World Hopping and Sel

[PorridgeBrick]

• He needed a bath.

Gah, meant to upvote this instead of downvote. Upvote Brigade, move out!

[Aether]

Gah, meant to upvote this instead of downvote. Upvote Brigade, move out!

The Brigade seems reluctant to move. Either that, or they did move, but the down-vote brigade beat them.

 

EDIT: On an unrelated note, you change your User Avatar often, Porridge. 'Tis confusing! (though I like your current one)

Edited April 18, 2014 by Aether

[PorridgeBrick]

The Brigade seems reluctant to move. Either that, or they did move, but the down-vote brigade beat them.

EDIT: On an unrelated note, you change your User Avatar often, Porridge. 'Tis confusing! (though I like your current one)

Hmm, this insubordination is troubling. I'll have to do something about that.

A-ten-SHUN! What is the meaning of this, Sergeant Harris! I tell your unit to move out, and what are you doing?! Playing CARDS. My men, playing CARDS while an erroneous downvote is still out there, running free! Do you like playing cards, Sergeant Harris? Or should I say, Private Harris? No, don't answer. If you opened your mouth, your breath would sully the air. And YOU! What are you looking at, Corporal? Do you wish to join Harris' little game of CARDS here? Be my guest. I'm sure you'll enjoy sharing his new rank as well. Oh, why so hesitant now, Corporal? I thought you liked cards. Certainly Harris does.

Hey, Private Smith! Who are you laughing at, Private Smith! Do you find this FUNNY, Private Smith? Are you laughing at your former commanding officer, Private Smith? I thought I taught my men better than that. Perhaps a day of cleaning latrines would teach you more respect, Private? You certainly won't be lonely, with Private Harris working with you. Though I question which stench would be worse, Harris or the latrines. Do you have any idea, Private Harris?

Corporal York, I believe I already mentioned something about laughing in the presence of your superior officers. Storm it, latrine duty for the lot of you! You make me sick, men. You make me sick.

Problem solved.

Oh, and I actually changed my avatar because I noticed someone using the same picture. Szeth seemed like a good idea, so now he's my avatar. Now I can facepalm annoying posts without even saying anything .

Edited April 18, 2014 by PorridgeBrick

[red032]

It's based on WoB that if you put enough uncontrolled, undirected power in one place that it will become sentient. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6597-theory-man-made-adonalsium/ has a post from Argent with the WoB.

I'm speculating further by guessing that any freshly formed intelligence will be very young and very immature, and will only have the fragmentary memories that the Seons appear to have about what happened to the Shards; therefore, I'm guessing that the intelligence in question doesn't know any better and will lash out at anything that might hurt it.

Think about it,

Devotion and Dominion were splintered.

So, there must be a lot of splinters around. Scatered, in my opinion.

I believe that the elantrians are the result of a splinter investing itself on a suitable human ( correct SDNA ).

And I believe that Elantris Shardpool received much more splinters and became sentient.

Imagine a sentient shardgate, with a misguided (see nightblood for misguidedness) sense on the Intent left by Devotion and you could see a really really problematic gate. One that offers you the conforts of giving up.

 

edit: spelling corrections

Edited April 18, 2014 by red032

[Pathfinder]

So a thought I had as to why the Elantians we see dissolve in the pool. Elantian magic is weaker the further away from Elantris you get right? So lets look at the order of events. Because the magic wasn't working right, Elantians didn't change completely/heal as they should. They get grievously injured and lose their mind from the pain. The injuries they have by this point are so great, it would kill anyone mortal. What if when you go through the portal, thus going to another world, you are so far away from Elantris that the magic doesn't work at ALL. You become mortal. Now you have all these wounds that should have killed you still as an Elantian but now you are mortal and then you croak. Or this occurs during the transition, and maybe the heod is so mad they cant focus on a destination so they disintegrate, kind of shooting off in all directs persay. This lends me to a theory i just had about Galladon in the stormlight archive. He looks dark skinned, which if he wasn't an Elantian is how he should have looked kolo? So what if by world hopping, he became human again? So there is no illusion in place to make him look normal, cause on another planet he IS normal. 

[Left]

That's definitely interesting but I'm not convinced that the magic just "went away".

I do kind of like the idea that the Shardpool is misguided like Nightblood, although there's no way to confirm it at the moment.

I'm betting that the Elantrians need to figure out the Aeons to use on the gate-kind of like the chasm line, but not really- and if you just hop in there without setting a destination you just melt.

[Shardmancer]

Hoid does not need to use the shardpool it's not specified anymore that is the key to worldhopping. I believe its a connection to Shadesmar and accesing the powers of the shard. Just like aon dor for aon tia- transportation... there must be a way to access other worlds shard powers (which Hoid obivously can do) This enables him to travel to other worlds.

[AerionBFII]

In a WOB didn't he say Hoid Worldhopped to arrive there before Vin? "Footprints in the dust"

Never new you could world hop within a world.. 

[Runetalos]

I feel like we are missing something more concrete here.  Something to do with the Aons, specifically the shapes of the Aons.  Maybe they somehow link up with other books?  

 

At one point in the book Serene looks up at the night sky and points out several constellations.

 

Serene found her eyes tracing the constellations of the major Aons.  Rao shone directly overhead, a large square with four circles at it's sides and a dot in the center.  Her own Aon, Ene, crouched barely toward its zenith.  In just a few hours it would vanish completely- or at least that was what the astronomers claimed

 

 

Can we think of anything that would link either of these constellations to other solar systems / planets from other books?  Or if not these two in particular do any of the other Aons (in the back of the book) look familiar? 

 

It's very strange to me that Aons are,

1.) Real star constallations in the sky 

2.) Literal representations of an attribute that actually work to summon that attribute with Elantrian magic (transportation, power, etc).

[Left]

Dude, that is probably the most mindblowing thing I've read on this topic. Do we have a WoB on this anywhere people???

[Runetalos]

For future reference here are the pages (paperback version) and a summary with my thoughts from my very recent reread .  I still have no idea which is the "BIG HINT" that Sanderson mentioned.

 

Pg. 353 - When Raodan finds the secret library on the way to throw the old Elantrian into the pool.  A mural implies that the pool might be a portal.  Galladon says "It's like the water was considered a gate of some sort".  I'm not the first person to notice this and honestly this seems the most likely to be the BIG HINT.  Elantrians wouldn't have magic once they go through the gate, so they couldn't come back (and maybe not even survive there (Shadesmar?) without magic.

 

Pg. 396 - This is what I mentioned previously.  I assume the shapes are not literal, in the same way we see a clump of stars and say "that is a bear or a hunter".  Like there aren't actually giant lines in the sky forming these shapes, just pin pricks of stars that make up the general shapes of Aons.

 

 

 

Serene found her eyes tracing the constellations of the major Aons.  Rao shone directly overhead, a large square with four circles at it's sides and a dot in the center.  Her own Aon, Ene, crouched barely toward its zenith. 

 

Pg. 576 - Dilaf and the monks use magic to teleport to Teod.  It requires sacrificing a monk (so it's a net-loss magic like hemalurgy that requires a sacrifice) but the teleportation doesn't seem to care about distance it seemed to imply any distance would kill one monk.  Later in the book a flashback shows us a monk being burned away to teleport a short distance.  This could be another way to world hop.

 

Other pages - Also mentioned before by others, but Tia teleportation seems to not care about distance.  The only thing that seems to matter is accuracy of calculations, so presumably you could use this on any world if you have a way to fuel it (stormlight, etc).  

 

 

For my efforts in connecting Aons to other books, the Aon for Honor (shard on Roshar) is "MAI" and the Aon for Endowment (shard on Nalthis) is "ESHE".  My thought process here is maybe the picture of those Aons somehow match up with something on the maps of those lands.  Maybe some kind of TIA MAI rune would teleport you to Roshar without calculating distances?  If you look at the "MAI" constellation in the sky of Sel is Roshar somewhere up there?

[Clin]

Runetalos, I noticed that as well.  Some other things that jumped out at me while I reread Elantris this weekend:  

 

1) Aon Tia would probably work if one was traveling from Elantris, so long as the calculations were correct, but probably not to it unless another source of Dor or investiture could be found to fuel it.  Perhaps the constellation thing would factor in here.

 

2)I might be up in the night here, but i'm wondering if there is a connection between the Aonic shape of Elantris and the specific shapes of the various cities on Roshar.  If Elantris can focus and/or amplify investiture on Sel, could cities like Kholinar have a similar effect on investiture there?  I'm probably seeing parallels where there aren't any, but the superficial similarities jumped out at me.  If there is something there, maybe it would be enough for Galladon to fuel his illusion on Roshar.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Clin

[Youngy]

One problem with using Shardpools to Worldhop is the question of how Hoid got onto Scadrial.

• Hoid did not know where the Well of Ascension was (at least, after Rashek moved it), so obviously he would have had to use Ruin's Shardpool if he came to Scadrial less than 1024 years pre-Mistborn 1.
• Ruin's Shardpool was a bunch of puddles on the bottom of the Pits of Hathsin at the time.

Perhaps we could use this as evidence to say that Hoid actually spent a thousand years on Scadrial, waiting for the Well to come back. But how would Hoid have gotten off the planet after it was used again? I guess Harmony could have his own Shardpool now...

For these reasons, I am unsure about the Shardpools being the method of Worldhopping... Why not hop straight to the pool if you want to find it?

But at the same time, we really only know what Preservation's Shardpool does - and only if Preservation barely has a Cognitive aspect at the time.

Brandon keeps hinting that the pool in Elantris is not what we think it is (and therefore not a Shardpool?) But even then, being the Shardpool of a shattered Shard, it would behave differently again. In fact, should a shattered Shard even have a Shardpool?

We've never seen a Shardpool with a whole Shard interact with anything.

[Shardmancer]

That is a very intresting theory. The aons referring to constelations is just another aspect of how these worlds tie into each other so well.. I dont know exactly if thats the key to world hoping.. or just another easter egg of how these worlds function in general

[Aether]

Brandon has said that the pool in Elantris is not what we tend to think it is, so maybe we are wrong to assume that it is a Shardpool? Maybe the pools at the Elantris pool and the Horneater pools aren't Shardpools at all, but just portals allowing for Worldhopping or access to Shadesmar?

[Tempus]

He's also said it is similar to other Shardpools though. The not what you think it is comment could be taken a couple ways. It could be that he means that the Shardpool doesn't normally destroy people (we think it does, but maybe it doesn't exactly). It could be that it's not Devotion's shardpool (we think it is, but maybe it's Dominion's, or a splinter shardpool). It could be a lot of things, really.

[DSC01]

I think the Shardpools only are going to be involved in worldhopping if the Shard can bestow transportation powers. One of the ones on Sel can, and Transportation is one of the surges on Roshar. On Scadrial, there is no such power in their magic system, so the Shardpool wouldn't be any help with worldhopping. It seems most likely that Shardpools can help facilitate worldhopping, but they are not necessary.

[LiquidBlue]

I really don't know what to think of shardpools or their use to world hop. When I read that it was hard to travel to/from Sel, I immediately thought that it was due to the Dor. In the book it is described as being under pressure, and when allowed an outlet it rushes through. To my mind, this means that the cognitive realm in the vicinity of Sel is flooded by Dor making travel both difficult and dangerous.

[Tempus]

I really don't know what to think of shardpools or their use to world hop. When I read that it was hard to travel to/from Sel, I immediately thought that it was due to the Dor. In the book it is described as being under pressure, and when allowed an outlet it rushes through. To my mind, this means that the cognitive realm in the vicinity of Sel is flooded by Dor making travel both difficult and dangerous.

 

A similar description to the under pressure scene you speak of is apparent when

Eshonai brings forth the everstorm

. Both scenarios occur when a certain type of magic hasn't been used in a long time. In Elantris, subsequent uses of the Dor are many times weaker as well than the first usage. It seems like when a power does not get used, it builds up.

[Youngy]

Ok, I've hit another snag in our understanding of world hopping using Shardpools.

How can one worldhop to and from Therondy? (We don't have any confirmation yet that there is a character from there - but I think it is assumed Nazh is due to his 'shadows' comment). There isn't a shardpool there - so how would it work without one?

[Tempus]

No magic, no shardpool. Could be hard to get there, and hard to get off there for a native. Unless there is a non shard dependent way...

[PorridgeBrick]

Well, there does seem to be some magical interactions there. If there's a decent sized Splinter behind it, then perhaps it could have a Splinterpuddle of some sort.

[Dravs]

From Elantris:

> "Over there," Karata said, pointing at the far end of the rectangular room, where the wall held only a single mural. It depicted a large mirrorlike blue oval. An Elantrian stood facing the oval, his arms outstretched and his eyes closed. He appeared to be flying toward the blue disk. The rest of the wall was black, though there was a large white sphere on the other side of the oval.

This would be the hint. The white sphere probably represents another world, or some sort of nexus, or whatever.

 

Honestly when I read this quote I get the feeling that Brandon was watching Stargate when he thought of the idea for Shardpools.  I know he likes to keep his magic systems enshrined in science so is it possible that the Shardpools connect to each other literally via wormholes?  With Shadesmar being another method of travel between the stars (if you know how)?

 

Possibly you need to know the location that you are travelling to, to "dial" the location, as most of the Cosmere science/magic is made with intent as an underlying factor?  It could make a bit of sense as to why Hoid could not just travel to the Well of Ascension in Mistborn from a different Shardpool, as he did not know where it was to travel to it.  He was likely stuck on Scadrial for a while, as i suspect he was the person who created the Terris Worldbringers religion which he also seems to have started on Roshar with the Worldsingers.

[Argent]

Ok, I've hit another snag in our understanding of world hopping using Shardpools.

How can one worldhop to and from Therondy? (We don't have any confirmation yet that there is a character from there - but I think it is assumed Nazh is due to his 'shadows' comment). There isn't a shardpool there - so how would it work without one?

 

We know that Hoid has used Shadesmar to worldhop, so Shardpools - if they are, indeed, the mysterious other way of jumping between worlds - are not mandatory, just more efficient. 

[Moogle]

We know that Hoid has used Shadesmar to worldhop, so Shardpools - if they are, indeed, the mysterious other way of jumping between worlds - are not mandatory, just more efficient.

Using Shardpools may require travel through Shadesmar, though. I don't think the two are incompatible.

As a different idea, the Spiritual contains the connections between objects. Each Shardpool, being of Adonalsium, may be strongly linked on the Spiritual and it could be that you can travel via these connections.