Sel's self-aware land and the earthquake

[+Extesian]

I previously posted this on the Shardcast comments, I don't think there's much to it but I'm curious to hear any thoughts on Sel's land gaining self-awareness. In Arcanum Unbounded Khriss makes the observation that "Indeed, I believe that the very landscape itself has become Invested to the point that it has a growing self-awareness, in a way unseen on other planets in the cosmere". We know the earthquake that caused the Reod was not natural.

Quote

MI'CH

You’ve told us that the earthquake was not caused by natural events.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yeah, it’s a complicated question because the earthquake was not caused by natural but the Reod was a natural effect of the earthquake, then... does that make sense? So the Reod is natural, a natural result of... does that make sense? That’s why it was a tricky question.

QUESTION

But the earthquake was not natural.

BRANDON SANDERSON

No, it was not.

AARON

So the Reod is a natural reaction to an unnatural occurrence.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

JOSH

And wasn’t it because there was like magical strain on the land?

BRANDON SANDERSON

That is certainly part of what was going on

So this made me think the land itself could have 'deliberately' caused the earthquake (maybe not with a highly intelligent level of awareness, perhaps closer to animal instinct). I see two possibilities.

1) the land is self-aware enough to protect itself and for some reason had a problem with the level of magical advancement (or use of investiture) by Elantrians.

2) that the land on Sel is becoming self-aware but with its 'personality' corresponding to the Shard that has the strongest regional influence there (as the Shards' power was stuffed into the cognitive and while they together made the Dor, perhaps they remain somewhat separate), and that the Dominion-land (hmmm Jaddeth??) wanted to overthrow Elantris (a la two tectonic plates sliding across each other, but in this case one of the plates deliberately moving itself).

I see 1 as more likely in reflection, I'm not sure that parts of the land would be Dominion and parts Devotion, as opposed to an roughly even blend across Sel. And to be fair, both are probably unlikely but hey, it's a thought

[+Extesian]

My humblest apologies, 'Something went wrong', the same topic double-posted and when I tried to edit 'Something went wrong'. Hopefully someone can tell be how to delete the duplicate post or one of the lovely Moderators can delete it.

Totally...noob...

[Jondesu]

I have been getting the impression that each land with it's own flavor of magic (Arelon, Fjordell, MaiPon, JinDo) has a Splinter of Devotion/Dominion, or some combination depending on how the Dor actually works, and that those Splinters are becoming self-aware (as Splinters do).  The earthquake was probably either the Splinter doing something it didn't intend, or an effect of it bonding with that portion of the world.  Then again, I think we've been told the splintering of D&D was a good bit earlier, but I'm not sure on that.

And no worries about the extra thread, someone'll take care of it.

[cometaryorbit]

Fjordell land being Jaddeth makes sense, IIRC Jaddeth is supposed to dwell underground.

But the Earthquake was within Arelon, which is presumably Devotion-aligned.