Brgst13 Posted December 12, 2020 Posted December 12, 2020 We know that in Shin religion, stones are considered holy and not to be walked on. The lone exception is Urithiru. We also know that Shinovar was terraformed to resemble Ashyn pre-collapse. To me, there are two possible reasons stone is considered holy and not to be walked on. One is a result of microkinesis and the apparent ability of stone to hold memories. The second is that this is an outside-induced prohibition to keep the first refugees confined to Shinovar. We also know that the lone exception to this rule is Urithiru, and this makes sense since it is not true stone, but extruded spren essence. 3
Honorless he/him Posted December 12, 2020 Posted December 12, 2020 Yup, that is the popular consensus in the fandom
Serack he/him Posted December 12, 2020 Posted December 12, 2020 I hadn’t considered your first reason before, but I’d long suspected it was an internalized version of your second reason. In that deep down in their ancient culture they are aware that they are guests on Roshar and somehow Shinovar was sculpted to their purposes and they should be good guests by staying there. So theoretically, their culture morphed that into a religious belief that walking on stone (leaving Shinovar) was profaning it. 2
AquaRegia he/him Posted January 18, 2021 Posted January 18, 2021 And here I thought I was so smart... just the other day the word "stonewalker" popped into my head and I suddenly thought "OOOHHHHH, NOW I get it! The stupid humans were supposed to STAY IN SHINOVAR." Crossing the mountains (stone) to get out of Shinovar and spread to the rest of Roshar was the "profanity". Then I found this topic LOL
stonewalker16 Posted January 19, 2021 Posted January 19, 2021 On 12/12/2020 at 7:36 AM, Brgst13 said: We know that in Shin religion, stones are considered holy and not to be walked on. The lone exception is Urithiru. We also know that Shinovar was terraformed to resemble Ashyn pre-collapse. To me, there are two possible reasons stone is considered holy and not to be walked on. One is a result of microkinesis and the apparent ability of stone to hold memories. The second is that this is an outside-induced prohibition to keep the first refugees confined to Shinovar. We also know that the lone exception to this rule is Urithiru, and this makes sense since it is not true stone, but extruded spren essence. I don't think that it's the idea that stone holds memories, because we've seen that they are fine using metal and other sources if they're soulcast. My theory is that they are at least on some level Cosmere-aware, or at least somehow know that Adonalism originally created Roshar, and so they do not want to fiddle with His creation. This makes sense knowing what we know about Urithiru (that it probably wasn't made by humans) and that the Shin kept the Honorblades for centuries. Having access to those surely expanded their viewpoints
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