Connection and the Ire (SH spoilers)

[Djarskublar he/him]

As most of us are, I am highly interested in the Ire for many reasons. They are the first worldhopping community we have seen on screen. I have some thoughts about them, and their connection to events in Elantris, which is why I put this over in Cosmere rather than SH board.

First some basic speculation. The drink they are drinking is basically pure Investiture to maintain their form as complete Elantrians. I don't really have a ton to say about this, that's just my guess.

I have all these ideas swirling around, and taken together they make a lot of sense so bear with me please.

First is that the old Elantrians from before the Chasm appeared were Worldhoppers. How could they not be at least moving in that direction when they live next to a Shardpool and have murals of them entering said pool? Even if they hadn't made it to other worlds just yet because of the Dor, they were working on it. 

Second is that the Ire are a community at least as old as Galladon. They either include members of his generation of Elantrians, or they are even older, since we know Galladon is a Worldhopper. I think this is a solid assumption.

Considering both of those points, it is likely that the older Elantrians were highly Cosmere aware, or at least Realmatically aware.

This brings me to exhibit A: the old man they dumped in the pool during Elantris. I always assumed the pool just killed him, like the book suggested, but now I am doubting that. Even though he only had strength enough to point a general direction, he still had people take him to the local Shardpool.

I want to examine this event from his POV. He was an Elantrian. The Elantrians were likely more aware of the Dor and Cosmere in general. They probably understood Connection's impact on their magic to a fair extent. This man was going about his day, when suddenly his Connection to the Dor is shut off. He doesn't know why, but before he can work through his exhaustion and walk to the leaders of the community, a scared peasantry comes in and kills most of his people. He himself joins the Hoed. With the shattered remnants of his mind, he is probably at least passively trying to find a way to remove the pain. In a moment of relative lucidity, he takes one last gamble, since he can't do anything about the Dor, to his knowledge. He attempts the most dangerous thing. He has people put him in the Shardpool so he can move to the Cognitive Realm and be restored by the Dor. Now, whether or not he survived this endeavor is up for debate, but the fact remains. This probably knowledgeable man deliberately had himself put into a perpendicularity and disappeared.

Now, why he did this, my guess is that he was trying to restore himself. By jumping into the CR, he may have attempted to Connect with the Dor at the source. This would be very risky, obviously. After likely being restored by all the Investiture going through him, the Dor probably ripped him to shreds. If he survived, however, that is a cool story. Elantris was restored days later, so maybe he went and joined the Ire if they existed at that point. Maybe he went off to Silverlight. Maybe he went back through the perpendicularity and joined Raoden in rebuilding after all that had happened.

If this has been discussed before, I'd like to see the thread. A cursory look didn't turn up anything.

[Yata he/him]

This is a bit controversial topic.

I don't actually think you may revert or mitigate the Reod in the Sel's CR. Galladon's look as a pre-shaod version of himself, while the Ire are quite in Reod-like.

I know there are also some controverial about Ire's drink, someone as yourself think their drink is raw investiture, other think that they drink connection (some in the same "kind" of the Connection Orb).

There are some troublesome matters on the Ire and their apparence in the SH. If the Dor is location dependant, they would suffer the Reod (or the restoration from the Reod) only if they are on Sel. But this mean that the Ire have to be on Sel when the Chasm appeared and runned away before the fix of Elantris.

[Djarskublar he/him]

I always assumed Galladon was using a glamour. Raoden could manifest one even while Elantris was broken when he used the Chasm line. I don't think we can base much on their appearances when they can cast illusion magic really easily.

There is no way the drink is just pure 'Connection.' That doesn't make sense. It would be Investiture that increases Connection temporarily, and that is essentially the same as just drinking Investiture to fuel yourself. The mechanic is irrelevant for my point, the idea was that they are maintaining their power as Elantrians via the drink. Which is apparently something everyone can agree on.

The Dor was trying to push itself through Raoden while he was under the Reod. The point is, I bet the Dor would be able to Connect to an Elantrian if they were in the CR. It would either do that, or just blast them with pure Investiture and destroy them body, mind, and soul instantly. I guess the old man could have been trying to completely end his existence to remove the pain, but if he is at that point, I would assume he would just fall into insanity (a deeper version of being Hoed, I guess). If he is still sane enough to point the way to the pool, I don't think he would attempt something that could destroy his Cognitive aspect and his chance at going on to the Beyond when he dies. If it does just Connect, it would still be dangerous for all the same reasons the CR is dangerous on Sel in the first place, plus the danger of the energy overfilling him to the point of death since he was an Elantrian.

The Ire have that glowy cable thing that is probably some sort of Investiture pump so they can perform magic away from Elantris. That is highly interesting. This makes me think of a potential way to use Selish magic off-world. If you have something like the D&D astral cord connecting the Dor to your Cognitive aspect, maybe you can get a power flow going. It would probably be limited like an electric current though. You would only be able to run on '20 Watts instead of however many you need' type of thing, so massive Aons would be out of the question. Being able to cast some basic offensive and defensive Aons, along with some food/water production ones, would be extremely useful.

[VirtuousTraveller]

53 minutes ago, Djarskublar said:

I always assumed Galladon was using a glamour.

A glamour?  I've seen people argue about where The Reckoners fits in Brandon's universe, but I've never heard that Fables was considered cosmere before :-P

[Yata he/him]

10 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

I always assumed Galladon was using a glamour. Raoden could manifest one even while Elantris was broken when he used the Chasm line. I don't think we can base much on their appearances when they can cast illusion magic really easily.

Raoden was on Sel where the AonDor could work...Galladon is on Roshar where the Dor can't reach him...and we have a WoB who said that an Elantrian off-world would look as their pre-shaod state.

 

11 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

There is no way the drink is just pure 'Connection.' That doesn't make sense. It would be Investiture that increases Connection temporarily, and that is essentially the same as just drinking Investiture to fuel yourself. The mechanic is irrelevant for my point, the idea was that they are maintaining their power as Elantrians via the drink. Which is apparently something everyone can agree on.

The problem (but it's not a real problem after all) is that we don't know if they are actually use their homeland powers...They may be using the "Connection drink" to attune themself with a Shard X and tap from his power as any other magic user of a Manifestation of Investiture fueled directly by X (I will use as example Preservation's and Allomancy, but in the specific case it would be weird)....but again this point is quite useless to this post, therefore just ignore it.

11 hours ago, Djarskublar said:

The Dor was trying to push itself through Raoden while he was under the Reod. The point is, I bet the Dor would be able to Connect to an Elantrian if they were in the CR. It would either do that, or just blast them with pure Investiture and destroy them body, mind, and soul instantly. I guess the old man could have been trying to completely end his existence to remove the pain, but if he is at that point, I would assume he would just fall into insanity (a deeper version of being Hoed, I guess). If he is still sane enough to point the way to the pool, I don't think he would attempt something that could destroy his Cognitive aspect and his chance at going on to the Beyond when he dies. If it does just Connect, it would still be dangerous for all the same reasons the CR is dangerous on Sel in the first place, plus the danger of the energy overfilling him to the point of death since he was an Elantrian.

We probably have different views of this but the Dor and the land are quite a closed symbiotic system..The Dor gains a meaning through the Forms dictated by the land...The Reod is not just "The Dor didn't come" is actually an "Error 404"...As you may see from WoB the simply "absence of Dor" didn't cause to an Elantrian to become a Reod (as Galladon showed us). So also in the Cognitive Realm you would have some "interface error" with the Dor.