bruin757 Posted January 16, 2018 Report Share Posted January 16, 2018 Hello All. With all the connections in Oathbringer to Warbreaker, it made me skim through WB again. I was struck by some of the similiarities between the Returned and what occurs to a spren when it bonds with a human (not sure if Odium's spren have similar reactions). The main thing is the loss of memory. Returned and bonded spren lose memory of their former lives, and yet they have vague recollections/connections to their pasts. Vasher describes the Returned as (paraphrasing here) spontaneous manifestations that they (scholars) don't truly understand. I wonder if there is a similar process occurring between the Returned and the spren who leave Shadesmar for the physical realm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHeadHancho Posted January 21, 2018 Report Share Posted January 21, 2018 the difference between the two is very complex. It deals with the function of things in the spiritual realm, namely: the spiritweb. The reason it has been established that a radiant needs to be “broken” (having had their spirit web ripped) is so that the spren can insert themselves into the gap, basically providing a tap into a purer investiture. Returned, on the other hand, are just heavily invested by Endowment. Spoiler We know from M:SH that humans appear in the cognitive realm after death and can be visited by shards. I believe it works somewhat similarly to the Old Magic on Roshar; in return for endowing someone with health at the sacrifice of your own life, you can be given life. In this case, the divine breath would be placed over memory in the web. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenod Posted January 23, 2018 Report Share Posted January 23, 2018 On 1/21/2018 at 1:27 AM, TheHeadHancho said: the difference between the two is very complex. It deals with the function of things in the spiritual realm, namely: the spiritweb. The reason it has been established that a radiant needs to be “broken” (having had their spirit web ripped) is so that the spren can insert themselves into the gap, basically providing a tap into a purer investiture. Returned, on the other hand, are just heavily invested by Endowment. Hide contents We know from M:SH that humans appear in the cognitive realm after death and can be visited by shards. I believe it works somewhat similarly to the Old Magic on Roshar; in return for endowing someone with health at the sacrifice of your own life, you can be given life. In this case, the divine breath would be placed over memory in the web. They actually aren't just invested. They divine breath that all Returned carry is a splinter of Endowment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHeadHancho Posted January 24, 2018 Report Share Posted January 24, 2018 That’s what I meant by heavily invested Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yata Posted January 24, 2018 Report Share Posted January 24, 2018 The greater analogue you could do in regard of Returned and SA's characters is with the Heralds. They are both Cognitive Shadows (decessed guys with so much Investiture to avoid the Beyond) stamped into a physical body. In one case the "so much Investiture" is provided by the Divine Breath (an Endowment's Splinter) that you could see in a some way as a Spren analogue (also if as far as we know, It's barelly sentient) while in the other case is provided by some conseguence of the Oathpact (that we don't know in details). The Memory loss is in the case of Spren and Returned happens for different reasons (and you have to notice the Spren doesn't simply lose memories, they lose the sapience at all). The Spren lose the Mind because they transition into the physical in a incomplete way (without a really strong anchor). The Returned lose memories by Endowment's design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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