Tangletalon's Unifying Random Theory *spoilers for EVERYTHING*

[Tangletalon]

Well, how does everything fit together? Well, each magic system draws energy from something. Maybe that something is Dor! Maybe the Dor is in different forms (Stormlight, metal, color, mystical energy, for WoK, Mistborn, Warbreaker, and Elantris, respectively), and it powers everything! To take this a bit farther, what if the Shards of Adonalsium are the Dor's pure form?

[Munin]

The Dor is the power of a single shard on Sel. Not the source of everything.

[Tangletalon]

I don't know much about what Sanderson said, but how do you know that? Did he say that sometime? What forces there to be one planet of Dor?

[hubay]

I'll elaborate at what I think Tangleton is getting at here. In Elantis the Dor is described as the reason behind everything: gravity, life, energy. It's chi; it's the One Power. So, assuming that's actually the case, is it the same true for the rest of the world? Does the power of Ruin and Preservation run their planet? Is there a fundamental difference between the power of Endowment and that of Aona? If the two are the same force, just with different 'pathologies', that could be significant. Could a world exist without a shard to power it?

Also, if life requires the existence of a shard, where did the original humans that are now shardholders come from?

[happyman]

I've always assumed that the powers that be (e.g. the powers of Adonalsium) actually span the entire universe and together sustain and run anything.  The shards are, I believe, just foci for the powers, just localized control over something that is really acting everywhere, but which can be concentrated and controlled consciously in one location.

Each one controls a different aspect of the world, and would thus relate to the world in different ways.  Hence the different magic systems.  Ruin and preservation are apparently tied to metals, and so their power manifests in the world as metal, and people who have some access to their power also draw power as metal.  Other systems would presumably draw from different aspects of the world that their shards are well-attuned to.

Which leaves one wondering what the Dor is.  I suspect it's just a different aspect of creation, one that is present everywhere but which the people on Sel have particularly good access to thanks to their creation.

[Stormblessed]

I see the Dor as the raw power of Adonalsium. Adonalsium might be shattered, but that doesn't mean the power used by Adonalsium is gone. Adonalsium could have been more of a focal point for the power.

I also think that each shard is just a channel for the Dor, just like Adonalsium was a channel when he/she/it was whole. Each shard has its own rules and laws which dictate how the Dor is channeled. (Remember back in Elantris how the Elantrians used the Aons to harness the Dor, while the Jindo harnessed the Dor through some martial arts type of fighting and Dilaf harnessed it a completely different way. This just shows how different shards use the Dor differently. Raoden even comments on it in Chapter 63.)

[happyman]

I'm actually guessing that the Shard's which created Sel's magic systems were actually related to writing.  The magic always seems to come through Glyphs of some sort---language.

Now I don't know what that means, but it's cool.  It could mean, though, that the Dor is the power of creation channeled through language.  It could just as easily mean that people on Sel are more attuned to the power of Language as it exists everywhere, and can thus call on it more effectively than, say, the people on Scadriel.