Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Connections?

[Trusk'our King's Tester]

We see in The Hero of Ages that Vin has certain limitations on the amount of Koloss that she can control via Connection at any given time; the more she controls, the more pressure it puts on her. Could it be that ancient entities in the Cosmere can suffer from having too many Connections that pressure their Spiritweb, and that this leads to insanity if left unchecked? This is may partially be why the Fused and Heralds are having such a hard time, and why Kelsier really wants to capture and interrogate a Herald.

[Nameless* Steel Inquisitor]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

We see in The Hero of Ages that Vin has certain limitations on the amount of Koloss that she can control via Connection at any given time; the more she controls, the more pressure it puts on her. Could it be that ancient entities in the Cosmere can suffer from having too many Connections that pressure their Spiritweb, and that this leads to insanity if left unchecked? This is may partially be why the Fused and Heralds are having such a hard time, and why Kelsier really wants to capture and interrogate a Herald.

It's possible. I don't think it's likely, and I wouldn't point to Vin having trouble controlling Koloss as an example (Elend could control more than her, so that seems to indicate that it is a power thing and shards still go insane, so...)

[apepi Forescout]

I think Kelsier is too connected(maybe invested?) to Preservation, which is why he is trying to get Stormlight offworld. If he could find a way to invest in stormlight, it could try to balance himself out and travel to different places, atleast Roshar.

This also might explain why the Ire don't live on a world anymore, and why the Iri world hop to a bunch of different places, because if they stay on one place for too long, it gets harder to worldhop.

I don't think that the crazy part might be related to the um, connectedness part really? The Heralds might be different(it might be the oathpact things) but the Fused/Return I feel somewhat go crazy because of the passage of time. We have heard about how shards mess with a vessel's...spiritweb(?). It kind of constantly grinds them, slowly until it is hard to fight back the intent of the shard. The crazyness cognitive shadows face is something similar to the same vein, but more the outside world ruins the cracks of their mind filled with investiture. It slowly grinds them, but unlike people who don't have investiture filling their spiritweb, Cognitive shadows have a hard time recovering from changes. It is why the Fused are insane, they have dealt with so much death/changes, the investiture originally holding them together is failing. I consider Spiritwebs like hard drives, and cognitive shadows can no defragment themselves.

I feel like maybe the heralds had the oathpact to maybe defrag their souls, but it got messed up so they can't do it anymore.

I feel like Edgli knew that this was a problem, so she threw in an ability for them have to die to be able to use, so they out of all the cognitve shadows, seem to go less crazy and have ways to die. I also think this is why in Halladren, the returned have to stay in the palace, if they leave, they might wither away from stress/etc(I do feel like this is somewhat a newish thing though? It might always have been like this).

[cometaryorbit Stone Shaman]

On 2/1/2022 at 3:15 AM, apepi said:

The Heralds might be different(it might be the oathpact things) but the Fused/Return I feel somewhat go crazy because of the passage of time.

The Stormfather says that "each rebirth further injures their minds", so I think the Fused are primarily damaged because of rebirth itself - though time might be a factor as well. The Heralds are probably a combination of rebirth and breaking the Oathpact (plus time).

On 2/1/2022 at 3:15 AM, apepi said:

I feel like Edgli knew that this was a problem, so she threw in an ability for them have to die to be able to use, so they out of all the cognitve shadows, seem to go less crazy

Well, the Returned only Return once, and most of them don't live that long as Returned.

[DiePie High Prelan]

first of all

On 2/1/2022 at 4:15 AM, apepi said:

I think Kelsier is too connected(maybe invested?) to Preservation

he's also very connected to ruin (perhaps even more so, the shard did kind of "reject him" because of it), but that's a minor detail.

But on to my main point, the main argument I can find against this is the heralds, who are implied to have remained sane better than other immortal beings due to the Oathpact (which is revealed created an extremely strong connection between them). I.e. it's because of connection that they fared better than other immortals (I think Elantrians were used as an example). It's still a good theory, and connection shenanigans definitely don't help people like Kelsier.

The way I see it, immortal beings going insane is because of the fact that human (and I presume singer) minds aren't built to handle immortality. Even Hoid (who's definitely the best off out of all of them) has to store his memories separately. I think that over time people accumulate cracks in their Spiritwebs, and, given enough time, they break.

[apepi Forescout]

5 hours ago, DiePie said:

first of all

he's also very connected to ruin (perhaps even more so, the shard did kind of "reject him" because of it), but that's a minor detail.

But on to my main point, the main argument I can find against this is the heralds, who are implied to have remained sane better than other immortal beings due to the Oathpact (which is revealed created an extremely strong connection between them). I.e. it's because of connection that they fared better than other immortals (I think Elantrians were used as an example). It's still a good theory, and connection shenanigans definitely don't help people like Kelsier.

The way I see it, immortal beings going insane is because of the fact that human (and I presume singer) minds aren't built to handle immortality. Even Hoid (who's definitely the best off out of all of them) has to store his memories separately. I think that over time people accumulate cracks in their Spiritwebs, and, given enough time, they break.

You have a point on the Herald thing.

But Elantrians aren't cognitive shadows, and Hoid I believe isn't either. So they are not good examples.

 

On 2/2/2022 at 2:34 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Well, the Returned only Return once, and most of them don't live that long as Returned.

Well...this is my point? Unless we are talking about the Returned that we don't see in Warbreaker.