Iriali and the Long Trail

[Calderis]

1 minute ago, Jonathon said:

What if the one is ambition? I mean, we know that ambition was splintered before being fully invested in threnody and we know that it was splintered away from the planet. What we don't know is where the splinters of its power went. Perhaps when ambition knew he was dying he turned himself into a race of people and instilled in them a belief in The One, which was weakened over time. That could explain why he fled from odium which doesn't seem like a very ambitious thing to do. Instead, He ambitiously created a group of people to traverse different invested systems with the hope that one day they will be able to reform into Ambition so that he can live once again. 

Ha, it's crazy but I like it. The Vessel is dying and knows that the shard is going to splinter, so he shoves all of the investiture into a people before they die in an ambitious ploy to safeguard the shard for rebirth in the future. 

Probably not true, but fun to consider. 

[FiveLate]

@Extesian

It is the combination of eyes, skin and hair that is the key though.  These work off of two totally interactive gene sets. This means that some of the genes will express all 3 traits, some will express in 2 of the 3, some will only express in 1 of the 3.  There are also genes will turn on and off some of these other genes, some of which are recessive.  

For example, eye color has over 10 known genes affecting it. This link goes into more detail. NIH 

Yellow eyes are technically not a normal human color.  When I see it, I generally think it refers to Amber eyes like this. 

Quote

During a study conducted at Rotterdam in (2009) it was discovered that the prediction of eye color could be done using only six out of sixteen SNPs. However, this specification could not account for the many variations that occur with brown, blue and hazel eye colors, including amber. So the exact coming together of the genes and genomes responsible for causing amber eye color still has not been isolated and identified. 

More info Here.. 

Interestingly, only certain general genotypes in South America and Asia express this phenotype.  That makes it a fairly good indicator of Asiatic ancestors (Native Americans being most closely genetically related to far Eastern Asains) regardless of skin and hair.

Therefore Yellow/Amber eyes spotted in the cosmere are probably the best indication of a common descent with the Iriali!

Edited July 13, 2017 by FiveLate
Stupid autocorrect.

[+Extesian]

@Jonathon your idea intrigues me. I’d been putting the religion of One (no matter how close to my heart it may be) down to manipulation by Bavadin. Of course I’m not committed to the Bavadin idea, but she’s in the business of hijacking and inventing religions so I see it as classic Autonomy. Perhaps she is even able to remain Connected enough to her worshippers that she actually does ‘learn’ their experiences upon their death. I wasn’t looking at the religion so literally.

But the idea that a Shard could have expended its power completely to create a race of people is really interesting. I feel like it’s less likely than religious invention, and I have my doubts it’s realmatically possible – but I like it nonetheless. Thanks!

 

I feel less warm to the Ambition idea for a range of Shard-related reasons. But again, your argument has coherence to it.

@FiveLate your analysis of physiological reasons for eye colour is pretty interesting. I think it is maybe less applicable to the Cosmere because of how much funky business goes on with something like eye colour, particularly on Roshar. Even on Taldain, as I noted, Kenton's eyes change when he's using large amounts of kinetic investiture. But of course Roshar is a whole other barrel of chulls. It's the place where a person's eyes change colour completely with bonding a sentient splinter. I suspect the Iriali colours are much more due to realmatic reasons than biological. But thanks for the input as I too often only think realmatically  The fact that eye colour, genetically, could be a good indication of Iriali descent is good though, it makes my slightly flimsy way of exploring linkages a little less flimsy!

Edited July 13, 2017 by Extesian

[Jonathon]

23 hours ago, Calderis said:

Ha, it's crazy but I like it. The Vessel is dying and knows that the shard is going to splinter, so he shoves all of the investiture into a people before they die in an ambitious ploy to safeguard the shard for rebirth in the future. 

Probably not true, but fun to consider. 

Grab something to hold onto, because this is about to get crazier. What if, going by my previous line of reasoning, this could mean that ambition is the shard that just wants to survive? This part is even less likely than the rest of my theory, but depending on when that WOB is from, and when we learned the name of ambition, it is theoretically possible... maybe?

[Calderis]

28 minutes ago, Jonathon said:

Grab something to hold onto, because this is about to get crazier. What if, going by my previous line of reasoning, this could mean that ambition is the shard that just wants to survive? This part is even less likely than the rest of my theory, but depending on when that WOB is from, and when we learned the name of ambition, it is theoretically possible... maybe?

Well I suppose if a Shard wanted to hide and survive, masking yourself within the inate investiture of an entire race would be an effective way to do it. 

[Toaster Retribution]

Ambition is splintered though, AU says that, and it also implies that Odium did the splintering. And a splintered shard lacks awareness as far as I know. If Ambition is the creator of the Irali (which I personally doubt) he is probably not actively trying to hide, since he doesnt really have a state of mind.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

6 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Ambition is splintered though, AU says that, and it also implies that Odium did the splintering. And a splintered shard lacks awareness as far as I know. If Ambition is the creator of the Irali (which I personally doubt) he is probably not actively trying to hide, since he doesnt really have a state of mind.

Well, implies Odium doesn't mean it was Odium. It could be that Odium mortally wounded Ambition in the Threnodite System, then Ambition fled. It wouldn't be the first time a Shard had a certain amount of time between when it was inevitably going to die and when it's mind gave out (yes, I'm thinking of Preservation). So, Ambition escapes the Threnotide system and hides on another planet, splintering himself intentionally into the Iriali. Odium comes looking, and eventually gives up, determining that Ambition was already mortally wounded and must have founds some hole somewhere to die. And he can't spend too much time looking into any system for fear of investing into it.

Now, I personally don't think that's the case, and think that the Iriali are from a different shard, but I still think it's possible. But for me the main point against Ambition is the Intent of the Iriali themselves. I'm thinking of how a Shard's intent will slowly override the will of the shardholder, with the process slowed down the more the shardholder's mind was already compatible with the Shard's intent. I think that the same would apply to a Splinter. After all, Seons show extreme dedication, Skaze seem somewhat evil (mostly going off of Brandon's description as "Evil Seons"), and most spren have a personality that would go in the same direction as their origin shard. So, the concept is that the Iriali were created with this concept of the Long Trail at the core of who they are, so they go from world 1 to world 4. However, they slow down, in part because the Shard's intent is starting to override this concept of finding the 7th land. So, Iriali who's personalities were already quite compatible with the Shard's intent retained the desire to keep going along the Long Trail, while other's lost it, which is why the have been on Roshar so long, and don't really show that many signs of leaving any time soon. This would explain the line "More people did know this, once. It's not talked about as much as it should be...".

So, if I'm right, then it would mean that we should be able to guess at what shard created them by looking at the Iriali's personalities. Essentially, if we can identify what the "stereotypical" Iriali would look like, then we might have a clue as to what shard created them. And no offense, but I don't see ambition being their father-shard. I'd expect a collection of Ambition-splinters to be a very industrious, and somewhat warlike people, constantly expanding.

Now, I don't remember much of the Iriali. When I read the SA books, I wasn't aware of the Cosmere, and they were lost with the descriptions of all the other people of Roshar. I mean, there are a lot or different cultures in these books. So if anyone can analyse the Iriali stereotypes, it can't really be me.

[Toaster Retribution]

@Lord Maelstrom Ym is Irali. Otherwise I dont think we have seen too many of them.

Axies was in one of the Irali cities (Kasitor) in his Interlude. I just reread it, here are some things about the Irali from that, if anyone is interested:

-They are very particular about a lot of things, which included chastity laws.

-They are not as prudish as the Vorin people.

-The purer Irali blood you have, the more golden locks you have. 

-Axies tattoos are not "that noteworthy" in Kasitor. I take that to mean that tattoos are not uncommon in Kasitor.

-Some of the people in Kasitor (Irali I assume) worship Cusicesh, so The One is not the only religion. The mad beggar Axies encounter also mentions the Northern God, but I dont know how credible he is.

In addition to this, I checked on Coppermind, and their capital, Rall Ellorim is called the City of Shadows for some reason. 

Maybe someone intelligent can make something out of all this. 

[Calderis]

@Lord Maelstrom every person on Scadrial is primarily invested by Preservation, but they can be destructive. Once a Shard is placed into a living breathing humanoid body I don't think that the intent can act it til it hits a threshold that would qualify them as a splinter, and the Iriali aren't. If the point of the Long Trail is, as @Jonathonsuggested, to hide and survive, there's going to be a larger portion of investiture in the Iriali than normal, but not enough to make them detectable to another Shard. 

Assuming that this is true, which I have to repeat it's a long shot, then investing in each individual would have to be a low enough amount that they are maybe, a little healthier, a little longer lived. Make them them motivated by the intent of the shard would be counterproductive to the goal. 

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

@Lord Maelstrom every person on Scadrial is primarily invested by Preservation, but they can be destructive. Once a Shard is placed into a living breathing humanoid body I don't think that the intent can act it til it hits a threshold that would qualify them as a splinter, and the Iriali aren't. If the point of the Long Trail is, as @Jonathonsuggested, to hide and survive, there's going to be a larger portion of investiture in the Iriali than normal, but not enough to make them detectable to another Shard. 

Assuming that this is true, which I have to repeat it's a long shot, then investing in each individual would have to be a low enough amount that they are maybe, a little healthier, a little longer lived. Make them them motivated by the intent of the shard would be counterproductive to the goal. 

Well, their lore talks of the One breaking apart into the Iriali so that it could have experience, then once they reached the 7th land they would somehow merge together to reform the one? That sounds a lot like A shard splintered itself intentionally, forming the splinters as it did so into Humanoids, and programming them to want to reform into the shard once a certain amount of traveling has happened. I'm guessing the shardholder that did so was similar to Odium in that it didn't realize how much the Shard's Intent can override someone, and thus either didn't anticipate the shard's intent overriding their programming, or maybe just took a calculated risk when splintering. This makes me think that this shard might be something to the extent of seeking knowledge or something like that. Maybe Curiosity? I could see a shard like that intentionally splintering itself in a way that it would remember how it felt, just to have the experience of "dying".

[Calderis]

@Lord Maelstrom I actually proposed that idea back on the first page. 

On 7/12/2017 at 5:52 AM, Calderis said:

Hmmm, there are what 6 more shard we don't know? What If the long trail is literal and a Shard of, knowledge or learning actually invested itself fully into/created a race?

@Jonathon proposed the Ambition part. I thought that the idea of the dying shard taking an ambitious risk in an attempt to save itself was novel. 

Both are total speculation.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

10 hours ago, Calderis said:

@Lord Maelstrom I actually proposed that idea back on the first page. 

@Jonathon proposed the Ambition part. I thought that the idea of the dying shard taking an ambitious risk in an attempt to save itself was novel. 

Both are total speculation.

I was building on your original theory, and saying that it might be possible to identify the shardic intent of the origin shard by look at the personalities of the Iriali, if the concept of a shard's intent overriding the mind of a shardholder applies to splinters as well (which seons and skaze seem to imply)

[Calderis]

Just now, Lord Maelstrom said:

I was building on your original theory, and saying that it might be possible to identify the shardic intent of the origin shard by look at the personalities of the Iriali, if the concept of a shard's intent overriding the mind of a shardholder applies to splinters as well (which seons and skaze seem to imply)

Ah, I misunderstood.

I think there is a significant difference between a splinter, a being of pure investiture, and a person who has investiture contained within them. 

For example, look at the returned. They literally contain a splinter, the divine breath, and they don't seem to be any more giving or selfless than a normal person (until of course the moment that the divine breath kicks in, and as per the annotations, they then give away their Divine Breath. But even this is still a choice of theirs, as in the moments before they give up their Divine Breath, they remember exactly why they chose to return). 

Scadrians are skewed towards Preservation and yet they aren't adverse to change. 

I think the entire point of an exercise such as this, for gaining knowledge, would be to see the experiences of a race of people of millennia without the intervention of the intent. 

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

8 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Ah, I misunderstood.

I think there is a significant difference between a splinter, a being of pure investiture, and a person who has investiture contained within them. 

For example, look at the returned. They literally contain a splinter, the divine breath, and they don't seem to be any more giving or selfless than a normal person (until of course the moment that the divine breath kicks in, and as per the annotations, they then give away their Divine Breath. But even this is still a choice of theirs, as in the moments before they give up their Divine Breath, they remember exactly why they chose to return). 

Scadrians are skewed towards Preservation and yet they aren't adverse to change. 

I think the entire point of an exercise such as this, for gaining knowledge, would be to see the experiences of a race of people of millennia without the intervention of the intent. 

Well, if the Iriali aren't splinters, but heavily invested humans, then how is this shard supposed to rebuild himself from them? How many millions of Iriali would it take for a shard to have completely invested itself? The passage makes it sound like the process of the One returning is one where they become a part of it, and are no longer individual. That sounds a lot like splinters. As for the intent, here is my theory: The father-shard designed the Iriali, knowing what he was doing (or maybe in ignorance of how much the intent can override the mind). He created them such that they would be able to interact and hide as humans. He also either made their personalities extremely close to his intent, or made them resistant to the corrupting influence of the shard's intent. Or maybe the intent was similar to their purpose (travel and experience, then come back and reunite). Then the shard slowly splintered itself, forming Iriali after Iriali, each one a splinter of himself, until he was completely, or nearly completely, splintered into the Iriali. The reason why he made splinters instead of investing into humans is that he couldn't get their experiences any other way. With humans, he can invest in them, but divesting wouldn't give him their memories. However, shards coming together and reforming would merge their minds, and thus their memories, allowing the final result to have all of their memories.

Edited July 15, 2017 by Lord Maelstrom

[Calderis]

Just now, FiveLate said:

This is basically what Endowment is doing.... it is why everyone on Nalthis has a breathe and is more invested than even Scadrians.

 

 

Which in itself plays down the ability for the Iriali to be holding the entire investiture of a Shard, as they are presumably less numerous than the entire population of Nalthis, and Endowment is definitely not subsumed within the inhabitants of her world. 

So Either the Iriali are insanely invested, which, by the heightenings would presumably make them all functionally immortal. Or it's just a no go. 

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

Which in itself plays down the ability for the Iriali to be holding the entire investiture of a Shard, as they are presumably less numerous than the entire population of Nalthis, and Endowment is definitely not subsumed within the inhabitants of her world. 

So Either the Iriali are insanely invested, which, by the heightenings would presumably make them all functionally immortal. Or it's just a no go. 

I don't think you get what I am saying. I don't think that the Iriali are people who have a crazy amount of investiture invested in them. I think they are composed of investiture. I consider them more akin to Seons than Humans. The reason they die and interbreed, etc, is because they were designed that way by their father-shard. And maybe a little portion of the father=shard still remains to take up the investiture that is released at death, and to invest into new Iriali. Or something. My entire theory relies on them being splinters, not invested humans like Nalthis.

 

BTW, for the immortality thing, even then, you need thousands of breaths to attain immortality (at least, I think so). So as long as the Iriali population is only 1/10th of the population of Nalthis, it would explain why they might not be immortal. That is assuming I'm wrong on the splinter thing.

[Calderis]

Just now, Lord Maelstrom said:

don't think you get what I am saying. I don't think that the Iriali are people who have a crazy amount of investiture invested in them. I think they are composed of investiture. I consider them more akin to Seons than Humans. The reason they die and interbreed, etc, is because they were designed that way by their father-shard. And maybe a little portion of the father=shard still remains to take up the investiture that is released at death, and to invest into new Iriali. Or something. My entire theory relies on them being splinters, not invested humans like Nalthis.

And I don't think that's possible. Every splinter we've seen is either sentient investiture (seons, spren) or uses a existing body as an anchor (Divine Breath). To make a physical body of investiture and make it capable of reproduction means you would have to be literally creating investiture, which should be impossible. 

5 minutes ago, Lord Maelstrom said:

BTW, for the immortality thing, even then, you need thousands of breaths to attain immortality (at least, I think so). So as long as the Iriali population is only 1/10th of the population of Nalthis, it would explain why they might not be immortal. That is assuming I'm wrong on the splinter thing.

Roughly 2000 for the 5th Heightening. 

[Jonathon]

6 minutes ago, Lord Maelstrom said:

I don't think you get what I am saying. I don't think that the Iriali are people who have a crazy amount of investiture invested in them. I think they are composed of investiture. I consider them more akin to Seons than Humans. The reason they die and interbreed, etc, is because they were designed that way by their father-shard. And maybe a little portion of the father=shard still remains to take up the investiture that is released at death, and to invest into new Iriali. Or something. My entire theory relies on them being splinters, not invested humans like Nalthis.

 

BTW, for the immortality thing, even then, you need thousands of breaths to attain immortality (at least, I think so). So as long as the Iriali population is only 1/10th of the population of Nalthis, it would explain why they might not be immortal. That is assuming I'm wrong on the splinter thing.

That's what my earlier line of thought was about because in one of my previous posts I was debating whether or not the race of humanoids were just invested or if they were actual splinters. I really started thinking about that specifically because @Calderis posed the question: what would happen to the people when they reform into the shard? So I agree with you that they are likely splinters otherwise the shard rebuilding itself eventually would have to drain all of the investiture from a race of people essentially leaving them drab, and the parent shard would need to know where each individual of the race is. However if they are splinters that were meant to behave like people than the parent shard would inherently know where they all were, would it not? And that would just generally make everything less complicated so I believe that given the choice between investing in people and creating a race of splinters, the shard would make the splinters

edit:

What If the shard placed splinters in dead corpses so they were already lacking a spirit web to be filled by the splinter? Then they were given life and are the ancestors of the present Iriali so only the originals were technically splinters because then as time went on the amount of investiture per person was diluted as the population size grew. The more people the less investiture to go around. Am I making sense? Idk I've had a long day...

Edited July 17, 2017 by Jonathon
Read calderis's post

[Calderis]

I apologize for the necro, but this seemed like the best place to put this. 

@Extesian I just reread the Ym interlude and when he was interacting with the Iriali urchin boy he mentions that his hair and skin were golden. No mention of the eyes. It says that the gold cast to the skin can only be seen in sunlight, but that the hair is always noticeable. 

Figured it was worth mentioning, in case the eyes are a false trail, and as skin color has not been mentioned here. 

 

[Taliax]

16 hours ago, Calderis said:

I apologize for the necro, but this seemed like the best place to put this. 

@Extesian I just reread the Ym interlude and when he was interacting with the Iriali urchin boy he mentions that his hair and skin were golden. No mention of the eyes. It says that the gold cast to the skin can only be seen in sunlight, but that the hair is always noticeable. 

Figured it was worth mentioning, in case the eyes are a false trail, and as skin color has not been mentioned here. 

 

Jumping into this quite late, and this might be a long shot, but could the gold skin have any connection with Sel? Elantrians have silver skin, is there any other Cosmere place/nationality known to have metallic skin? This may be irrelevant but it was a small thought.

[dgenio8]

I think there is a problem with the intentional splinter theory, but please correct me if I'm wrong! I haven't read the books for a long time...

Ym is on the path to be a Surgebinder.  We know that Investiture interfere with Investiture. If Ym is made of Investiture, or highly invested, I think it would be impossible for him to get a Nahel bond.

 

[Calderis]

33 minutes ago, dgenio8 said:

I think there is a problem with the intentional splinter theory, but please correct me if I'm wrong! I haven't read the books for a long time...

Ym is on the path to be a Surgebinder.  We know that Investiture interfere with Investiture. If Ym is made of Investiture, or highly invested, I think it would be impossible for him to get a Nahel bond.

 

Once that investiture were made flesh and blood it would be no different than any other person. Otherwise no one could attain a bond. 

There are three states in the Cosmere. Matter, Energy, and Investiture. 

Literally everything is made of Investiture of different types. 

[Hoids Imaginary Friend]

Hmmm. This got me thinking about something I read (think it was a WoB, sry at work and dont have time to find) where the shards have an associated special individual number:

Preservation =16

Honor = 10

Odium = 9

I think he even said they have an associated color too.. maybe..

Im wondering if this 7th land business is a hint at the shard.? Not that we know enough about who's number is who.. or do we!?

If the shard color is valid than it could be another indicator..

Food for thought

!~ HIF~!

[Darkness]

didn't the patriarch on Sel have ridiculous long golden hair too? Just throwing that out there. Honestly I missed the whole "4th of 7" thing, but it's really cool! My first instinct is that it's folklore that descends from the laypeople's perspective on the shattering Adonalsium. Not too hard to imagine that common people cant believe their God would get shattered without wanting to do it for some godly reason.

Ambition and Curiosity are fun thoughts, but they dont really draw the same parallels textually that Adonalsium does for me. That said, I would love it if the Iriali were Ambition's last grand plan for survival. The legend of 7 planets sounds like a shard (or Adonalsium) that had considerable foresight. It also indicates to me that at least the Iriali will flee Roshar by the end of the Stormlight Archive, if not sooner. This is too juicy a prophecy not to get to by the end of the Cosmere story.

[Stark]

On 7/12/2017 at 1:28 AM, Ookla the Indivergable said:

As for the Long Trail, Roshar is the fourth land the Iriali have been in, and when they get to the seventh, all will become One again.

I completely missed you thread, and began speculating elsewhere about this very topic due too some Oathbringer info:

Spoiler

Relevant quotes Oathbringer Chapter 36, Hero.  A Dalinar flashback with Evi of the Irali.  She drops a few lines that, to me, point to some idiom that may help ID previous planets.  Namely Scadrial and Nalthis.  The third planet may have hintsbased on some phrasing and Part 2 epigraphs.