Spren and Shades

[Ciridae]

Shades and nahel spren have a lot in common and I think by looking at the mechanics of how spren work and comparing the two we can guess some things about shades and the Forests of Hell. 

1. Both seem to be primarily cognitive entities made of investiture that can have a presence in the PR.

2. In the PR both go stupid, they lose most of their cognitive abilities. Spren need to relearn language and basic social interactions, shades don't seem to retain much of anything that made them human. 

3. In their physical manifestation they have the ability to harm the spiritual aspects of living beings, Shardblade cuts and withering are extremely similar.

4. Cognitive shadows are something like people-spren. Relevant WoB, emphasis added:

Quote

QUESTION

So if I’m a Surgebinder and I have my own Cognitive entity with me, can I go off-world with that and [have] everything continue to work in exactly the same way? Because we’ve seen Cognitive entities that--

BRANDON SANDERSON

So...taking a Cognitive entity off-world is hard. So, Surgebinding, if you can find out how to make it happen, remember, the Investiture is keyed to Connection. This is why Kelsier is--Oh, sorry, spoilers! When a certain somebody [laughter] getting off Scadrial, because he basically was a spren by that point so…[laughter] So, yeah Surgebinding would work off planet, but you’d have to get the spren off first. It’s hard to do. Well, Cosmere-wide it’s not hard hard...You could learn how.

basically was a spren by that point so…[laughter] So, yeah Surgebinding would work off planet, but you’d have to get the spren off first. It’s hard to do. Well, Cosmere-wide it’s not hard hard...You could learn how.

We know how Kelsier was made a cognitive shadow, the Well anchored his soul to the CR and replaced it with investiture in the process. We also know that Ambition left chunks of their power near Threnody. 

This part is my best guess at what hapoens when you turn into a shade. Presumably for shades to be created there has to be a significant amount of investiture that can turn the soul of someone who was killed by shades into a person-spren. The investiture has to be in the Cognitive Realm, shades only exist in the Forests of Hell and we know that the CR is location dependant. I would have to guess and say that Odium went back after the fight and put the chunk of Ambition into the CR like he did on Sel.

So after dying by shade-attack the person's soul is quickly spren-ified by whatever the source of investiture is, presumably a piece of Ambition. The person-spren is then, for reasons I cannot explain, thrust into the physical realm to become what we know as shades. In the AU essay Khriss writes that people and planet were both twisted by the pieces of Ambition. It would be interesting to know if only people from Threnody can become shades.

Khriss says that the perpendicularities are unstable, and of morbid origin. If there is a large enough source of investiture in the cognitive realm ready to turn someone into a shade when that person dies, that could be what she is referring to. This would imply that the source of investiture could move around which would be pretty weird.

Whatever that source of investiture is, it's not alone. In Secret History Nazh tells Kelsier that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is an important rite with requirements and traditions. So the people of the homeland presumably had their own chunk of investiture to turn some who were privy to the knowledge into Cognitive Shadows. This is just a guess, but if something went wrong that investiture could be what later turned into the Evil.

As a sidenote, the longer spren on Roshar are connected to someone in the Physical Realm, the more they regain their personality. I think we see something similar with Silence and her grandmother. The Nahel bond is very different from Silence's situation, but her grandmother's shade is always close to her and the book makes clear what an important role Silence's grandmother had in her life. They are not bonded, but I think the lingering Connection is why her grandmother is not as far removed from humanity as the other shades are, and why she is able to help Silence.

None of this explains why shades only appear at night or how the simple rules come into play or why only people who die through shade-attacks turn into shades themselves. I don't think we've seen anything comparable in the cosmere so far that could give any clues about what is happening there.

Let me know what you think!

[StrikerEZ]

On 6/10/2017 at 4:55 PM, Ciridae said:

Whatever that source of investiture is, it's not alone. In Secret History Nazh tells Kelsier that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is an important rite with requirements and traditions. So the people of the homeland presumably had their own chunk of investiture to turn some who were privy to the knowledge into Cognitive Shadows. This is just a guess, but if something went wrong that investiture could be what later turned into the Evil.

So, I really like your theory, but this is the only part I'm not quite sure about. We know that the Shades were there before the Evil came to the homeland, so I'm not sure if it's safe to assume that the Evil is the same type of Investiture as what's in the Forests of Hell. I could get behind the idea that the Forests' Investiture started creating Shades when Ambition was splintered there, though that doesn't explain the Evil on the homeland later. 

Besides that, I really like you theory. I'll let others have the pleasure of tearing it apart. 

[Calderis]

45 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

So, I really like your theory, but this is the only part I'm not quite sure about. We know that the Shades were there before the Evil came to the homeland, so I'm not sure if it's safe to assume that the Evil is the same type of Investiture as what's in the Forests of Hell. I could get behind the idea that the Forests' Investiture started creating Shades when Ambition was splintered there, though that doesn't explain the Evil on the homeland later. 

Besides that, I really like you theory. I'll let others have the pleasure of tearing it apart. 

We know that there were Cognitive Shadows prior via Nazh. I don't think Shades as we know them has been confirmed. 

[Ciridae]

I don't think the evil necessarily has to be the same type of investiture as in the forests, Khriss says that some of of the investiture was there before the clash of Odium and Ambition. But I think it's reasonable to assume that the is a large enough piece of investiture in the homeland, large enough to create cognitive shadows, but not large enough to create a stable perpendicularity. 

I really can't say for sure about the evil, it just seems to fit that that large piece of investiture is somehow responsible for the only supernatural things we hear about the homeland.

[+hwiles]

@Ciridae First, awesome theory, have an upvote!

As to why the Shades manifest in the PR..You reasoning for how a person killed by a Shade is spren-ified seems perfectly sound to me:

1. Person gets killed by a Shade, which is an entity composed of Investiture speculated to have been corrupted in some way by Ambition and Odium's fight
2. Person's soul begins transitioning between the realms in the same manner we're familiar with via secret history
3. Free Investiture, possibly formerly belonging to Ambition and/or corrupted by Odium, pours into the temporary opening between the realms created by the soul's transition
4. This free Investiture takes the shape of, replaces, or otherwise combines with the now deceased person's soul

I would therefore propose the following extrapolations:

1. When a shade is created, it retains some of the Connection/Identity of the person it was made from, which makes sense if you consider that it was essentially cast in their image; this helps explain why they manifest in the PR rather than just the CR
2. The free Investiture is Connected to the Shades, which is why people who die naturally don't manifest as Shades; IE, the free Investiture isn't within close enough proximity in the PR or CR to flood in and sprenify their soul during their transition to the Beyond.
3. The free Investiture (or piece of Ambition, whatever) creates a short-lived perpendicularity during the sprenification process since perpendicularities are simply places where highly concentrated Investiture creates a bridge between realms.

Feel free to incorporate or reject out of hand these additional speculative points as you will.

[Spoolofwhool]

7 hours ago, hwiles said:

Free Investiture, possibly formerly belonging to Ambition and/or corrupted by Odium, pours into the temporary opening between the realms created by the soul's transition

Unlikely to have been corrupted by Odium as he has been careful not to leave pieces of his investiture behind, which would weaken his whole.

7 hours ago, hwiles said:

The free Investiture is Connected to the Shades, which is why people who die naturally don't manifest as Shades; IE, the free Investiture isn't within close enough proximity in the PR or CR to flood in and sprenify their soul during their transition to the Beyond.

Alternative explanation than distance as why death by shade is required to make a shade: As you say, there would need to be some method to connect the person to the investiture. My explanation is more directly the withering process. Withering involves an injection of investiture into the target, which slowly destroys the body. As that investiture likely comes from the shade, it's probably of the same nature as the investiture which turned them into cognitive shadows. Therefore, that same type of investiture permeating you and killing you, would likely create a connection between the soul and the greater source of that investiture in the spiritual (assuming it is in the Spiritual Realm, which I think is valid since that's the default location for investiture.) The connection would then allow the investiture to convert the severed cognitive/spiritual into a cognitive shadow. I'll point out that per the distance theory, this would mean that if you died right next to a shade, you could turn into a shade. Furthermore, it seems to be that withering is connected to turning into a shade, and you may not wither away next to a shade. For instance, I doubt Silence's grandmother died next to a shade outside the in, then Silence opened the rings to force the shade in. Feels more likely she died and became a shade inside the rings. 

[Ciridae]

@Spoolofwhool That's a great elaboration, I agree with most of what you say. I'm not sure about the investiture being in the spiritual realm though, if being killed by a shade connects you to that investiture, turning you into a shade, then where did the first shade come from?

12 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I'll point out that per the distance theory, this would mean that if you died right next to a shade, you could turn into a shade.

I think this might be the answer to that question. Assuming the investiture is in the CR, if you died in the PR equivalent to the CR location of the investiture, you might be turned into a shade.

Khriss seems to imply that withering isn't the only way to become a shade:

Quote

"People on Threnody are afflicted with a particular ailment that—upon death—sometimes turns them into what we call a Cognitive Shadow."

She also believes that it has to do with people from Threnody specifically. We know that the people were twisted by the chunks of Ambition, but I can't tell where that detail fits into the theory.

[Spoolofwhool]

48 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

That's a great elaboration, I agree with most of what you say. I'm not sure about the investiture being in the spiritual realm though, if being killed by a shade connects you to that investiture, turning you into a shade, then where did the first shade come from?

51 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

I think this might be the answer to that question. Assuming the investiture is in the CR, if you died in the PR equivalent to the CR location of the investiture, you might be turned into a shade.

The investiture of a shard is usually in the Spiritual Realm, and requires some force to move it to being stored in the Cognitive Realm instead, as seen with the Dor. We haven't heard anything which indicates that this would be the case, so I'm assuming that the bulk of the power is in the Spiritual Realm, where location doesn't matter.

There would be other ways of connecting to the investiture. Withering by shades is just what I speculated as the most common way of doing so currently.

58 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

She also believes that it has to do with people from Threnody specifically. We know that the people were twisted by the chunks of Ambition, but I can't tell where that detail fits into the theory.

My opinion is that turning into cognitive shadows is a process which has existed on Threnody for a long time. Ambition's investiture simply changed parts of the process, and/or created variations in the kinds of cognitive shadows created.

[Calderis]

6 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

My opinion is that turning into cognitive shadows is a process which has existed on Threnody for a long time. Ambition's investiture simply changed parts of the process, and/or created variations in the kinds of cognitive shadows created.

Seeing as Threnody is a world without a Shard, I've always assumed that the creation of a Cognitive Shadow is a cosmere wide thing that if understood properly, anyone can do.

Certain groups on Threnody have just come to understand the process. 

[Spoolofwhool]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

Seeing as Threnody is a world without a Shard, I've always assumed that the creation of a Cognitive Shadow is a cosmere wide thing that if understood properly, anyone can do.

Certain groups on Threnody have just come to understand the process. 

That can be the case. Note however Khriss' remarks on Threnody in the essay:

Quote

Judging by the records that Nazh has provided, I have concluded that some measure of Investiture must have existed on this planet before the battle between Shards.

People on Threnody are afflicted with a particular ailment that—upon death—sometimes turns them into what we call a Cognitive Shadow. I will leave aside the nature of whether or not a Cognitive Shadow is actually the soul of the person—this is a question for a theologian or a philosopher. I can, however, explain what is happening magically. A spirit infused with extra Investiture will often imprint upon that very power. Much as the spren of Roshar become self-aware over time because of people’s focus on the Surges as being alive, this excess Investiture can attain the ability to remain sapient after being separated from its Physical form. Locally they think of these things as ghosts, though really they are instantiations of self-aware (well, in this case, barely self-aware) Investiture.

First of all, it seems that despite there being no shard, there was a higher than usual amount of investiture permeating the planet. That could cause some sort of natural cognitive shadow creation to occur. The second line seems to indicate that there made be some process occurring which isn't being consciously directed by people. This WoB seems to treat it more as a phenomenon or natural mechanic than a process people are intentionally working towards. 

Quote

[...]

RHANDRIC

That's something that stood out to me, because in all your other magic systems that we've seen so far there has to be some sort of snapping to occur, and that's unique, because- [...] Is there an active magic system on Threnody?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Threnody has a non Shard-based...it depends on what you call a magic system. Do spirits coming back from the dead count as magic? It's science to them, but, it's goofy science.

[Source]

 

[Crucible of Shards]

I always thought that when Hoid waltzed into the WoA chamber riding a dead body (Or mostly dead?) that it had something to do with the morbid origin of Threnodite perpendicularities. But I have no proof

[The One Who Connects]

6 minutes ago, Crucible of Shards said:

I always thought that when Hoid waltzed into the WoA chamber riding a dead body (Or mostly dead?) that it had something to do with the morbid origin of Threnodite perpendicularities. But I have no proof

Doesn't completely contradict your line of reasoning, but we have this entry (bold added)

Quote

Question

So, why did Hoid in Secret History have to ride on another person to get to the Well, when that person could float on--

Brandon Sanderson

Sooo, what he’s floating on is a Cognitive Shadow, it’s a spirit, it’s not an actual person.

Question

Do we know them?

Brandon Sanderson

You don’t know them, don’t worry about them. But see, he’s using that as a boat because it’s easy to sink through the mist. And if you notice, he has to coat his oar with Investiture in order to move him. So yeah, he’s floating on a person’s soul. It was so much easier with the Pits, but that’s because there were boats and things.

[Crucible of Shards]

Thanks, once again, @The One Who Connects I feel a bit guilty that you seem to do all my WoB hunting for me.

[Calderis]

5 minutes ago, Crucible of Shards said:

Thanks, once again, @The One Who Connects I feel a bit guilty that you seem to do all my WoB hunting for me.

I've gotten a little better, but between him and @Extesian, I completely understand your sense of guilt. 

[The One Who Connects]

Just now, Calderis said:

I've gotten a little better, but between him and @Extesian, I completely understand your sense of guilt. 

Just now, Crucible of Shards said:

I feel a bit guilty that you seem to do all my WoB hunting for me.

I'm online, you mention something that I remember/know about, I find it. Nothing to feel guilty about.
You mention something that I've got no clue about, odds are somebody else does and does the same thing anyway

[+Extesian]

7 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I'm online, you mention something that I remember/know about, I find it. Nothing to feel guilty about.
You mention something that I've got no clue about, odds are somebody else does and does the same thing anyway

And to add to this, I need questions to focus my learnings. I've learnt more about the Cosmere trying to answer other people's questions than through any other means. I'm a researcher at heart so I like a book or WoB reference for EVERYTHING. The process of finding them has made the Cosmere and my reading so much more enjoyable.

So no guilt necessary, I love doing it (I've just been busy lately). But I also encourage people to do it themselves, if they want, to share that benefit

[bmcclure7]

On 6/10/2017 at 4:55 PM, Ciridae said:

Shades and nahel spren have a lot in common and I think by looking at the mechanics of how spren work and comparing the two we can guess some things about shades and the Forests of Hell. 

1. Both seem to be primarily cognitive entities made of investiture that can have a presence in the PR.

2. In the PR both go stupid, they lose most of their cognitive abilities. Spren need to relearn language and basic social interactions, shades don't seem to retain much of anything that made them human. 

3. In their physical manifestation they have the ability to harm the spiritual aspects of living beings, Shardblade cuts and withering are extremely similar.

4. Cognitive shadows are something like people-spren. Relevant WoB, emphasis added:

We know how Kelsier was made a cognitive shadow, the Well anchored his soul to the CR and replaced it with investiture in the process. We also know that Ambition left chunks of their power near Threnody. 

This part is my best guess at what hapoens when you turn into a shade. Presumably for shades to be created there has to be a significant amount of investiture that can turn the soul of someone who was killed by shades into a person-spren. The investiture has to be in the Cognitive Realm, shades only exist in the Forests of Hell and we know that the CR is location dependant. I would have to guess and say that Odium went back after the fight and put the chunk of Ambition into the CR like he did on Sel.

So after dying by shade-attack the person's soul is quickly spren-ified by whatever the source of investiture is, presumably a piece of Ambition. The person-spren is then, for reasons I cannot explain, thrust into the physical realm to become what we know as shades. In the AU essay Khriss writes that people and planet were both twisted by the pieces of Ambition. It would be interesting to know if only people from Threnody can become shades.

Khriss says that the perpendicularities are unstable, and of morbid origin. If there is a large enough source of investiture in the cognitive realm ready to turn someone into a shade when that person dies, that could be what she is referring to. This would imply that the source of investiture could move around which would be pretty weird.

Whatever that source of investiture is, it's not alone. In Secret History Nazh tells Kelsier that becoming a Cognitive Shadow is an important rite with requirements and traditions. So the people of the homeland presumably had their own chunk of investiture to turn some who were privy to the knowledge into Cognitive Shadows. This is just a guess, but if something went wrong that investiture could be what later turned into the Evil.

As a sidenote, the longer spren on Roshar are connected to someone in the Physical Realm, the more they regain their personality. I think we see something similar with Silence and her grandmother. The Nahel bond is very different from Silence's situation, but her grandmother's shade is always close to her and the book makes clear what an important role Silence's grandmother had in her life. They are not bonded, but I think the lingering Connection is why her grandmother is not as far removed from humanity as the other shades are, and why she is able to help Silence.

None of this explains why shades only appear at night or how the simple rules come into play or why only people who die through shade-attacks turn into shades themselves. I don't think we've seen anything comparable in the cosmere so far that could give any clues about what is happening there.

Let me know what you think!

If  That is so is it possible you think for  Silence to bond her grandmother?  If so she might gain magical abilities the same way the knights radiant gain abilities.  This could be the start of a hole new magic system for one Sanderson future books.

[Kramerfarve]

Could what makes the shades different from other cognitive entities be that they are partial avatars? 

I know we don’t know a lot about avatars yet, but it is assumed they have access to the shardpool, correct?

When a shade kills someone therefore, it suffuses them not just with investiture, but the shardpool of Ambition, connecting with the dormant parts of Ambition already in the spiritweb . Death separates the physical body, but the cognitive entity is forced back into the physical realm with the same pressure of the dor. Cognitive entity loses its mind etc etc.

If this is true, could shades be avatars missing their bodies?