discipleofhoid

Sorry if I was unclear. I wasn't trying to claim that they were creating a magic system. Just showing that they had some influence over how those magic systems worked. Which does not by any means prove they could create their own magic systems. But if they can actively change some attributes of their magic system I don't think it is a far stretch to say dominion and devotion realized that if they created areas that were of varying parts dominion/devotion they could get varying magic systems. Which is basically what you were saying too. The main difference between what you are saying and what I am saying here is the term compromise versus cooperate. I am suggesting that far from compromising they found a common goal(unity) and worked together towards it. Yes they used different methods but devotion's methods are not anathema to dominion and dominion's are not to devotion so they didn't have problems. The more I think about dominion and devotion actively working together the more evidence I see for it. I will gather that evidence I see and post it in cosmere section soon.

Some magic systems may have occurred that way but there are examples of shardic manipulation of magic systems I would say that magic systems do naturally occur on shardic worlds but that does not preclude shards from actively taking part in creating additional systems / ways of accessing shardic power. (is Shardic even a word? If not it should be.)

I don't know that dominion and devotion were necessarily opposed shards in the sense that preservation and ruin were. One can be devoted to a people they have dominion over( I think Prince Raoden is the perfect example of this.) <alternate insane theory> If Aona and Skai were cooperatively creating magic systems it would explain several things. It would explain why Rayse killed them so early in the scheme of things. Two shards really working together synergisticly hasn't been seen yet in the cosmere and I suspect that the power increase for shards working together would not be linear(Allomancy with feruchemy has an exponential growth pattern). It would also explain why there are so many mixed magic systems on Sel. IT would explain the existence of the Dor and why both the Dakor monks and the Elantrians seem to use it in some aspect. I suspect that the Dakor monks have found one of the darker and more dominion heavy magic systems to adapt. </alternate insane theory>

Thanks! I had looked for a topic on this but evidently my searching skills are not what they should be.

So has any one ever tried to do an analysis of the writing and symbols that are on the background of brandonsanderson.com? Are the symbols just random or designed to look cool? Or is there an order there? I recognize some of the aons and some of the glyphs from mistborn. Does anyone recognize the text at the bottom and top? or the other symbols that aren't from elantris or mistborn?

My biggest concern with this theory is that Brandon has stated that up through WoK the books are published in chronological order. Given that, the splintering of Aona and Skai happened long before Sazed's ascension to shard status. As you pointed out that kinda derails this theory. From the brandonothology : This isn't the original quote but I couldn't find the original one and Brandon does not correct the assumption.

Seeing wouldn't be to much of a problem the brain is amazingly adaptive when it comes to your data source for vision.(See this) Yes all they would have is blue lines but lines to closer items would be thicker. Also I believe that they are iron/steel savants - that allows them to see the tiny amounts of metal in everyday items. So it would take some time to adapt but I think that they could do it. Color I am a little less sure of. If a savant could tell the difference between types of metal then maybe they could determine the color by the metal contents of the dye but that seems a little far stretched to me.

Another thing to consider when the two civilizations meet is that the Lord ruler kept his people in a dark age (no scientific advancement) for 1000 years. The other civilization may not have had the words of founding but they also had a 1000 years to progress normally. How much more advanced is the civ on the other side of the world.

I still think that the simplest solution is having the Elantrian members of the 17th shard use the "Age" Aon to de-age everyone every few years. This would have the advantage of working on all 17th shard members. You find someone who would work well as a member and you don't have to go searching for some way to keep them young.

And both the type of the metal and the commands determine how the power is manifested. In fact in every magic system where the focus has been identified, the focus determines how the power is manifested. It is not what gives the ability to use the power but it is what shapes how that power can be used. Aons, Metals, Commands - all are focuses and all shape how the power is manifested. They do act as a channel for the power but that channel shapes the final product.

Kandra society maybe? Or some as yet undiscovered civilization that fully practices hemalurgy?

Does that make shadesmar the system bus? And lightweaving the framebuffer?

It is commonly expected that Dalinar has/will be using stormlight. If you broaden the focus to Oaths in general. It does help your case a bit. When you used Oaths with the capital I took that to mean the Oaths of the knights radiant in particular. But I still think that parts are missing for that to be the focus. The biggest thing that using all oaths is missing is the specificity requirement for a focus. See these posts here and here. The first is an explanation of the attributes of a focus the second is my reasoning for how the Oaths of the knight radiant achieved that. I was proven wrong in my mind for the reasons in my previous post. In response to some of your points: Poorly made aons do not work at all - There is only one maybe two cases of a poorly draw aons doing anything. 1) dilafs wife and 2) note that this one is a maybe: Elantris it's self after the reod. In both cases those targeted by the aon suffered until dead or the aon was fixed. Poorly mixed metals do not provide power either. You can get small amounts of power from non-allomanticly purified sources because they often contain small amounts of the metal that is in the right proportion. As for the spren thing: We have not seen Dalinar's spren yet but nor has he really used magic yet. For Shallan, Jasnah tells her that the anglehead spren she sees are related to what she does. This implies that Jasnah has a spren as well. Also in one of Dalinar's visions the knight tells him that "not all spren are as discerning as the honorspren" when speaking of surgebinders. I think it is pretty well established in the book that all surgebinders have a spren. Brandon has said that szeth is a special case. That said rereading the tread it becomes obvious that the spren cannot be the focus.

It was asked last night and yes it has to be anchored to the planet.

17th shard has elantrian members. Two of the Aons are health and age. From what I understand this is what elantrians are functionally immortal. There is no reason they could not use these aons on others as well.

Do we know is this he is not native in the since that other shards set up camp here first then he moved in or is this a Brandon is tricksie moment and he is saying he is not native because all of the shards came from a different planet to begin with?

No but they did figure out where to place them in humans to make new koloss. And weren't they recharging the spikes - If I remember right when Human shows them how he puts one guy on top of the other to drive the spike through both of them no? So that would mean they were recharging the spike.

of ancient lore.

The counterpoint to the oaths being the focus (I thought they were to at first) is three-part 1) The focus is actively used every time the power is drawn. In elantris an Aon must be drawn. An awakener must use a command. A allomancer must burn metal. If the oaths are the focus that would mean the oaths would have to be spoken or thought every time a power is used. That is just not the case. 2) The focus does not increase the spiritual connection to the shard in any of the other systems. That is what the oaths appear to do. In the other systems there is often a way to gain a closer connection to the shard - but it is never the focus for using the power normally. Aon Rao is the aon for spirit - it increases the spiritual connection of elantrians to their shard. Lerasium increases an allomancers connection to preservation. Breaths seem to increase connection to endowment. None of these though are the focus for their magic system. I have to say that this is the category that the oaths fall into which means they aren't the focus. 3)The third and in my mind most important point that says the oaths are not a focus cognitive or otherwise is that kalidan was surgebinding for months before he ever learned the first of the oaths - thus the oaths are not required to surgebind and cannot be the focus for the power.

I think that what may be making it hard to determine what the focus is on Roshar is that the connection to a shard(I.E. what provides the power) is mainly spiritual in nature for all of the magic systems. However in most of the other systems we have seen the focus is not spiritual in nature. (Metallic arts and Elantrians have a physical focus, Metal and Aons. Awakening has a cognitive focus, Commands.) This makes them eaiser to tell apart. If surgebinding has a spiritual focus this explains our confusion. What I would propose is that this is the case. The connection to the shard (what gives you the power) is formed by how you act. Any honorable attribute can form this connection. "Act with honor and honor will aid you" This however is not the focus. This is akin to having the genetics to be a mistborn or becoming an elantrian. The focus then defines how the power pulled through that connection is used. We see this in the other systems: the shape of the aons forms the effect, the molecular shape of the metals defines their effect and the cognitive shape of the command forms its effect*. This being the case if Roshar has a spiritual focus there would be some spiritual thing/creature/connection that would determine what magical effect we see from the power. If we look Roshar has such a creature forming a connection with most of the people we see using magical powers. The focus for Roshar then are the spren that form spiritual connections with humans. It is the type of spren/connection that defines what powers they can use. Let me know what you think of this idea. *Note that while the physical shapes of the aons and the molecular shape of the metals defining their effect is cannon the thing about the cognitive shape for the breath is not. That seem to be being accepted by most in its thread though.

I would say that Compounding investiture should increase your spiritual connection to the shard the investiture originally came from. So I would guess that instead of more breaths it would make that breath more potent. Compounding surgebinding of any type(remember soulcasting is just the transformation surge) would IMO be equivalent to saying another of the oaths. Note that you could temporarily have these effects without Compounding if you just spiked a ferring with the investiture power. He could spend a equal amount of time with the increased connection to the shard that he spent without any connection - or he could surge the stored connection with the respective loss. This of course is all very speculative. We don't really know what investiture is. Personally I suspect that it is just an increased spiritual connection to the shard - but I could be way off. We were discussing it at one point over here. We came to the conclusion(I think at least no one ever objected) that investiture was "Something that furnishes or endows with a power." We never did decide by what or how that power was furnished. And with the information we have I am not sure we can come to a concrete decision on that.

Extreme as in either end of the spectrum - pulled down to nothing(extreme low) or pushed to a extreme high. I think either will work. Extreme high emotions are necessary to allow the extra connection to preservation to form when an allomancer snaps.

So if there are shadows then the trell religon on scandrial and any other trell religion could be shadows of the same thing.

Personally I agree that it probably isn't the case - but objectively it is possible. Shadesmar is the cognitive realm. Would there be a link between the cognitive aspects of a random group of people in space and the main cognitive realm? I think so but I could also logically argue that there wouldn't be. In any case moving back to the actual subject of the thread: I had always assumed that the final mistborn books would be about planets other then scadrial too.

But is shadesmar accessible if you aren't on a Shardplanet? So here would be the scenario: Hoid needs to interact with some people on the spaceship. As he is doing so the ship leaves orbit of the planet. Hoid then cannot jump back into shadesmar until the ship comes close to another shardplanet.