Are We Sure the Pool is a Shardpool?

[Radiant Returned he/him]

I didn't really start discovering the Cosmere until several books after Elantris. So since then, I've gone along with everyone that the pool in the Arelon mountains that Elantrians use to escape their suffering is a Shardpool for either Devotion or Dominion. BUT, I just finished re-reading, complete with annotations from Sanderson's site, and he had this to say (granted, the annotations are from 2006)

Annotation for Chapter 61-1

"I'm honestly not sure what the pool is or how exactly it fits into the theory of this magic system. It was added as a plotting device, as mentioned earlier, and therefore was never tied directly to the cosmology or theoretics of the world. When I do a sequel for this book, I think I'll try and find a way to tie it in. For now, however, it's kind of a loose thread."

Now, is there definitely a possibility that Sanderson developed more and has now decided it is a Shardpool? Yes, especially because in Hoid's bonus scene (wasn't in my mass pub edition, only in my new leather bound) he jumps through and theoretically transports like it's been shown Shardpool's can be used for. But I find it interesting that that's not 100% certain, or if it is that it wasn't intentional by Sanderson at the time of writing it. Which also means the voice that talks to Raoden COULD be kinda the remains of one of the Shards, but not necessarily because that wasn't Sanderson's original intent. Any ideas?

[Landis963 he/him]

It definitely is one of the Shardpools.  The Well of Ascension, from Mistborn, is identical to the mysterious pool, apart from color.  (There was a WoB to this effect in the Hero of Ages Q&A that started it all)  Other Shardpools include the one in the Horneater Mountains where Rock met Hoid, and the one mentioned in the SoS broadsheet where some Cosmere-blind correspondent ran into someone with a demonic-looking red-and-black face that seemed oddly stiff in the few moments before she fainted dramatically.  (This, BTW, was a fake-out from the writing team, who guessed that we the fanbase would assume that this was a Parshendi, when they had something very different in mind)  

Likewise, the voice that Raoden hears is has been confirmed to be a cognitive shadow of either Devotion or Dominion, again by WoB.  

[WeiryWriter he/him]

4 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

Likewise, the voice that Raoden hears is has been confirmed to be a cognitive shadow of either Devotion or Dominion, again by WoB.  

I would very much like to see this WoB, as I do not recall one to that effect.

[Windrunner he/him]

I'd chalk this one up to it simply being the first book Brandon had published. The annotations don't get updated when he changes something, so I'm sure Brandon has decided that the Pool is a perpendicularly since the they were written.

[Pagerunner he/him]

Have you taken a look at Brandon's pre-published history as a writer? He's done some blog posts about how the Cosmere originally came about, and I find them quite fascinating. And relevant to many discussions - for example, Elantris, White Sand, and Dragonsteel were the original group of Cosmere novels. He wrote them, and shopped them around to publishers, but no one wanted them. So, he kept writing, tried a different, lighter kind of writing style, and ended up with a bunch of books he didn't like. When Tor finally decided to publish Elantris, Brandon took a bunch of pieces out of the books he didn't like and wrote Mistborn, and then things just went downhill from there.

All that goes to say, although the annotations were put online in 2006, the book was written much earlier, around 1999; I suspect the annotations were written closer to that period, as well. It was before he had written Mistborn, so the concept of Shardpool may not have been fully developed yet. Brandon played around with the concept of Shardpools in one of the unsuccessful books, Aether of Night (which you can get as a draft by emailing him!), before eventually incorporating them into Mistborn in a big way.

So, when the annotations were written, there wasn't much of a concept of Shardpools, apparently. He must have really fleshed it out when planning Mistborn, and then tied it into other places (Stormlight, Sixth of the Dusk) as more of an overarching concept. Which all may have started from an obvious plot device in Elantris.

EDIT: Oh, and @Landis963 and @WeiryWriter, latest WoB I could find on the subject said RAFO. But it was from the SoS tour, so there might be something newer out there.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Pagerunner

[Landis963 he/him]

9 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

EDIT: Oh, and @Landis963 and @WeiryWriter, latest WoB I could find on the subject said RAFO. But it was from the SoS tour, so there might be something newer out there.

Argh, I thought for sure that had been confirmed.  My bad.  

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

The very fact that Hoid used it to transit to the Cognitive Realm means that it is a shardpool. A Perpendicularity as they called it in Secret History... That allows crossing the borders