Breath and spren

[mathiau]

10 minutes ago, R J said:

What you said isn't exactly what the WoB is saying but arguing science would result in a derailing, just google it

You're right, the WoB is saying that matter and investiture are the same thing, which is not exactly the same as being made of investiture.

But it doesn't change that if being made if investiture was a a problem to hold.

29 minutes ago, R J said:

To go back to the original point that you raised: states of Investiture do not correspond to the Three Realms

Yes it seems I was wrong about that.

[Honorless]

12 hours ago, Elsecaller_17.5 said:

Seems we missed this, aren't spren pretty explicitly cognitive beings?

They are Cognitive entities, yes

10 hours ago, Elsecaller_17.5 said:

They have aspects that exist in a 3 realms but in general they are primarily cognitive.

do spren have a Physical aspect? Would their appearance into the Physical whether through their respective natural phenomena, emotion or due to the Nahel Bond and Surgebinding count as their Physical aspect or would that just be them breaching into the Physical? Spren are supposed to be manifestations of Platonic Ideas, which are in the Spiritual reflecting Physical stuff

[mathiau]

3 hours ago, R J said:

do spren have a Physical aspect? Would their appearance into the Physical whether through their respective natural phenomena, emotion or due to the Nahel Bond and Surgebinding count as their Physical aspect or would that just be them breaching into the Physical? Spren are supposed to be manifestations of Platonic Ideas, which are in the Spiritual reflecting Physical stuff

I would they don't have a body (quote)

Are we sure they are manifestations of Platonic Ideas and not just interpretations of people? I mean, the sprens made by the Singers where different.

[Honorless]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

I would they don't have a body (quote)

Are we sure they are manifestations of Platonic Ideas and not just interpretations of people? I mean, the sprens made by the Singers where different.

spren made by the Singers. I think you are referring to the Voidspren? Those are different, probably Corrupted by Sja-Anat or Odium himself

Brandon hasn't exactly copied the Platonic Realm of Ideas, kinda divided it into two: one is perfection, one is perception. It isn't cut and dry but these two WoBs should help:

Quote

Kurkistan

Are flamespren, are they all doing their own thing, or is there some Ideal of "Fire" sitting in the Spiritual Realm that they're all based on?

Brandon Sanderson

Each spren is based on the Ideal of Fire.

Kurkistan

And is that sitting in the Spiritual Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, we're using sort of a Platonic Ideal, and that concept is in force, so *sounds hesitant* "yes", but [spren] are manifestations of it.

Kurkistan

So these Ideals in the Spiritual Realm: Divine Breath, does that heal by accessing some Ideal of Human Health: so a guy who had never had a tongue and doesn't know how to speak all the sudden has a tongue and can speak?

Brandon Sanderson

You are... *LONG pause* You are, um, on the right track.

Kurkistan

Okay.

Brandon Sanderson

Because the Breath is... eh. How can I explain this? You are, yeah... So... So each Breath is a shade of deity, right?

Kurkistan

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

And each Breath incorporates into it this sort of idea of being endowed by the deity Endowment, correct?

Kurkistan

Yes.

Brandon Sanderson

And so each Breath you hold brings you one step closer to becoming like that, and so what you're saying is... is "yes", kind of true, yes.

Kurkistan

But it's like within the Breath, not sitting off by itself-

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, yes yes exactly.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

Quote

Questioner

Shards. Are the ten orders of the Knight Radiants related to specific gods? Because Honor, child of Honor-Kaladin

Brandon Sanderson

So all the magic on Roshar, all the surgebinding on Roshar, is going to have its roots in Honor and Cultivation. Um... There is some Odium influence too, but that’s mostly voidbinding, which is the map in the back of the first book.

Questioner

I was wondering how much-

Brandon Sanderson

But, but even the powers, it’s, it’s really this sort of thing. What’s going in Stormlight is that people are accessing fundamental forces of creation and laws of the universe. They’re accessing them through the filter of Cultivation and Honor. So, that’s not to say, on another world you couldn’t have someone influence gravity. Honor doesn’t belong to gravity. But bonds, and how to deal with bonds, and things like this, is an Honor thing. So the way Honor accesses gravity is, you make a bond between yourself and either a thing or a direction or things like that and you go. So it’s filtered through Honor’s visual, and some of the magics lean more Honor and some them lean more Cultivation, as you can obviously see, in the way that they take place.

Questioner

The question kind of rooted because, Wyndle in the short story is always saying that he’s a cultivationspren, he doesn’t like [...]. I kind of got the idea that each order had a different Shard.

Brandon Sanderson

That is a good thing to think, but that is not how it is. Some of them self-identify more in certain ways. Syl is an honorspren, that’s what they call a honorspren, they self-identify as the closest to Honor. Is that true? Well, I don’t know. For instance, you might talk to different spren, who are like, no, highspren are like “We’re the ones most like Honor. We are the ones that keep oaths the best. Those honorspren will let their people break their oaths if they think it’s for a good cause. That’s not Honor-like.” There would be disagreement.

Questioner

Are you saying that the spren’s view of themself influences how they work?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh yeah, and humans’ view of them because spren are pieces of Investiture who have gained sapience, or sentience for the smaller spren, through human perception of those forces. For instance, whether or not Kaladin is keeping an oath is up to what Syl and Kaladin think is keeping that oath. It is not related to capital-T Truth, what is actually keeping the oath. Two windrunners can disagree on whether an oath has been kept or not.

Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017)

 

Oh right Kelsier, him lacking a Physical aspect was such a big part of Secret History with the aforementioned trouble traveling off-world, not being able to do Allomancy, even part of the trouble with him holding Preservation. I'll take this comparison between a Cognitive Shadow and Spren to tentatively go with spren defaulting to not having a Physical aspect

Edited May 8, 2020 by R J

[mathiau]

1 minute ago, R J said:

spren made by the Singers. I think you are referring to the Voidspren? Those are different, probably Corrupted by Sja-Anat or Odium himself

Brandon hasn't exactly copied the Platonic Realm of Ideas, kinda divided it into two: one is perfection, one is perception. It isn't cut and dry but these two WoBs should help:

I mean the sprens from before humans came to Roshar, Syl mentioned that there are old spren that have four genders instead of two, like the Singers.

Ok, they are Platonic Ideas

[Honorless]

6 minutes ago, mathiau said:

I mean the sprens from before humans came to Roshar, Syl mentioned that there are old spren that have four genders instead of two, like the Singers.

Ok, they are Platonic Ideas

Oh that's more to do with how spren think of genders, those from older times reflected the Singers, the spren now mostly identify with binary human genders, though some don't

Quote

UppityDarkeyes

Would you be willing to confirm that the use of 'they' pronouns for the Sibling is because the Sibling is non-binary? Since apparently some people are confused on this point.

Brandon Sanderson

The Sibling did not view themselves as male or female. (And considered it odd that so many spren would adopt human genders.)

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Nov. 3, 2018)

https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=spren%2Bgender

Edited May 8, 2020 by R J

[Elsecaller_17.5]

14 hours ago, R J said:

They are Cognitive entities, yes

do spren have a Physical aspect? Would their appearance into the Physical whether through their respective natural phenomena, emotion or due to the Nahel Bond and Surgebinding count as their Physical aspect or would that just be them breaching into the Physical? Spren are supposed to be manifestations of Platonic Ideas, which are in the Spiritual reflecting Physical stuff

I would argue that just being visible indicates some physical aspect. Its especially true with ones that can physically change the physical realm. Syl carrying a leaf, Pattern unlocking things, luckspren enabling skyeels and chasmfiends to exist, etc.

[Honorless]

Someone shared this WoB with me:

Quote

Questioner

So, is it possible for a spren to get more Investiture? And if it does, will it kinda level up into a higher form of spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's possible. That is totally possible.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

So... maybe spren can receive Breath?

[spaidapig]

2 hours ago, R J said:

So... maybe spren can receive Breath?

I saw this WoB as well on a different post. At first I thought, hey that almost sounds like a confirmation to this thread.

But now I think, it just says, that spren can hold more or less investiture, in our case frim Honor and Cultivation, and that this might be the difference between ordinary and higher spren.

Then we have spren that even surpass others, like Cusicesh and even more the Nightwatcher and the Stormfather.

I know that the SF is special because he hold the CS of Tanavast, but the Nighwatcher definitly holds more Investiture than other spren.

[Honorless]

Hmm, it's true that spren can physically touch & influence objects, so there is something

I will tentatively go with Breath being Endowment's Investiture, it would change a spren's nature towards her as opposed to Honor, Cultivation or Odium depending on the amount of Breath received

[Mr.stormblessed]

On 5/6/2020 at 11:23 PM, R J said:

What would giving Breath to spren result in? Breath is supposed to be more in the Physical than the Spiritual due to the nature of Endowment / to facilitate their transfer. Would the adaptability of Breath to different sDNA cause it to become more Cognitive in nature? Or would it make it easier for the spren to push into the Physical Realm and retain their coherence there?

I assume that the rules of Awakening should still remain the same for them and they would still gain Heightenings if they acquire more Breaths, but would doing so change what kind of spren they are if they have more of Endowment's Investiture or would Endowment's nature mean her Investiture wouldn't change the inherent nature of the spren? If the spren was a Nahel Bond capable spren, would this count as Corruption assuming their nature does change? Would they still grant the same Surges?

Could they grant the benefits of the Heightenings to their Bondmate? Seeing as the Nahel Bond is a melding of the Spiritwebs, to some degree, would transferring Breaths be easier between Bondmates or could a Bondmate use one another's Breath at the Fifth Ideal?

Questioner

So, is it possible for a spren to get more Investiture? And if it does, will it kinda level up into a higher form of spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's possible. That is totally possible.

[Honorless]

1 hour ago, Mr.stormblessed said:

Questioner

So, is it possible for a spren to get more Investiture? And if it does, will it kinda level up into a higher form of spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, it's possible. That is totally possible.

We've seen that WoB already, it was being discussed on this topic just a while ago