Shardcast Episode 3

[Windrunner he/him]

So, as I was listening to this, I was just going to post this in the comments section, but then it started getting a little long for that. Here's my post of ungodly length, perhaps the longest I've done.

Don't you go ragging on my AonDor! I'd love to see someone learn how AonDor works, haha. I'd guess personally that if you know enough modifiers, you could replicate the effects of any other manifestation of investiture.

At the beginning of Elantris Galladon's been in Elantris more then five or six months (because he didn't know about the collapse of the Duladen Republic but less then a year.

Here's what I've always kind of thought was the reason that no one figured out the earthquake thing. Firstly, the Elantrians obfuscated the process by which AonDor worked, no one knew about the tie to the land. So all that information died with them. I'd imagine scholars would have postulated the earthquake thing, but there was no indication to them why the earthquake would have screwed with the city, as they didn't know about the connection. And if they did correctly guess, no one knew about the shape of the cities, and they were imprisoning everyone who could have fixed it.

Secondly, I'd imagine that it would be pretty difficult to differentiate between what happened first, the earthquake or the city ceasing to glow. The shock wave isn't instantaneous, whereas when Aons cease to function, it happens pretty quickly. So the city could have stopped glowing seconds before the earthquake hit the city. It would appear that the earthquake had been caused by the city's fall, and no one who had seen the chasm form would know any different. They wouldn't have even known about the chasm for a while, initially. Seons are instantaneous sure, but most were bound to Elantrians, and lost their minds the second the Reod hit. So that pretty much crippled their instantaneous communications, it would have been weeks before someone from the south actually arrived at the capital, even if some rumors had filtered through the few remaining sane Seons. Even those would have been considered "suspect" because of their ties to AonDor and thus Elantris.

Also just as a side-note, while the Jindooese are an "Asian" culture, they're ethnically black. I can't decide if that makes it more or less racist though XD

I'm probably rationalizing here, but I always figured that Iadon made the law about his son speaking in court before Raoden got over his hero worship of Iadon. Once Raoden actually began challenging him, it was too late for Iadon to change the laws because Raoden had become so beloved that silencing him would have majorly pissed off a lot of people.

While using Jalla as a spy is certainly something I'd never considered, I wonder if Hrathen would actually buy that "coincidentally", a member of the Princess's family who has been working against him has converted to Shu-Dereth.

I am with Mi'ch on the streets being Aon modifiers. They glow, when if you consider it, only the walls and the central palace that forms the dot should be glowing, they're the only parts of the base Aon. The buildings in the outer cities didn't glow though. You "could" make the argument though that the Cognitive aspect of the city as a whole (if that's even possible) sees the city as one entity, so if part of it's glowing, the whole thing glows. Another potential modifier I noticed is that if you look at the base Rao, the square and all the circles are about the same size. However, it took "hours" to cross even a portion of Elantris, while there's never any indication of that scale in Kae, which is even bigger then its circle. So in the actual modified Rao, the central square is far far larger then the circles then it would be in a base Rao. The wall of Kae is mentioned at other points, but it is true that her noticing it would have been good.

I've always wondered if Shu-Dereth was onto something by choosing a god of rocks who lived beneath the land, because of the obvious ties the Shards on Sel have to the land.

The question of Dilaf is interesting. I do believe in one of the annotations that Brandon says that Wyrn sent Dilaf and several other Dakhor plants, who have not been uncovered, to destroy Elantris, but before they did so, the city fell. Makes me wonder what exactly they were doing in the ten years leading to the fall. It wouldn't have been easy to destroy the city when the Elantrians were at full power, but sending Dilaf does make sense, he's one of the most powerful Dakhor in existence. I can see Wyrn leaving them there though, to try to shape the new government to be more amenable to Dakhor's dominion.

As I told Eric a couple weeks ago, Hrathen is 42 during Elantris Just for fun, Sarene is 25.

Perhaps Dilaf talks about Sycla as the world, because it's the only land he really cares about? They want Teod though... Fjorden is known for ignoring the bits of the world that they don't control though, so I'm not quite sure. I imagine that any wrinkles might get smoothed in the annotated version, but a few of the comments from Brandon have made me wonder if perhaps the Rose Empire was already a concept, and he just plugged Forgery in there when he developed it.

Okay, here's my best information on how old Elantris is. When King Rhashm first brought the Aonic people to Arelon, the city was already there, abandoned. Fun fact, Rhasham made them live there even though they all thought it was haunted. Anyway, since by the Middle Era Arelon was taking shape politically, I'd imagine that was the Early Era, which is, far more then 200 years ago. (My gut says 600+ but that's got no facts).

Really really great podcast guys. I'm hoping someone will comment on this because you guys brought up some incredibly fun points to discuss.

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

Thanks for sharing the ages! I'm going to make sure we include that in the next ep, because it's good info to know!

[Iredomi]

Great info as always windy =)

Yeah I was thinking the same thing about the Fjordell ignoring other places and Teod can sort of be counted as part of the continent even though it isn't really just by association if that makes sense? And where does the red armoured ambassador fit in all this? Does that mean the fjordell empire is still going during Emperor's Soul?

Sorry heaps of questions but yeah just curious.

Great ShardCast too by the way and you couldn't really tell it was late =)

Oh and annotated version... what's this?