Ripheus23 Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 (edited) So, I think part of the Shadesmar stuff, is that Sanderson both probably had his own "parallel dimension that's like Tolkien to the power of Alice-in-Wonderland" thing going on in his head, plus he picked up on the dreamworld-Ways-weird tower-etc. stuff in WoT, so he's really building up Shadesmar/the Cognitive Realm to be a predominant landscape in SOME Cosmere-saga settings. This is quasi-confirmed to the extent that a Silverlight story is in the works. However, I was thinking: the Shards probably corresponded to crystal-like graphs of Spiritual information, in the Cognitive Realm, and so the place where Adonalsium was Shattered was probably IN the Cognitive Realm. Now, Ruin is attuned to destruction, [edit] especially by the overall time period in which he refers to Vax. I'm not saying Vax would be the place in Shadesmar where Adonalsium was Shattered (destroyed). Maybe, but the references we've seen to it are pretty "throwaway" for what would otherwise apparently be a place of immense significance. So instead, I think Vax was a place in the Cognitive Realm that was particularly affected destructively by the Shattering, at least [this would include the site of the Shattering, presumably, without requiring itself to be the same]. This is why Ruin/Ati is confused: by the time he sees Scadrial's Shadesmar subset, it reminds him of another place of great "Ruin" in Shadesmar, a place he saw affected in the Cognitive Realm, during/because of the Shattering of Adonalsium. Edited July 5, 2019 by Ripheus23 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger he/him Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 Cool theory. I can't currently think of anything that directly contradicts this yet but I always just assumed that the shattering happened in the spiritual realm(this is where most shards reside). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+TheFoxQR Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 Does this WoB add anything? Quote Little Wilson Can you give us any hints about Vax's magic system? Brandon Sanderson No. Little Wilson *sighs* Okay. Brandon Sanderson Nope, nope, nope. Big RAFO. *interruption* Isaac Stewart It's a magic system based on RAFO. The more RAFO you get, the more Investiture you're able to bestow. Calamity release party (Feb. 16, 2016) I've always found this one extremely interesting. Particularly because the implication is a magic user would be able to "bestow" investiture, the more they have of something specific. Brandon's absolute refusal to talk about Vax is... baffling. He usually gives us atleast a timeline of when we might find out more. Or maybe a book or series association. But here? Nada. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nnatel she/her Posted July 5, 2019 Report Share Posted July 5, 2019 I really like the part of Vax being destroyed as a result of the Shattering (and as Ati talks about it as he sees Cognitive Realm it is at least connected or as you said - a part of CR). But I'm not sure if the Shattering could happen in CR - wouldn't it result in a similar effect as on Sel, where magic is bonded to certain place? The Shards are mostly in SR, so either it needed to happen in Spiritual or the amount of freed Investiture during Shattering created kind of a perpendicularity that allowed new-created Shards to get to another Realm (and if that was the case than I have nothing against your theory and actually such an amount of Investiture would cause some crazy destruction and create some weird magic effect - just look at Threnody). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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