[Secret History] Those people in that place

[Kurkistan]

Real topic title: Are all Elantrians secretly always zombies?

So the Ire (or at least the leaders of them) are Elantrians. Interesting. But they look weird. They're all old-looking and shriveled and bald. They still glow a bit and in fact seem to need the super-special light in the fortress to survive, drinking it in passively from the fortress while they're there as well as drinking their glowy-liquids both casually in the fortress and seemingly as a way of staying alive while out on the expedition that Kelsier crashed.

So can we talk about why they look like this? And, much more importantly, why Preservation describes them as "the ones who died, but did not"? Because according to Brandon Elantrians should just stop looking Elantrian if they get too far from Sel: nothing about them looking like wrinkled old prunes.

We could just say that they're really old or something, or have been away for too long, but how does that explain the "the ones who died, but did not" line?

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The crazy thought that popped into my mind when I was thinking about it is that all Elantrians are dead people. At least to an extent. The Shaod usually comes at night, it's said. And we've always theorized that it keyed into people that are particularly Devoted to something.

What if the Shaod takes people at the moment of their death, perhaps people who feel that they have something they're Devoted to that they still need to be around for? Someone dies in his bed of a stroke, boom Shaod.

As an example: Some have argued that Hrathen's Dilaf's wife (who got post-Reod-Shaod'd before the Reod actually happened due to a botched healing when she was dying of some terminal illness) was in fact taken by the Shaod right then and there, but that the healing somehow interfered with it. What if she actually died, and that triggered it all?

An alternative, of course, is that these might all be mid-Reod Elantrians who got Shard-pooled, and they were that way when they got there. So if a pre-Reod or post-restoration dropped by the fortress, they'd look fine. This seems like a pretty thin line to straddle, though.

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I haven't read Elantris in a while and feel like I'm missing some WoBs. Also I don't know whether Elantrian immortality being particularly taxing comes into it. Thoughts?

Edited January 29, 2016 by Kurkistan

[natc]

Relevant question: is one's form in the cognitive realm (after shifting into it, not the odd flame you'd be to other people there) affected by cognitive perception?

[Mestiv]

I think Ire are pre-Reod Elantrains that got stuck in the Cognitive Realm. Maybe pre-Reod Elantrians run a whole bunch of expeditions to other worlds, creating infrastructure like the fortress we saw, using technology not based on AonDor. Then, the Reod struck, trapping all the crews in the Cognitive realm. Their technology still working somehow, but without a way to come back to Sel as it is not a safe place to be in Cognitive realm now. So the Ire want a power of Preservation to clean up the mess that Cognitive Sel is right now. They look the way they look, because they were affected to some degree by Reod, but not as much as if they were in the Physical Realm. Elantrians were mostly affected by Reod in the Physical Realm anyway. Now, even after Raoden fixed Elantris and some of the Aons (there are two Aons making built in Elantris, Rao and Ela, Raoden fixed only Rao as far as we know) they still cannot come back because of the mess in Cognitive Sel.

 

 

 

As an example: Some have argued that Hrathen's wife (who got post-Reod-Shaod'd before the Reod actually happened due to a botched healing when she was dying of some terminal illness) was in fact taken by the Shaod right then and there, but that the healing somehow interfered with it. What if she actually died, and that triggered it all?

 

That was Dilaf's wife, but that's not really important

[TwelfthOfSnackTime]

I think Ire are pre-Reod Elantrains that got stuck in the Cognitive Realm. Maybe pre-Reod Elantrians run a whole bunch of expeditions to other worlds, creating infrastructure like the fortress we saw, using technology not based on AonDor. Then, the Reod struck, trapping all the crews in the Cognitive realm. Their technology still working somehow, but without a way to come back to Sel as it is not a safe place to be in Cognitive realm now. So the Ire want a power of Preservation to clean up the mess that Cognitive Sel is right now. They look the way they look, because they were affected to some degree by Reod, but not as much as if they were in the Physical Realm. Elantrians were mostly affected by Reod in the Physical Realm anyway. Now, even after Raoden fixed Elantris and some of the Aons (there are two Aons making built in Elantris, Rao and Ela, Raoden fixed only Rao as far as we know) they still cannot come back because of the mess in Cognitive Sel.

 

 

 

 

That was Dilaf's wife, but that's not really important

 

 

But how would they be able to refill their glowing drink? Or get their regular soldier minions if they've been stuck in the cognitive realm for almost 1000 years or more.

Granted they could get minions and supplies from other worlds but I don't think any old investiture can keep an elantrian going. It's got to be bottled up Dor.

[Mestiv]

Do you even have to eat in cognitive realm? Do you age? I honestly don't know if we know that. But camping in Cognitive Realm for hundreads of years would probably drive them insane anyway.