Original Teemo

I love this theory! Might I suggest that, correlation not implying causation, we might consider that the skullmoss/fainlife and the death of the Gods of Yolen have a common cause as opposed to one causing the other? Perhaps it was not that Ambition was killed, but the method by which it was accomplished that is important and that is why it is the location where he was wounded that matters and not where he died.

Thanks, that's really helpful. So anything that would answer my question would likely be RAFOed I guess. Incidentally, I wasn't asking in regards to the force opposing Adonalsium which I agree seems to be a group of people. I'm more trying to get an idea of whether Adonalsium is as fundamental and unique as is implied.

Has there ever been one or more entities in the Cosmere that held substantially large amounts of Investiture that is neither Adonalsium itself nor traces its Investiture to Adonalsium? More colloquially, are there powerful sources of Investiture that ultimately owe their power to sources unrelated to Adonalsium?

Incidentally, there is this about the Evil on Threnody - "A creeping darkness, a terrible force that consumed the entirety of the continent, feasting upon the souls of men."

Presumably, Braize was not always a prison. Perhaps the important question is not how Hoid traveled to and from Braize, but WHEN?

Cookies?

I have this funny itch to drag meaning, kicking and screaming, out of apparent chaos. I bet you guys do too. And, where the Cosmere is a mess of chaos, 17th Shard seems to be THE place to go to make sense of it. Anyway, happy to be out of the shadows, see you around!

Well investiture seems to be able to grant the spark of life, so the reverse should also be true?

Hey, I'm not always super clear either

In thermodynamics, energy is never removed from the universe, but it is made not-useful. Here, investiture is the realmatic analog to energy. This theory proposes that sharpools "replenishing," etc. is misdirection and that they are actually refilling by stealing the spark of life through conduits in the spiritual realm.

Imagine that a Shard has, essentially, a battery of "potential" investiture. This is what we think of as the Shard's power. The Shard or its delgates can use this battery to transform the "potential" investiture into "kinetic" investiture which effects a spiritual change, manifesting itself in the other realms. This is "ends positive" investiture. Now I realize it is commonly accepted that spent investiture eventually returns to the Shard, which I submit might happen if the spiritual change were to be reversed. However WoB says that investiture obeys its own form of thermodynamics, and entropy always increases and no process is 100% efficient. So at least some of that investiture is lost to the inexorable march of entropy and the battery must be recharged... Now imagine that Adonalsium obeyed the same rules and did, in fact, require a continuous supply of investiture to recharge its spiritual battery. That sounds like a pretty toothless "god." Well, not to fear good Realmaticists, we can still have the power of creation at our fingertips, this is but a minor setback! The planet of Yolen was filled with a *nearly* limitless supply of the spark of life, all the creators of Adonalsium had to do was take it. And take it they did. They took and took and took until the entire planet was covered in Fain Life, stripped of its very soul. In desperation a small band of unlikely allies attempted to destroy Adonalsium to stop the destruction once and for all. They failed. Instead they were forced to use the shattered remnants of its power to take the survivors of Yolen and flee across the void of space, never to use their abilities again. But the Shards grew intents that overpowered the wills of their creators, and the horror caused by Adonalsium's spawn continues across the spiritual realm where time and space know no bounds. One day, sooner or later, it will come for us all.