Ripheus23 Posted January 7, 2019 Report Share Posted January 7, 2019 So, one of those great paradoxes: if the Shards are everywhere and if the Vessels are "in" the Spiritual Realm, why do we see them fixated in certain regions of space? One explanation: Investiture-as-substance vs. Investiture-as-attribute: the substantial form assigned to each Shard varies in density across space, though the degree of assignment remains Spiritual in magnitude across all cases (except with respect to Devotion and Dominion, say). However, I think there's more to it, something else Realmatic. Shards Invest in worlds. But what is it to "Invest in" a world? When we say such a thing IRL (although not of worlds, so much, usually, as relationships or countries or projects or whatever), we mean that we make it part of our life-story, or we make ourselves part of its life-story, or both, or whatever along these lines. In the Cognitive Realm, it is usually planets that have complex corresponding regions. The Cognitive Realm is absolutely relevant to story-theoretic existence since a story would be a sequence of cognitive representations, Spiritually Connected though to be sure. In any event, I think the reason the Shards often "gravitated towards" already-populated areas was because those areas had a narrative actuality and potential that empty interstellar space generally is lacking in. (Of course some Shard seems to have "made its story" about outer space, and Rayse avoided Investing "too much" in any given world until, maybe, Braize.) Maybe this was even a contributing factor in so many violating the no-team-up agreement: there just weren't enough pre-existent living worlds to Invest in, and the only way to create a whole living world was to team up anyway, so... [I do still wonder why Tanavast claims to be the creator of humankind, at the end of WoK.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weltall Posted January 7, 2019 Report Share Posted January 7, 2019 (edited) 2 hours ago, Ripheus23 said: Maybe this was even a contributing factor in so many violating the no-team-up agreement: there just weren't enough pre-existent living worlds to Invest in, and the only way to create a whole living world was to team up anyway, so... This isn't very likely, as Khriss mentions in Arcanum Unbounded that there are lots of iinhabited worlds in the Cosmere that aren't host to a Shard. We know of enough 'spare' worlds right now that you could distribute the paired Shards up between them with room to spare. We've got a whopping three inhabited worlds (plus one more habitable one) in the Drominad System which is enough planetary real estate to house all these Shards in and of itself. Or two-thirds of them if you only count worlds with sapient life and decide that First of the Sun currently having an Avatar of Autonomy makes it off-limits. Then there's Obrodai which certainly didn't have any Avatars until recently, so it would have been 'empty' yet life-bearing when the Shards left Yolen. Then there's one other habitable (but not terribly hospitable) world in the Selish System and two in the Threnodite System. And those are just the worlds we know of. The way Khriss frames her discussion of what makes First of the Sun so interesting makes it clear that there's lots more we don't know of and most of which we likely never will. Oh, and there's at least one inhabited world with no humans other than Braize. So plenty of room for the Shards to spread out, meaning that there's no real need for them to have teamed up due to a lack of individual worlds to Invest in. Quote [I do still wonder why Tanavast claims to be the creator of humankind, at the end of WoK.] In retrospect, I don't think that he's claiming to be the creator of humanity but he's claiming that he's the entity that Vorinism says is the creator of humanity. The exact words he used were "I am... I was... God. The one you call the Almighty, the creator of mankind.". The key here is 'the one you call', with the whole creator bit following directly from that rather than being an independent claim. Edited January 7, 2019 by Weltall 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quantus he/him Posted January 7, 2019 Report Share Posted January 7, 2019 Relevant WOB: Quote Questioner How many worlds does [the cosmere] have in it? Brandon Sanderson A couple hundred. A couple hundred stars. Questioner How many planets are your books going to use? Brandon Sanderson Habitable worlds, in Goldilocks zones? There's probably 20 or 30, maybe a few more. Maybe up to 50, but you'll only really... there'll be like, ten or so core planets that you'll see stories from. source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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