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Bonding Cognitive Shadows


Honorless

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So a while back I made a list of the things I would love to see happen in the Cosmere, one of them was this:

Humans being the equivalent of spren: I want to see a Shardworld where a Bond with a human grants the non-human (preferably a Cognitive Entity) access to an Investiture system

Basically, a reverse of the trope of humans being granted magic by a magical entity, with the humans themselves granting magic to other entities

A while before that, I'd also made a topic speculating on how Bonds between human beings could be possible in the Cosmere

 

I don't know if we'll ever get to see exactly those, but now that I think about it, a workaround may be possible to have something similar, via Cognitive Shadows

The idea seeded from this WoB:

Quote

Blightsong

Could Kelsier theoretically bond with someone on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

OdysseyCon 2016 (April 8, 2016)

Stormlight Archives & Mistborn might provide some evidence for the possibility of such a thing occurring. Spren, which are Cognitive Entities, seem to require some Connection to the Physical, both via the ideas that they represent being channelled by beings in the Physical Realm and via the Nahel Bond for higher cognitive functioning if they want to enter the Physical Realm itself. It's the same case for Kelsier according to Preservation, he lacked a Connection to the Physical. Could this Connection take the form of a Bond?

Other examples from the Cosmere which could possibly support this can be found in on the world of Threnody with the Shades. Silence's grandmother's Shade was possibly more self-aware as it is stated that she didn't ever try to attack Silence, there were also some interesting rumors regarding her waystop being protected by the Shade of her dead husband, possibly actually referring to her grandmother's Shade.

So, am I cuckoo or is this idea feasible? Are there better ways? Can you Bond Cognitive Shadows and can doing so grant you access to the Investiture system that person had access to when they were alive?

Also, could a stronger Connection to the Physical by this method possibly help a Cognitive Shadow escape the inexorable pull of the Beyond?

 

The topics I mentioned:

https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/88470-things-i-want-to-see-in-the-cosmere/

https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/87727-human-bonds/

Edited by Dreamer
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5 hours ago, Eternal Khol said:

so you want to see a Invested piece of Investiture?

Kinda contradictory isn't it?

Or maybe he wants to see that pieces of investiture have a more direct impact, be granted the ability to manifest magic themselves in the PR and not via their human bond counterpart 

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I mean, I'm pretty sure that we have seen people Bonding Cognitive Shadows; surely that's what the Fused are. Like that's a bond that inevitably ends poorly for the non-Cognitive Shadow participant, but it's still a bond.

So, I guess, the first hurdle to overcome in trying to make this work the way you want to is whatever reason the Fused have to body-snatch instead of sharing their bodies with the original owners- because the way that was explained, it did sound like it was more of 'unfortunately, there's only room for one soul per body' and less 'the Fused are just kind of awful like that'; I didn't get the impression the Fused were capable of leaving the original person intact.

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On 2/10/2020 at 2:58 AM, Eternal Khol said:

so you want to see a Invested piece of Investiture?

Kinda contradictory isn't it?

If all human souls are investivure , then technically we have seen it already . 

 

Honorless , u make me wonder tho. Is it possible for a Spren to gain superpowers on the cognitive realm due to Humans granting them access to something ? 

Not Spren I guess from what we saw in OB. Maybe they aren't evolved enough yet. 

I wonder if it's possible for some other entity. The seons and skaze maybe ?? 

 

Also , why is it that the Fused can't form bonds ? They were both , well basically , constructed by adonalsium. Atleast the Parshendi were too. 

Huh I wonder what a seon or skaze really looks like on the cognitive side ? 

Also suppose kelsier could form a Nahel bond with a full feruchemist. Could the couple become fullborn then ?

Is that how the bands were created

Edited by PrinceGenocide
A little polishing
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On 2/10/2020 at 4:41 PM, PrinceGenocide said:

Also , why is it that the Fused can't form bonds ? They were both , well basically , constructed by adonalsium. Atleast the Parshendi were too.

Huh I wonder what a seon or skaze really looks like on the cognitive side ? 

Also suppose kelsier could form a Nahel bond with a full feruchemist. Could the couple become fullborn then ?

Is that how the bands were created ? 

The Parshendi were probably created by Adonalsium, like all native flora and fauna of Roshar, they have a Gemheart which allows them to attract & trap spren. This is how they get their Forms. The Fused are something else now, in a way,... Cognitive Shadows possessing Parshendi bodies.

If you are referring back to the "powers we were forbidden to touch" line, the answer is that we don't know, we can only guess. The Surges probably are dangerous if they were used in some form to destroy Ashyn. I think the spren simply preferred to Bond humans "though broth are we, their meat is men", possibly due to the Parshendi/Singer/Listener ability to attune to the Rhythms rather than express emotion in a more overt manner, like humans do. We do know that Nahel Bond with Parshendi are very much a possibility: Venli and Timbre are Bonded. That Bond didn't happen before could be tied to how they were on different sides of the conflict. The spren were with humans, Honor & Cultivation while the Parshendi were with Odium because the humans switched sides towards Honor and Cultivation, the Parshendi felt betrayed with the Shards and spren and sided with Odium. We don't know exactly how all of this played out but why would the spren try to Bond with the opposing side. And before the Shattering, Adonalsium would've had objection to the spren granting Surges:

Quote

Pod

You’ve said that you would call Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrials the three magics on Roshar. Would it be more accurate to say that Surgebinding followed and emulated fabrials and/orthe possibility of fabrials or vice versa?

Brandon Sanderson

 Vice versa. Fabrials are... generally, Surgebinders first, fabrials second. 

Pod

So you couldn’t have done fabrials when it was just Adonalsium. 

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, before the [Shattering]? *deep in thought mmming*

Pod

Would the spren have still been able to do Surges then?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say... no. No, Adonalsium probably would not have let that happen. You could theoretically do it, if Adonalsium allowed it. 

Pod

He had boundaries against it. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So, I would say no. 

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

 

We don't know what the Seons or Skaze look like on the Cognitive Realm. What we do have are these WoBs:

Quote

Sir Jerric

Could a seon or a skaze turn into some sort of Shardblade on their home planet?

Brandon Sanderson

That is theoretically possible.  They work under the same fundamentals but they would need to have something to pull them more into the Physical Realm.  

Words of Radiance Omaha signing (March 13, 2014)

Quote

Questioner

[Spren] are used to Invest a lot of things, fabrials, they turn into Shardblades. Are we ever going to see something similar with the seons, from Sel?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, they are basically the same thing. They're a little more formalized, a little more structured but they are basically the exact same thing so yes. Some of the things you see spren doing seons are capable of, some things that seons do spren will be capable of.

Shadows of Self release party (Oct. 5, 2015)

Kelsier could form a Bond, theoretically, but it wouldn't be a Nahel Bond. In that situation, I suspect the Feruchemist wife would be able to access Allomancy from the Bond with Kelsier. I don't know if the other way around is possible.

The Bands were Unsealed Metalminds, created via Spiritual Feruchemical metals including Nicrosil which allows one to store Investiture, probably Identity as well, through Feruchemical Aluminium. Again we don't have the full details.

I suggest reading up the Coppermind articles on Feruchemy & Excisors

Edited by Honorless
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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, PrinceGenocide said:

No , no I was actually referring to y fused can't make a sprenlike bond with the Parshendi instead of  taking over completely. 

Not sure, we know that the Fused don't have their own body and the patterns on their skin/carapace of their victim change, which means that they take the bodies to anchor themselves in the Physical Realm and slowly overlay their own Spiritweb over their host's body. Potentially this is an inherent quality of a Cognitive Shadow, and a major difference between them and other Cognitive Entities, which can be drawn and made to manifest on the Physical. 

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On 2/9/2020 at 10:25 PM, Gilphon said:

I mean, I'm pretty sure that we have seen people Bonding Cognitive Shadows; surely that's what the Fused are. Like that's a bond that inevitably ends poorly for the non-Cognitive Shadow participant, but it's still a bond.

That seems more of a bond between the fused and the singer body then a bond between the two singers.

I do love the idea of a story from the other side.  Maybe the only way to do this on Scadrial is with hemalurgy.

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19 minutes ago, Dreamer said:

Not sure, we know that the Fused don't have their own body and the patterns on their skin/carapace of their victim change, which means that they take the bodies to anchor themselves in the Physical Realm and slowly overlay their own Spiritweb over their host's body. Potentially this is an inherent quality of a Cognitive Shadow, and a major difference between them and other Cognitive Entities, which can be drawn and made to manifest on the Physical. 

I kind of assume Kelsier took over someone else's body too. The heralds worked like this at first but then Brandon changed it.

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7 hours ago, Robot said:

I kind of assume Kelsier took over someone else's body too. The heralds worked like this at first but then Brandon changed it.

 

2 minutes ago, PrinceGenocide said:

Yeah so kelsier wouldn't actually be in symbiosis , he would have hijacked the host body right ? 

 

Kelsier has his own body (we see his scars). We know his original body was digested by a Kandra. We suspect Hemalurgy, given that he & Spook were interested in researching it

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30 minutes ago, Dreamer said:

 

 

Kelsier has his own body (we see his scars). We know his original body was digested by a Kandra. We suspect Hemalurgy, given that he & Spook were interested in researching it

Idk , maybe he scratched himself again. Or maybe his soul saw the scars as part of him , so when he injured his arms and healed back , the scars manifested 

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On 2/25/2020 at 9:08 PM, Dreamer said:

Kelsier has his own body (we see his scars). We know his original body was digested by a Kandra. We suspect Hemalurgy, given that he & Spook were interested in researching it

wait where do we see Kelsier?

And would being (and then giving up) being a vessel make Kelsier a Physical being rather than a cognitive shadow?

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I suspect that the Fused take over bodies because that's how Odium designed it when he made them into the Fused. I could be wrong, but I'm betting it is not inherently necessary for a Cognitive Shadow to take over a physical body in order to form a bond with a person. 

Theoretically, the differences between spren and cognitive shadows are in origin, as both are sentient pieces of pure investiture. They both seem to need a way to anchor themselves in order to interact in the physical realm. We've seen spren do that through the Nahel bond, we've seen Seons and Skaze do it through their lighter bonds, the Heralds do it through the Oathpact, the Fused by taking over bodies, and Returned do it through divine breath. It's suspected that Kelsier used hemalurgy to anchor himself.

It should be possible then that we can mix and match. A cognitive shadow should be able to form a Nahel bond or something extremely like it, just as a Seon should be able to. 

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3 hours ago, DiePie said:

wait where do we see Kelsier?

The ending scene of Bands of Morning.

3 hours ago, DiePie said:

And would being (and then giving up) being a vessel make Kelsier a Physical being rather than a cognitive shadow?

No.  The Heralds are CS and they get bodies.

2 hours ago, Criggleworth said:

It should be possible then that we can mix and match. A cognitive shadow should be able to form a Nahel bond or something extremely like it, just as a Seon should be able to. 

That is the theory yes.  I wonder what it looks like.

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On 2/28/2020 at 5:29 PM, Robot said:

Imagine someone bonding a herald o,o

I don't think Heralds, as they are, can be Bonded like this (though, of course they can Bond with spren like anyone else).

I think they recreate their bodies in the Physical, so they technically aren't always Cognitive Shadows. They have the Spiritual aspect in their Spiritweb, Connection and Investiture necessary to always turn them into Cognitive Shadows when they are killed.

Edited by Honorless
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  • 1 year later...
On 2/28/2020 at 7:49 AM, Honorless said:

I don't think Heralds, as they are, can be Bonded like this (though, of course they can Bond with spren like anyone else).

I think they recreate their bodies in the Physical, so they aren't always Cognitive Shadows, they just have the Spiritual aspect and Investiture necessary to always turn them into Cognitive Shadows when they are killed.

So they could be bonded while in the cognitive? Though if they were to return to the physical would the bond strain or strengthen greatly as they have been fully brought to the physical realm?

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On 2/27/2020 at 5:09 PM, Criggleworth said:

 

I suspect that the Fused take over bodies because that's how Odium designed it when he made them into the Fused

 

100% agree, I think it is more of a choice situation with the fused, why would they want to appear as a guide like Spren when they could take control completely? We know they have a natural assertion of their will as they bond as seen with Venli.

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On 2/25/2020 at 9:03 PM, Friendshipspren said:

Yeah so kelsier wouldn't actually be in symbiosis , he would have hijacked the host body right ? 

Wouldn’t he have to highjack a willing singer in order to reside in their gemheart? Otherwise the bond would be more like that of a Spren where they have some connection to the physical realm strengthened by their bond.

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1 hour ago, TheOneEyedFox said:

So they could be bonded while in the cognitive? Though if they were to return to the physical would the bond strain or strengthen greatly as they have been fully brought to the physical realm?

Mind you, it's only a theory, but that's what I think. As for what will happen to the Bond if they are brought into the Physical... I don't know

54 minutes ago, TheOneEyedFox said:

100% agree, I think it is more of a choice situation with the fused, why would they want to appear as a guide like Spren when they could take control completely? We know they have a natural assertion of their will as they bond as seen with Venli.

Odium might've just been stingy with his Investiture or the situation back before the Desolations and the Heraldic Epochs might've been complicated enough that this strategy was better for Odium and/or the Fused. We know so little of that time even after RoW

52 minutes ago, TheOneEyedFox said:

Wouldn’t he have to highjack a willing singer in order to reside in their gemheart? Otherwise the bond would be more like that of a Spren where they have some connection to the physical realm strengthened by their bond.

Well, as we see with the Listeners, the Singers in question don't need to be well-informed about what exactly they're agreeing to, they just need to agree

50 minutes ago, TheOneEyedFox said:

I would love to see somebody swear Kelsier’s Ideals!

I know right? Well, there's this fic if you're interested:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20694752/chapters/49156421

48 minutes ago, TheOneEyedFox said:

Couldn’t a cognitive shadow bond a chasm fiend? Is this what happened???

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here?

 

Btw, you can just quote multiple posts by clicking the "+" right beside "Quote"

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