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What we learn about the people the protagonists meet in SP4


Oltux72

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  • Threnodites have gotten off planet. When? How often?
  • The ability to turn into a Cognitive Shadow is genetic among them. Ambition's wound did not just change Threnody. It has changed the Threnodites, like Ruin and Preservation have altered the Scadrians.
  • They are the only people on the planet. In fact they are so monocultural that they have forgotten that other languages exist. Centuries therefore.
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59 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Threnodites have gotten off planet. When? How often?

Perpendicularities do open there sometimes.  They don't seem to turn into CS when they die though(or if they do something happens to prevent them sticking around).  Perhaps the sun is so invested that it kind of burns them away?

Edited by Karger
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On 24/03/2022 at 4:27 PM, Oltux72 said:

The ability to turn into a Cognitive Shadow is genetic among them. Ambition's wound did not just change Threnody. It has changed the Threnodites, like Ruin and Preservation have altered the Scadrians.

This is something that it's been burning in my mind since reading the spoiler chapters. The theories I've seen so far hinge on the idea that there's something about the planet that turns people into Shades when they die, but it appears that it's something about the people that makes them transform. It's Threnody's magic system. Assuming, of course, that Nomad knows what he's talking about and isn't just drawing wild conclusions from an unfortunate event during a visit to the Forests of Hell.

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On 24.3.2022 at 9:27 PM, Karger said:

Perpendicularities do open there sometimes.  They don't seem to turn into CS when they die though(or if they do something happens to prevent them sticking around).  Perhaps the sun is so invested that it kind of burns them away?

I would guess the very opposite. It delivers enough Investiture to turn them into full Cognitive Shadows with memories and everything.

4 hours ago, ShardlessVessel said:

The theories I've seen so far hinge on the idea that there's something about the planet that turns people into Shades when they die, but it appears that it's something about the people that makes them transform.

Indeed, unexpected. But do you see a way around that conclusion?

4 hours ago, ShardlessVessel said:

It's Threnody's magic system. Assuming, of course, that Nomad knows what he's talking about and isn't just drawing wild conclusions from an unfortunate event during a visit to the Forests of Hell.

That I doubt. We have never seen what the Old Threnodites could do with their Shadows.

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On 4/1/2022 at 6:58 AM, ShardlessVessel said:

This is something that it's been burning in my mind since reading the spoiler chapters. The theories I've seen so far hinge on the idea that there's something about the planet that turns people into Shades when they die, but it appears that it's something about the people that makes them transform. It's Threnody's magic system. Assuming, of course, that Nomad knows what he's talking about and isn't just drawing wild conclusions from an unfortunate event during a visit to the Forests of Hell.

I got the following two major impressions from reading Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell:

1. Shades are associated with the Forests on the continent of Hell. They do not seem to have been a factor in daily life in the Homeland, the original continent where most/all of humanity resided. It is said that the Forescouts discovered the Three Simple Rules that allow living humans to dwell among the Shades. This was clearly a new discovery

2. Threnodites only become Shades when they're killed by the touch of another Shade. At no point in the novella is it stated or even implied that all Threnodites become Shades after they die.

Of course, we have no idea when Shadows for Silence takes place in the Cosmere Timeline. The situation on Threnody may have changed drastically by time The Sunlit Man takes place.

Edited by Johnny Silverlight
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4 hours ago, Johnny Silverlight said:

Of course, we have no idea when Shadows for Silence takes place in the Cosmere Timeline. The situation on Threnody may have changed drastically by time The Sunlit Man takes place.

We have an idea:

Quote

Questioner

Can you put the Cosmere books into [chronological] order?

Brandon Sanderson

Here is the order that I have publicly confirmed. There are obviously other books and stories fitting in there. For those, you’ll just need to RAFO.

  • Elantris
  • The Emperor’s Soul
  • First Mistborn trilogy (The Final Empire)
  • Warbreaker
  • Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell
  • The Stormlight Archive
  • Wax and Wayne Era Mistborn (Alloy of Law)
  • Sixth of the Dusk
  • Future Mistborn trilogy

Miscellaneous 2016 (July 15, 2016)

So hundreds but probably not thousands of years.

Maybe the Shades in the Forests of Hell are some kind of bug to a feature that works on Threnody as a whole. After all,  Nazh says that becoming a cognitive shadow is a sacred process, which means that there is another way to do it than the one that creates Shades. Then again, that's by the time of Mistborn, which means that the Evil probably hasn't overtaken the homeland yet (since that happen 150 years before Shadows for Silence, and Warbreaker is "a few generations" before Stormlight). So there could have been a change between Mistborn and Shadows for Silence, although Sigzil definitely wasn't a Dawnshard by that time.

Edited by Elegy
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On 3.4.2022 at 7:43 AM, Johnny Silverlight said:

1. Shades are associated with the Forests on the continent of Hell. They do not seem to have been a factor in daily life in the Homeland, the original continent where most/all of humanity resided. It is said that the Forescouts discovered the Three Simple Rules that allow living humans to dwell among the Shades. This was clearly a new discovery

2. Threnodites only become Shades when they're killed by the touch of another Shade. At no point in the novella is it stated or even implied that all Threnodites become Shades after they die.

True. The crucial part is in Secret History, where Nazriloff confirms that Threnodites have a ritual for properly creating Cognitive Shadows. It looks to me like Shades are the result of something going wrong.

Yet Nomad was almost eaten by a Shade, so we can assume that some exist in his time.

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There is a 'wound on the Spiritual Realm' in Threnody or its solar system, per Harmony in the RoW epigraphs.

So Threnody might be like a person with a Shardblade soul-wound - the Forests of Hell continent is its "deadened limb", realmatically cut off in a way that leads to Shades rather than  'proper' Cognitive Shadows.

Becoming a Shade seems to involve an infusion of Investiture from an existing Shade ... presumably derived from Ambition with some Odium?

(The Threnody theory in my signature is about this...)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Aux theorizes that this group of Threnodites split off before Ambition's death. I think it's obvious that Brandon wouldn't just let Aux guess right on the first try, because there's always another secret. Additionally, Brandon intentionally chose to put Threnodites on this world, which would be an odd decision if shades, the most interesting thing about them, are tied to the world but not the people. 

I agree with what has been suggested, that the sun could burn away shades, at least some of them. For example, if the condemned who Nomad watches being burned were to form shades, they would be burned away. However, another line suggests something different to me. 

Quote

“May his soul find its way home, Rebeke.  I’m sorry.”

My theory is that their shades try to find their way home to Threnody rather than remain on this world where the invested sun is constantly threatening to burn them away.

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  • 5 months later...

I thought some big evil happened on Threnody that caused everyone to travel to the other side of the planet and live more impoverished life .. I assumed that they could worldhop and had knowledge about the cosmere back then before they had to all flee the evil as refugees. Coppermind says Threnody was technologically advanced before this evil took over. That could mean Threnodites in SP4 were stranded on that planet possibly because access to the perpendicularity on Threnody was shut off.

Did the Threnodites in SP4 mention the shades at all? That would debunk my theory that they come from pre-shade era. I think only Nomad brought up the concept up tho, so the SP4 Threnodites might be from pre-shade times.

 

Edit: oh, i guess brandon wants us to think that too. Here's a quote from SP4

Quote

“Right,” he said.  “Red eyes.  Complete lack of memories.  I feel like we would have seen those, though.  Shades come out in the darkness, and we’ve been in nothing but darkness since getting here.”

Perhaps this group split off before the Shard’s death—and the event’s after-effects—took them.

 

Edited by Stockman
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On 10/19/2022 at 8:02 PM, Stockman said:

Coppermind says Threnody was technologically advanced before this evil took over.

I think that means relative to other cosmere worlds at that time, not space-traveling advanced. Forests of Hell seems vaguely inspired by colonial or frontier era America, but the fire issues very much limit their practical technology. They know gunpowder, but don't generally use guns, for example. Metalworking is probably also very dangerous outside of the fort cities.

The Homeland could easily have been Industrial Revolution level, but I don't think think they were anywhere near our level.

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