Theories on the Origin of Storms

[Mr. Misting he/him]

So. What the crap is the Origin? We know for a fact that the highstorm leaves Shinovar weak and comes back at full force after passing through the origin. This is this the majority of what we know. There is so much empty space that we don't understand. Therefore, commence theories:

Is the Origin the residence of Honor's Perpendicularity? If so the Stormfather would just came back after a hard day of being a storm and spreading investiture and get refueled. I always thought that the highstorms were Honor's Perpendicularity but after checking the Coppermind I find myself mistaken. If the Origin was Honor's Perpendicularity I was still have to be able to move around easily because we see that it is mobile. 

Was the Origin originally part of the highstorm system? We know that the highstorms have existed on Roshar pre-shattering but we also know that the system has been drastically changed since then. I could see the Origin being added as an afterthought and that is why the highstorms are messed up, needing to be refueled.

Same storm of different ones? Does the Origin make a new storm or refuel the old one? I always assumed that it was the same storm but we don't really know.

Was the Origin the origin of Roshar? I don't know, the Origin feels like a very important name that I wouldn't just give to the storm cycle place. Something more has to be going on here.

There are so many questions about the Origin and I want to hear some weird theories on what you guys think. Discuss.

[ConfusedCow]

               I have theorized that the plane of Shadesmar cannot form a map (I think the math term is bijection) to a sphere.  There must be a missing point, a point on the surface of Roshar that has no corresponding point in Shadesmar.           

               A typical mapping for example involves drawing a line from the top of a sphere resting on the 'origin' of the plane to every point on the plane.  Each line will intersect the sphere once and form a 1-1 correspondence between each point on the sphere and the plane except the point at the top of the sphere.  This point at the top is sometimes thought of as the point corresponding to infinity.  

             I believe the origin on Roshar to be this point that does not connect to Shadesmar.  Instead it connects straight to the spiritual realm and thus is the source of infinite investiture.  

    

[Treamayne]

In world, it is entirely possible "Origin" is simply a recognized name for "in the ocean to the east"  since weather science is not developed enough to understand how a storm develops over water and may not correspond to a single specific physical location.

7 hours ago, Mr. Misting said:

Same storm of different ones? Does the Origin make a new storm or refuel the old one?

I feel like this was already addressed in WoR when Stormfather caused the "Origin" to make a new Highstorm out-of-cycle to match the Everstorm.

I also think that is one difference between the Everstorm and a Highstorm:

• The Everstorm is every nine days (except when Odium interferes) because it is one storm circling Roshar
• Highstorms are a non-random, non-regular cycle because the develop over the ocean before moving over land

[offer]

6 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I feel like this was already addressed in WoR when Stormfather caused the "Origin" to make a new Highstorm out-of-cycle to match the Everstorm.

 

This does not answer whether it is a new storm - maybe he crated a new one or maybe he moved the existing was faster so it croosed the sea faster than regular.

[Treamayne]

19 minutes ago, offer said:

This does not answer whether it is a new storm - maybe he crated a new one or maybe he moved the existing was faster so it crossed the sea faster than regular.

The quote is certainly ambiguous (WoR ch 86)

Spoiler

“A highstorm,” Kaladin said, shooting up through the sky after Szeth. “The red storm is from the Parshendi, but why is there a highstorm coming? This isn’t the time for one.”

“My father,” Syl said, voice growing solemn. “He brought the storm, rushing its pace. He’s . . . broken, Kaladin. He doesn’t think any of this should be happening. He wants to end it all, wash everyone away, and try to hide from the future.”

 

[Returned he/him]

The Origin is an in-world description of a semi-regular, significant event in the lives of the people of Roshar. They name a region they have never seen and cannot reach, but logically must exist, based on what little they can observe of it. They see that the Highstorms weaken as they cross Roshar and are at their strongest when they first arrive. So they theorize that the Origin is a place (imprecisely defined in size and location) that must be out there and where the storms are born (or reinforced). If Rosharans want to talk about such a place they have to name it, and "origin" is as good a term as any other for that. I think that it's a mistake to ascribe greater importance to it than that.

I'm not sure the distinction between "new storm" and "one storm irregularly refueled" is a meaningful one. If we are looking for a natural description it could just as easily be a region in which weather conditions reliably converge to produce a huge storm, not unlike hurricanes which occur in regular regions on predictable cycles on Earth. It's always the same weather, contained in the same system (Earth), and causes specific results on a predictable (if not totally so) timetable. If the Earth's population were limited to a certain region of land along the South Pacific, those people might refer to the area of the sea where El Niño forms as the origin of that storm which comes at irregular intervals over a two to seven year cycle. No magical importance needed-- there doesn't have to be more going on with the name. Not any more than for things called the North Pole or the Equator.

Though, for what it's worth, I think that having a constant spren as the storm itself (the Stormfather) and a huge being which walks with it (whether that's the Stormfather or not) strongly suggests to me that it is one storm which constantly exists. But if the storm cycle causes those spren to pop into a specific region of the physical realm where conditions prompt that then I don't think anything would be meaningfully different.

We know that the specific weather patterns on Roshar create storms of similar intensity with the same features at irregular intervals (on a very predictable overall cycle; their calendar is based on a two-year cycle that reliably includes the Weeping), and that those storms weaken to almost nothing by the time they reach Shinovar. But once the Highstorms were personified by common belief (in the form of a super-spren) and infused with Shardic power as a Splinter we're moving beyond needing strictly natural explanations for anything.