Ripheus23

Hmm, let's say that one way to meta-analyze the cosmere story would be to try to work out a particular "alternative" system of Investiture in a specifically described solar system. I think this has been done in various ways, by lots of people, already, but let's just experiment with some ideas for a moment.

So, let's have the system be one where a black hole is eating the local star, but something has slowed the process down so that the star system is enduring for thousands and thousands of years. The number 7 is the key thematic number in this zone, because there are the Seven Shields that defend the local star and its surrounding planets/moons from being absorbed by the Dark Sanctuary (which is what they call the black hole). That is, there are exactly seven major celestial objects, i.e. one star and six moons or planets.

Hmm, let's go with... well, it seems like it'd be hard to have a stable gas giant, unless it got the mightiest Shield, but how if it's not inhabited somehow? We'll stipulate that this system, let's call it the Chthornos system for now, doesn't have any gas giants. So, it has three small planets, each with one small moon.

The star is primarily named Chthornos. Planet 1 is Torbrae, 2 is Xezzel Xza, and 3 is Hiphanad. Torbrae's moon is Shadolir, XX's is Vhelix, and Hiphanad's is Chrysmaur.

The focus of the action is Hiphanad. There are a smattering of underground settlements on wracked Torbrae, and underwater towns on XX. But most humanoid agents are settled on Hiphanad.

So Hiphanad has five major continents: Weur, Thoyghrig, Ertyra, Greater Quixolk, and Lesser Quixolk. The Quixolkish regions are so known primarily because of the dense residence of people who travel to Xezzel Xza from sites in those regions, bringing back marine life forms and minerals from their adventures on the other world. But there are differences in culture/style that motivate a multi-continental division comparable to the separation of North from South America.

The magic system: the Dark Sanctuary is the indirect key factor in the local system of magic, known by some as the Abyssal Arts. For example, the magical components of the Shields involve dealing with the Dark Sanctuary via Investiture. The general "rule" is that the black hole is drawing into the solar system a host of slight examples, like fragments of narrative tropes concretized by magic, of Investiture phenomena throughout the cosmere.

So, let's say there are e.g. trees with crystal flowers that grow facing the dark radiance of outer Investiture, like solar panels but for the energies drawn by the Dark Sanctuary into that solar system. These trees/flowers can "trap" samples of alien Invested Arts. Then, in an aura of varying size around different trees, the sample of Investiture can be projected.

Then there is e.g. a city where a tree houses an echo of a spren, and that city houses projections of this echo. Another area has a tree that captured the shadow of a seon, somewhere else there's the residue of a Threnodite shade, etc.

Let's say that a civilization on the continent of Ertyra has created artifacts that allow them to replicate the power of the crystal trees, but so as to carry trapped Investiture patterns around, to further effect. What would these devices be... Hmm... Well, let's also say that what makes Torbrae so historically bad to try to live on is that it got infested with residue of Hemalurgic dynamics, and what they call it there is "the Crucifixion," referring to the desolation of that world in ancient times.

But so the focal magic system is that of the Shields. Each Shield protects one of the celestial objects, so three small Shields uphold the moons, three larger ones the planets, and the greatest defends Cthornos.

Some enemies/figures-of-power

Over time/eventually, microscopic sets of particles of raysium, atium, ulium (for Ambition), and dominium (for Dominion) coalesced into a Dor-like plasmatic state at the Dark Sanctuary's firewall. The resulting highly Invested, and highly malevolent, entity found a way to escape the gravitational force of the Sanctuary, descending to Hiphanad to undertake an evil quest: that it would cause the failure of all the Shields, and the destruction of the star system. (What to call it, though? The Dreadshard, ha! Yeah, that'll be its name. The Dreadshard.)

It is known (by someone or other) that Bavadin allowed an attempt of an Avatar of hers to form in this star system, but the outcome of the endeavor is not known.

There is a Sleepless in a submarine town on Xezzel Xza.

It is believed that Reason tried to hide in this star system for some period of time, but how long (hours? days? years? centuries?) is entirely unknown.

There is a small Splinter of Virtuosity here, contained in one of the Sanctified, the Invested trees. Its effluence is not understood, but is expected to relate to the artistic numerical progression (Fibonacci sequence). The fortress of that Sanctified tree is remote, overseeing a small local population mostly of deliberate devotees of the tree, but no one there has figured out how to use the tree's power yet.

The system was not designed in its current state by Adonalsium, but the proximity of Cthornos to the Dark Sanctuary was caused by a ripple of magical-gravitational power caused by the Shattering of Adonalsium. The number 7 is important to the system not for any direct reason of later Shardic affiliation, but there is some vague/mysterious/Spiritual relationship with the importance of the number 7 in Iriali culture.

There is a dragon on Torbrae, ruling the largest, but technically still small, city-state remaining there. This dragon, Fire, has a Hemalurgic implant related peripherally to the Crucifixion of Torbrae.

Design of the Shields

Each Shield is correlated with an enchanted megastructure on Hiphanad, which structure actually "generates" the corollary Shield for the moon/planet/star in question. The structures, known as the Houses of Silver and Gold, are literally made mostly of silver and gold, with all the Invested consequences of this fact. Each Shield channels/compiles its powers in such a way as subtly hues its associated House with one of the seven spectral color categories (ROYGBIV), though, so one House looks e.g. greenish in some ethereal way, despite its metal being silvery and golden.

The Shields were put in place around the time of the Shattering, as a desperate but triumphant attempt to prevent the star system from being devoured by the Dark Sanctuary. A modest amount of Honor's raw substance, especially compared to the trace amounts of other godmetals found in the Dreadshard, is allegorically known to have contributed to the efficacy of the Shields from their beginning. The Dawnshield, the Sentinel of the Sun, is divided into 16 compartments, each containing a small quantity of metallic hydrogen, so as to invoke an echo of Preservation's nature, there, also.

There is at least one Shield-House on each Hiphanadean continent, and the additional two are in Ertyra and Weur. The ones in Weur are right next to each other, whereas those in Ertyra are many days' distance from the other.

The Dawntower, the House of the Dawnshield, is in Eirdais Raimierien, the City of the Argent Helm, whose primarch is recognized in being granted the electrum diadem of the regime. This is believed by superstitious analysts to give the primarch, known as the Sovereign of the Sun, some kind of magical "control over" or at least "subtle influence on" the Shield of Cthornos itself.

When the Dreadshard formed, in the time of the Dark Antiquity, what was called the "Silver Labyrinth cult" in Thoyghrig, it did so in its earliest attempt to collapse a Shield, in this case to let the moon of Torbrae be dragged off into the grave of the Dark Sanctuary. The Dreadshard has been at least indirectly at work for approximately 4,893 years as of the intended main text, though it has been mostly dormant for various reasons over much of this timespan. This is because the technically miniscule amount of godmetal composing it requires substantial "recharge time" if the available power is used to too much effect in some local action at some specific time.

Random "factoids,"crackpot-theory style

Nightblood is theoretically capable of recognizing the Dreadshard as "evil" and destroying it in turn, but it is believed that a being like Nightblood might be aware of a deep, exotic risk in doing so in this case. So it's not known that Nightblood would actually be willing to be used against the Dreadshard, if the opportunity arose, either because there would be a weird possibility of Physical defeat or the cost of absorbing the Dreadshard's Investiture would alienate Nightblood from itself so profoundly that the sword would experience others' aversion to the sword but towards itself now.

There is a dark counterpart of the Shields that is used in favor of the gravity well's success in the astronomical exchange: the Durance of the Apocalypse, not to be found on any moon or planet but encased in immense magic directly above the technical/scientific surface of Cthornos. This place is known to almost no one at all, not even the Dreadshard, until near the close of the Sanctification (the cataclysm of the Shields' betrayal, the loss of much of the solar system to the Sanctuary's hunger), when it serves a role in placing the outcome of the Cthornos crisis (because agents of various factions converge there, and resolve a given dilemma, in favor of the star system's continued survival; though agents elsewhere do important things, of course, too).

There is a semi-stable pathway into and through Shadesmar, from Xezzel Xza and to a cryptic space-structure floating dangerously close to the Sanctuary firewall. The society/faction who mainly knows about this pathway, and more or less controls access to it, is known to rumor as the Lost Hand, and to themselves as the Dark Gauntlet. Personages in the space-castle witness the loss of Torbrae when the Dreadshard orchestrates the downfall of the Weurian Empire in the Empire War during Sanctification. For that event brought about the collapse of the Shield-House of Torbrae, in Weur, when an artist of Investiture wielded the Dreadblade, a weapon empowered by the Dreadshard, to invert the tone of Torbrae's Shield, through the mystical chain connecting the House to the other world, demolishing both the one Shield and the whole House in turn).

The Tree of Whimsy in Lesser Quixolk is indeed named by reason of inspiration by Whimsy the Shard, a single little flickering particle of their Investiture being uniquely retained in that tree there. Only a handful of beings have ever even known about the Tree of Whimsy, even so, and they mostly take it for a holy, comforting curiosity in a star system frequently overshadowed by the threat of mass chaos and destruction, rather than as something they could ever figure out how to put to practical effect.

There are giant half-whale, half-bird creatures on XX, known as the h'Selimir or Windwhales, which are not DNA-related to the Aviar but are esoterically inked by sDNA to the Aviar. Whether this is deliberately related to Autonomy's obscure history with Cthornos, or the result of the general effect of the Dark Sanctuary on the spiritweb of the cosmere, is not provable (yet).