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Harmony and Post-Catacendre Koloss


Honorless

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Why didn't Harmony turn the Koloss back to human?

Preservation and Ruin could create humans wholesale so its not like that's beyond a Shard's power. I didn't realize while thinking about him changing the Koloss into a true breeding race that he was a Shard and shouldn't require to resort to Hemalurgy as the only option, before remembering what he said to Kelsier about regaining his body and what Kelsier apparently looked like in era 2.

 

On top of that Koloss are complicated. They're an amalgamation of (parts of) multiple souls stitched on the "main" soul, whose body transforms. Do these secondary souls manifest on the Cognitive when a Koloss is killed? I seem to remember them doing so in SH. Which is rather confusing since the... donors should've been dead already and their Cognitive self should've faded into the Beyond. I may be misremembering and those other souls may have been of the Koloss' victims or other unrelated people since Ruin was rampaging at that point so a lot of people were dying.

Are there restrictions on what Shards can do when it comes to living beings? Is creating a different body from scratch and putting someone's soul into it not possible somehow? Is this why Kelsier couldn't just create a new body for himself as Preservation nor could Sazed as Harmony?

In Warbreaker

Spoiler

The Returned are returned to their original body, which transforms due to the Divine Breath (and people's perception).

In The Stormlight Archive

Spoiler

The Fused need to steal bodies. But Heralds apparently do not, nor do Thunderclasts who just create a new body from stone.

Or is it something imposed by Investiture systems, perhaps it is easier to make Investiture follow pre-made paths

Altering the Spiritweb to alter one's race seems to be possible

Spoiler

if Cultivation and the Nightwatcher abilities are any indication

so why not turn the Koloss back to human?

Spoiler

Is it something Cultivation can do because of her Intent? But-

Preservation's power has been used to alter humans before, to create the Skaa,

Did it require consent or a Cognitive sense of self of being human that the Koloss wouldn't have been capable of? Human the Koloss would've wanted to turn human at least.

Spoiler

Then what about Soulcasting or Soul Forgery?

 

Also what about Mistwraiths? They are technically humans even though they have never experienced being human (except the First Generation)? Is becoming Kandra through Hemalurgy their only option? Can't they be turned into regular humans or given regular human bodies?

Did this decision have something to do with his Intent? Possibly also why he let the Southern Scadrians suffer during the Catacendre (which they called the Ice Death)?

After all, he is Preservation and Ruin. He can preserve a species by making them capable of reproduction. He can ruin people into becoming brutal savages or mindless formless globs of meat. But can he restore them?

Edited by Dreamer
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1 hour ago, Dreamer said:

Why didn't Harmony turn the Koloss back to human?

Preservation and Ruin could create humans wholesale so its not like that's beyond a Shard's power. I didn't realize while thinking about him changing the Koloss into a true breeding race that he was a Shard and shouldn't require to resort to Hemalurgy as the only option, before remembering what he said to Kelsier about regaining his body and what Kelsier apparently looked like in era 2.

So the Koloss are a true breeding race, but what results of the breeding is not a koloss. It is a koloss blooded human. In order to become a full koloss, the child has to chose when they reach maturity to join up and receive their spikes, which is passed down from prior deceased koloss. I think there is a reason for this that I will go into below.

Quote

On top of that Koloss are complicated. They're an amalgamation of (parts of) multiple souls stitched on the "main" soul, whose body transforms. Do these secondary souls manifest on the Cognitive when a Koloss is killed? I seem to remember them doing so in SH. Which is rather confusing since the... donors should've been dead already and their Cognitive self should've faded into the Beyond. I may be misremembering and those other souls may have been of the Koloss' victims or other unrelated people since Ruin was rampaging at that point so a lot of people were dying.

Are there restrictions on what Shards can do when it comes to living beings? Is creating a different body from scratch and putting someone's soul into it not possible somehow?

I think or at least theorize, the differences is this:

Spook - human, that expanded the cracks in his spirit web with investiture. Shard should be able to fix that

Koloss - other people's spirit webs are stapled and fused like a frankenstein monster (Brandon's words), to function as one spirit web. I don't think that can be changed and the person survive with shardic intervention. I think also since a society had arose among the koloss, perhaps Sazed felt it would be wrong to tear that away from them. He essentially gave a new species the ability to continue if they so wished. 

Kandra - can already breed true themselves. The result are mistwraiths. In order to attain sapience, the spikes are required. Given their immortal nature, allowing them to breed further would be problematic I believe. As to changing them back, the originals are already dead. All Kandra we see are born mistwraiths and brought to sapience via spikes, so not sure they could be turned back when they are now a full species. 

 

side note: as to what happens when they die, the koloss's spirit pops up in the cognitive realm, but not the chunks of spirit web that was stapled to them. So many popped up in that scene, because so many koloss were being killed by the siege engines and they didn't know how to react, so were killed whole sale. 

Edited by Pathfinder
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I can think of four possible reasons

1. It was just easier to make them true breeding.  Even Harmony is not actually omnipotent and he was remaking the world so it may have made sense to keep things simple.

2. He gave them their perception of what they wanted.  They claim to want to be human but many of them would probably say that they liked being strong and blue if they could figure out why someone was asking as opposed to fighting them.

3. Considering that they were probably the stuff of the originator's nightmares I think that he might have foreseen bad consequences by turning them fully human.

4. They were his back up plan in case Elendel did not work out for some reason a new society of humans could always propagate from the koloss settlements.

Edited by Karger
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