There is Such a Thing as a Dumb Question

[Chachel she/her]

Here is my dumb question: I've been using Roshar as both the name for the planet and the name for the main continent interchangeably on the wiki. Is this correct?

[Zas678 he/him]

It seems to be the case. It seems like there is only one continent on the planet (that we know of) and that this is all we need to worry about.

[Chachel she/her]

Yay! Thanks, zas. That's what I assumed.

[Chaos he/him]

That does indeed seem to be the case. It kind of baffles me, too, but whatever works, I suppose.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

Which is odd, since the planet and continent names haven't been the same before now. *shrug*

[Zas678 he/him]

The only one that comes to mind that was different was Elantris (Opelon and Sk-- something).

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

And Warbreaker. They referred to different countries, I'm not so sure about continents, though.

[KChan she/her]

It says "Roshar" on the map, and that's good enough for me.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

I would say Mistborn did that too, but they didn't exactly have continents, what with the planet being so close to the sun.

[KChan she/her]

There actually was another continent, with people on it. It's vaguely referenced during one scene in Hero of Ages, and is also mentioned by Brandon.... somewhere. Also, Scadrial is an "off-planet" term for the world; its natives don't call it that.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

I'm not sure if you could call the opposite pole a continent in a traditional way. I dunno.

[Joe ST he/him]

By the map, there's lots of mountains, which are usually caused by tectonics, which implies that it isnt all one plate. Though I cannot remember any ground-shaking, so they may be fused together...I guess it depends on how old the mountains are, if they've always been there then the planet must be pretty quiet/dead or just magically subdued....

[Chaos he/him]

There has never been any indication that there are not continents on Scadrial. They're just dead wastelands.

[Joe ST he/him]

There has never been any indication that there are not continents on Scadrial. They're just dead wastelands.

...or were dead wastelands...

[KChan she/her]

I'm not sure if you could call the opposite pole a continent in a traditional way. I dunno.

If there are people on it - and there are; Brandon has said so - then there has to be a continent. Unless they're merpeople or something.

[Joe ST he/him]

If there are people on it - and there are; Brandon has said so - then there has to be a continent. Unless they're merpeople or something.

or drowning... lol

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

I'm just not sure if Scadrial has oceans that define where the continents are like we do.

[lordofsoup]

It would make sense that there were continents before TLR changed everything, but after he used Preservation to change the world, he might not have added continents.

[FellKnight he/him]

There actually was another continent, with people on it. It's vaguely referenced during one scene in Hero of Ages, and is also mentioned by Brandon.... somewhere. Also, Scadrial is an "off-planet" term for the world; its natives don't call it that.

90% sure that it was during the climax of WoA that the other pole is revealed. Brandon talked about it in the annotations.

Fell

[KChan she/her]

Oh, right. Why on earth did I say Hero of Ages? You're right, it was Well of Ascension. I'm an idiot.

Also, Silus, yes, there are oceans.

[darniil he/him]

Wow. I'm glad this topic was here. I was going to ask about it, since articles in the wiki made me think of it.

I always thought that Roshar was just the continent. Being a geography major when I was in college, I've seen a lot of maps, and the way the maps were laid out in the book and on the Epic Bookmark make me think it's the continent's name.

To elaborate on that, it's the way the title is done. When titling a map, you title it based upon what you're mapping out. So you'll have a map of Luthadel, titled Luthadel. You'll have a map of (rats, what's the name? at work now; no WoK to reference) the Shattered Plains(?) with a related title. Then, we have the map titled Roshar, complete with scale marker (there is one, right?), a directional indicator (north arrow on our modern maps, stormward arrow on theirs), and even latitude markers that indicate this continent is in its planet's southern hemisphere.

To me, the titling of the maps is the primary indicator that Roshar is the name of the continent, but the latitude marks are a close second.

(I had a nice talk with Isaac Stewart, the Way of Kings mapmaker, at Eagle Eye Bookstore last summer during Dragon*Con weekend, and that also helped me come to my conclusion on this. YMMV, of course, but this is my two cents on the matter. I'm not about to go changing anyone else's articles, though, despite my personal confidence on the topic. )

[leinton]

Woooooo, another geography major! Did you have a focus, or were you a general geography major?

If people on a continent believe they are alone in the world, it wouldn't be a stretch to name their world after their continent. To them, it IS the world.

[darniil he/him]

I focused on GIS and related things, though I really enjoyed the one remote sensing class I took. That was a blast, interpreting all the LIDAR (and similar) imagery, trying to figure out what I was looking at, determining the altitude of the camera based upon known ground features, etc. I wasn't a big fan of the quantitative spatial analysis class I had to take, but the program didn't have a qualitative class, so quant was all that was available to meet that requirement.

Heh, and I just remembered - someone in this thread was talking about plate tectonics. I actually mentioned that when I was poring over the Epic Bookmark's map with Isaac next to me.

[Chaos he/him]

Yeah. It is definitely rather weird, but if you look in the 17th Shard Interview last August, he does heavily imply that that Roshar is the name of the planet.

So, I ripped it out of that book and I put it here, and that means it brought with it a few side characters who no longer live on Yolen because they now live on Roshar.

Since Yolen is the name of a planet, it seems that Roshar is the name of one, too. Seems clear from context.

EDIT: Okay, I found the explicit confirmation.

One other question, what is the name of the planet that Elantris is on?

Elantris: Sel

Warbreaker: Nalthis

Mistborn: Scadrial

Way of Kings: Roshar

White Sand: Taldain

Dragonsteel: Yolen

There are others, but I haven't talked much about those yet, so I'll leave them off for now.

It's in the Brandonothology (which you can find in Zas's signature), and that specific instance was from the Barnes and Noble Q&A.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Chaos

[darniil he/him]

Awesome. Thanks for the clarification.

I remember, also, that he decidedly did not comment on other continents on Roshar when asked. I guess that either means nothing will happen there, or something will, but later.