Shardcast: Aethers


It's time we talk about aethers, the last big cosmere magic system! Or is this actually an MCU podcast? A Pinnochio podcast? Maybe it's an ecology and physics podcast. Surprise, it's red spikes all the way down. This episode is both very on the rails and also totally not.

Spoilers for Lost Metal and Tress of the Emerald Sea.

This episode we have Eric (Chaos), David (Windrunner on the forums), Evgeni (Argent), Ala (Rasarr), and Verónica (Cheyenne Sedai)!

Aether of Night requests thread is here (please note this is a manual process and it will be sent to you in the order of weeks): https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/60219-aether-of-night-manuscript-requests/?page=1

Incredible thumbnail by Caio Santos: https://twitter.com/BlackSalander/status/1617230159563870208

00:00 Introduction
01:42 Show & Tell, Hoid Box
9:01 What is an Aether?
13:40 Meta history, Aether of Night 
29:42 Canonical References 
33:49 Strains of Aethers
59:05 Ecology
1:15:30 Prime vs. Primal Aethers 
1:19:25 Types of Aethers (Canonically)
1:35:34 Midnight Essence
1:58:19 Other Aethers
2:21:07 Aether homeworld
2:29:33 Who's That Cosmere Character

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Random thought: what if the crimson aether is related to the sinew essence? I have no evidence for this other than a) flesh sea = ew, b) red spikes as an element doesn’t really make sense and c) I don’t think they’re related to blood because the extension of that essence — all non-oil liquids — doesn’t make sense w/ red spikes.

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Gilphon

Posted (edited)

About the stains on Mraize's pants- At one point in Tress it's mentioned that if you let dead spores just lie there for long enough, they leave behind stains that are hard to clean out. I would imagine that's similar to what happened to Mraize.

Edited by Gilphon
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Honorless

Posted (edited)

I wasn't sure how Silajana was broken down, though I did know a name "Nilanjana" which was what popped up in my head first, but I was pretty sure that's Neel+Anjana. Sila is stone, Jana could mean a person. So, "person of stone", "He or she, of stone", was my first guess. The 's' is usually aspirated, iirc. English isn't great for transliterating Indian languages... there were a lot of suffixes it could've been. Based on which 'a' was a schwa, which was a long ā, it could've been a lot of different things. But "origin" makes a lot of sense. And we're going full Sanskrit.

Vishwadhar would mean "lord of the world" with the base words being Vishva (world) and Dharan (bear / hold / wield), it's a title of a Hindu god, Vishnu. World's Edge is a possible translation, Vishva+Dhar, but given how Silajana is translated, I would say it's less likely.

The amount of pronunciations and meanings "Suna" could have... it's too much. I don't even know if the 's' is aspirated (like sh... yeah I don't know why aspirated 's' sounds aren't just transliterated into 'sh' either). But going by context, that these are the names of Aethers...

I remember going through my references and ignoring certain definitions but now that I think about it, some of those translations could make sense. Like "execution site" or "place of slaughter" if it was referring to the Aether corresponding to the Crimson Sea.

It's probably not "zero", "empty", "void". It sounds grand, but I don't think there's an Aether like that, iirc. But there could be an Aether of Investiture nullification out there, I guess. Tress' world probably wouldn't realise what that Aether would do, and so it might've gone unremarked within the scope of the story.

It's possible that it refers to a Verdant Aether, and means something like "bloom" or "bud" or "fruit", but I'm not sure. Verdant doesn't produce vines with flowers or fruits, either in Tress or AoN.

It could also be the Sunlight Aether, for "beam of light".

Edited by Honorless
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Though if this is the last major magic system, what about Mercy, Whimsy and Valour as sources of systems?

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1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

Though if this is the last major magic system, what about Mercy, Whimsy and Valour as sources of systems?

They can certainly have one, but Brandon has always talked about major and minor systems. So Roshar, Scadrial, Nalthis, Sel are some of the big ones, places like Threnody, or First of the Sun, or Taldain have magic, but it's not one of th core ones that are the pillars of the Cosmere, particularly going forwards into the space age.

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SingleSoul

Posted

I think it's not at all unlikely that the moons could be some kind of artificial megastructure. 

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19 hours ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Random thought: what if the crimson aether is related to the sinew essence? I have no evidence for this other than a) flesh sea = ew, B) red spikes as an element doesn’t really make sense and c) I don’t think they’re related to blood because the extension of that essence — all non-oil liquids — doesn’t make sense w/ red spikes.

Welll, the simple explanation is that you are ramming a square peg into a round hole. There just is no connection between Rosharan essences and aethers.

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3 hours ago, SingleSoul said:

I think it's not at all unlikely that the moons could be some kind of artificial megastructure. 

*Shardcast voice* What IS a moon?

I agree those moons are super weird could be artificial. 

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3 hours ago, SingleSoul said:

I think it's not at all unlikely that the moons could be some kind of artificial megastructure. 

Why do they have those specific colors? I'd say the moons are the aethers.

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teknopathetic

Posted (edited)

I wonder if the reason the Crimson Sea has random rainfall is because there is an immortal scientist living under the sea and screwing around with the ecology. It would be interesting to know if the Crimson Sea was always this unstable or if it got worse in the recent past.

Sort of related, but is that maybe why the Iriali left? Maybe their island was on the Crimson? Charlie seems to know a lot about the Iriali, so maybe the Irali were on a neighbouring sea. 

Edited by teknopathetic
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Let's say the Aethers predate humanity or mortal-type life, then their 12 essences would be very focused on their own experiences in the universe. To an aether, maybe "sharpness"would be a core aspect of the universe. And likewise, "meat"would make absolutely zero sense to an aether as something inherent to the universe. 

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On 1/30/2023 at 10:45 AM, SingleSoul said:

I think it's not at all unlikely that the moons could be some kind of artificial megastructure. 

 

71690104.jpeg

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