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Spren as Forms *TES Spoilers*


Kurkistan

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*Small TES Spoilers*

At 7:30 in the TES Writing Excuses episode, Brandon identifies at least part of the foundation of Realmatics: "we're delving into the Cosmere stuff, my underlying theory of existence in my novels, which is based on a mash-up between Platonic Forms and Asian style 'everything has a soul'".

We can see at least some of this happening in TES with how Forging works, but particularly with what happens when you Forge simple objects, like Shai's stained glass window. In her discussion with Gaotona:
 

“It is . . . rather mystical,” Gaotona said, spreading his hands before him. “A window frame knowing the ‘concept’ of a stained glass window? A soul understanding the concept of another soul?”

“These things exist beyond us,” Shai said, preparing another seal. “We think about windows, we know about windows; what is and isn’t a window takes on . . . meaning, in the Spiritual Realm. Takes on life, after a fashion. Believe the explanation or do not; I guess it doesn’t matter. The fact is that I can try these seals on you, and if they stick for at least a minute, it’s a very good indication that I’ve hit on something."
(83-84 (?) - in the ebook, not sure on the pages)


Spren, then, seem to represent these self-same forms (the Forms of Fire, Wind, Pain, Fear, Gravity, Ale...). The question, then, is whether spren are Cognitive beings (as most people have assumed, I think) that access Spiritual Forms or if they are mostly just Spiritual beings.

If spren are Spiritual in nature, then it would lend credence to Windrunner's idea of Spiritual/Physical overlap giving rise to the Cognitive Realm, especially when paired with Syl's inability to think in the Physical Realm without her bond with Kaladin.

Some Cognitive overlap obviously occurs, though, such as how Flamespren are seen (when measured) affecting their nature in perfect alignment with how the Cognitive realm--"how an object is viewed and how it views itself" (pg 53)--works. Spren are imperfect tokens of the Forms, then, not the Forms themselves, so I think that they are Cognitive beings that have a strong access to and dependency on Spiritual Forms, but are not just Spiritual representation of the Forms themselves.

Mildly less concrete:

This also explains why Spren can be so region-specific (such as Ale-spren and Cusicesh), since local belief in specific Forms is necessary for their to be any local Spiritual Form for spren to latch onto. This means that, if Shai went to some world/region that simply didn't have the concept of glass windows, she wouldn't be able to Forge one, no matter how plausible she made it, since no Windown form would exist for her to access.

Somewhat less concrete:

This is also implied by the fact that "the more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail." (pg 42 ?), implying that Forgeries rely on the constant maintenance of their foundational Forms (i.e., and "Emperor as the Emperor" Form rather than a "Emperor as a simulcrum" Form as the basis for Shai's Forgery). This also implies that, if the very concept of a Window were to be instantaneously excised from Sel--or even just the Rose Empire, potentially--then Shai's Forgery of the stained glass window would fail at that very moment.

EDIT: And it further follows that these Forms do not, in fact, take on any real independent existence of their own, but instead are at all times determined by the aggregate of Cognized concepts which make up their form. Like a Russellian conception of "Red" within an individual's mind being, in truth, the aggregate of all those things which a person considers to be red, or otherwise the average of them, such as how people think of a "perfect rectangle" whenever you say the word "rectangle."

Although, on second thought, I suppose that the Forms could come to be as an aggregate concepts, but then "split off" into their own independent existence. That would mean that "Fear" would exist whether or not there existed entities to experience fear, which then gets us into philosophical discussions (in the Cosmere, where all philosophy matters!) of whether a number can be prime in and of itself and what have you.

It could also be slightly less strict, with Forms having their own inertia once created, but still being dependent on and affected by changes in mass opinion. So everyone could stop believing that Drunkenness ought to have a Form in the town that Axies (I forget its name) visited, but it might take awhile for the spren to go away.

So there's that, with many more fun and interesting things to come from TES, especially after the latest Orem signing is up and we have more questions answered biggrin.gif.

 

EDIT (6/8/13):

 

I thought it was time to add some new evidence that pretty much locks some version of this theory in.

 

Various passages, because evidence is fun

 

Two different types of "spren", one is essentially a Cognitive aspect, the other is based on "cognitive ideals or concepts, which have taken on literal personification over time"

 

"Spren are created by the perceptions of men"

 

Also, I've posted two other theories about Forms since this one. One on their general structure and specifically how they relate to Forgery (immediately derailed, impossibly dense) and one that's more streamlined.

 

UPDATE:

 

Theory confirmed.

Edited by Kurkistan
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This is also implied by the fact that "the more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail." (pg 42 ?), implying that Forgeries rely on the constant maintenance of their foundational Forms (i.e., and "Emperor as the Emperor" Form rather than a "Emperor as a simulcrum" Form as the basis for Shai's Forgery). This also implies that, if the very concept of a Window were to be instantaneously excised from Sel--or even just the Rose Empire, potentially--then Shai's Forgery of the stained glass window would fail at that very moment.

I read that quote quite differently. I thought that it was referring to mundane failure, as opposed to magical; Sort of like "a secret shared by two is no secret", rather than a magical requirement. After all, it seems like everyone would know about the palace decorations being Forgeries, and they are still working flawlessly.

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I read that quote quite differently. I thought that it was referring to mundane failure, as opposed to magical; Sort of like "a secret shared by two is no secret", rather than a magical requirement. After all, it seems like everyone would know about the palace decorations being Forgeries, and they are still working flawlessly.

Good point. I hadn't thought of that. We also have Shai not showing any compunction about leaving her stamps front-and-center for all the Forgeries in her room, which one would think would be a bit counterproductive if that would cause them to fail.

I did read more of a magical "Fail" then a simple non-magical "fail" there, although I can't think of any justification at this moment. Anyone have thoughts on how to save that section of the OP from Ruin?

Edited by Kurkistan
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Sorry. I don't want to seem like a rube, but what is TES? All I can think of is "The Elder Scrolls".

The Emperor's Soul.

I'm defining the new naming convention before anyone can stop me. It's working so far. ;)

Edited by Kurkistan
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I read that quote quite differently. I thought that it was referring to mundane failure, as opposed to magical; Sort of like "a secret shared by two is no secret", rather than a magical requirement. After all, it seems like everyone would know about the palace decorations being Forgeries, and they are still working flawlessly.

As Gaotona said.

“Our workers are not Forgers,” Gaotona said. “We don’t use that word. They are Rememberers.”

They work pretty hard to maintain a cognitive dissonance on what their forgeries are.

Shai suspected that on the bottoms of those “ancient” urns would be soulstamps that had transformed them into perfect imitations of famous pieces.

If even she didn't know for sure then it's a good chance it wasn't public knowledge.

Souls are also generally harder.

“The human soul is different from that of an object,” Shai continued. “A person is constantly growing, changing, shifting. That makes a soulstamp used on a person wear out in a way that doesn’t happen with objects."

Plus, she seemed to say she was worried about something beyond rumors of the falseness of her forgeries.

"There will be no rumors of what we do.” “You don’t need to worry about me talking,” Shai said, truthfully for once. “The more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail.”

If she was just worried about secrets she probably wouldn't have said it like that.

Edited by Nepene
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I thought that one of Shai's main motivations for making Forgeries was to fool people. She is creating great works of art in the performance and execution of her exploits (eg, swapping the paintings), not in the objects that she creates. She wouldn't undermine her own greatest work in that way.

PS: You may actually be right, but playing Devil's Advocate is fun necessary to build strong theories.

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  • 3 months later...

Wow, I don't know why I didn't reply back in November. Still, there is discussion to be had. I do hereby formally revivify this thread, which I am allowed to do... because!

@Nepene

Thanks for the assist. Good to have your uncanny quote-finding skills on my side for once. :)/>

@ulyssessword

I'm coming to a thought about the seeming discrepancy between the cases of Shai not wanting her Forgeries to be known and the ones of her displaying them proudly. This isn't very "Form" related, but it has to do with Cognitive aspects.

I think I was wrong to say that "Emperor as Emperor" was a Form, at least in the context that we're talking about here. There may well be a kind of spren-accessible "Imperial" Form, but I don't think that's the kind of thing that affects the Forging of a specific person. So, instead of relying on Forms for success or failure, the plausibility of Forgery could rely on the individual Cognitive aspects of the items being altered.

Where I go all new-and-shiny, then, is how those Cognitive aspects react to different kinds of "disbelief" about how they are Forged. I would hazard that the ability of an outside perspective to affect the plausibility of a Forgery depends upon both the strength and number--quality and quantity--of disbelief directed at it.

So 100 people who are like "oh, didn't that window used to be broken? Eh." is less harmful than 1 who goes "It's a MONSTER! Kill it with FIRE!!!!!!!" to the Emperor's re-ensouled body.

Those are the kind of strong reactions are what you would get from a Forging that wasn't supposed to have happened; that is surprising, offensive, and shocking--in other words, secret Forgeries. Shai's "public" Forgeries, on the other hand, are received with a degree of acceptance. Instead of "that desk is a fake!" you get "that desk has been Forged into a better version of itself. Cool beans."

And that leads us into a discussion of the nature of Shai's soulstamps of herself, which (aside from her special one) leave her with a degree of knowledge about past events and her own true identity as a Forger.

I would hazard that these soulstamps are actually a bit "meta," as it were, incorporating their very artificiality into the descriptions of the alternate versions of Shai. A stamp of a history in which Shai stamped herself, essentially.

So her Shaizan stamp would say "<Shaizan's history> + and then Shai applied this stamp at X time for Y reasons," with X and Y somehow being written such that they are variables that draw upon Shai's recent past. Instead of creating Shaizan as a full-fledged person, it instead creates her as an acknowledged fiction meant to serve a specific purpose, as decided by the circumstances under which Shai assumed that character. And so Forging itself can become part of a plausible history for an item/person.

The way Shai's "I give up" and the Emperor's stamp differ from this, then, is that they do not have that second-level incorporation of their artificiality, and simply re-write the past of their target.

P.S. I'm working on a TES addendum to the MEC, so this is kind of a dry run for it, and some of it will probably be adapted for further discussion.

Edited by Kurkistan
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I don't know how relevant this is to your theorizing, but it's something from WoK (ch37) that sticks out to me. Like Brandon is trying to tell us something.

“Spren live in everything,” Hesina replied.

“They can’t live in everything,” Kal said, dropping a peel into the pail at his feet. He glanced out the window, watching the road that led from the town to the citylord’s mansion.

“They do,” Hesina said. “Spren appear when something changes—when fear appears, or when it begins to rain. They are the heart of change, and therefore the heart of all things.”

“This longroot,” Kal said, holding it up skeptically.

“Has a spren.”

“And if you slice it up?”

“Each bit has a spren. Only smaller.”

...

“So we eat spren,” Kal said flatly.

“No,” she said, “we eat the roots.”

“When we have to,” Tien added with a grimace.

“And the spren?” Kal pressed.

“They are freed. To return to wherever it is that spren live.”

“Do I have a spren?” Tien said, looking down at his chest.

“You have a soul, dear. You’re a person. But the pieces of your body may very well have spren living in them. Very small ones.”

I think an interesting question to ask Brandon would be, "If Shai were to Forge on Roshar, what spren would react to it?"

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How would this relate to Spren bonds then...

If I understand your point accurately, then spren will react in response to the massed belief / perceptions of the local populous. Such as flame spren existing because people give form to the concept of fire, or Ale spren given form by the populations percepriopn of drunkeness.

What of Honorspren then? If the local perception is what gives the spren their form, then Syl would react to the notion of Honor as perceived by the Alethi. If this is the case then surely Kaladin would never have attracted her in the first place since he acts in a very non-Alethi fashion. Same with Dalinar (although he may not be attracting an honorspren, or any kind of spren as far as we know.)

Note:

I like your theory very much but I want to play devil's advocate for a bit to see where the discussion takes us.

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How would this relate to Spren bonds then...

If I understand your point accurately, then spren will react in response to the massed belief / perceptions of the local populous. Such as flame spren existing because people give form to the concept of fire, or Ale spren given form by the populations percepriopn of drunkeness.

What of Honorspren then? If the local perception is what gives the spren their form, then Syl would react to the notion of Honor as perceived by the Alethi. If this is the case then surely Kaladin would never have attracted her in the first place since he acts in a very non-Alethi fashion. Same with Dalinar (although he may not be attracting an honorspren, or any kind of spren as far as we know.)

So far as Honor's definition goes, there are two options that jump out at me:

First, the idea of "real" honor could still be alive and well among the Alethi, only the nobility don't place much value in it. Kaladin thought it still existed and felt betrayed when Amaram didn't live up to the popular conception of honor. So the populace at large believes in a more "honorable" form of honor. The lighteyes could believe in it too, come to that, but simply not follow it. Like knowing ice-cream is bad for you, but eating it anyway. This is somewhat related to Cheese Ninja's thread about Nohadon changing the way Nahel bonds work.

Second (and more likely), Honor with a capital 'H,' as in Tanavast, had something definitive to say about what exactly "honor" meant. If I had to guess (and when don't I? :D), I would recall that Spren are not just the Forms they take up. They are born of a combination of Cultivation and Honor, and likely have independent existence--of some form--beyond needing to rely on Forms. So Heralds come down from on-low, form the KR, and tell people what's what, with Honor having set up the system for bonding spren, as well as altering the dispositions of certain types of spren so that they react appropriately when someone acts properly.

EDIT: Or it could be a bit less intentional, simply the result of an Honor-Cultivation mash up on Roshar, without any real control on the Shards' part.

Note:

I like your theory very much but I want to play devil's advocate for a bit to see where the discussion takes us.

No! Not another one of those! The last time that happened, I ran away and hid for three months! (apparently, since I still can't recall why I didn't post back then) :P/>

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Second (and more likely), Honor with a capital 'H,' as in Tanavast, had something definitive to say about what exactly "honor" meant. If I had to guess (and when don't I? :D/>), I would recall that Spren are not just the Forms they take up. They are born of a combination of Cultivation and Honor, and likely have independent existence--of some form--beyond needing to rely on Forms. So Heralds come down from on-low, form the KR, and tell people what's what, with Honor having set up the system for bonding spren, as well as altering the dispositions of certain types of spren so that they react appropriately when someone acts properly.

Might this be extended to a very general idea about the "landscape" of the Cognitive and/or Spiritual realms on a given world being shaped into specific forms by the Shards nearby?

Brandon's comments about the various versions of investiture being easier/harder to translate from world to world seems to have a direct relationship with how tied to the world those abilities are. He said Scadrial's are the easiest to take to another world, while Sel's are the hardest. One is totally internal, while the other is completely dependent on the physical landscape. I'd guess Roshar is more on the difficult side, since spren seem to have been bound to the world in some way, though obviously they have some capacity to move around and potentially even travel through Shadesmar, if Shallan's truthspren are any indication.

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^Shadesmar's "landscape" could be shaped by Shards, I suppose. We know that Sel's region is particularly dangerous because of the Splinterings, so less catastrophic Shardic events could also have an impact.

Q: You said to not travel to Shadesmar on Sel. Is this a consequence of Odium Splintering Aona and Skai?

A: It is indirectly related to the splintering. There is a clue to why it is dangerous in Way of Kings.

Actually, forgive me if this has already been said and/or is off-topic, but it occurs to me that the "clue" we get in WoK (something grabbing Shallan's leg in Shadesmar) might be that Honor's Splintering also made Shadesmar dangerous on Roshar, so raw Spiritual power being flung around might be dangerous regardless of what Shard it originally belonged to.

I would also guess that WoK's abilities are actually fairly free of Roshar, to contradict you completely. Stormlight looks like pure Spiritual energy, so far as we can tell, and I can't see why Kaladin wouldn't be able to draw upon already-infused spheres if we were to teleport him to Scadrial. You can probably also work in a hack to get raw power from some source other than Stormlight, if you try hard enough.

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I would also guess that WoK's abilities are actually fairly free of Roshar, to contradict you completely. Stormlight looks like pure Spiritual energy, so far as we can tell, and I can't see why Kaladin wouldn't be able to draw upon already-infused spheres if we were to teleport him to Scadrial. You can probably also work in a hack to get raw power from some source other than Stormlight, if you try hard enough.

True. Stormlight can be stored, so I guess that's definitely portable. I guess I was more thinking of the Nahel bond with spren. I think we'll need to learn more about how Szeth pulls it off before deciding on that though.

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True. Stormlight can be stored, so I guess that's definitely portable. I guess I was more thinking of the Nahel bond with spren. I think we'll need to learn more about how Szeth pulls it off before deciding on that though.

Oh yes, definitely. I acquiring powers seems to be very world-specific.

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I'm not sure how close I'm going to stay to the original topic, but I'll try.

“The more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail.”

I think this is more likely a mundane example of failure to preserve a secret. None of Shai's other stamps depended on public opinion. She changed her bedroom from a storage space to the nicest room in the castle, after all. It's also worth noting that she says the Forging on her wall to make it a piece of artwork worked partially because she thought it would appeal to the wall more to be beautiful than to be boring.

I am curious about how the interaction between Soulcasting and Soulstamping would work. For example, if you use Soulcasting to change a rock into bread, would it be easier to Forge it into a different type of rock or a different type of bread? I don't think it'll ever come up in the series.

Kaladin's mother thinks of everything having a spren, which actually seems a bit closer to the whole "everything has a cognitive aspect" bit. When Shallan goes to Shadesmar, she thinks of the goblet's cognitive aspect as a spren. I think they might be a bit off the mark, because when we see spren, they're a bit more limited than that. There aren't any in Shinovar, where there aren't Highstorms or Stormlight, and Dalinar doesn't see any in his visions of the past either.

Typical spren seem to be some combination of 'natural phenomenon' or 'thought/emotion' + either Cultivation or Honor.

The coppermind wiki has a list of spren that are seen or believed. Some of these, despite being believed in, are never truly seen, (ex:Groundspren) which indicates that belief isn't everything. Also, if belief was all there was to it, we'd probably see a lot more variability between spren of the same types depending on region, which has yet to be mentioned. Axies seemed to indicate that the alespren could only be found in Iri, but he didn't go into enough detail for us to be sure about how it usually works.

The Nahel spren (Syl and Truthspren) probably operate under a slightly different set of rules, but I'm not sure how different. After all, I think it was Nohadon's book itself that bound them into their current state that resulted in the Knights Radiants. When Syl expresses that "all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual" she was including herself as well.

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There aren't any in Shinovar, where there aren't Highstorms or Stormlight, and Dalinar doesn't see any in his visions of the past either.

Dalinar doesn't see any, but Nohadon at least mentions Honorspren.

As for no Spren in Shinovar, there are also no Spren on other worlds (that we know of) and Shinovar is also largely sheltered from Highstorms - it's possible that Highstorms and Spren are very closely related (perhaps something about Stormlight alters the Cognitive realm in some fundamental way, or it's actually 'bleeding' over into the Physical).

I actually had a thought about Spren the other day, which others have probably had before me; it's to do with Spren and the Cognitive realm, and how Flamespren become fixed when measured.

I would say that if Spren are Cognitive beings (or Spiritual beings heavily influenced by Cognitive viewpoints) it would make a certain sense for them to stick when measured - we know that Cognitive interactions (how an object views itself and is viewed by others) form a part of Realmatic Theory. When a Flamespren is measured, the person doing the measuring is imposing a cognitive directive into it (you are THIS length). The fact it only works when written down it either because of a reinforcement (the Cognitive directive is reinforced by the act of recording it) or because there is now an EXTRA cognitive directive (in the form of the record). It would be in interesting (though slightly morbid) experiment to measure a Flamespren, then kill the person who measured it and see if the measurement holds...

FOR SCIENCE!

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I'm not sure how close I'm going to stay to the original topic, but I'll try.

“The more people who know of a Forgery, the more likely it is to fail.”

I think this is more likely a mundane example of failure to preserve a secret. None of Shai's other stamps depended on public opinion. She changed her bedroom from a storage space to the nicest room in the castle, after all. It's also worth noting that she says the Forging on her wall to make it a piece of artwork worked partially because she thought it would appeal to the wall more to be beautiful than to be boring.

It really does seem like a more magical "Fail" when you read it, though. I have some thoughts higher up in the thread about the degree of "animosity" towards a Forgery mattering.

I am curious about how the interaction between Soulcasting and Soulstamping would work. For example, if you use Soulcasting to change a rock into bread, would it be easier to Forge it into a different type of rock or a different type of bread? I don't think it'll ever come up in the series.

I agree, it probably won't come up. If it did, though, I think there are two rather clear ways it would work:

Case 1: Soulcast rock->bread at t0, try to Forge it at t2 such as to change its history at t1. In this case, I think the bread would act like bread, since it seems that what was once soulcast stays very firmly soulcast: rocks turning back into rocks a few years after they've been incorporated into your body would not be nice.

Case 2: Soulcast rock->bread at t1, try to Forge it at t2 such as to change its history at t0. Now this one gets interesting. I think objects can recall their histories, since Shallans' goblet knew that it had been in one form for a long time. So you might actually be able to Forge a soulcast object such that it was never soulcast, or such that it was soulcast differently. It all depends on whether somethings history is completely wiped whenever you soulcast it, as well as if Forgery can simulate other magic systems. I think it should retain its history and Forgery is that versatile, and so the Forgery should work and change history at t0.

Kaladin's mother thinks of everything having a spren, which actually seems a bit closer to the whole "everything has a cognitive aspect" bit. When Shallan goes to Shadesmar, she thinks of the goblet's cognitive aspect as a spren. I think they might be a bit off the mark, because when we see spren, they're a bit more limited than that. There aren't any in Shinovar, where there aren't Highstorms or Stormlight, and Dalinar doesn't see any in his visions of the past either.

Yeah, thinking about it, I don't think "spren == Cognitive aspects" will cut it. Two plausible options (and one less plausible) occur to me:

1) Spren are Cognitive, true, but are not Cognitive aspects. Rosharians are conflating the two because they are rather similar and it makes the whole system easier to understand, rather than having to posit that their are two distinct kinds of Cogniitive existences. I think this one is most likely.

2) Spren are not necessarily Cognitive aspects (they get their existence from Honor/Cultivation), but do tend to latch onto objects whenever they don't have anything better to do.

3) (Less plausible): Spren started out as Cognitive aspects, but Honor/Cultivation's presence on Roshar, as well as Stormlight supercharged them and gave them more independent existence. So every Cognitive aspect is a potential spren, with Cognitive aspects undergoing mitosis under the effects of Stormlight and letting a spren go off into the wild while he original object still gets to have an aspect of its own.

I think Dalinar not seeing any spren at all in his visions is either some quirk of the visions (is Honor blind to spren?) or just an accident on Brandon's part. We know that at least bonding spren exist, from Nohadon, and the sudden onset of spren at some point in history would seem to be a pretty big event, on par with the Recreance or the Desolations. The kind of thing that gets mentioned.

Recall also that spren really aren't mentioned that much in the book: they're background noise that Brandon intentionally has people not pay attention to, because he wants to give the impression that they are simply natural to and accepted in the world. Dalinar's scenes are pretty heavily focused on some weighty stuff, so it's understandable that mentioning/noticing spren would be secondary.

Typical spren seem to be some combination of 'natural phenomenon' or 'thought/emotion' + either Cultivation or Honor.

The coppermind wiki has a list of spren that are seen or believed. Some of these, despite being believed in, are never truly seen, (ex:Groundspren) which indicates that belief isn't everything. Also, if belief was all there was to it, we'd probably see a lot more variability between spren of the same types depending on region, which has yet to be mentioned. Axies seemed to indicate that the alespren could only be found in Iri, but he didn't go into enough detail for us to be sure about how it usually works.

I think I'd seen this one before, but I hadn't remembered it:

http://www.stormblessed.com/2010/12/25/interview-with-brandon-sanderson/

Q: The spren are a really unique part of Roshar. Do you have rules for deciding what “gets” spren (wind, flames, glory, creation, life, death) and what doesn’t? Have you introduced most of the spren types, or will we see a lot of new ones as the series goes on?

A: You will find out much more about the spren as the series goes on. There are a lot of things that get spren where the spren are not noticeable, or they only occur in very rare circumstances or in certain regions, as Axies explains. So the phrase “There’s a spren for that” that I’ve seen popping around on the internet is actually fairly accurate. There’s a spren for quite a lot of things. I don’t want to delve too deeply into this until I’ve written more in the series and you begin to understand exactly what the spren are.

So groundspren can still be a thing, just not be "noticeable". And Axies was right that some spren require rare circumstances and/or regions.

I'm not so much positing variations of flamespren as variations on whether or not there are ale-spren. I'd hold that the "Fire" form is essentially universal on Roshar, and so transcends regional boundaries and has a single, universally accessed and formed existence.

The Nahel spren (Syl and Truthspren) probably operate under a slightly different set of rules, but I'm not sure how different. After all, I think it was Nohadon's book itself that bound them into their current state that resulted in the Knights Radiants. When Syl expresses that "all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual" she was including herself as well.

Actually, she quite explicitly wasn't including herself.

"People are discord," Syl said.

"What does that mean?" [Kaladin said]

"You all act differently and think differently. Nothing else is like that--animals act alike, and all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual...

[...]

"But not all windspren act alike," Kaladin said... "You're proof of that."

"I know," she said softly. "Maybe now you can see why it bothers me so."

(WoK 262)

I read the "virtually the same individual" just to mean that there wasn't much to differentiate them. So, under my theory, they're all basically blank slates that latch onto Forms and act in the same way in relation to their environments.

---

Also, fun fact, I've been trying to generalize "Forms", though I went off on a bit of a Forgery tangent.

Dalinar doesn't see any, but Nohadon at least mentions Honorspren.

As for no Spren in Shinovar, there are also no Spren on other worlds (that we know of) and Shinovar is also largely sheltered from Highstorms - it's possible that Highstorms and Spren are very closely related (perhaps something about Stormlight alters the Cognitive realm in some fundamental way, or it's actually 'bleeding' over into the Physical).

I actually had a thought about Spren the other day, which others have probably had before me; it's to do with Spren and the Cognitive realm, and how Flamespren become fixed when measured.

I would say that if Spren are Cognitive beings (or Spiritual beings heavily influenced by Cognitive viewpoints) it would make a certain sense for them to stick when measured - we know that Cognitive interactions (how an object views itself and is viewed by others) form a part of Realmatic Theory. When a Flamespren is measured, the person doing the measuring is imposing a cognitive directive into it (you are THIS length). The fact it only works when written down it either because of a reinforcement (the Cognitive directive is reinforced by the act of recording it) or because there is now an EXTRA cognitive directive (in the form of the record). It would be in interesting (though slightly morbid) experiment to measure a Flamespren, then kill the person who measured it and see if the measurement holds...

FOR SCIENCE!

I basically agree with this. The fact that someone else doing the recording unbeknownst to the person doing the measuring still works to lock spren down, though, means that there are some more complicated things going on. Spren seem to be able to tell, on a very macro level, whether their attributes have been recorded.

While both Ashir and Geranid knew that he was calling out real sizes (really, it should have been double-blind), only Geranid knew when she wrote it down, and that was in response to a mere report from Ashir. So the spren either had to be able to access both of their perceptions of it or access Geranid's very weak "I suppose Ashir is calling out real measurements" belief. The spren was also immediately "freed" when they erased the measurement.

It could be the case that even a double-blind situation would freeze a spren. SCIENCE TIME!

Scenario:

Alice is measuring a flamespren, but only calls out real numbers half the time.

Bob--a very unimaginative and unintuitive man, who couldn't tell a truth from a lie if you color-coded them--is listening to Alice, and then calls out all of her numbers to Chuck. He has no idea of which numbers are right, so no tonal indicators or anything to mess up the experiment.

Chuck randomly chooses one of Bob's reports to write down. He has a 50% chance of believing that any given report is true.

There are 5 possible results that we care about:

1) Alice tells a true measure, Bob repeats it, Chuck believes it and writes it down. (T/T)

-Either the spren freezes or it doesn't.

--If it does, then the spren has to be able to access at least the fact that Chuck wrote it down and most likely someone's belief in its truth, either Chuck or Alice.

--If it doesn't, then Ashir's belief was all that mattered and he subconsciously knew that Geranid was writing it down.

2) Alice tells a true measure, Bob repeats it, Chuck disbelieves it, but still writes it down. (T/F)

-Either the spren freezes or it doesn't

--If it does, then the spren only needs to access Alice's belief in its size and the fact that that size was written down.

--If it doesn't, then the spren has to know that the recorder believes what he is writing, at the very least.

3) Alice tells a false measure, Bob repeats it, Chuck believes it and writes it down. (F/T)

-Either the spren freezes or it doesn't

--If it does, then the only thing the spren needs is the recorder's belief. This also opens the door to spren being permanently locked down if anyone "knows" that it's size has been recorded.

--If it doesn't, then the spren needs to access Alice's belief in the truth in order to be frozen.

4) Alice tells a false measure, Bob repeats it, Chuck disbelieves it, but still writes it down. (F/F)

-Either the spren freezes or it doesn't

--If it does, then literally writing down any measure that is meant to be related to an individual spren is enough to lock it down.

--If it doesn't, then the world is a more sensible place.

5) Alice tells any measure, Bob repeats, Chuck doesn't write it.

-Nothing happens. That was easy to write up.

There is also the question of how significant the fact actually being recorded on some medium is. Does the spren only access the belief in people's mind that some writing is meaningful, or does it actually understand the meaning of numbers and letters on a page? More experiments!

And, obviously, more information is learned by finding out exactly what sets of circumstances can freeze spren. A world where both F/T but not T/F results in freezing spren is different from a T/F and F/T world.

Now replace Alice and/or Chuck with a robot and things get more interesting. Can the spren access the truth or falsity of the report given by a deadmind? (5 awesome points if you get the reference without looking it up)

Edited by Kurkistan
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  • 1 month later...

Update:

 

As pointed out first here by Senor Fresh--that fast-acting cremling--Brandon has divulged some info on the nature of Spren:


Rutthed:

 

 

Serious question: are there poopspren, and how would they fare in indoor plumbing situations?

mistborn:

 

 

Well, it depends on how you're defining spren. In the books, they don't make a distinction, but there are several varieties. At the basic level, everything has an identity--a soul, you might say, but more than that. This is based on how it is viewed, and how long it has been viewed that way. Feces would have this, but wouldn't have a very strong cognitive identity because of its transitional nature.

 

Other types of spren, the type that characters see and interact with, are cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time. These are usually related to forces or emotions, and don't relate to this particular topic.

 

 

And that's far more than I ever expected to say on this...

 

This applies to my mondo (and highly off-topic at this point) thread about "Forms" in general, but obviously has some small impact here.

 

So we get a second confirmation of "personifications" to add onto our "Window" example, and we have a definite expansion to ideals/concepts as well as physical objects.

 

Spren-wise, we're a bit up in the air about their nature still. On the one hand, we know that they are of Honor and Cultivation, so can't be just Cognitive aspects. On the other hand, Brandon just said that they are Cognitive aspects. This actually lends a bit of credence to the "Spiritual beings accessing Cognitive stuff" side, on a fundamental level.

 

Also, as a general comment: Unless I'm wrong, I think this quote essentially means that I'm right in the OP. That's nice.

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Everything exists in all three realms. Why wouldn't Shards Spren?

 

But the question is to what degree. Are Spren simply Cognitive aspects that have been boosted by Stormlight, or are they independent beings that happen to latch onto Cognitive aspects? Are "other types of spren" even Spren at all, or are Rosharians mistaken, conflating true Cognitive aspects with Cognitive beings, or Spiritual beings expressing Cognitive ideals?

 

Especially considering how integral they are to the Stormlight Archive, anything we can learn about Spren will be invaluable for broader Realmatics. So yes, Spren likely have three aspects. But it matters how they're expressed in each of the realms.

Edited by Kurkistan
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  • 1 month later...

So if spren are simply cognitive aspects manifest the physical realm, why would they not be present on other worlds.  Realmatics says everything has a physical, spiritual, and cognitive aspect.  Yet spren are only manifest on Roshar.  I think this makes it clear that Cultivation and/or Honor (but to my mind mostly Cultivation since spren seem to jive more strongly with Cultivation's apparent intent) have a definite role, whether direct or indirect, in at least the manifestation of spren in the physical realm. 

 

I agree that, since spren don't seem to be present in Shinovar, it strongly suggests that the highstorms have a role in facilitating the manifestation of spren.  A possible hitch in that Idea is the case of Cusicesh in Kasitor which is just about at the same longitude as the Eastern border of Shinovar.  In other words, if the highstorms have run out of steam so much by the time they reach Shinovar then they would also have run down by the time they reached Kasitor.  If so, and if the spren are juiced by the highstorms, then how could such a large spren be supported in Kasitor.  However, that seemingly large mountain range which completely covers Shinovar's Eastern border could perhaps put a bit of a smackdown on the storms thus protecting Shinovar but not protect Kasitor.

 


Yeah, thinking about it, I don't think "spren == Cognitive aspects" will cut it. Two plausible options (and one less plausible) occur to me:

1) Spren are Cognitive, true, but are not Cognitive aspects. Rosharians are conflating the two because they are rather similar and it makes the whole system easier to understand, rather than having to posit that their are two distinct kinds of Cogniitive existences. I think this one is most likely.

2) Spren are not necessarily Cognitive aspects (they get their existence from Honor/Cultivation), but do tend to latch onto objects whenever they don't have anything better to do.

3) (Less plausible): Spren started out as Cognitive aspects, but Honor/Cultivation's presence on Roshar, as well as Stormlight supercharged them and gave them more independent existence. So every Cognitive aspect is a potential spren, with Cognitive aspects undergoing mitosis under the effects of Stormlight and letting a spren go off into the wild while he original object still gets to have an aspect of its own.

 

I am leaning towards the Catquisitor's first posibility.  With Hessina's description of spren, there seems to be a simple-completeness-and-readiness-with-vague-answers-which-don't-seem-to-quite-jive-upon-examination that tends to only come packaged in folk wisdom.  You know, the kind of answer you give your kid after they have responded with "Why?" a fourth time after a series of explanations to the first 3 why's.  So, while there is very likely a foundation of truth to what she says, it seems she is rolling a number of things together in a neat vague package.

 

As to Dalinar not seeing spren in his vision, does he ever note a conspicuous absence of spren or are we drawing conclusions because of the lack of mention of spren?  I like the idea of Honor being blind to spren.

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