Ripheus23

Maybe it's a Dawnshard. According to the thread RShara linked to, Sanderson has apparently said that Book 3 explains what the sphere is, and although the tentative consensus over there seems to be I feel instead that

@Fanghur Rahl Well Christianity usually says that God let evil people murder Him when He became Incarnate, so who knows?

The logic of the system depends on the value of triangles to architecture, e.g. as in space frames. So "trigonomancy" is the technical name for spellmasonry. Now there's an interpretation of political space as architecture made from pure intentionality, so that country borders act like walls for a building, and the Spell of Arrest, per nation, allows designated agents of the state to magically arrest people (the thing of it is, the Spell of Arrest only works on people actually guilty of the thing they're to be arrested for, so police automatically know whether their targets are guilty when they do this). The fuel for the Spell of Arrest is an abstract quality of people known as nomothetes, who gain this quality by being voted into office by a duly constituted citizenry. Since this "fuel" is not (usually) infinite, nomothetes have to be voted in again and again; and for what it's worth, in this world, the debate between monarchists and democratic republicans has been solved by the facts of magic (since political magic only works in democracies/republics, more or less). Now there are three world wars in this story, two described in the historical background and one that is ongoing as of most of the text. The second one was so destructive that it led (as on Earth) to a major push for real international laws. The fundamental Treaty of Sepland (Sepland is the nation where the Cosmopolis Auditorium was built) was that it is illegal to destroy the world. So any citizen of any country on this planet, if they find a wizard or scientist or whoever, threatening such, can cast the Spell of Arrest on them. The Second Geomachy took place roughly 1900 years before the main storyline so the planet has been safe from total ruin until the Third Geomachy destabilizes the trigonomantic substrate for international law so much that the First Treaty of Sepland is magically revoked. Additionally, though, there is one city, sjl-Jlljhad (pronounced sil-ill-ee-hahd, you could say...), that is mostly made up of concrete spellkeeps, though the civilization who built sjl-Jlljhad ran out of a reliable fuel supply for them and their society collapsed during what was known as the Trigonomachy (IIRC...). EDIT: I just remembered... So, the helmets that channel spellkeeps, were inspired by the access keys for the Choedan Kal (sp.?) from The Wheel of Time. There is a special helmet known as the Promiseer's Aegis, which was the helmet that God brought with Himself to the universe when He became incarnate. This doesn't look like a specific building but can shapeshift into the form of any building the wearer either knows from experience or by intellectual foresight. It is fueled directly by imaginary energy and so the actual existence or sufficient fuel level of the corresponding building is not required to use the Aegis as such. However, you can't just wear the helmet and make a wish for it to become, say, "The conduit for a building that can destroy the universe." You have to know how a building could destroy the universe, what shape it would be and what it would be made of and fueled by (otherwise-speaking). The exemption to this knowledge requirement is if you have a substance known as Starchrism, which is the sanctified blood of beings known as ur-Wraiths, the offspring of the jyserphaen, which is the Angel of Evolution whose personal dreamworld is also the dreamworld of all living creatures on its planet (I think the jyserphaen transferred these beings from its dreams into physical reality or something; I will check the document later to confirm this...) Anyway, Starchrism responds to the wishes in question, taking the shape of the building that the Aegis is supposed to mystically channel absent prior knowledge of the needed form.

The (Forge) system has some nifty-sounding applications. I especially like the implications of, "Self, transcend," not working. Also appealing to the word-image-concept distinction to ground the system is philosophically cool. ... Ones I've "explored": 1.) Spellmasonry [unfortunately, though I came up with the name myself, this term turned out to have been used for a different system of magic in an already-published work], also trigonomancy. The limit on magic in general is that it sort of only happens in or because of different kinds of buildings, but can happen anywhere in the building to some degree, or be channeled outside by people wearing helmets designed to look/be like the buildings. (Lowspires have a low conduit-range; awespires have a long-range; allspires have universal range.) Also, depending on what the building is made of, and what is used to magically "fuel" it, some or another building can do just about anything that can be described... So there are spellkeeps (as they're often referred to) such as: The Endspire: causes things to come to an end. The River of the Forgiven: causes one's objective guilt to be negated. The Dreadfane: burns up the relics of saints as fuel to turn other holy relics into evil magical weapons. [If unholy relics are used to fuel it, it internally destabilizes until it produces an object so volatile that it breaks down.] The Questfane: The Day of Night: turns laughter into a physical entity. The Sinspire: causes one to be abstractly guilty of an extreme crime. The Sinforge: turns sin/guilt into a form of matter. The Cosmopolis Auditorium: used to magically pass international laws. 2.) Heartscending. Magic based on love/similar emotions (e.g. respect, hate). Two heartscenders in love are magically rendered unable to hurt each other physically. Heartscending also allows married couples to magically create children; a related twist allows for the resurrection of the Creationborn (the children of heartscending). More on this later...

Since Sanderson is so good with words, I suspect the general difference might be related to the early use of "passion" to stand opposite of "action." Now granted Odium himself doesn't act or sound passive, ditto for Ruin, but it could be that, on another level, they are passive---intellectually, morally, something along those lines. If virtue somehow comes from reason and reasoning is being actively thoughtful, then maybe the viciousness of the destroyer-Shards comes from their failure to rationally analyze their moral responsibilities, to proactively understand what they ought to do. I think the question of moral knowledge posed very directly in Oathbringer shows at least that Sanderson wants to answer this kind of question, after all.

Hmm... Captain America: Adolin Iron Man: Shallan Thor: Elend Hulk: Vin Hawkeye: Spook? Black Widow: Jasnah EDIT: Although switching Adolin and Elend might work better...

That sounds like "yum yum" in my head

Espionage, hmm... I'm gonna guess that elf tropes would fit into this mold(sp.?) the most easily, out of the elf-dwarf-orc-et. al. alternatives.

IDK, maybe it's just that Sanderson knows how hard it would be to write an effective larger-scale tale, especially given that he enjoys the details of his worlds so much.

I personally think it is similar to building names, too, like "coliseum." But the prevalence of metallic representations of magical/divine forces, in the Cosmere, makes me think the "building" would be metallic, or even that it is because it's metal it's a building that it has such a name. But somehow this metallic building has to have a consciousness of its own---not entirely difficult, granted---or, perhaps, having Shards as it does, it's like... Crenshinibon(sp.?), the evil shard(!) from the Drizzt stories.

Argh Well, for a more... relatable... discussion of the themes in question... TBH I "retconned" the magic system to explain the visual nature of the final battle between the protagonists and the Uncreated Darkness. (The Emissary is involved, but with quite a twist as far as the combatants go---think Moridin from The Wheel of Time mixed with Jesus Christ.) I wanted to have it be a beam duel like the showdown at the end of The Power That Preserves from the Thomas Covenant series, or like in Dragonball Z of course, where the good side is firing off a ray of pure light, and the Darkness is shining, well, darkness, against them. But there had to be a reason for the Uncreated Darkness to itself fight the protagonists, rather than through the Emissary, and so on and on. As it stands, the magic system actually seems overly detailed, to my mind, since the story doesn't seem long enough to justify the kind of analysis that went into coming up with the notion of Venn-chains made of vanadium (as "cords" for magic-electric charge), or whatever; but I've been thinking of having an appendix or two in at least the novel-length entries in the series, where the analysis becomes self-justified (as flavoring for the audience, even if they don't happen to see those flavors added to any of narrative dishes, so to speak). Now, the other ingredient I would like to describe, is the philosophical side of the story. This revolves around the question of whether it is possible to commit evil for its own sake. This is parsed as i) Doing a given evil thing, for the sake of that thing (lying for lying's sake, say), or ii) Doing a given evil thing, for the sake of the fact that that thing is evil. The Emissary's motive is to try to do (ii), and the theory is that evil can be defined opposite goodness, so that evil is either I) making a good object evil (corruption) or II) negating the good object itself (destruction). So, the Emissary wants to use the dynamics of creation to destroy the world, by causing a new inflation event inside the already existent world, so that the original world collapses from internal pressure and the new universe of darkness is crushed by that same collapse, thus dissolving all physical reality as such. But now on the planetoid that the final combatants (on the good side) come from, there was a semi-recent Enlightenment-style event, called the Vow of Knowledge. This was the debut of a moral principle that more or less everyone on that planetoid accepts as if it is as obvious as, "I think, therefore I am," or, "2 + 2 = 4," or whatever. The principle is, "It is good to try to know what is good." A corollary to the Vow was the Law of Hell, whereby most major governments passed a law according to which the ultimate sin, whatever that is determined to be, is fundamentally outlawed. (This might seem a no-brainer rule, but just think, it's not like such a rule is in the American Constitution, after all.) There is a nation, Carvok Kyrs, whose international economy trades off its legal resources, e.g. well-trained lawyers, and they have the ultimate sin as committing evil for its own sake. The two major factions in that country, then, are the Particularists who believe the Sin is (i), and the Generalists who think it's (ii). But other countries outlaw other things as such, e.g. sleeping with the Emissary (for an actually not entirely obscure option). And the punishment for breaking the Law is being sent to the Land of Hell, adjacent to Carvok Kyrs. (This entire region is tied to the seal on the Emissary's power of creation-by-emanation, and one part of the plot revolves around the fate of a man wrongly imprisoned in the Land of Hell, whose freedom is related to the occasion of cosmological transit.) So, other major characters are a man on trial for the Sin, in a rare instance of a Generalist prosecutor having their case brought to court (the prevailing doctrine of moral psychology in Carvok Kyrs is that pure evil would be internally incoherent in such a way that no being can actually intend it, so up until now the Generalists haven't had a case of theirs heard by the Kyrsian supreme court; but the man in question did something [still not sure what he's been accused of, honestly] that the Kyrsian authorities are open to debating as a counterexample to said doctrine), and a woman from another country (called Sthalt) where it is believed that sinning in dreams is possible, and such is criminalized: she's a police officer tasked with arresting dream-sinners, who pursues a given target across her continent, all the way to Carvok Kyrs, where she becomes embroiled in the high-profile trial.

Shortly before my mind betrayed me and started devoting random excesses of time to the hexaverse story, I had already come up with a more well-developed setting/magic system/philosophical theme, something that altogether would be much shorter in length and, hence, much more doable as a project. (I have written two novels to this point, but for various reasons neither seems likely to be the breakthrough for me, alas...) To illustrate this prior tale, I will focus on two of the main concepts at play in it: The doctrine of victory Theoretically, the structure of the story would play out over two full-length novels, with two novellas in between. The first full-length text would be called Before the Dark Anfract, and the second would be In the Meridian of Time. Now, besides being an LDS phrase par excellence, "the meridian of time" is used here to signify the overarching problem of the story. That is, cosmological time has certain built-in transition points, commencing from the origin, like phase-transitions on a universal scale (and post-inflation, although technically there's not the same kind of inflation in this early cosmos as there was IRL*). *[I highlight this difference to emphasize that the standard model of early inflation incorporates the notion of phase-transitions into its description of the shattering of the four forces.] The prevailing quasi-mythology of the focal planet(oid) is the doctrine of victory, according to which the creation of the world, the initial expansion, was caused, directly-physically, by Good winning a specific battle over Evil. Now, in this universe, known (ironically ) as Isræl, Good and Evil as such are the Uncreated Light of Sei Eẋen, and the Uncreated Darkness of Vangmord Hæll. The reason that the doctrine of victory is quasi-mythological is because of the symmetry of cosmological transit: the Uncreated Light, at t = 0, exnihilated an infinite amount of matter, emanated an indefinite amount, and enharmonized a finite amount of pre-existent substance. At t = 0, the Uncreated Darkness by contrast exnihilated a finite amount of matter and neither emanated nor enharmonized anything else. At t = 1, the Darkness enharmonized a finite amount of relatively pre-existent substance, i.e. it corrupted a finite amount of the matter exnihilated by the Light. The negative results of these two phases of creation were (a) the advent of the Emissary of the Uncreated Darkness, Malevir Soridin (whose name translates to "the Victory of the Apocalypse"), and (b) the foundation of the Dark Anfract, an evil labyrinth that surrounds the trillions of galaxies in the observable universe. [Now technically, Soridin was granted the auspices of the Darkness forthwith, so that it is He Who builds the Anfract, and He Who comes to emanate the Darkness into the universe, as one of His methods of attack, for instance.] And at t = 1, the Light did not affect the relatively pre-existent Dark matter of the Emissary. ---SO, eventually, in "the meridian of time," the Darkness will radiate itself outward while manifesting an infinite wave of Dark matter from nothingness, etc., and the Light will affect the Emissary internally somehow, and so on and so forth. This peril is first fully discovered by scientists on the galactic level of the tale, although of course the Emissary knows about it, has been working towards that moment since the creation. It is noted that at t = 2+, until the end of the Septimation (a cosmic war in which the Emissary emanated a number of terrible ships, the voidships, into existence), when 1/7th of all life was destroyed, the Darkness was being generally emanated at a certain rate, whereas now there is a seal on the Emissary whereby He can't summon the Darkness, as such, anymore. But this corresponds to how at t = 1, the Light couldn't emanate itself in a certain way, either, so now at t = omega - 1, well... The carbon of magic The system of magic upon which the story turns is focused in the notion of magic charge. That is, exnihilated matter is magically charged dependent on which element is in question and which physical phase it is in, e.g. exnihilated oxygen is positively magically charged in a liquid state, say, and negatively magically charged if in glass form (the assignment is stochastic in that positive and negative magical charge, for exnihilated elements, are not correlated to greater and lesser degrees of temperature per se nota). By contrast, emanated matter becomes magic (charge) when at either thermal extreme (absolute zero or the transit to energy), negatively at the low end and positively at the high. The Uncreated Emptiness of pre-existent substance is not susceptible to magic charge. Now, for purposes of trying to avoid having to overanalyze IRL chemistry, I decided to simplify the magic system by having there be the equivalent of a "carbon" of magic, that is a specific element that theurgically bonds with itself and other elements in the most munificent fashion. And because I love LOST way too much, I chose vanadium (atomic number 23, I believe, haha) to be "the carbon of magic." Throw in some notion of Venn-chains as an important physical embodiment of abstract mathematics (related to the trifold form of creation), and I got an exotic and poetic enough design out of the basic concepts. RAFO?!

Proof: Nightblood will believe that Adonalsium is Good, and destroying Good is evil, so to destroy the destruction of Good will be to recreate Adonalsium. Theory: everything in the Cosmere is actually happening in reverse, so the Shattering of Adonalsium was actually the end of the world.

My copy of the book had a blurb-review from Lord Sanderson on/in it, so I'm voting Not a Coincidence

It's been on my mind for a while, though it took me a while to put it to words, but... I daresay there might be some thematic connection between Hemalurgy's relation to the Spiritual Realm, and the role of nails in the Crucifixion. (And the notion of a "quincunx," then, for that matter...) I doubt Adonalsium was crucified to death, but I do wonder if something akin to Hemalurgic spiking was involved... Maybe he was killed with a sword/swords, and that fact is related to the different kinds of magic swords that keep showing up in the Cosmere.

Well there is a very obscure tradition of seeing God the Father and the Son as, if not in a state of "conflict" or "adversity," still something less than perfectly in harmony. So the M-GK/KG Incarnations might be standoffish towards the other Incarnations (this relates to the concept of "dithelitism," according to which the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity had two wills, divine and human---so it might be that M-GK/KG are of one will with the other divine persons, on the divine side, but that the adjunct wills of their Incarnations ended up at odds). And the divine persons really did Incarnate, else there'd be no vessels to kill to make the god-hydra (for whatever reason; so far I just like the name of the monster ). Now the underwater setting is supposed to be on one of the overlap-planets. I was considering a 7-part series (if it ever came to that!) in which each individual book of the first 6 focuses on a different planet/sphere, with a seventh tie-it-all-together book at the end.

I am as yet only familiar with basic factorial notation and its relation to permutations/combinations. However, pursuing the theme would probably require investigation of more sophisticated examples of this kind of notation.

The prevailing belief/wisdom is that God <is> the six/seven persons, but that It has "sent" Itself, as each, to just one of the six planes (plus the hyperplane of light). That is, God-as-the-Creator gets parsed as each-person-created-one-dimension-of-the-hexaverse. However, since It is still ultimately One God, these dimensions have to have a place of overlap/intersection. So if there is much in the way of intraplanar religious debate, it would tend to be over which person is believed to have sent Itself to the plane in question. Those "uniquely-almighty" folks are supposed to be more extreme, though, in that they don't think the orders besides M-KG/GK are objectively real at all.

@StrikerEZ Wait, so it's not a galactic cluster, but a cluster of stars? Well Adonalsiumdamnit... EDIT: Also, that really diminishes my impression of Adonalsium's power, unless we suppose that Adonalsium's power was like 1/3rd of the Big Bang (next to the initial sum of mass/matter & energy) that never got Banged out across the universe, or something.

Why yes So far I have been developing the cosmology around a six-sphere helix. That is, there are six "planes of existence" to the universe, and one planet/star/w/e per plane, that can "slip into" community with the five other nexus-spheres. These six spheres move up and down and in a spiral, i.e. an interplanar helix, around a central light of some kind (I was thinking of having another "divine person" come from an absolutely unitary concept of God, so there'd be 6 persons due to the Triœscence (my name for the three attributes) and 1 due to a simplicitarian theomorphology, and this 1 corresponds to the central light). As for specific spheres, I really want to write a massive fantasy epic in an underwater/marine-biology setting. I was thinking of having sentient cuttlefish be the protagonists, along with a sea urchin and a sand dollar (though they would be caught in some deep, dark current, so their first several POV sections would mostly revolve around their dismay at being sucked towards the current's menacing end---and what they would do at the end IDK). But anyway the religious idea is that the M-based persons are "evil" or at least antagonistic (the idea being that "might makes right" is a negative attitude, even for God). Yet there is supposed to be a major religious movement among the cuttlefish, based on an argument for God being based on the concept of unique power, since God is unique, period, and a definition from knowledge or goodness is not necessarily uniqueness-preserving, whereas having an entity of absolute power requires that entity to be absolutely individuated (so as to have a final ordering over all other entities). Then there are angel-like whales who use their musical aptitude to create cymatic portals, and a manta ray who embodies one of the M-persons---and something called "the god-hydra," which is made up of the slain bodies of the vessels of the divine persons' various Incarnations (so, like, there were six Mary-like beings in history, who have been slain by someone, in order to try to create this god-hydra thing). As for the symbol, it looks like a good basis for either an (A) emblem (like of a specific church) or (B) a formula (for a specific spell). Maybe even something related to the interplanar helix

To my knowledge, the only real "difference" between a dwarf and a non-dwarf galaxy is the number of stars in each. Also I can't figure out if there's actually a thing called a "dwarf cluster" unless we're talking about a cluster of dwarf galaxies, or maybe a small cluster of whatever-sized galaxies. Now, the numerical difference doesn't make quite a difference, though, in the sense that there's still such a massive number of stars per galaxy in question, that tacking on another zero or two or three (or whatever) wouldn't have any intuitive value for the reader. Telling the reader, "Oh, there are only 100,000,000 stars per galaxy," here, doesn't mean much less than saying, "There're 100,000,000,000 stars per galaxy." Moreover, if we're dealing with a cluster of galaxies, well, those apparently can contain up to 1,000 galaxies, but the low-end number I've read on Wikipedia is 100. So we'd still be dealing with at least 10 billion stars, if not 100 billion, which is comparable to a normal individual galaxy. (In fact, some dwarf galaxies are said to contain several billion stars anyway!) Additionally, dwarf galaxies, while not absolutely defined in terms of "normal"-size galaxies, seem strongly correlated with them, including as regards their origins. So if the Cosmere was a cluster of dwarf galaxies, or a small cluster of whatever-sized galaxies, this would indicate that there was/is a set of "normal" galaxies/clusters, around which the Cosmere revolved, or something along this line. I suspect the Mistship saga will explore the galactic question in the meta-series, but for now I haven't come up with a possible reason for the specific characterization of the Cosmere in terms of dwarf galaxies.

Having a super-antagonist doesn't necessarily mean having a "Supreme Evil." OTOH if there's no super-antagonist, then the final crisis of the meta-series would have to revolve around a Natural (or Magical) Disaster, I suspect...

"his nemesis" was not meant to refer to a nemesis of Adonalsium but of Hoid.

So, this is an incomplete theory about what, if anything, the ultimate antagonist in the Cosmere will end up being. We have two Shards that resulted in major villains (Ruin and Odium). Some suspect Autonomy to be antagonistic, it seems... But now let's suppose at some point the previous "evil" Shards are all held by no one (e.g. Sazed/Harmony loses hold of Ruin), and then someone else comes along and takes them all up... Or maybe there's an anti-Hoid out there, and Hoid isn't trying to reforge Adonalsium but prepare for his nemesis...

Ah, but what if a returned Ruin WAS the super-evil at the end of the entire Cosmere storyline? Let's say Odium survives and rips Harmony apart (or that Rayse dies, but the Shard of Odium is not Splintered/etc.). Zam, Ruin's back! Then someone fuses Odium and Ruin. (Like... Kelsier...?!)