cometaryorbit Posted June 14, 2022 Posted June 14, 2022 Something weird that just occurred to me. There are a lot of cases in the cosmere of beings 'losing their minds' or sapience due to some Realmatic damage. Mistwraiths, parshmen, deadeyes, 'broken' Reod seons... It's clear in OB that restored singers remember their lives as parshmen, and in ROW Mayalaran's 'WE CHOSE' shows that deadeye spren retain memory when restored too. But mistwraiths don't keep anything when they become kandra... they even lose much of their instincts as mistwraiths and have to re-learn how to form bodies. Now maybe that's because they were born as mistwraiths (no prior memories)... but the modern parshmen were born as parshmen too, so...
Returned he/him Posted June 14, 2022 Posted June 14, 2022 I'm not sure that mistwraiths have a consciousness that would understand the world or form memories in the way that a singer or bonded spren does. They aren't described has having an identity or mental life at all. Their individuality and sapience come from their Blessings. In a sense they are born when those Blessings are bestowed, not when their Mistwraith bodies are created, and I'm not sure it makes sense to expect memories from them before that. It sounds like asking a person to remember events before their conception because the cells that formed them already existed. Damaged Parshmen, on the other hand, were sapient but mentally slowed and fuzzed in their thinking-- their restoration just removed those externally imposed blockages. Singers were never mindless beasts, but regular people who were mentally/spiritually maimed for their whole lives.
+robardin he/him Posted June 14, 2022 Posted June 14, 2022 (edited) 41 minutes ago, Returned said: I'm not sure that mistwraiths have a consciousness that would understand the world or form memories in the way that a singer or bonded spren does. They aren't described has having an identity or mental life at all. Their individuality and sapience come from their Blessings. In a sense they are born when those Blessings are bestowed, not when their Mistwraith bodies are created, and I'm not sure it makes sense to expect memories from them before that. It sounds like asking a person to remember events before their conception because the cells that formed them already existed. Damaged Parshmen, on the other hand, were sapient but mentally slowed and fuzzed in their thinking-- their restoration just removed those externally imposed blockages. Singers were never mindless beasts, but regular people who were mentally/spiritually maimed for their whole lives. One wonders about the first mistwraiths, then. Rashek turned all living Feruchemists into mistwraiths, being unable to outright kill/destroy them with the power of Preservation, then "restored" his friends with a few hemalurgic spikes. It would have taken even Rashek a bit of time to kill enough people the right way to create 2xN Blessings spikes (N = however many "friends" he recovered that way; at least ten, the number of First Generation surviving to Sazed's time); until then, those friends would have suffered the same constant mental state of "something is missing, something is terribly wrong!" that MeLaan experienced without her spikes in BoM. And all the other former Feruchemists that hadn't been good enough with Rashek to get spikes? Yikes! Edited June 14, 2022 by robardin
Returned he/him Posted June 14, 2022 Posted June 14, 2022 12 minutes ago, robardin said: One wonders about the first mistwraiths, then. Rashek turned all living Feruchemists into mistwraiths, being unable to outright kill/destroy them with the power of Preservation, then "restored" his friends with a few hemalurgic spikes. It would have taken even Rashek a bit of time to kill enough people the right way to create 2xN (N = however many "friends" he recovered that way; at least ten, the number of First Generation surviving to Sazed's time); until then, those friends would have suffered the same constant mental state of "something is missing, something is terribly wrong!" that MeLaan experienced without her spikes in BoM. And all the other former Feruchemists that hadn't been good enough with Rashek to get spikes? Yikes! It'd be far from Rashek's worst atrocity, though I guess that's a subjective assessment. I would presume that eventually the torment wound down as the mistwraiths' sapience fell further and further away from them, their memories vanished, and they became the effectively mindless beasts that gave rise to the true-breeding, never-human mistwraith kind. About as merciful as the Reod was over time. I'm not sure it would have taken Rashek long to prepare the Blessings though. He had comprehensive knowledge of the Kandra (which he designed) and so probably the Blessings as well, held Preservation's power for possibly a relevant amount of time afterwards, and was Fullborn immediately afterwards. Still not an awesome experience for the packmen, I'm sure, but Rashek knew what he wanted and what to do. 1
cometaryorbit Posted June 14, 2022 Author Posted June 14, 2022 (edited) Maybe mistwraiths aren't intelligent enough to form memories, but IDK... There is that MeLaan POV bit @robardin mentioned-- though maybe a post-kandra mistwraith is different, the intelligence doesn't go away immediately? But there's also a WOB that "there's enough there to train" but it's ethically questionable. That imo suggests at least reasonable animal level intelligence and dogs etc. definitely can form memories. They probably wouldn't be verbal or very clear memories, but losing even instincts seems weird. But Hemalurgy is weird... That same WoB also calls mistwraiths "mentally-stunted people" so I think the analogy with parshmen may not be that far off. Also, I think the damage to parshmen goes beyond "mentally slowed and fuzzed" -- they seem to have lost all motivation/will. Parshmen can speak but rarely do, never tried to flee or rebel against mistreatment (the idea that they are potentially dangerous is considered totally crazy) or even ask for better treatment, etc. I agree sapience is not lost exactly, but the damage seems more extensive than just IQ loss or "brain fuzz". They seem to be sapient but without will. Edited June 14, 2022 by cometaryorbit
Returned he/him Posted June 14, 2022 Posted June 14, 2022 My overarching suggestion is just that there isn't necessarily "memory", in the way we use the term for Singers or Kandra deprived of their spikes, that exists to be lost when a natural-born mistwraith is spiked and becomes a Kandra for the first time. I don't see a reason to think that this process bears much relation to anything that happened to the Singers. Conversely, it's not obvious that Singers' memories are torn away like happens with Kandra that lose their spikes. I'm not suggesting that the only effect of what happened to the Parshmen was the mental fuzzing/slowing, only that that seems like the relevant piece regarding memories. We have narration of a Parshman remembering some details from his servitude (the rules of a card game) but not enough to play. From what we know of the Parshsmen it seems likely that he was unable to pay enough attention to commit details to memory in the first place, as opposed to remembering everything he saw and did and then having those memories externally damaged. I'm mostly extrapolating from the fog Singers describe after their restoration and Rlain's description of Dullform, but I could see an ability to focus attention being an operation of will that Parshmen lacked. 55 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said: I agree sapience is not lost exactly, but the damage seems more extensive than just IQ loss or "brain fuzz". They seem to be sapient but without will That's the distinction I'm trying to draw. Parshmen are able to form and retain memories before and after their damage and restoration. Being restored didn't grant them new memories or damage old ones as far as we know. Mistwraiths, on the other hand, don't seem to have "memories" nor sapience prior to being Blessed, while both can be damaged after Blessings are removed. If the two groups are different, we can expect see different things with them. But I think I may be missing the point you are making. Are you saying that a mistwraith being spiked and becoming a Kandra suffers spiritual/realmatic damage in the process, and that that damage tears their memories away?
cometaryorbit Posted June 15, 2022 Author Posted June 15, 2022 I'm not sure I'm exactly making a point, beyond "this is weird". The first generation retain their human memories so it's nothing to do with the mistwraith -> kandra transition. But new kandra lose even fundamental instincts from being a mistwraith. Seems weird.
Returned he/him Posted June 15, 2022 Posted June 15, 2022 50 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said: The first generation retain their human memories so it's nothing to do with the mistwraith -> kandra transition. But new kandra lose even fundamental instincts from being a mistwraith. Seems weird. I can see that. There are plenty of oddities in the Cosmere that have turned out to be meaningful. I still think you're being too hasty about the mistwraith -> Kandra transition, since we only have the example of human -> mistwraith -> Kandra to judge by. I'm not convinced that they lose all their instincts either, since mistwraiths and Kandra do such different things (absorb whatever, however, vs. exactly imitate a specific body), and they start reasoning and thinking differently as Kandra. But who knows?
cometaryorbit Posted June 15, 2022 Author Posted June 15, 2022 13 hours ago, Returned said: II'm not convinced that they lose all their instincts either, since mistwraiths and Kandra do such different things I will try to find the quote about losing instincts.
Duxredux he/him Posted June 17, 2022 Posted June 17, 2022 (edited) So, I have a Spiritual mumbo jumbo idea. To preface, I agree that Singers and Spren both seem to be able to record and retain memories even when they are Parshmen or Deadeyes. I think the current theory is that this is tied to the Connection stuff from Ba-Ado-Mishram, and that when BAM was locked away a portion of their Connection or possibly their ability to access a part of their Spiritual Identity was lost. The idea I had is that though we think of their malady as having lost their minds, I wonder if it isn't directly related to the Cognitive Realm, instead they lost a part of their Spirit or Connection. Their mind is technically working, but it's their soul or perhaps their Connection to their Cognitive self that is damaged. For Kandra, I'm just theorizing for now. My guess is that the natural state of the Mistwraith doesn't allow for the same memory storage that a Kandra has, and that maybe Kandra are writing memories to the portion of the soul in their Blessings. When a spike is removed the Hemalurgic charge degrades and anything that was stored on the spike also degrades. Alternately, it's just the degradation of the spike that weakens their ties to the Cognitive or the Spiritual realms, or in other words this weakens whatever it is that makes Kandra sapient with their Blessings. Different mechanisms for their lost minds and different "default" states. There are two things I'm not sure on, first is that I can't remember the specifics but I think MeLaan was storing something memory or cognitive related in a metal container in her leg and an emergency canteen in her head in BoM. That may be relevant. The second is that Kandra must maintain a minimum mass in order to retain their intelligence. Does anyone know why this is a requirement? Edited June 17, 2022 by Duxredux clarity
Some Random Spren he/him Posted June 20, 2022 Posted June 20, 2022 On 6/17/2022 at 4:56 PM, Duxredux said: The second is that Kandra must maintain a minimum mass in order to retain their intelligence. Does anyone know why this is a requirement? kandra flesh also sort of works like brains right? maybe it's just that they need above a certain amount in order to use logical thinking
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