in BoM came from and perhaps why Harmony knows about science and technology elsewhere.

 

There are also parts of the southern Scadrians' cultures that remind me of a toned down Derethi. They certainly revere their dominating 'gods' (allomancers) but divorced from their strict religion. 

 

The only rub here is that the southern Scadrians seem to have extremely allomanantically driven, something they would be unlikely to get from Sel. Perhaps that's the result of Kel/The Lord Ruler/whomever's influence.

 

Just some thoughts.

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I have to comment on the "Radiants must be honorable to access stormlight" claim. This is definitely false in the general sense. KALADIN (and other windrunners) has to be honorable because Sil (or any future windrunners spren) is an HONOR spren. Shallan and Pattern however aren't of Honor, but Cultivation. Lightweavers mix truth and lies (not honorable) to cultivate the responses they want in others.

 

Also, I'm firmly behind Autonomy being the new shard influencing Scadrial in SoS because that is what Lessie so desperately wants for herself. She takes autonomy away from a limited number of others (by creating the new hemalurgic constructs) in an attempt to bring autonomy (as she sees it) to a great many more.

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I have to comment on the "Radiants must be honorable to access stormlight" claim. This is definitely false in the general sense. KALADIN (and other windrunners) has to be honorable because Sil (or any future windrunners spren) is an HONOR spren. Shallan and Pattern however aren't of Honor, but Cultivation. Lightweavers mix truth and lies (not honorable) to cultivate the responses they want in others.

 

Also, I'm firmly behind Autonomy being the new shard influencing Scadrial in SoS because that is what Lessie so desperately wants for herself. She takes autonomy away from a limited number of others (by creating the new hemalurgic constructs) in an attempt to bring autonomy (as she sees it) to a great many more.

Is it not honorable to inspire in others the goodness you can see in them? To show them the honorable and good men and women they could be?

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One definition of honor is 'high moral standards of behavior'. All Radiants swear at least the first Ideal and as far as we know, everyone but the Lightweavers swears four more. If you follow the Ideals you progress to full Radianthood, if you don't you stop and potentially even lose your surgebinding entirely. In other words, the power comes from holding yourself to a higher standard of behavior. It doesn't really matter that one Order focuses especially on honor (however that definition is worked out in-universe), one on laws, one on uniting people etc. The basis for the Investiture is still acting in line with the Intent 'Honor'.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I vaguely remember a WoB saying that there's a person/people actively working to slow down Harmony's knowledge of the Cosmere. Is there a chance we're actually dealing with Selish worldhoppers, and not a specific Shard or Splinter?

Minor SH Spoilers

Secret History showed us that even hundreds of years back, Elantrians had figured out ways to mess with Shards. They might be trying something similar.

 

But either way, I am a little worried about this, because I'm not sure how you're write this to work for both Cosmere readers and non-Cosmere readers without things getting weird. Throw in the fact that Hoid seems to think Dominion is out for the count, and you have a few major, but not insurmountable, problems.

Edited by Observer
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