Andrew the Great Posted October 16, 2010 Report Share Posted October 16, 2010 Re-reading my earlier post, I sound a bit harsh. It's not that I don't think that the numbers hold any significance. It's just that I don't think that we can glean that significance from what little information we have, and I think there are other things we could be looking into right now that will be much more beneficial to our understanding of the cosmere. So sorry if I came across as overly critical - I do that sometimes, and I don't mean anything bad by it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emeralis00 Posted October 16, 2010 Report Share Posted October 16, 2010 @andrew, what I meant was that instead of looking at each book individually, we should look at the books as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew the Great Posted October 16, 2010 Report Share Posted October 16, 2010 I'll agree with you there. But then, that's kind of the point of finding information about the cosmere. It's difficult at this point to look at the universe as a whole and just logically piece things together. We don't have enough information to do that, at least completely. The idea is that we find the information by looking through the various books, then compare that to the information found in other books, and see what applies throughout the universe. Then we can work from there to piece the rest of the universe together. I agree that looking at the universe as a whole has merit. But it needs to be done along with looking at the individual books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyman Posted October 26, 2010 Report Share Posted October 26, 2010 As I see it we've really only got a handle on two magic numbers: 16 (number of Shards and Allomantic metals) and 10 (Essences, Heralds, Orders of Knight's Radiant, etc). We might possibly have a third magic number if we count 3 (the number of realms-physical, spiritual, cognitive). 16 being the number of shards seems significant because it is 2^(2^2), or a pair of pairs of pairs. This is certainly how the Allomantic metals are arranged. Even if the shards are not all paired off as exact opposites, it would not surprise me if they somehow had an organizational scheme that broke down along these lines. As for 10---I really don't know. Maybe it somehow connects to the physical structure of the elements in the cosmere? Although it always really bugs me when there is some fundamental physics that is completely different from our world at base, yet ends up with something that acts exactly the same way at the macroscopic scale, but it's hard to get Soulcasting to work if this isn't true somehow. I have to agree though---10 being a holy symbol on Roshar probably follows from it's other known properties. Doesn't make the idea of it being holy wrong though---it's got lots of nifty properties on Roshar that would probably convince me as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zas678 Posted October 28, 2010 Report Share Posted October 28, 2010 I've got another one. The Mad Prince (from the deleted scenes in Elantris) has 10 generals. How many Aons are there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew the Great Posted October 28, 2010 Report Share Posted October 28, 2010 More than ten. Or sixteen, for that matter. I think. Though I don't have my copy of Elantris with me. Gr. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyman Posted October 29, 2010 Report Share Posted October 29, 2010 I was just looking over the appendix to Elantris recently. There are many, many more than either 10 or 16 Aons. At one point, Galladon is complaining that Raoden's people had taken too long to invent a real alphabet, and Raoden responds that the Aons are an alphabet, just "An incredibly complex one." Neither 10 nor 16 Aons could possibly fit this description. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Munin Posted October 29, 2010 Report Share Posted October 29, 2010 I was just looking over the appendix to Elantris recently. There are many, many more than either 10 or 16 Aons. At one point, Galladon is complaining that Raoden's people had taken too long to invent a real alphabet, and Raoden responds that the Aons are an alphabet, just "An incredibly complex one." Neither 10 nor 16 Aons could possibly fit this description. Although to be fair, that could also describe the way that various lines can modify existing Aons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyman Posted October 29, 2010 Report Share Posted October 29, 2010 I was just looking over the appendix to Elantris recently. There are many, many more than either 10 or 16 Aons. At one point, Galladon is complaining that Raoden's people had taken too long to invent a real alphabet, and Raoden responds that the Aons are an alphabet, just "An incredibly complex one." Neither 10 nor 16 Aons could possibly fit this description. Although to be fair, that could also describe the way that various lines can modify existing Aons. I got the impression that the modifiers, etc., weren't generally known. I think they were talking about just the base Aons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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