Cosmere
This community is a place to discuss books in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere--the shared universe where most of his novels take place. Please take a moment to review our rules!
1. Show respect to others
Every interaction in the community must be kind, respectful, and welcoming. No person should ever feel threatened, harassed, or unwelcome. Do not engage in hate speech, harassment, insults, personal attacks, trolling, or arguing in bad faith. Interpretation of this rule is subject to the moderators' discretion. Please remember the human.
2. Spoilers not permitted in post titles
Post titles must never reveal spoilers. This includes no direct quotes from the books. Title wording should be vague if necessary. Grey areas are up to the moderators' discretion.
3. Use spoiler markup for all spoiler posts
Please cover all posts in a spoiler tag. Spoilers outside the scope of a post must be hidden with spoiler markup and the scope indicated. The scope is determined by the post tag flair along with any additional restrictions placed by the OP.
You spoiler tag like this:
::: SpoilerSpoiler Tag
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in order to get:
Book Name Here
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4. Post must be tagged for spoilers
All posts must be tagged to indicate the level of expected spoilers in the link/post and comments. The spoiler scope should include the name of the book or books, such as [Book Name] or [Book Series]. You may also say [No Spoilers] if you don't want any spoilers at all. Be as specific as possible. You can even say [Book Name Ch 34], for example.
5. No excessive reposting
Identical content may not be reposted within, by default, a two week period. This period may be adjusted at the moderators' discretion.
6. Posts must be on topic
Posts must be related to the Cosmere. Posts relating to sensitive topics (such as politics, religions, etc.) will be subject to greater scrutiny.. Meta discussions related to the community are generally permitted. Self promotion for money is disallowed. Art, podcasts, videos and other such actual content is allowed.
7. Respect intellectual property
Piracy and copyright infringement are strictly forbidden. With some exceptions, all content must comply with Dragonsteel's licensing and fanart policies. Artwork must be attributed and may not be posted against the artist's wishes. Fan art should be marked as [OC] or credited to the original artist. If AI was used as a tool, please also mark the post [AI: Tool Used], for example [AI: Midjourney].
8. Leaked content is not permitted
Content which is released outside of Brandon Sanderson's wishes is not allowed under any circumstances. Pre-release content publicly released by Brandon, Dragonsteel Entertainment, or a publisher is okay if marked appropriately for spoilers.
9. Posts must be thoughtful and unique (Except Fri-Sun, PST)
Posts must provide original thoughts, questions, ideas, news, or interpretations of the books that can be discussed by the community.
Restricted content often includes: memes; images reminiscent of something in the books; AI-generated artwork; photos of books, bookshelves, merchandise; casting posts; photos of pets; etc. This content is not restricted in /c/brandonsanderson if you’d like to post there.
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There are some fundamental concepts that span all of the systems. Investiture is the "mana" here but can show up as matter too, like the mists or shardblades. Investiture always wants to be used, and in a way that rewards people for satisfying the Intent of the shard it came from, like how radiants progress by personal growth and deepening the bond. When it's being used, it makes vibrations that can be picked up by Seekers and the like.
Magic systems in a particular area are affected by what's going on (or happened in the past) with the shards there. Like how the Dor works because 2 dead shards are corked up and trying to get out. The shards can also consciously affect the rules to an extent, like putting limiters on how much power the radiants get. There are a bunch of side stories set on worlds with no shards, there's still magic but it gets wacky because shards fought there once or something. There's also magic that Ado himself set up, that tends to be either subtle like Hoid's stories or stone singing, or bonkers megastructures, with no in between.
Most magic has a Connection to the world it came from, but people figure out how to bypass that and you get the Cosmere Space Age.
Connection is something you have already seen a lot of, in the form of Bondsmith shenanigans and to a lesser extent the wind runner lashings.
The Intent of the user also affects how the magic works, it's why you can use magic without realizing, or do really complex stuff without doing all the math yourself. It's usually bundled up with a Command, where you give a verbal order and your Intent kind of gives it flavor.
The fact that different metals do different things shows up a lot, but it's not 100% consistent what each metal does.
And then there's the 3 realms. You've seen how the first 2 work, and that whole scene at the end of RoW is them looking into the third. The third is also where souls are (including the bits that govern memories and what magic you can use), Investiture returns there after it's been used, and all of time and space are one there. There's no alternate timeliness or time travel, but you can see the branching possibilities for the future, or play "what if" games like burning electrum. When something is looking at all of that for you and handing you the TLDR, it's called Fortune.