Timewaster's Guide Archive

I might just take you up on your offer shadow, but later, when I don't have schoolwork to do.

Well, there's how you overwhelmingly concentrated on the things you considered negative.  That kind of cherry picking can make anything seem to be bad.  If you had balanced your review with things you thought Sanderson had done right in WoA and HoA, then you would probably be getting a much better reception.

Endowment isn't obvious at all for #1, where did we ever interact with it to the level of Hoid or the Pool Shard?  Furthermore, "Release", the name Ookla proposed for the Pool Shard, could be quite easily interpreted to apply to the Dor's activities as well.   As to Raoden noticing Aeon Rao in Elantris, why couldn't he have figured it out on his own?  IIRC, he was looking at Elantris from a mountaintop at the time.


And why did you drop Hoid?  Last I checked Vin and Saze didn't notice a spaceship in their solar system when they were in Shardmode.  Without a Space Ship, Shardhood is pretty much the only way I can think of for Hoid to cross interstellar distances.


@Inquisitor, why not?  Preservation fuels at least 16 magics.  More if you consider him a joint fueler of Feruchemy.

I agree, the Pool is linked to the Dor. Now, more importantly, how is it linked to the Dor.

Occam's razor would indicate that the Pool is the Dor's Shard Pool.

But the way Brandon worded it implied that the Pool held the Dor's Consciousness.  Which mean the voice pretty much has to be the Dor.

Edit: this post is a response to Chaos, not bookWorm

Quote from: Aranfan on July 14, 2009, 03:13:38 AM

Quote from: Zas678 on July 14, 2009, 02:50:17 AM

I don't think that the Dor and the Pool are the same thing, though you may be right about the Warbreaker shard.  It seems that the Dor is just an energy with nothing guiding it any more, and if something was guiding the Dor, they would want it released. The Pool wanted to let Raoden relax, let him die in peace, but he refused because he saw a way to bring back Elantris.

You're conflating the power with the person, just because the Dor's power is straining to be used doesn't mean the person won't want to end the agony of a Hoed, or formerly Hoed, Elantrian.  Besides, the Pool struck me as very similar to the Well of Ascension (Preservation's Pool) and the Black Pool (presumably Ruin's) that Alendi saw.  With this I would conclude that the Pool near Elantris was the Dor's body (as the WoA was Preservation's), and the voice Raoden heard in the Pool was the Dor's voice.  

Ookla, I don't see why there should be.  Alendi's Diary has reliability issues, but I could certainly check the descriptions of the Well and the Pool to see.

This is not entirely accurate. Lerasium and atium are, respectively, Preservation and Ruin's "bodies". Wasn't the Well of Ascension part of Preservation's Cognitive part? I seem to remember something like that.

Also, if Ruin, Preservation, and Endowment are any basis, whatever Shard(s) in Elantris would have a similar abstract concept.

I recall Brandon saying in the Offical Hero of Ages Spoilers Thread that the Mist, the Well, and Lerasium were all different forms of Preservation's power.

Quote from: Zas678 on July 14, 2009, 02:50:17 AM

I don't think that the Dor and the Pool are the same thing, though you may be right about the Warbreaker shard.  It seems that the Dor is just an energy with nothing guiding it any more, and if something was guiding the Dor, they would want it released. The Pool wanted to let Raoden relax, let him die in peace, but he refused because he saw a way to bring back Elantris.

Perhaps "Tranquility"? That's the best I can think of thus far, having not read Elantris in a long time. A Shard wanting peace and harmony like that would probably be immensely passive in its magic. Maybe.

Maybe, AonDor doesn't seem all that tranquil though.

There are other possibilities for which four Shards we are missing. I'm going to start a long-winded post on the subject right now

I'd be glad to hear it.  I'm also going to probably attack the parts were it differs from mine. 

Edit: Also, feel free to attack mine as well.

I just thought I'd put in my two cents regarding the Shards we have met or seen evidence of (I'm assuming that Brandon was only speaking of the books we had access to at the time, Elantris, Mistborn, and Warbreaker):

The first two need no explanation.
1. Preservation
2. Ruin

3. The Dor
I feel that the Dor is one of the four Shards we have directly interacted with, the Pool talking to Raoden and all.

4. Hoid
Yes, I think Hoid is a Shard in the same way that Vin was a Shard.  Vin and Sazed made no mention of a space ship while they were in godmode, and with their sensitivity to metal, they would have seen one if one was in the solar system.  In the absence of a spaceship, Shardpower is the only thing I can think of to get Hoid from world to world.

Now for the last two.
5. Endowment
The Voice in Warbreaker.  We never actually interacted with it, just Lightsong remembering being offered a way back.  The Returned are definitely evidence of  the Shard's power/influence.

The last one is harder since Brandon Sanderson said the last one was no longer on the world by the time the story got told.  The set up between Ruin and Preservation doesn't work if a third Shard was hanging around before Vin was born.  Another Shard could have caused the Chasm in Elantris, but Occam's Razor makes me want to think it was just normal seismic activity.  Warbreaker, however is intriguing.  The Idris Royal Family traces its lineage back to the first Returned, this is interesting, why would Endowment decide to suddenly start calling back returned all over the world just because some people had crossed a body of water?  I think that the Returned started Returning soon after Endowment arrived on the Warbreaker world.  But that leaves a question: how did humans get there?  The chances of humans independently evolving on so many different worlds are so low as to be absurd, they had to have been put on all of the worlds by the various Shards.  Unless humans started out on the Warbreaker world, I think Shard #6 is whoever put humans there.  Which would be the influence that we see.