One of Roshar's Shards

[emailanimal]

So, we have a Word of Brandon that Cultivation is alive.

Have we ever gotten an actual confirmation from him that Cultivation is currently on Roshar (or anywhere within the Roshar system)?

 

Why?  There is a well-known WoB somewhere comparing Nightwatcher and Stormfather.  

Quote

INTERVIEW: Mar 11th, 2014

WoR Signing Report - Awesomeness Summoned (Verbatim)

QUESTION

Is the Nightwatcher a spren of Cultivation in a similar way that the Stormfather is to Honor?

BRANDON SANDERSON

The Nightwatcher is not Cultivation but is related. You're on the right track.

While he did not draw the exact parallel, he did point out that the question was along the correct lines.  Stormfather is a Cognitive Shadow of Honor (right?). Nightwatcher may be something of a Cognitive Shadow of Cultivation. But why would a living Shard have a cognitive shadow? Perhaps because it left the proverbial building.

 

Looking through WoBs on this topic, there is one early one where he says "yes" to a statement "Cultivation is a Shard on Roshar", but this can still be interpreted from a historic perspective, not as "Cultivation is on Roshar now".

So, has anyone ever asked Brandon if Cultivation is actually ON Roshar during the events of the Stormlight Archive?

 

(counterpoint is Cultivation is heavily Invested in Roshar, and may find it difficult to leave. I argued elsewhere, that Investing Odium in Roshar was part of Honor's plan, which is why Odium was allowed Desolations and own spren.  I do not have a good answer to that, except a vague feeling that Cultivation's Intent may be something that might allow her to, at least for a time, not reside on a planet she Invested into... Not certain why or how. Autonomy may be able to do so as well, so it is not out of the realm of impossible).

 

 

[Yata]

Cultivation is on Roshar in SA, a Shard can't simply leave without de-Invest herself and if she did something like that she would probably lost a lot of power (not a smart thing with Odium so near), her Spren are still there and so she is, because all her spren are still part of her.

Lastly but not less relevant we have a WoB that said Odium can't influence too much directly Roshar because He has a full living and powerful shard who oppose him there.

Returning to the WoB you provided. Stormfather become Honor's Cognitive Shadow (or to be more precise, he merged with Honor's Cognitive Shadow) only recently (from the Roshar's History times) and whatever He was before in relation to Honor, is what (probably) the Nightwatcher is to Cultivation....There are a lot of theories about.

 

For example I think Rider of the Storm (old name of the Stormfather) and Nightwatcher are great Adonalsium spren that H&C's corrupted with their Investiture, but we have no sure answer.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Yata

[Kered]

3 hours ago, Yata said:

 

For example I think Rider of the Storm (old name of the Stormfather) and Nightwatcher are great Adonalsium spren that H&C's corrupted with their Investiture, but we have no sure answer.

I've never thought about that, you just blew my mind. Makes sense that some great spren would pre-date the shattering. Jeeze, that opens a lot of doors. 

[emailanimal]

3 hours ago, Yata said:

Lastly but not less relevant we have a WoB that said Odium can't influence too much directly Roshar because He has a full living and powerful shard who oppose him there.

This, to me, is the confirmation I was looking for.

 

The first part of your response  is something I wrote about at the end of my post as an argument in favor of Cultivation being on Roshar, but not direct evidence. Honor is gone but his spren are alive and kicking, so why not Cultivation being absent for a time?  But the WoB about powerful shard opposing Odium is direct evidence, so thank you!

 

3 hours ago, Yata said:

Stormfather become Honor's Cognitive Shadow (or to be more precise, he merged with Honor's Cognitive Shadow) only recently (from the Roshar's History times) and whatever He was before in relation to Honor, is what (probably) the Nightwatcher is to Cultivation....There are a lot of theory about.

 

For example I think Rider of the Storm (old name of the Stormfather) and Nightwatcher are great Adonalsium spren that H&C's corrupted with their Investiture, but we have no sure answer.

So, you think that there were two "interactions" between Stormfather and Tanavast: (1) Tanavast "corrupts" Rider of The Storm to become something (and Cultivation does the same to Nightwatcher); (2) upon the death of Tanavast and the Splintering of Honor, Honor's Cognitive Shadow merged with Rider of The Storm/Stormfather to form the entity we all have seen in the books.   Am I correct in understanding your theory?

 

6 minutes ago, KereDerek said:

ve never thought about that, you just blew my mind. Makes sense that some great spren would pre-date the shattering. Jeeze, that opens a lot of doors.

Well, we know that there were spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation came (and hence - in the time of a united Adonalsium).  I find @Yata's theory to be quite reasonable, but not certain it is mind-blowing: it is a natural extension of the information we already know.  

 

This should probably go to a separate thread, but what the heck. Spren are manifestations of activities that have a distinct cognitive component. Roshar has a property that such manifestations are visible in Physical Realm. Knowing that Roshar existed before Shattering, and knowing that it did not really go through a cosmic-scale event of the sort of orbit shift at the time of the Shattering (well, we don't really know, but there is not much evidence for this),  spren pre- and post-Shattering are essentially the same.  Since wind, or pain, or laughter (hopefully) existed on Roshar before Shattering, it makes sense to assume that all these spren were there, and therefore they were originally tiny splinters of Adonalsium himself.  There really isn't any rationale in windspren being of Honor beyond Honor making a conscious choice to change the nature of their Investiture upon arrival to Roshar.  Some new spren may be created on the go (inkspren can only exist if there is a written language in the civilization), but the ones representing the core activities with cognitive components must've been there before, and they could only be Adonalsium's if we assume that Adonalsium is the source of all Investiture.

 

We can think of every Shard (as they were produced by the Shattering) commanding Investiture of a specific color. That is - all Investiture in Cosmere got separated into 16 colors the moment Adonalsium Shattered into 16 Shards.  Then, there may be two working hypotheses on the nature of spren:

 1. (some) spren consisted only of Investiture of one color (e.g., growth spren did only have the color(s) of Cultivation and no other Shard). 

2. all spren consist of (somewhat equal parts) Investiture of all 16  colors.

In case 1: upon Shattering, and without any further action on anyone's part, spren could become spren of Shard X.

In case 2: upon Shattering, every spren remains a spren of Adonalsium. "Turning" them requires someone like Honor to replace 15/16th of the investiture of the spren with his own.

 

 

 

 

 

[+Extesian]

35 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

This, to me, is the confirmation I was looking for.

 

The first part of your response  is something I wrote about at the end of my post as an argument in favor of Cultivation being on Roshar, but not direct evidence. Honor is gone but his spren are alive and kicking, so why not Cultivation being absent for a time?  But the WoB about powerful shard opposing Odium is direct evidence, so thank you!

This.

WoB from 2016-12-06 [Arcanum Unbounded] Herald Washington Library Center - Chicago, IL

 

Quote

[31:37]

Q: Did Ambition fight back?

Brandon: Yes.

Q: And...Was Cultivation close enough to when Odium got [Splintered] Honour, to know how to fight back?

Brandon: Heheheheh. I would say yes.

Q: And Cultivation, is she--

Brandon: She is still there. Alive and kicking.

Q: And she can probably know how to not turn her back to the--

Brandon: Well, maybe. She has learned from the experiences of others.

 

[emailanimal]

24 minutes ago, Extesian said:

This.

WoB from 2016-12-06 [Arcanum Unbounded] Herald Washington Library Center - Chicago, IL

 

Quote

[31:37]

Q: Did Ambition fight back?

Brandon: Yes.

Q: And...Was Cultivation close enough to when Odium got [Splintered] Honour, to know how to fight back?

Brandon: Heheheheh. I would say yes.

Q: And Cultivation, is she--

Brandon: She is still there. Alive and kicking.

Q: And she can probably know how to not turn her back to the--

Brandon: Well, maybe. She has learned from the experiences of others.

 

To me this is less of a direct acknowledgement that Cultivation is on Roshar.  "She is still there" can be interpreted as "she is still alive", which is, indeed a question Brandon seemed to go back and forth between answering "yes" and "RAFO" for a couple of years.  "She has learned from the experiences of others" on its face is not a confirmation that she currently resides on Roshar.  Experiences of others appear to have ranged from taking a stand (Skai and Aona), playing some sort of a long game (Tanavast) and running around (Ambition). So... 

 

To be exact: I actually do believe that Cultivation is present on Roshar in Stormlight Archive. I just am looking for unambiguous confirmation of this fact by Brandon, not just for convincing arguments that it cannot be otherwise.

[+Extesian]

Fair interpretation. I feel that "she is still there" followed by "alive and kicking" is a very strong indication that 'there' means on Roshar, but there have been a lot of mixed signals so given Brandon's sneakiness it's maybe not completely solid.

From previous WoBs I have an unformed theory that Cultivation's Vessel is still alive but no longer the Vessel ie may have dispersed the Investiture and is living a post-Shard life. I really doubt it but it could reconcile the careful wording of inconsistent WoBs where the wording of questions switches between Cultivation and Cultivation's Vessel.

For now I agree that Cultivation is almost definitely still there, but not definitely.

[Yata]

7 hours ago, emailanimal said:

So, you think that there were two "interactions" between Stormfather and Tanavast: (1) Tanavast "corrupts" Rider of The Storm to become something (and Cultivation does the same to Nightwatcher); (2) upon the death of Tanavast and the Splintering of Honor, Honor's Cognitive Shadow merged with Rider of The Storm/Stormfather to form the entity we all have seen in the books.   Am I correct in understanding your theory?

Exactly, but the 1) is an headcanon of mine while 2) is actual confirmed by WoB somewhere

I used to avoid confusion to call Rider of the Storm (the name used by the Listeners) the being before the merging and Stormfather after...But the names may be a bit imprecise in this way

7 hours ago, emailanimal said:

The first part of your response  is something I wrote about at the end of my post as an argument in favor of Cultivation being on Roshar, but not direct evidence. Honor is gone but his spren are alive and kicking, so why not Cultivation being absent for a time?  But the WoB about powerful shard opposing Odium is direct evidence, so thank you!

The Vessel (Tanavast) died and the Shard was Splintered but "Honor" is still invested in Roshar...it's not gone.

On another note, being like Spren or Shard become attached to the area where they spend time/are connected It's extremely difficoult to them to leave, of course this may be done but more you are connected to a place and more the effort is to leave....A Shard is a collosal amount of Investiture and it leak in the Shardworld where it is...For this deities de-Invest from a Shardworld would be almost the only way to safe "go away".

For example we have also in-world proofs of Cultivation's presence on Roshar. Her Perpendicularity is still there (probably the Horneater's peaks), this mean she is still on Roshar.

On a final note, but this is a specific case. We don't know if a Shard may actually leave Great Roshar System, or if whatever the Oathpact does to Odium is actually targeting every Shard so Honor, Cultivation, Odium and whatever other shard enters, can't leave (this is actually how I think Oathpact works...but yet we have no proofs of it)

[emailanimal]

12 hours ago, Yata said:

if whatever the Oathpact does to Odium i

As a nitpick, Oathpact is an agreement between Honor and the Heralds; Odium is not part of it. But I see what you are saying. I have a feeling (see my "Odium's Dilemma" post from a few weeks back - I know you've commented on it) that Odium and Honor did have a separate pact though, with Tanavast allowing Rayse to use Odium's investiture to create /corrupt voidspren and cause Desolations (Honor's concession) for the price of Odium being tied to Roshar system and not able to leave (Odium's price to pay for a chance to splinter Honor).

 

We have in-world proofs, indeed, of Cultivation's Investiture being present.  As I mentioned above, the *evidence* points to it. But I would like an actual WoB.

[Spoolofwhool]

15 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

As a nitpick, Oathpact is an agreement between Honor and the Heralds; Odium is not part of it. But I see what you are saying. I have a feeling (see my "Odium's Dilemma" post from a few weeks back - I know you've commented on it) that Odium and Honor did have a separate pact though, with Tanavast allowing Rayse to use Odium's investiture to create /corrupt voidspren and cause Desolations (Honor's concession) for the price of Odium being tied to Roshar system and not able to leave (Odium's price to pay for a chance to splinter Honor).

Yata is not suggesting that the Oathpact creation involved Odium in the agreement. He's saying that what the Oathpact does is affecting Odium and indirectly keeping him bound there. 

[emailanimal]

55 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Yata is not suggesting that the Oathpact creation involved Odium in the agreement. He's saying that what the Oathpact does is affecting Odium and indirectly keeping him bound there. 

And I am saying that what affects Odium is something else that is between Odium and Honor.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, emailanimal said:

And I am saying that what affects Odium is something else that is between Odium and Honor.

Yes, I know what you're saying. I was just pointing out that you were nitpicking something which hadn't been referred to. 

[JoModius]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I just wanted to pipe in that although I also believe Cultivation is still kicking around on Roshar, her shardpool still being there shouldn't be used as evidence as we have WoB that it is possible for a shard to willingly leave a planet while leaving their shardpool behind (and that in fact this has happened already).

Edit: Sorry, here is the WoB.  I misremembered, he did not say that it did happen but that there are circumstances in which it could happen.

 

Quote

INTERVIEW: Nov 29th, 2016

Old Firehouse Books-AU tour (Paraphrased)

QUESTION

If a Shard were to divest itself from a planet, would the perpendicularity there disappear?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Normally the shardpool would cease to exist, but there are circumstances that could prevent the shardpool from disappearing.

 

Edited August 15, 2017 by JoModius
WoB add - correction

[PallonianFire]

It's also pretty clear that Cultivation is still on Roshar because Hoid talks about her in WoR, saying that there's only one woman on Roshar who's his age, and that they never got along. He's talking to non-Cosmere-aware characters, so he doesn't say Cultivation outright, but that's clearly whom he's talking about.

[phoenix2563]

There is a theory that Cultivation is still around, but trapped in some kind of prison, likely somewhere on Roshar due to her being invested there.

This theory is derived from the below WOB:

Q: Please tell me the name of holder of Cultivation

A: Hoid calls her SLAMMER... but that's not her real name

 

[AbsentKeeper]

10 hours ago, phoenix2563 said:

There is a theory that Cultivation is still around, but trapped in some kind of prison, likely somewhere on Roshar due to her being invested there.

This theory is derived from the below WOB:

Q: Please tell me the name of holder of Cultivation

A: Hoid calls her SLAMMER... but that's not her real name

 

This is very interesting, I've never seen this WoB before.

Personally, this makes me think that somehow Cultivation is using most of her Investiture to trap Odium, like Preservation did to Ruin.

In American slang, at least, a slammer is a prison, not a prisoner. Hoid does like his puns. 

Edit: I upvoted you and it made you go from Artifabrian to Pahn Kahl, I'm not sure how that's an upgrade though. These wierd rankings haha

Edited August 19, 2017 by Cowmanthethird

[The One Who Connects]

On 8/15/2017 at 2:24 PM, JoModius said:

I misremembered, he did not say that it did happen but that there are circumstances in which it could happen

Those circumstances are part of why Odium didn't want to get tied down on a planet long enough that he would start investing there. He would have to waste time manually reclaiming that Investiture before he could leave(Pool disappears) or rip himself away from that power(Pool stays). Option 2 weakens him because it separates him from his power, not to mention being quite a painful experience.