Elantrian Drawing Aons via Spanreed

[Duxredux he/him]

A continuation of the Spanreed assassination thread in the Stormlight board. I realized that we have people who can make drawings that literally explode.

What happens if an Elantrian attempts to draw an Aon with a Spanreed? We can do variations on if the Elantrian has done whatever Moonlight did in Scadrial, if they are using the Spanreed in Elantris and the other reed is in Fjordell, or if the Elantrian is out of country and the conjoined spanreed is in Elantris.

The two biggest questions are if the Elantrian can draw a valid Aon remotely and how close one or they other has to be to accessible Dor. If we can figure it out though, then an Elantrian could stash a few spanreeds in key locations and remotely activate Aons.

Thoughts?

Edited September 17, 2023 by Duxredux
clarity

[Trusk'our he/him]

37 minutes ago, Duxredux said:

A continuous of the Spanreed assassination thread in the Stormlight board. I realized that we have people who can make drawings that literally explode.

What happens if an Elantrian attempts to draw an Aon with a Spanreed? We can do variations on if the Elantrian has done whatever Moonlight did in Scadrial, if they are using the Spanreed in Elantris and the other reed is in Fjordell, or if the Elantrian is out of country and the conjoined spanreed is in Elantris.

The two biggest questions are if the Elantrian can draw a valid Aon remotely and how close one or they other has to be to accessible Dor. If we can figure it out though, then an Elantrian could stash a few spanreeds in key locations and remotely activate Aons.

Thoughts?

Whoa, now that's thinking outside the box!

I'd say it could be made to work as long as the Intent is there- the rubies of the Spanreeds are spiritually conjoined, so using one end to draw a functioning Aon on the other should work, as they'd act as if they were a single continuous piece.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Trusk'our

[Njvodin]

The spanreeds will also have to be perfectly in sync, as a small jarring motion on the receivers end will cause the Aon to be imperfect, and probably just fizzle away, or whatever happens to it on paper

[alder24]

8 hours ago, Duxredux said:

A continuation of the Spanreed assassination thread in the Stormlight board. I realized that we have people who can make drawings that literally explode.

What happens if an Elantrian attempts to draw an Aon with a Spanreed? We can do variations on if the Elantrian has done whatever Moonlight did in Scadrial, if they are using the Spanreed in Elantris and the other reed is in Fjordell, or if the Elantrian is out of country and the conjoined spanreed is in Elantris.

The two biggest questions are if the Elantrian can draw a valid Aon remotely and how close one or they other has to be to accessible Dor. If we can figure it out though, then an Elantrian could stash a few spanreeds in key locations and remotely activate Aons.

Thoughts?

That's a great idea. I think that's no different than drawing an Aon with a stick. It would work but I think an Elantrian would draw 2 Aons - one with his hand, the other will be drawn by a spanreed somewhere else. The power of each Aon would depend on their individual distance to Elantris - they won't work on Roshar and you can't take spren out of Roshar easily (yet) so this idea might be impractical for now.

 

6 hours ago, Njvodin said:

The spanreeds will also have to be perfectly in sync, as a small jarring motion on the receivers end will cause the Aon to be imperfect, and probably just fizzle away, or whatever happens to it on paper

IIrc some error is tolerable, The closer Aons are to perfection the more powerful they are. Properly set up spanreed tables would eliminate any glaring errors that would result in failed Aons.

[Treamayne]

On 9/17/2023 at 7:22 AM, alder24 said:

IIrc some error is tolerable

Not precisely. If the line position, length, or slant is off at all - then the Aon is invalidated.

On 9/17/2023 at 7:22 AM, alder24 said:

The closer Aons are to perfection the more powerful they are.

This is true, in that line weight can make an Aon more efficient. Also, Chasm line repetitions for those aons using multiples of the base Aon Aon.

References:

Spoiler

Ars Arcanum:

Quote

PRECISION

For an Aon to work, it must be drawn with absolute precision. Indeed, my research shows that other potential uses of the Dor also require exactness, far more so than any other type of magic I’ve as yet encountered. Again, this seems to point at a distinctiveness, as most other forms of Investiture are only concerned with perception. Elsewhere, if you think you are doing something correctly, it often works. But here, even a tiny mistake in drawing invalidates the Aon.

WoB:

Quote

linkhyrule5

Why is there only one Chasm line per Aon? Since each Aon is made up of repetitions of Aon Aon, shouldn't there be a Chasm line per repetition?

Brandon Sanderson

The Aons aren't JUST made up of repetitions of Aon Aon. There's a lot more to them than that. Some follow a repetition pattern, others do not. The only requirement is using the initial Aon once, then building from there. Because of this, I made the new requirement be only one use of the chasm line.

Aons can actually have multiple forms and still work. For example, if you drew the chasm line on each one of those Aons, they'd work fine. (Maybe even better, in some cases.) What is happening in the books is that the Aons are ALMOST functional, and the Dor is straining to come through them. The chasm line brings them the one step further they need to be functional. However, further tweaking could make them more efficient.

Ch 7

Quote

This was Aon Ashe, the ancient symbol for light. The character brightened momentarily, seeming to pulse with life; then it flashed weakly like a man heaving his last breath. The Aon disappeared, its light fading from brightness, to dimness, to nothing.

“You’re much better at that than I am, sule,” Galladon said. “I usually make one line a little too big, or slant it a bit too much, and the whole thing fades away before I’m done.”

Ch 46:

Quote

“As I understand it, the Elantrians didn’t really mind competition,” Raoden said. As he spoke his finger slipped, breaking its line. The Aon held for a moment in the air, then faded away, his mistake invalidating the entire construction. He sighed before continuing his explanation. . .

A few minutes later, when Raoden had nearly completed the Aon and its modifiers, he realized that Sarene had put down her book and was watching him with interested eyes. The scrutiny made him slip again, and the Aon faded away before he even noticed what he had done. She was still regarding him as he raised his hand to begin Aon Ehe again.

“What?” he finally asked.

Ch 49:

Quote

He had recently moved on to a new, more advanced AonDor technique. The texts explained that Aons were more powerful when drawn with attention not only to line length and slant, but line width as well. While they would still work if the lines were all the same width, variance in the proper locations added extra control and strength.

So Raoden practiced as they instructed, using his fifthfinger to draw small lines and his thumb to construct larger ones. He could also use tools—such as a stick or a quill—to draw the lines. Fingers were the convention, but form mattered far more than the utensils used. After all, the Elantrians had used AonDor to carve permanent symbols into rock and stone—and had even constructed them from wire, pieces of wood, and a host of other materials. Apparently it was difficult to create AonDor characters from physical materials, but the Aons still had their same effect, regardless of whether they were drawn in the air or smelted from steel.

His practice was futile. It didn’t matter how efficient his Aons were; none of them worked.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Trusk'our he/him]

Oh, just had another idea of how to use the Spanreeds @Duxredux; you use Navani's method of moving a Spren over to a larger gemstone to make two Spanreeds of unequal strength. Use the bigger Spanreed to make a much larger Aon that perfectly mirrors the smaller one. You could use this method to make stronger Aons more quickly and easily.

Quote

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/171/#e8187

Snipexe

Does the size-- Let's say you have a really big Aon, and you had it pretty far away from Elantris, does the size of the Aon allow it to be more powerful?

Brandon Sanderson

To an extent, yes.

Or maybe you could use the reverse method as a Forger; Forgery requires very small and detailed. . . runes (Do we know what Forgery's "Aons" are called?) on the stamps and linchpin plates. So a Forger who used the larger modified Spanreed on a Soulstamp could make a much smaller and more detailed Soulstamp as a copy.

For both examples it might take some practice, as you'd need probably need to apply more force on one Spanreed to affect the other, but I think there could be some pretty interesting applications for it.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

(Do we know what Forgery's "Aons" are called?)

In text, Gaotona merely calls them "symbols" (Day 70)

Spoiler

“So this symbol,” Gaotona said, pointing at one of her sketches of the greater stamps she would soon carve, “is a time notation, indicating a moment specifically … seven years ago?”

“Yes,” Shai said, dusting off the end of a freshly carved soulstamp. “You learn quickly.”

Based on the images in the novella, I would guess they are similar to Hanze radicals (Described in these posts - Stormlight Archive Spoilers) where simplified versions of other characters are combined to make new/compound meanings. Who knows what the in-world term for the language or this structure would be, since we have not yet gotten that information.

If Aon evolves into Aonic and AonDor; maybe Mai Pon evolved from MaiDor and, therefore, "Mai."