worldhoppers [OB] Why do world hoppers know more than native inhabitants

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

During Kholinar Raid in Oathbringer , no one could use stormlight ! If you did the corrupted spren detected investiture be it span reed or KR abilities . Thanks to Wit(Hoid) Azure was able to find a work around . By putting up metal plates ( it doesn’t say what kind but I’m going to guess Aluminum) but my point is Wit knew how to counter spren . 

I have one issue with Brandon I don’t like! And it’s that Brandon has a tendency to have Worldhoppers that know more about what’s going on behind the scenes than the natives do ! Wit can have a passed cause 5 millennia old. But there are too many others . When Kelsier first escaped the well he ran into Khriss and she knew way more than Kelsier. Iyatal the leader of ghostbloods knows way more than most of the scholars on Roshar, Vashur knows better than most Hoe to fight with shardblade . Khriss wrote arcana unbound and knows more about most of the magic on most planets. I just think there should be scholars on Roshar that know more about Roshar magic than Khriss does! Does anybody feel what I’m saying ?

[MountainKing]

25 minutes ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

During Kholinar Raid in Oathbringer , no one could use stormlight ! If you did the corrupted spren detected investiture be it span reed or KR abilities . Thanks to Wit(Hoid) Azure was able to find a work around . By putting up metal plates ( it doesn’t say what kind but I’m going to guess Aluminum) but my point is Wit knew how to counter spren . 

I have one issue with Brandon I don’t like! And it’s that Brandon has a tendency to have Worldhoppers that know more about what’s going on behind the scenes than the natives do ! Wit can have a passed cause 5 millennia old. But there are too many others . When Kelsier first escaped the well he ran into Khriss and she knew way more than Kelsier. Iyatal the leader of ghostbloods knows way more than most of the scholars on Roshar, Vashur knows better than most Hoe to fight with shardblade . Khriss wrote arcana unbound and knows more about most of the magic on most planets. I just think there should be scholars on Roshar that know more about Roshar magic than Khriss does! Does anybody feel what I’m saying ?

This isn't Vasher first time on Roshar and while he was on Roshar earlier he studied shardblades. Khriss life long mission is studying magic systems. Aluminum is a Cosmere constant so that's okay, and remember Vasher and Khriss are both over 2000-5000+ years

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

No I didn’t know Khriss was that old , I read white sand . She didn’t even know sand mages were actually Called Sand Masters. So now I’m assuming white Sand happened 1000 years ago ? 

 

You know what would really help if he a standard Cosmere dare he put on his stories saying the CD ( Cosmere Date) so she know When a story takes place ,

[MountainKing]

White Sand I believe is the oldest published Cosmere story by a long shot.

[Oversleep]

@SzethIsBadAsHell this may be helpful to see when the books happen relative to each other. Most of the worldhoppers we see are already at least few hundred years old.

Edited June 23, 2018 by Oversleep

[KalaDANG]

Yeah. Khriss kind of knows basically everything. What you have to think about and remember though is that most of the worldhoppers are somehow associated with the 17th Shard, and the Academy at Silverlight. Khriss is actually the one who FOUNDED the academy. So some of the worldhoppers that we've seen, like Baon, Demoux, and Galladon originally wouldn't have had any knowledge about other planets and languages. But we see them, with difficulty, going about on the planet speaking the language and basically blending in. So what we kind of have to assume is that in their association with the 17th Shard, they have recieved some kind of training, and may even have been educated in Silverlight on Realmatic theory and the magic systems and languages of different planets and nations. As for those oldies like Hoid, who definitely isn't associated with them, and Vasher, who probably isn't, they're both functionally immortal so long as Vasher is able to continue to consume investiture. With that long of a life span, they would definitely be able to learn more than one person can learn by studying during ONE. You also have to consider the desolations, and the amount of information on the surges, Radiants, and Heralds that was lost. The Rosharans are breaking relatively new ground here with the Radiants, and have to learn about them without a lot of background information. But the 17th Shard has all the recorded information on Roshar, and Hoid was actually THERE before the first desolations. So yeah, there's a bit of an advantage to those who aren't natives, but they just haven't learned enough yet.

 

[Calderis]

Even for those that aren't a part of the Seventeenth Shard, travel through Shadesmar to other worlds in itself implies a level of knowledge that almost no viewpoint characters we've seen in any book have had.

Just by understanding how to leave your world through a perpendicularity you're knowledge of realmatics is higher than 99% of the general population. 

[Journey Before Pancakes]

I don't think you're really considering the barriers you have to overcome to be a worldhopper in the first place.

I don't think many people stumble into the Cognitive Realm, and if they do, I doubt they have much success unless they already know what they are doing.

If you know what you're doing, it's likely you're not going to jump into a world that you don't have knowledge about already.  If you are just going exploring through random perpendicularities/transporting randomly, you're either extremely lucky and naive, or powerful and knowledgeable enough that you are willing to take that risk.

[Weltall]

9 hours ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

During Kholinar Raid in Oathbringer , no one could use stormlight ! If you did the corrupted spren detected investiture be it span reed or KR abilities . Thanks to Wit(Hoid) Azure was able to find a work around . By putting up metal plates ( it doesn’t say what kind but I’m going to guess Aluminum) but my point is Wit knew how to counter spren

Aluminum is a Cosmere-wide Investiture sink, a fact that is easy to discover for a worldhopper and Hoid of course knows almost everything. Given that he's the best part of ten thousand years old (he's literally the second-oldest individual in the series) it really shouldn't surprise you that he knows a few tricks.

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have one issue with Brandon I don’t like! And it’s that Brandon has a tendency to have Worldhoppers that know more about what’s going on behind the scenes than the natives do !

As mentioned... why is this surprising to you? Worldhoppers by definition know more about Realmatics and the 'big picture' of the Cosmere than almost anyone born and raised on a single planet. Scadrial during Era 1? Repressive theocracy whose entire system was designed to reinforce that the Lord Ruler was God and there was nothing above him. Nobody is going to be learning about the inner workings of the Cosmere under that system and as a bonus, both Perpendicularities are in regions he controls. There was some interstellar traffic through Pits and Rashek knew about it and allowed it, but it didn't interfere with his rule so it was okay. But for most people, there was never a chance to learn more. Roshar? It used to be more Cosmere-aware but the Desolations did a very good job of destroying whatever knowledge they had, and we've evidence that Odium has taken steps to ensure that as much knowledge is lost as possible. Taldain? Literally interdicted from the rest of the Cosmere by Autonomy. Nalthis actually was pretty close to greater Realmatic awareness during the time of the Five Scholars (who did worldhop) which explains why Vasher knows as much as he does.

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Iyatal the leader of ghostbloods knows way more than most of the scholars on Roshar, Vashur knows better than most Hoe to fight with shardblade . Khriss wrote arcana unbound and knows more about most of the magic on most planets. I just think there should be scholars on Roshar that know more about Roshar magic than Khriss does! Does anybody feel what I’m saying ?

To get specific here:

- The Ghostbloods are a worldhopping group and have actually been to multiple worlds (Mraize has a trophy from Yolen for crying out loud) and we know for a fact that she was born in Silverlight and used to be part of the Seventeenth Shard, so she's an obvious candidate for knowing lots of things (mind you, she's not the leader of the organization either).

- Vasher was a scholar and helped create his own Shardblade out of a completely different magic system so of course he's going to know a few things. And he's about six hundred years old and a Returned so he's got massive advantages when it comes to speed, strength and how much time he's had to learn how to fight.

- Khriss is from the chronologically earliest story so far (White Sand) which going by Brandon's timeline makes her at least a thousand years old and her job is researching magic systems. Ergo, she's had time to work out the underpinnings of Cosmere magics and talk to people who know more than she does on any particular aspects of it, so of course she's well informed. We even see her grilling Wax in Bands of Mourning to increase her knowledge of how A-Steel/F-Iron interact.

- Rosharan scholars probably did know more about their magic than Khriss... at some point before the Recreance happened and there were no more Surgebinders for thousands of years. As mentioned, Odium seems to have standing orders to his forces to destroy sources of knowledge. They're only just now starting to rediscover what they lost long ago and they're having to do it all by trial and error.

In the modern world, we take having ready access to knowledge for granted. We've got the internet that can be accessed from almost anywhere and you can look up just about everything on it. For anything that's not digitized we have huge libraries and with the exception of individual manuscripts and books we have redundant copies of everything. Try to envision a world where that's not the case and books had to be copied by hand. If you only have one copy and it's lost, that knowledge is gone forever. It's happened on Earth with any number of works that we know existed but no copy has survived, so we only know about it from other writers talking about the work, or excerpts that someone else included in their work which we can study. For example, we know that Aristotle wrote a second volume of his Poetics which hasn't survived. Sophocles wrote over a hundred plays and we only have seven intact. Most of Zoroastrianism's Avesta texts are lost, there's a Confucian treatise on music that scholars have been bemoaning the loss of for two thousand years, only a few Maya codices survive etc. etc. That's not even scratching the surface of how many works have been lost to us. Loss of knowlege can happen and it's only exacerbated in the Cosmere with everything that's going on.

Worldhoppers have the massive advantage of being able to go from world to world (and being around long enough to do so at multiple points in any planet's history) and bring back knowledge to a safe location where it can be preserved, so they aren't subject to the same risk of losing everything.

36 minutes ago, KalaDANG said:

So some of the worldhoppers that we've seen, like Baon, Demoux, and Galladon originally wouldn't have had any knowledge about other planets and languages. But we see them, with difficulty, going about on the planet speaking the language and basically blending in. So what we kind of have to assume is that in their association with the 17th Shard, they have recieved some kind of training, and may even have been educated in Silverlight on Realmatic theory and the magic systems and languages of different planets and nations.

For the most part, the characters are using some form of Connection manipulation to speak the local languages. Whenever you see 'Zahel' making a weird color metaphor for example, it's him trying to say something that doesn't have an equivalent in Alethi so the magic is translating it literally. Hoid using the word 'Coin' is another example of this. Brandon discusses the workings of this system here and mentions that worldhoppers who actually learn the local language(s) are far less likely to exhibit this sort of thing. Galladon's speech pattern in the Purelake interlude is another example.

That said, you're right that a lot of worldhoppers (and especially members of the Seventeenth Shard) do have access to knowledge and training that most people do not.

Edited June 23, 2018 by Weltall

[KalaDANG]

1 minute ago, Weltall said:

For the most part, the characters are using some form of Connection manipulation to speak the local languages. Whenever you see 'Zahel' making a weird color metaphor for example, it's him trying to say something that doesn't have an equivalent in Alethi so the magic is translating it literally. Hoid using the word 'Coin' is another example of this. Brandon discusses the workings of this system here and mentions that worldhoppers who actually learn the local language(s) are far less likely to exhibit this sort of thing. Galladon's speech pattern in the Purelake interlude is another example.

That's right that's right I forgot about that.

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

Thanks for the insight ! Since we have no Cosmere Date to go off , that’s where my confusion began. I read White Sand and saw how ignorant Khriss was of the magic Systems on her own world . I assumed that between white sand and Mistborn era. 1 . Perhaps 7 to 16 years have went by . I did not know Khriss founded Silverlight and basically a university in shadesmar. I wasn’t aware centuries had passed. I guess what I expected was Khriss to be running up to Kaladin going what is a Radiant and how do your powers work . It also upset me when Preservation. Was dying and she showed up with devices to steal his power , while Kelsier is clueless . Jasnah is my favorite scholar and I kind of dislike the idea of her  not being as knowledgeable as Khriss , I was hoping time went by slowly In the cognitive Realm and so maybe Jasnah had time to encounter silverlight , do some research and come home to Roshar filled with Juicy knowledge to fight the Fused with, I do not know how time works in Shadesmar , so if u spend a year there will only a month pass in the physical Realm? I never said Mraize was the leader , I know Iyatal is higher rank than him! She. Is one of the hunters from Southern Scadrial I discerned that from the mask and BoM.  I see those Worldhoppers are real stingy with the knowledge they do have though !!! Thanks for great discussion guys.

[Calderis]

22 minutes ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

It also upset me when Preservation. Was dying and she showed up with devices to steal his power. 

She did no such thing. Yes she was curious about the events of a Vessels death. As a scholar of Investiture and Realmatics of course she would be. 

Your thinking of the Ire. 

[RShara]

Also Khriss is perhaps 1000-2000 years old, not much more. Vasher is, at most, maybe 1000 years old.

White Sand is before Elantris, we don't know how much. But Elantris is not thousands of years before the events of The Final Empire, and White Sand is not likely thousands of years before Elantris. And it's been about 350 years between Hero of Ages and Way of Kings.

Warbreaker happens between Hero of Ages and Way of Kings. It was about 300 years between the Manywar to Warbreaker, and the things that made the Five Scholars famous. Vo, the first Returned was 300-500 years before that, so Vasher would be younger than that. So Vasher is between 600 and 1000 years old.

That being said, both Khriss and Vasher are scholars, and they make it their business to learn and investigate as much as they can. So it makes sense for them to be very knowledgeable.

The average worldhopper is pretty knowledgeable. But Hoid, who lived before the Shattering, is a statistical anomaly adn shouldn't be counted.

Edited June 23, 2018 by RShara

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

On ‎6‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 1:09 PM, Calderis said:

She did no such thing. Yes she was curious about the events of a Vessels death. As a scholar of Investiture and Realmatics of course she would be. 

Your thinking of the Ire. 

I misspoke , your quite right ! Been a while since I read Secret Histories , I thought she was with them. I guess it’s time for re-read

 

On ‎6‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 2:40 PM, RShara said:

Also Khriss is perhaps 1000-2000 years old, not much more. Vasher is, at most, maybe 1000 years old.

White Sand is before Elantris, we don't know how much. But Elantris is not thousands of years before the events of The Final Empire, and White Sand is not likely thousands of years before Elantris. And it's been about 350 years between Hero of Ages and Way of Kings.

Warbreaker happens between Hero of Ages and Way of Kings. It was about 300 years between the Manywar to Warbreaker, and the things that made the Five Scholars famous. Vo, the first Returned was 300-500 years before that, so Vasher would be younger than that. So Vasher is between 600 and 1000 years old.

That being said, both Khriss and Vasher are scholars, and they make it their business to learn and investigate as much as they can. So it makes sense for them to be very knowledgeable.

The average worldhopper is pretty knowledgeable. But Hoid, who lived before the Shattering, is a statistical anomaly adn shouldn't be counted.

Oh I agree, as I said before I had no idea white Sand was centuries ago . I just read it last month . And at that time Khriss didn’t even know about Sand Masters . So I was looking at her in that frame of mind. 

What would really Help many people understand the Cosmere is if he had a standard date entry in all the books. Think how great it would be if before every novel it said “ the Events in this book take place around 1400 A.S. ( After Splintering) or 70 B.S. ( Before Splintering) it would help us laymen understand tremendously . We all can’t be like Cal and R’shara Walking Talking WoB sources with eidetic memory. If I didn’t know any better I swear you guys are lightwesvers with full mnemonic Resonances...lol

Also I enjoyed Warbreaker , most people criticize it , But I’m sorry to say Vasher is a Horrible scholar personality. As much as I try I can’t get scholar out of him . Dalinar type during the Blackthorn yes, Kelsier psychopath I’ll buy it. I just can’t buy a scholar .

[RShara]

Well that's because he hasn't completely finalized all the dates and things. He plans on giving us an actual timeline when he can.

[Weltall]

49 minutes ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

What would really Help many people understand the Cosmere is if he had a standard date entry in all the books. Think how great it would be if before every novel it said “ the Events in this book take place around 1400 A.S. ( After Splintering) or 70 B.S. ( Before Splintering) it would help us laymen understand tremendously

Aside from Brandon not having all the dates nailed down as he's writing the books (it took him a while to nail down whether White Sand or Elantris happened first and for a while he had Mistborn Era 2 happening before Stormlight Archive rather than in between the two halves of it) another thing to keep in mind is that Brandon's intention with the books is that they be readable by people with no knowledge of the big picture, as self-standing works. There's increasing amounts of crossover but it's still possible so far to read, say, Stormlight Archive without needing to know who Zahel really is, or what all the letters in the epigraphs are talking about in order to appreciate the main plot. Putting some kind of absolute date at the start of each book would break that. Here's a WoB where he talks about this.

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Also I enjoyed Warbreaker , most people criticize it , But I’m sorry to say Vasher is a Horrible scholar personality. As much as I try I can’t get scholar out of him . Dalinar type during the Blackthorn yes, Kelsier psychopath I’ll buy it. I just can’t buy a scholar .

Take a look at how he describes Awakening to Vivenna, he's clearly applying the scientific method to his local magic system, uses precise terminology and knows far more about how the magic works and what you can do with it than almost every other character. His knowledge of other worlds is effectively invisible in Warbreaker; you need Words of Brandon for example to confirm that he and Shashara made Nightblood in imitation of a Shardblade after wordlhopping to Roshar. But even confined to just the one book, it's obvious that he understands how and why Awakening works the way it does on a deeper level than other characters.

[Calderis]

13 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Aside from Brandon not having all the dates nailed down as he's writing the books (it took him a while to nail down whether White Sand or Elantris happened first and for a while he had Mistborn Era 2 happening before Stormlight Archive rather than in between the two halves of it) another thing to keep in mind is that Brandon's intention with the books is that they be readable by people with no knowledge of the big picture, as self-standing works. There's increasing amounts of crossover but it's still possible so far to read, say, Stormlight Archive without needing to know who Zahel really is, or what all the letters in the epigraphs are talking about in order to appreciate the main plot. Putting some kind of absolute date at the start of each book would break that. Here's a WoB where he talks about this.

Take a look at how he describes Awakening to Vivenna, he's clearly applying the scientific method to his local magic system, uses precise terminology and knows far more about how the magic works and what you can do with it than almost every other character. His knowledge of other worlds is effectively invisible in Warbreaker; you need Words of Brandon for example to confirm that he and Shashara made Nightblood in imitation of a Shardblade after wordlhopping to Roshar. But even confined to just the one book, it's obvious that he understands how and why Awakening works the way it does on a deeper level than other characters.

Fully agree. Trying to tie his interests and level of knowledge to his demeanor is just playing into stereotypes. 

Vasher is the first person we heard use the term "Investiture" in world after all.

Edited June 23, 2018 by Calderis

[Leyrann]

12 hours ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

We all can’t be like Cal and R’shara Walking Talking WoB sources with eidetic memory.

Actually, yes we can. It's a matter of practice. It may take a few months but eventually you'll more or less know all those times and the like by heart and the only advantage RShara and Calderis still have is the speed of looking stuff up, and they have an unfair advantage in that department because of being arcanists and knowing every single WoB catalogued.

[Calderis]

@Leyrann I agree. Can't speak for R, but I mean... I was doing this before Arcanum, slogging through theoryland. It's all practice.

I've personally entered a few hundred WoBs into Arcanum out of thousands. My knowledge of WoBs is much more a thing of choice than necessity. 

[Leyrann]

Okay, I guess I was exaggerating a bit. But still, it's really a matter of practice. The speed at which you can learn about the Cosmere, I have found, is amazing. It took me a few weeks to have the general stuff in my head and by now, after 8 months or so, it's only details that I don't know.

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

10 hours ago, Calderis said:

@Leyrann I agree. Can't speak for R, but I mean... I was doing this before Arcanum, slogging through theoryland. It's all practice.

I've personally entered a few hundred WoBs into Arcanum out of thousands. My knowledge of WoBs is much more a thing of choice than necessity. 

I’m the exact opposite ! I find it more intriguing to discuss things with with fans and have our theories confirmed or denied by Arcanist Like you and R’shara. I agree with you guys 97 percent of the time. Thing is I have also seen people interpret WoB erroneously . They don’t see what Brandon is trying to convey, they only look at the WoB from a perspective of how it supports their own theories and tend to ignore the parts that says hey “ Your wrong”  I don’t want to be that guy! I’m just now starting to get into WoB . I think I had first read everything a few times , formulate a few theories, see where I went wrong : like the thread about the Fused and Voidlight . That led me to a better understanding of How Brandon thinks. Now I’m ready for some facts and I’ll be better equipped to understand them now !!

[Gasper]

The reason that worldhoppers know more is their age, as said above, and that they see the connections between the magic systems. It is sort of like a PhD chemist discussing vinegar and baking soda with a five year old. The five year old may know how to get it react, but the chemist knows why, how and the details of the system because he has back ground knowledge, time and experience.

[goody153]

I think worldhoppers like Vasher, Hoid, Kelsier and Khriss(especially her considering she's basically a researcher/academic of Cosmere) are an exception to those who know too much but the rest probably don't know that much as we would think.

[Journey Before Pancakes]

18 minutes ago, goody153 said:

I think worldhoppers like Vasher, Hoid, Kelsier and Khriss(especially her considering she's basically a researcher/academic of Cosmere) are an exception to those who know too much but the rest probably don't know that much as we would think.

Vasher was also one of The Five Scholars, do he has good reason to be well educated (even if he rarely seems to act like it because he's so jaded now).

I agree with this though.  A lot of the more "minor" shard hoppers are probably having their hands held and get spoonfed all the relevant information.