Eternal Khol

On 12/5/2025 at 6:26 PM, Ookla the Ansible said:

he also specifically said that the "december" translation was basically just meant to tell the reader that she was named after a "month" in general. One parallel to ours, but not the same

Just wouldn't have the same ring to it if it ended up being The Fires of Jalorpalorp, or something like that

13 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

I'm pretty sure we aren't told enough to identify the entity at the end, for the same reason it's so gloomy: it isn't the end of the story. It's the end of Book One of a series.

Was it not the “Fifth god”? which Topaz learns right before his head is cut off, is actually Emperor Aronack

On 4/29/2025 at 4:23 PM, Oraiyu said:

And so - I believe that one's OG consciousness is either drawn to the Beyond (or dissolved into it, as you pointed out as a possibility). A cognitive shadow's consciousness and self-awareness is formed by concentrated investiture conforming to the mold.

It seems to me that the getting drawn into the Beyond happens after one dies, obivously, and their spiritweb starts to “dissolve”. Their dissolving Spiritweb being the last thing holding/tying them to the Cosmere

A things presence in the three realms, Spiritual mostly, is kind of what gives it existence/meaning/form in the cosmere. And after one dies, their spiritweb, what made them, them…. start to dissolve away, and when none is left, their mind, it feels like to me, who know what it is, is sucked to the Beyond.

its possible that when a Shadow is made, nothing is actually sent to the beyond at that time and their reinvoigoration through Investiture just firmly latches their mind/being back to the Cosmere. They are changed, of course, but could maybe still be the same person.
 

If the OG does get sucked to the beyond and the Shadow is just a “copy” i have this idea in my head of after a Shadow dies(if Shadows also go Beyond after they “die”), going to the Beyond and just…. Meeting and chilling with the OG, theirself, and recounting all they had done after the OGs death XD

With the public release of Dragonsteel Prime and knowing that Aether of Night was supposed to be set in the future after DS Prime, apparentely even having some of the same characters... i have been on the lookout for any conenctions and I thought id make this post to theorize and discuss on potential Conenctions 

ill spoiler the DS Prime info(not sure if i need to? Just being safe though)

To start off, I Imagine that the "Shards" in Aether of Night are probably the characters from DS Prime that Brandon was talking about(Hoid is also apparentely in the book... but i dont think anyone has ever found him... so that might just be Brandon misremembering...)

DS Prime spoilers

Another interesting potential connection i found is that In Aether we find out that during their battle the Fell Twins used their powers(Order & Chaos) to create different "tools" to aide their side in the battle... which culminated in them eventually creating the Night and Illuminous Aethers which are said to be Order and Chaos(the raw power of creation...) in their pure forms... which The Former says was forbidden to men...

DS Prime spoilers

I havent done a proper reread of Aether since DS Prime's release so thats all i can think of off the top of my head... what connections have you found?

On 5/29/2024 at 3:30 PM, teknopathetic said:

Females can spend years having children (described as being bedridden for 20 years but is a possible hyperbole)

I took that not to mean that their gestation period is insanely long but that the Sho Del numbers are dwindling and if she became an adult, Du Len would pretty much be forced to spend the next 20 years pushing out kid after kid to help perpetuate their race.

On 5/29/2024 at 3:30 PM, teknopathetic said:

Jerick didn't know Fain trees were a thing until the end of the book and he never sees them up close

I dont know, even if someone doesnt know what fain is youd think that a massive bone white tree in the middle of a forest of greenery would merit a mention or some reaction.

39 minutes ago, teknopathetic said:

So it is really under described. I am not sure how shoulders would even function if there were two sets. Maybe the extra arms are only semi functional? 

I always imagined their second set of arms as being like Stitch's from Lilo & Stitch lol. Coming out of the body under the first set, around the waist/ribcage area.

3 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

So it seems pretty likely Jerick is tied to one, though might not have taken it into himself yet.

That does seem to be the case... i just wish wed get more of a confirmation. A DS Prime spoiler stream would be awesome! but i get there probably wouldnt be much demand now that its not canon

6 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Please make sure to spoiler tag your non-Mistborn content while in the Mistborn forum.

Yes sir

Good catch!

The way the magic is initiated is supposed to reflect the Intent of the Shard(s) as Brandon's said he doesnt want a Shards magic to be limited to its Intent, in what it can do, otherwise the magic itself would be rather limited.

It definitely could be with Brandon saying there is "a" Dawnshard in this book(Hoid is obvi one).... but i cant get out of my head that Frost stated that Hoid has "the power of life" and Jerick "the power of destruction"

Doruse also mentions watching over "the source of power'...  and Aronacks response is "so thats where he came from?" like there was a Dawnshard or something was present in the village and Jerick found it.

Thats what ive been thinking as well! along those lines anyway.

I saw a theory on reddit where someone was thinking that maybe Dragons were "cursed" to have or spend part of their life in human form.. but i was thinking the opposite. That Dragons are just like that. Naturally magical, immortal and having a human form. id also think, if anything, that Dragons as a race are probably older than humans as a race, so if anything, humans are based off of a Dragons "mortal" form

The Creation story and some other bits definitely suggest so imo

Maybe Adonalsium, for in all their perfectness, saw a flaw in them.. maybe he wanted to created non-divine beings so that they could eventually elevate to and fully appreciate divinity themselves? or even just mortality?

edit: the Iriali religion of The One is kinda popping into my head?

Oh wow. So he came up with it pretty much right after HoA. Kinda new to us. but def not new.

I saw that WoB too but totally missed the 2009 part at the end

I was looking through WoB's for a specific one and came across this interesting one regarding Atium that i think suggests Brandon had the Atium retcon in mind since at least 2010

The questioner asks what a Atium-Lerasium alloy would do and Brandon goes on to describe Atium as granting "you a glimpse into the vision of everything - past, present, future"

We know that the Atium in Era 1 only granted a limited vision of the future not "a glimpse into the vision of everything - past, present, future"

So Brandon probably has had the Atium retcon in mind for going on 15 years now

Just thought it was interesting and id share

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/291/#e9448

12 hours ago, WandererNearby said:

I realized that I don't remember there being a time where the proper names of the three Scadrian Invested arts are verbed (nouns being turned into verbs). This is confusing to me because it happens a lot in English and some of the Invested Arts do get verbed like surgebinding and awakening. It makes sense that Scadrian Arts can be verbed because they're all intentional actions done by the Invested Artist like sand mastery and unlike the Old Magic. I just don't know why but it feels like Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy shouldn't be verbed. "Help! I Allomanced all of my steel and now I can't get up!!" or "Poor Dave, he got Hemalurged right in the face." just feel so wrong to me.

m I just crazy here? Is there linguistic or philological reason why this is true?

I was just thinking of this not 5 minutes ago.... had some theory or idea, regarding Hemalurgy, pop into my head but it totally went out the window when i thought "hemalurged" XD

7 hours ago, AonEne said:

Published books, though - I'd look more to them for precedent, and at the stuff already on the Coppermind, but then I don't know what's on the Coppermind in this area. 

yeah, I probably should.... but DS Prime was never traditionally published or edited and was written so long ago, so i didnt want to just follow suit and just not label it as narrator/third person omniscent just because the published books dont have those kinds of PoV's.(White Sand Prose and, like i noted, Mythwalker, which were both written directly after DS Prime also have Narrator PoV's)

There are a couple PoV's that are def the narrator/third person omniscent, so i dont want to knock the idea that these PoV's might be as well

21 hours ago, AonEne said:

Do other books have narrator POVs? I would not do that myself, the narrator isn't a character, just a slightly distanced voice. I'd say they're Jerick's, Frost's, and the last paragraph...multi? Dunno. Question for the Keepers on how they'd do it, maybe. 

Mythwalker's Prologue has a third person omniscent PoV

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/warbreaker-prime-mythwalker-prologue/

But, yeah, Jerick and Frost are who i was thinking on the first two as well. Not so sure on the last one

im doing a character analysis of Dragonsteel Prime, like i have done for, Way of Kings Prime, Aether of Night, and Mythwalker in the past

But i need help identifying who a couple of PoV's belong to.

 There were a few PoV’s I had a hard time placing as the narrator(third person omniscent) or a specific character

For example:

Chapter One’s first PoV of “The Lumbermans son was born into a world of magic" and the whole "narrator-y" exposition of Jericks early life that followed is the narrator correct? or is that a Jerick PoV?

Then in Interlude one, between Frost and Topaz, there isnt really any internal dialogue or such presented from either of them to give any indication as to who’s PoV it is. Only “Frost said” and “Topaz said” but the interlude does end with a “narrator-y” paragraph.

Quote

Frost nodded humbly, and with that the fool was gone, slipping along the outside of the building to the stables where an enormous Ke’Chan waited for him with a pair of horses. They rode away at a full gallop, sensing an urgency that no one else on the continent seemed to understand. With Cephandrious gone, the castle plants seemed to wilt slightly, the air seemed to turn a little colder, and two youths awoke the next morning to find that their best—and perhaps only—friend in the palace had disappeared without a word of farewell.

i cant tell if this is either a Frost or a Narrator PoV?

Then in the middle of chapter 52, directly after Topaz does his healing/growth blast we get this PoV(This Is the whole PoV)

Quote

An invisible wave of life washed over the castle. Soldiers who had fallen, both human and Sho Del, felt their wounds suddenly heal. Bodies that were dead remained so, but any with even a spark of life left in them were completely revitalized. Men left for dead sat up, finding their armor mangled and torn, but their bodies intact. About two dozen of these rescued men—fourteen of them bearing the symbol of a tree on their armor—could be found on the fields behind the palace, amongst a scattered group of five hundred bodies. Where the fighting continued, a man impaled on a Sho Del sword felt his life return suddenly, his vitality lifted, his pain extinguished. He looked down at the sword still sticking from his chest, then up into the eyes of his confused opponent. A second later the wave had passed, and he began to die again. In the garden, where the energy had been focused, hundreds of trees sprang from the ground, growing from tiny seeds to enormous pines in the blink of an eye. Seeds that had lain dormant for years, seeds that would never have grown on their own, suddenly burst to life. The trees appeared like a tidal wave of wood, growing so closely together that they pushed one another out of the ground as they shot up, tossing several full-sized trunks high into the air. Branches snapped and pressed together, shattering even as they grew, for there was no place for them to go. Those watching could hear the wood groan and pop, a sound similar to an enormous rockslide. The resulting wall of trees had grown so closely together that they would never survive—there wouldn’t be enough light or nutrients to support them. Six arrows thunked into the trees.

Narrator right?(seems kind of obvious on this one, but i dont want to be wrong on my analysis)

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Definitely some people did yeah. I don't know if it was everyone or not, the legend's got some holes (for example it seems like all of the Five were involved with fainlife rather than just Xeth, and it doesn't really explain how dragons relate to all this), but there's also clearly some truth since Drephrast references Aronack destroying the world once and Frost references humans being forbidden magic nowadays

Oh for sure, the Creation story shouldn't be taken as fact. I was just trying to pair any parts of it i could with anything Frost or anyone else said.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I took that as dragons, just because that's the group that's neither humans nor Sho Del and Xisis has some wild powers, but true Frost was probably around back then.

Yeah, it def could be. I just never really considered them as Frost states that he cant do magic/Microkinesis. I just assumed the rest couldnt either... not a very good assumption though, i guess.

PS. Frosty does say/think to himself though at one point that he has "never lied" and that seemed a truth, so i believe, that at the least, Frost himself cant do magic/Microkinesis 

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I'm talking about the part where she says she would have sensed it.

Oh yeah... her powers were gone at that point... I didnt even think of that lol

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I don't think so. I mean, yes their powers are probably "flavored" by them, Hoid can (mostly) only grow while Jerick can (mostly) only destroy yeah, but Frost says seeing axi is the normal mode of function:

Yeah, Im just theorizing off the fact that all three use Microkinesis and Hoid and probably Jerick have a Dawnshard so there powers would prob be diff than" normal" magic/Microkinesis(running on the hunch that there is a "normal" non-Dawnshard Microkinesis)

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Curious whether all usage was aligned with one Dawnshard or another or if there's a "neutral" version out there. Aronack may imply the gods can grant it:

It definitely seems it can be given/ taken away by them... humans apparently used to be magical then it was forbidden them "thousands" of years ago, Frost says. Its never said that the gods did that, but it had to either be "proto-Ado" or the gods themselves...

I feel like all humans, like the "creation story" and Frost suggests/states, were/used to be magical/Microkinetic(i feel like most magic was Microkinesis back then?) and those past, magical humans are also who Frost might have been referring to when saying that "For many, that is the extent of their powers, you know?"

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The ancient tree thing does seem likely to me. Wonder if there's a whole set of "firsts"—First Gem, First Tree, etc.

Yeah, the tree does seem probable. Seemingly older/larger than the rest and constantly being struck by lightning but is fine... def outside of normal... i just wish there was some sort of scene that would have... made it clear

43 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Minor continuity error from the lack of beta reading, I guess?

I dont think that one is an continuity error actually...

Ryalla was right. Hoid was actually not capable of bending light. He could only "Scatter it" like a prism making a rainbow, and says that he couldn't even make his ring dissapear let alone himself(like how Ryalla uses her lightweaving to hide/dissapear)

Quote

"I can scatter light into its separate colors. Holding it for even a moment, however, is taxing. Now, ask me how much energy it would take for me to bend light around myself, making it appear as if I weren’t here? Lords, Ryalla, I couldn’t even make this ring disappear.

43 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

If it's not a Dawnshard then I wonder why the powers are so similar and where they come from. Wish we could ask Brandon but I doubt he remembers

Its something ive kind of thought, in one form or another, for while, and was happy to see someone have the same though on reddit, just yesterday, but it seems like they could all do Microkinesis of some sort. Maybe Hoids and Jericks versions would be like Ryalla's but are "flavored" by the Dawnshards...?

Fr! I wish we could ask Brandon! there are 1/2 questions i am dying to know... what was "the source of power" Doruse was talking about? I mean it obviously was a Dawnshard... but what item was it in? When did jerick have contact? And where did Ryalla get her magic??? Did Frost or one of The five do something to her at some point?... Aronack took it away... maybe he also gifted it to her for whatever reason?

I just remembered i forgot to post this last time, but there is something at the end that makes me think Ryalla was just a magic user and not a Dawnshard. 

Throughout the book Aronack tries to get Hoid to give him the Dawnshard.... apparently Aronack cant just take it from Hoid. It seems it has to be given? At least once being used by a person already 

Then at the end of the book when Ryalla is imitating Oreon/Aronack with her lightweaving, Oreon/Aronack himself shows up/speaks into Ryalla's mind and says that "you should not have imitated me" before making her lightweaving fail... but he didnt just make it fail, judging from Ryalla's second to last PoV, he actually took her power away as still hadnt gotten it back and muses on the idea if she ever would.

So i dont think she was a Dawnshard since Aronack was able to just take her magic away.

On 4/1/2024 at 9:58 PM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Frost makes a reference to "nuclear bonds" that seems to suggest Brandon thought electromagnetism was responsible for holding subatomic particles together at the time he wrote Dragonsteel, so we should keep in mind that there might also be somewhat questionable physics logic at play lol.)

Im not an expert at all and might just be confusing myself here XD, but i didnt see anything wrong with jerick shooting lightning and Frost mentipning nuclear bonds?... maybe "nuclear bonds" wasnt the right term there? but the electromagnetism part seems right, to me.

Axi are atoms right?, so sub-axi should also be protons, electrons, and neutrons(and by extension, quarks & leptons)

Therefore in the "spontaneous bridge of negative sub-axi between two conductors" line, the "negative sub-axi" should be electrons(negatively charged) which are held in place by electromagnetism... right? The Strong Force is what holds the Protons and Neutrons in place

I think i found a one... or a couple, i guess.

The country of "Aldbin"(named on the map and mentioned throughout the book) and one of the Nine Lords "Aldvin" seem to get mixed up a number of times throughout the book

There is a number of times they seem to have used "Aldvin"(The Wise) when talking about "Aldbin" the country

Here is a line from chapter 13 where "Aldbin" is mentioned correctly "Aldbin, directly south of Melerand, a land populated mostly by cattlemen and farmers.

Here is one example from chapter 11 where "Aldbin" in incorrectly referred to as "Aldvin"

"Aldvin has always been one of the most stable of the Middle Kingdoms"

I got the feels that Hoid and Jerick are the Dawnshards and Ryalla was... just a girl capable of doing magic?

Apparently, all? Humans were capable of doing magic thousands of years ago, or Microkinesis, which i feel like all magic was/is called , but as Topaz said, he thinks that "Prohibition" is being rescinded, so for whatever reason Ryalla can do magic now. Thats my take anyhow

Hoid and Jerick seem to be able to directly affect or change things... Causing Growth or Healing & Destruction/splitting things apart... Ryalla seems to only manipulate whats around her, albeit in some pretty powerful ways. Though, i guess that could just be due to having different Dawnshards/powers, but i never got that vibe.

Been waiting for everyone to be able to read/talk about this one! Tis one of my favorites!

I love that everyone can finally meet meet and read all these characters but mostly my guy Bat'Chor! who is still canonically the closest thing Hoid has had to a best friend

Theres a lot to unpack and talk about but a couple Cosmere relations/tidbits id like to specifically mention are that, first, i love that even back then Brandon had the Dragons as these amazing mythical beings that could receive/answer prayers! Just always thought it was such a cool element and i loved to see being used back then and even now!....  Second, Frost is for sure Drephrast right!?! The leader of the Dragons!? And third.... "The Father".... thats got to be proto-Adonalsium?!

Its definitely worth a read and even though it is not canon, for those looking, i feel like the little nuggets or echoes of truth in it has helped better form the idea/story in my head of why in the Canon Cosmere, the Shattering happened

Edit: B$ has also said that a coupe characters from Dragonsteel Prime were in Aether of Night... I wonder who it is

Aether is supposed to be the first appearance of a Shard and Dragonsteel was supposed to be the story of the Shattering... so im assuming that some of the Dragonsteel characters eventually became the Shard(s) in Aether.... maybe Aronack was supposed to be Decay!???! It seems to fit with how Aronack was described in Dragonsteel and Decay in Aether

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

Side note is that if she could Create the Nightwatcher to be UnConnected and immune to the formative effects of the population's view of her, and thought it was worth doing, there's a good chance she'd be able to similar protect herself from their influence.  

Conversely… Cultivation being affected by perception could be exactly why she made Nightwatcher to not be… because Cultivation knows what thats like. 

Shards also just seem so deelply integrated with… everything pretty much, that i wonder if it would be a good idea to cut herself off like that?

It prob does just have to do with her liking the “spren of the world” title and leaning into it, but i like to think she cant help it anymore

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

4 hours ago, Eternal Khol said:

Cognitive Shadows or Spren sure, there is some effect of human perception on them. Shards?

Well there are WoB that say otherwise and one specific one talking about this with Honor.

Brandon has said that Shards can be affected by human perception and has even said that if Honor were alive and made a physical body that it would automatically have weird double pupils because of how he was perceived… not because he wanted to

dont see why the same thing couldnt happen with Cultivation…

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13420