All of the Elantrians alive when the chasm was created suffered the same affliction that newer ones did afterward. Everything related to the Dor was affected. The Dor was not tainted, nor was it weakened, but the basic symbol needed for it to interact with the world was changed. Remember the first time Raoden used a glyph that worked? The pressure that built up was enormous.
Right. It's more like putting your thumb over a faucet tap and restricting what comes out, rather than tainting or weakening of it.
As for whether or not they would lose their coloring with distance, I would say the glow of their skin would certainly wane as they got further from elantris. It would then be easy enough to disguise your skin and hair. Also remember that Raoden was able to disguise himself completely even before he added the chasm line to Elantris itself. It would seem that very little power is needed to affix a disguise.
Oh, i have no qualms with them losing their shiny from distance, but I don't think they'd lose their color. However, this also comes back to my life-support analogy. If greatly restricted flow of the Dor because of the Shaod causes them to practically zombify, and their lives to essentially "freeze", when they move completely out of range for the flow of Dor to even reach them (which i'm assuming being lightyears away would do), wouldn't this basically kill them?
Earongal:
I have to disagree with you. Occam's Razor is fine, but all facts have to be put into account, and I feel you are missing a couple of things in this instance. First, Brandon goes out of his way to describe Grump, making sure to include that, while he had the skin color of the Mubakanaki(??), he was not built like one. in fact, it is noted that none of the three strangers really fit in with any nationality the viewpoint character knows. Second, do you remember the epigraphs from HoA? Brandon likes giving special characters a unique way of speaking so they can be identified more easily. As for the tall grumpy blonde analogy, it works if your in Sweden, but if you were in China, there's a good bet it's the same guy, especially if he speaks in a unique pattern, and even more especially when the author goes out of his way to make the guy speak one of the four or five words of his native tongue that is known to the reader.
First, Quick Nitpick - It's Eerongal with two E's, not Ea (not a big deal, just FYI)
well, currently, we only know one person who's a native Dula speaker. Galladon. So it's hard to say if he has a unique way of speaking, or if he talks like any other dula.
I accept that he's speaking dula, and indeed that these people are likely from Sel (of that i'd had no doubt), and they indeed dont fit physically into the race they appear to be, but this would be true of almost anyone who pretended to be of a native race elsewhere (take your swedish in china example, if he dressed up and tried to look chinese, it would be obvious he wasn't chinese, generally)
Also, another thought occurs to me. Wasn't Galladon pessimistic and grumpy BECAUSE of the Shaod? Like when he was reminiscing about being a farmer, didn't he talk about missing the care-free days or something, though not fitting in with others? With the Shaod fixed, wouldn't he likely become a much happier, nicer person anyways? This is all speculation, but it certainly doesn't SEEM like a far leap in logic, and we have nothing to go on for this to be true, since we don't really get any extended time with them after everything is fixed up.
Also, yet another thought that occurs to me when writing this: Generally, yes, brandon likes dropping hints about other works in his current works. However, so far only 1 character has had any crossover action. Hoid. And that's because he is in all of brandon's (shard) books. While the stuff pertaining to Hoid may be as an "on the side" nature to the events in WoK, it seems a pretty bold step to be bringing other characters directly from his other works just to build some anticipation for anything upcoming that involves hoid and the shards themselves, especially since brandon's official stance on his other works is that none of his works are required reading for others, even if they all have elements in common.
To some extent, this would make Elantris required reading to make sense of these little outlier scenes involving characters from Elantris, if they are indeed characters actually from Elantris.
Now brandon may very well break his usual form and do so, he certainly is allowed to if he wants to, but to me, the idea of Raoden and Galladon showing up in WoK for foreshadowing just really seems to break the usual way he does things.
It wouldn't surprise me to get some hot cross-over action as soon as hoid and the shards become the main focus of a book, but until then, i can't really see brandon reusing some older characters in a new book until that focus is shifted.
Thoughts on these couple of things? These are both obviously personal speculation, and attempting to logic all the info we have together, so i could very well be wrong on both accounts, but I feel they're actually both worth considering.
