On Aether and Essences

[Firesong she/her]

So, we know that Aethers have a correlation with essences due to a recent WoB. And I was wondering what goes to what, and what we can predict about unrevealed Aethers. 

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Comatose

Also talking about aether, a lot of the aether spores—or all of them that we've seen—map fairly neatly to a primal essence or element. And so we're wondering, if that's a continued pattern, what’s the essence for the crimson aether? Or to put it another way, what's with the red spikes? The world wants to know.

Brandon Sanderson

What’s with the red spikes? So, red spikes are the aether version of coral, which is… I did not, let’s just say, want to do a flesh aether. So we're going in a coral direction as our kind of organicish, fleshy sort of thing. Do understand they're not going to be a 1 to 1, right? We might have some wiggle room there, but so far I've done them as a 1 to 1.

Comatose

But that is kind of fun, though, if it is kind of mapping to flesh that it's still got kind of a horror or like a scary element to it.

Brandon Sanderson

Imagine it more like carapace and things like that as what we might call our "flesh" for mapping the aethers there. I'm not going to go with some aether that creates giant tumors. I did toy with it. It just, you know, certain things don't work as well as other things.

So the the verdant aether is— verdant and roseite have been the two that have always been the most interesting to me. Though of course, zephyr is really important for the for the space age cosmere, right? Being able to have portable air and some some propellant that breaks the laws of our universe by providing propellant that is small, very compact, and very easy to use as a propellant helps a bit with space age stuff.

So I was left curious on how exactly they would all map out.

• Roseite: Roseite obviously is Vev; Quartz, Glass, and Crystal. As it forms crystals
• Zephyr: Zephyr is even more obviously Jes; which correlates with Air and Zephyr. And it releases bursts of air. Furthermore, it can also be associated with the body focus of Inhalation, as Brandon talked about it being breathable and used as a source of oxygen. 
• Verdant: Verdant is Palah, which correlates with wood, plants, and moss. And it produces vines.
• Sunlight: Sunlight is obviously Chach, associated with fire and light. This aether produces light and heat. 
• Crimson: Brandon said it is coral-esque, meant to be organic material. This would be Ishi, which is meat and flesh.
• Midnight: This doesn't directly correlate with any Essences, thus it likely fits into the two special aethers which don't fit the pattern.

From this, we can expand.

• Metal: A metal aether that is associated with Kak, whose soulcasting property is Metal. This can easily create metal for tools, vehicles, or armour. This actually is one of the aethers that showed up in AoN, but I won't expand too much on that as this isn't the right channel for that, just wanted to bring it up as evidence.
• Stone: One that is with Tanat, and produces stone or bone. That would easily create stone spikes or platforms, or create armour from stone. 

These two I can easily think of ideas for, but not sure what to do with these ones.

• Shash: Blood and non-oil liquid. Maybe creates tendrils of blood, like the Kagune in Tokyo Ghoul or blood weapons in a bunch of anime? That's the best I got. 
• Nan: Opaque Gas, smoke, and fog. 
• Betab: Oil

These ones, as I said, I can't think of a logical thing that they can do. I would say production of water for Shash, as it isn't an oil. But that doesn't make much sense. as it requires water to function, making water wouldn't make sense. He did say it isn't very strictly one-to-one.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Firesong

[Treamayne]

36 minutes ago, Firesong said:

• Midnight: This doesn't directly correlate with any Essences, thus it likely fits into the two special aethers which don't fit the pattern.

• Betab: Oil
• Nan: Opaque Gas, smoke, and fog. 

I feel like there are some connections here. Both Midnight Essence (ME) and Midnight Spores (MS) are described as showing the opalesence that is seen in the sheen on the surface of many oils (and surface tension is a thing) but we also see both ME and MS "bleed" a gray/black smoke/gas.

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Metal: A metal aether that is associated with Kak, whose soulcasting property is Metal. This can easily create metal for tools, vehicles, or armour. This actually is one of the aethers that showed up in AoN, but I won't expand too much on that as this isn't the right channel for that, just wanted to bring it up as evidence.

I can understand why you would avoid this outside of the AoN subforum; but I would mention that if any aspects of Authers from AoN get changed fro the canon - Metal is the most likely to change. I feel that there is more connection to Fabrials than just the Kak soulcasting property. As far as soulcasting is concerned, we have seen (heard) in Oathbringer that the Azish Bronze roofs were because they had a soulcaster specializing in that metal - which implies that, at least for the fabrial version, these is a limitation to not just metal, but specific metal(s). Which makes me also wonder if maybe that soulcaster is "copper and its alloys" or "bronze only." For a spore version, I imagine something like the Crimson - but as metal spikes rather than the psuedo-organic coral/Crimson.

 

[Firesong she/her]

1 minute ago, Treamayne said:

I feel like there are some connections here. Both Midnight Essence (ME) and Midnight Spores (MS) are described as showing the opalesence that is seen in the sheen on the surface of many oils (and surface tension is a thing) but we also see both ME and MS "bleed" a gray/black smoke/gas.

I can understand why you would avoid this outside of the AoN subforum; but I would mention that if any aspects of Authers from AoN get changed fro the canon - Metal is the most likely to change. I feel that there is more connection to Fabrials than just the Kak soulcasting property. As far as soulcasting is concerned, we have seen (heard) in Oathbringer that the Azish Bronze roofs were because they had a soulcaster specializing in that metal - which implies that, at least for the fabrial version, these is a limitation to not just metal, but specific metal(s). Which makes me also wonder if maybe that soulcaster is "copper and its alloys" or "bronze only." For a spore version, I imagine something like the Crimson - but as metal spikes rather than the psuedo-organic coral/Crimson.

 

I feel that the metal one is likely to change in specifics, but still be kept in terms of producing metal. What metal though, I do not know. 

The furry one definitely is gonna change as we already have the flesh one with Crimson. 

But yeah, I can see Midnight fitting with Betab to a degree, we do see that the Spren of Betab are pure black and all. But I am not sure. I like the idea of it being one of the 2 outside of the pattern, it just makes more sense to me. As it was pretty special in AoN as well. Not gonna mention the other special one in there, though. 

[Treamayne]

11 minutes ago, Firesong said:

I like the idea of it being one of the 2 outside of the pattern,

Well, the WoB Did say that it was not a 1:1 correlation. So if the +2 are the interaction of two or three essences that could explain why the Mignight shows aspects of Vapor, Tallow and Sinew.

Also, I wonder if a Foil Spore could maybe be influenced to "grow" different metals depending on how it is directed (like using Iron/Steel to grow Rosite toward or away from you; maybe using an Iron plte on Foil manifests the Spore as iron; while using a Copper plat would manifest the Foil Spores as copper instead?