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THIS WILL HAVE DE SPOILERS:

I just (literally just) had a theory about the Delver's. As someone on the general thoughts thread said, they weren't, as far as we can tell, around in Defending Elysium.

And there is so much that interests me about that. While it might just be a writing flaw, as brandon wasn't aware he was going to do that, I refuse to believe that. Brandon is the type of author who makes an In World explanation for any flaw in his writing. He has done this.

So here's the theory:

humans (or possibly something else, more on that later) became the Delvers. They had to gain incredible power, but from what we've seen of humans, they would be so warlike that learning all the possible battle based things that Cyto could do wouldn't surprise me. It could have been just one at first, and the warped mind led to the new Delvers not remembering anything about humanity. It could have been part of a battle plan, turning them all into Delvers (I doubt this one). It could have been a TLR situation, where one superpowerful Cyto turned all the most powerful cytonics into delvers. It could have simply been over time, more powerful cytos became delvers.

Here's some things I have that back it up, especially humans:

  1. What changed after DE? Humans. Humans expanded throughout the Galaxy, and started to cause chaos (even if my theory is wrong, it's clear that humans caused the Delvers). They tried to take over the galaxy several times, which would be quite a big change.
  2. Spensa thought she was becoming Delver-ish. This could happen to all Cyto's. This could just be a side effect of the Delvers in space. But what if it was the way human psychology reacted to powerful cytonic abilities? We've been shown that cytonic abilities don't exactly make people stable, they have quite the opposite effect. So maybe super powerful cytonic ability warped it even further, to full on Delver level.
  3. Humans summoned delvers. Not much, but do we have any explicit proof that they existed before this?

Something had to happen to create the delvers. Something as big as them would have been noticed, and commented upon, by Jason. But he didn't. Therefore, in all likelihood, they didn't exist.

My secondary theory for how they would have formed:

AIs, grown too powerful, with too much cytonic technology, went all Eldritch horror, and humans banished them to the nowhere. This would explain why AIs were forbidden to such an extent, why MBot had such clear restrictions, such a powerful subroutine to stop him from going beyond his limits. It might also be why the Delvers are attracted to AIs- not the cytonics on them, but the fact that they came from AIs.

While it could have been another race, I find this extremely unlikely. It just doesn't make sense that they coincidentally came into existence after humans went into the galaxy.  

 

So yeah, that's my theory.

-Ark1002

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6 hours ago, Ookla the Very Handsome said:

Something had to happen to create the delvers. Something as big as them would have been noticed, and commented upon, by Jason. But he didn't. Therefore, in all likelihood, they didn't exist.

Or were just not particularly close to our dimension yet.

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I think they have been here since the beginning and because of the various activities that humans and others have done it has bought them a lot closer and annoyed with our world.

 

alternate theory if I'm wrong will Spensa will become a delver or be close to becoming one because of her connection to that realm.

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10 hours ago, Ookla the Very Handsome said:

 

AIs, grown too powerful, with too much cytonic technology, went all Eldritch horror, and humans banished them to the nowhere.

 

My theory is that the delvers are related to the taynix, but I had a shower thought this morning that this series could exist in the same literary universe as Conan and Cthulu.  I was thinking what if Spensa had asked M-Bot to check the datanet for a story about Conan instead of Fallen Leaf what he would have told her.  Then I was thinking about how Robert E. Howard wrote a background of the world that Conan existed in and how it went beyond Conan's time and showed how the different races from the Hyborian Age eventually became the civilisations from ancient history, essentially making it a prehistory of Earth.  Add to that the fact that Howard was friends with Lovecraft and put references to his work in the Conan stories then it gets easy to "what if" the delvers are Great Old Ones.  There are a few that based on the descriptions from the wiki that match the bill, more or less.  Even if you don't try to make them fit, there is definitely a very Lovecraftian vibe to the delvers.  Which means that when Spensa made a dedication of battle to Crom, he may have heard her.  According to the Howard version, not the movie version, Crom only sends doom and death.  I'll have to double check the ending of the book but I think she fights that Krell before she finds M-Bot and Doomslug, so you could conceivably say that that Crom sent both.  I know that M-Bot is still "alive" but his body has died.

 

 

The Great Old Ones that I think are similar to delvers, to save people the time of looking them up. I know there are a lot of tentacles and spines, but they could be reinterpreted as the arms of a maze.

Ammutseba   

 Devourer of Stars     

A dark cloudy mass, with tentacles, absorbing falling stars.

Gi-Hoveg

The Aether Anemone

A cosmic-entity manifesting as a gigantic, spongy, and fleshy mass covered in a myriad of both eyes and spines. He is said to be the nemesis of the Outer God Uvhash, usually summoned to contrast this deity.

Xitalu 

   Being of Higher Dimension

    A tentacled, multi-eyed, soul-devouring abomination which dwells between dimensions.

 

And for the people who want to look them up anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos_deities#Table_of_Great_Old_Ones

 

 

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I love theories! I think it’s more likely that the increased cytonic movement awoke the Delvers an annoyed them. Or, alternatively, the murdering off of the doomslugs (I’m dying on the doomslug-over-taynix hill sorry-not-sorry) pissed them off bc of the loudness.

i seem some parallels between the Superiority trying to create “peace” meaning lack of aggression whilst the Delvers want peace in terms of silence. And both are willing to exert extreme force to get it...

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I like your theory about how the Delvers used to be humans. I think it's possible that the Delvers aren't just former humans. They may be cytonics from all sorts of different alien races as well.

For example, it's mentioned in Starsight that the kitsen used to have cytonics until the kitsen cytonics left their planet. No one knows where they went.

Maybe Delvers used to be normal people/aliens with cytonics abilities who ascended to a higher state of being or something like that?

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I like the idea of AI becoming “alive” via the Delvers or the figments; both could make sense. the fear of AI “copying itself” is very real. But why? The Superiority seems to care more about its cytonic nature but mbot’s human pilot? There is a reason there was a strong fail safe. 

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4 hours ago, Bliev said:

I like the idea of AI becoming “alive” via the Delvers or the figments; both could make sense. the fear of AI “copying itself” is very real. But why? The Superiority seems to care more about its cytonic nature but mbot’s human pilot? There is a reason there was a strong fail safe. 

What I mean by my comment is that figments could literally be ancient AI. Sort of the end result of AI evolution. 

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Yeah, there's clearly some more connection between cytonics and delvers than we've seen. It can't just be that cytonics draws delvers here and delvers are just some random creatures of the deep. Spensa takes on Delver emotions just by using her powers - there's something there.I agree that whatever the delvers are, they weren't around during DE timeframe.

I don't think the delvers are former humans (or other species) though. Spensa had to basically teach this Delver that the little specks were also people and not just buzzing dust. If the delvers were formerly people, they would know this already.

My guess as to what brought the Delvers forth - the portals to mine acclivity stone, portals to Nowhere. They weren't around during DE time, because they seem to be a combination of Cytonics and technology, the kind of thing that wasn't around until humanity expanded on cytonics. We see the same strange markings near the portals, and in the Delver maze. I think these portals somehow brought the Nowhere closer to our plane. (Reminds me of the Cognitive Realm and perpendicularities, from the Cosmere...) This would be why there's so many delvers, so close, every time cytonics is used - acclivity mining (and exiling) via nowhere portals has been going on, full bore, for a very long time. 

I don't have a good guess for how the delvers are connected to cytonics yet. My best guess is that the delvers are the source of cytonic power - and cytonic individuals are those that can draw on the nearest delver, or on a particular Delver. (Like people in the Cosmere that get Investiture from a Shard.) This connects them to that delver.

I don't know how AI fits into this. Maybe cytonic AIs can draw on more delver power than unaided people, and thus both grow very powerful themselves AND anger the delvers very, very quickly?

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On ‎01‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 9:56 PM, Marethyu316 said:

The Delvers surprise to learn that the things that were annoying it were actually alive makes me doubtful that they used to be human.

Actually their surprise is what makes me think that they were human or sentient before. For me that surprise is like recognition or remembring what they were like, which they have forgotten.

My theory is that when they evolved, they were looking at the universe at such a macro level that they no longer see the buzzing irritation as life. It is like us looking at ants. we see bugs, but if we were to go among them, we might see families, and emotion.

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6 hours ago, Magpro said:

Actually their surprise is what makes me think that they were human or sentient before. For me that surprise is like recognition or remembring what they were like, which they have forgotten.

My theory is that when they evolved, they were looking at the universe at such a macro level that they no longer see the buzzing irritation as life. It is like us looking at ants. we see bugs, but if we were to go among them, we might see families, and emotion.

Magpro is on to something here. To expand on it Delvers could be "ascended" Cytos and as part of this process to primary intelligence forgot / overlook it. There are so many references to primary intelligence that there has to be linkage. 

It is really hard to not think of this in Cosmere terms such as shards splintering, etc. which would explain some issues with DE and now. As a side not this has a Reckoner's feel to this as well with a certain character's annoyance with humans. 

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16 hours ago, Ooklidean Geometry said:

R'Shara

Are the delvers, are they new since Jason's time?

Brandon Sanderson

They existed, but Jason didn't know about them.

R'Shara

Ohh, because we couldn't find any trace of them...

Brandon Sanderson

There's no trace of them. They were basically added in when I was doing Skyward. It was my evolution of where I wanted to take the whole thing.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think we are definitely going to get a delver origin story, just because explaining everything is a Brandon thing to do. I don’t think, and also hope that he wouldn’t, introduce something that mysterious and explain it with “yeah the delvers were always there”. He has something brewing in that mighty mind of his, and it is probably going to be a lesson on how hubris leads to disaster and we should all be more empathetic. 

I am in favor of the delvers being a result of AI getting out of control or reaching some god tier of consciousness that makes them abandon the universe for the nowhere. It makes sense that they would lose their sense of empathy as they become so OP they can’t understand individual lives anymore. I lean toward the AI route because of Spensa’s interaction with the delver and its mannerisms. It takes the emotions of the universe and reflects them, and this is a common way of AI learning. 

Very exciting stuff. Can’t wait to see where Brandon takes it!

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