I don't get Investiture on Sel

[JekyllLantern97]

I understand investiture pretty well on the other planets. You can give or receive breath on Nalthis because the shard is Endowment. Allomancy is all about preserving or changing energy from one form to another. Hemalurgy is taken by harming someone else and the power leaks out. That makes sense. You have to honor ideals to become a radiant, etc. etc. AonDor just seems like writing magic spells in the air. How is that related to devotion or dominion? It's been a while since I read Elantris so maybe I'm missing something, but something like Forging seems like a much more blatant relation to Dominion. Can someone explain it to me?

[Quantus he/him]

Sel is a corner case.  The Focus of all the different Investitures is Patterns/Symbols, as is evident in AonDor, Dahkor, Forger, etc.  However, they fundamentally work differently than all other know Investitures.  This is because all of them are sourced in The Dor, which resides in the Cognitive Realm instead of the Spiritual Realm.  What happened was Odium came and killed/Shattered both Shards, then for reasons that arent 100% clear shoved all their investiture into the Cognitive Realm rather than letting it return/remain in the Spiritual Realm which is where the bulk of most Shards exist.  Among other things this is why all Dor-based magics are fundamentally location-locked, so they all loose strength the further you get from their respective homelands, and all of them fail off-world (unless unrevealed special measures are taken).

[Chiberty]

37 minutes ago, JekyllLantern97 said:

I understand investiture pretty well on the other planets. You can give or receive breath on Nalthis because the shard is Endowment. Allomancy is all about preserving or changing energy from one form to another. Hemalurgy is taken by harming someone else and the power leaks out. That makes sense. You have to honor ideals to become a radiant, etc. etc. AonDor just seems like writing magic spells in the air. How is that related to devotion or dominion? It's been a while since I read Elantris so maybe I'm missing something, but something like Forging seems like a much more blatant relation to Dominion. Can someone explain it to me?

As far as I can tell, it's more in the Seons and Skaze, since the Seons serve those they love, and the skaze are power-hungry. They fit, but it's hard to tell for the rest of the magics because we don't actually know what determines who becomes an Elantrian.

[Hen she/her]

This is something that Ive actually wondered about myself. The Dor (Dor being investure) can be accessed many different ways, Through Aons in Elantris, the monasteries in Fjorden, the ChayShan dance that Shuden performs, ect. These different manifestations aren't separated explicitly into dominion and devotion, And these two shards share many features.

In Sel, the way the Dor is accessed is tied to land, and each area has a different way to access the Dor. For example, Aons are more powerful the closer they are to Elantris. Only people native to an area can use that bridge to the Dor. Again think of Elantris, only those born In or close to Arelon can become elantrians. It seems the only requirement to access power in Sel is location, and determination to learn the invested arts.

In some cases it can be easy to separate these pathways to the Dor into Devotion and Dominion. The Dakor monasteries, which are obsessed with world domination, are easily tied to Dominion. The Elantrians are worshiped by many in Arelon, and so Aons are most likely Devotion. The ChayShan is a martial art, and martial are takes years of, one might say devotion, to master, making it the investure of Devotion.

The frustrating thing is not all of the forms of invessture on Sel can be categorized, such as the potions used to turn Hrathen and Serene into temporary Elantrians (these potions have been revealed to be and invested art, though little is known about them).

Hope this helps!

 

[AonNae]

So I think that you could categorize AonDor, Forgery, and ChayShan as Devotion-based since you have to devoted to these Investitures to use them. For example, in AonDor your intent and precision is important, more important than they are in other forms of Investiture. Your intention and precision are both aspects of devotion. You have to be devoted to Aons you draw to fulfill the intention requirement and you have to be devoted to be accurate in your drawings to fulfill the precision requirement.

For ChayShan, you have to be focused on the martial art, or in other words devoted to the martial art and the actions you are performing.

Forgery might be more of a mix of Devotion and Dominion. You have to be devoted to creating accurate stamps that reflect accurate and plausible histories whereas when you actually stamp the object you are trying to Forge, the new history is dominating the soul's true history by overriding it.