The Arcana and their counterparts

[+Oltux72 he/him]

There are multiple ones, sadly only one of them is named

• The Spirits themselves have arcane powers up to manipulation of Connection. Do we agree that they are to Virtuosity what Seons are to Devotion?
• The art of calling up the Spirits. That has no direct equivalent.
• The Spirits materializing and doing work. They are basically old-style fabrials like they were to be found on Roshar.
• The Hion-lines. They seem to be immaterial fabrials. This is also completely new. Anything equivalent?
• The Machine. This seems to be a cross between Awakening and new-style fabrials.
• Necromancy. I am sorry, but what the Machine does amounts to do that. Though I got to ask what exactly powers this Arcana. Is it the act of killing so many people or are the souls used as a permanent power source?
• Nightmare Painting. Is this a generic thing? Could a Nightmare Painter operate on a Seon or Skaze?
• The Nightmares themselves. The Midnight Mother, respectively Midnight Aethers. I guess this almost certainly kills the theory that the Midnight Mother was an Aether.
• The flying trees. Skyeels? It seems to be the same arcana. This looks like a clear evolutionary adaption. That means that Virtuosity did not create them. What is going on?

When I list them like this, this beats Roshar. This is an alarming number of Arcana. What is going on there?

 

[Argenti he/him]

41 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

The Spirits themselves have arcane powers up to manipulation of Connection. Do we agree that they are to Virtuosity what Seons are to Devotion?

Yup, they're all splinters of gods. Spren can mess with connection too it apears.

41 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Necromancy. I am sorry, but what the Machine does amounts to do that. 

It's not necromancy exactly, it's more it forms cognitive shadows of the people it killed. It's no more necromancy than the shades are.

43 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Though I got to ask what exactly powers this Arcana. Is it the act of killing so many people or are the souls used as a permanent power source

The people's souls served as an initial power source. It just needed something to get it going, once the machine properly started it used the spirits it was attracting to power further motion. The killing itself doesn't have much power, maybe attracting Ruinous investure, or converting the people’s souls to Ruin. 

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

Nightmare Painting. Is this a generic thing? Could a Nightmare Painter operate on a Seon or Skaze?

Yes, but not to the same extent. Remember the flame spren measurement thing? That's basically the same underlying mechanism.

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

The Nightmares themselves. The Midnight Mother, respectively Midnight Aethers. I guess this almost certainly kills the theory that the Midnight Mother was an Aether.

Why? Just because they act like Midnight essence and aren't an Aether doesn't mean the Midnight Mother isn't? It's a term like lightweaving, a word that can mean a lot if magic systems. 

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

The flying trees. Skyeels? It seems to be the same arcana. This looks like a clear evolutionary adaption. That means that Virtuosity did not create them. What is going on?

Sky eels use luck spren. The flying trees do not. Evolutionary convergence. Not really related.

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

When I list them like this, this beats Roshar. This is an alarming number of Arcana.

 

Also why are you using the word Arcana? 

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

What is going on there?

They captured a large portion of all of the investure on a planet in one spot. Funky stuff happens.

[ftl]

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The Spirits themselves have arcane powers up to manipulation of Connection. Do we agree that they are to Virtuosity what Seons are to Devotion?

Makes sense to me. They're splinters; Spirits are to Virtuosity as Seons are to Devotion, (speculation) Skaze are to Dominion, Rosharan spren are to Honor/Cultivation, etc.

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The art of calling up the Spirits. That has no direct equivalent.

That reminded me of how to attract spren on Roshar. It's basically the same process as Shallan attracting creationspren.

 

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The Spirits materializing and doing work. They are basically old-style fabrials like they were to be found on Roshar.

Yep

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The Hion-lines. They seem to be immaterial fabrials. This is also completely new. Anything equivalent?

Not yet, but I suspect as fabrial science on Roshar continues to advance we'll get something like it. It's basically the magical equivalent of electricity.

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The Machine. This seems to be a cross between Awakening and new-style fabrials.

Also reminds me a lot of Nightblood!

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Necromancy. I am sorry, but what the Machine does amounts to do that. Though I got to ask what exactly powers this Arcana. Is it the act of killing so many people or are the souls used as a permanent power source?

I think the spirits are used as the permanent power source, whereas the souls were temporary.

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Nightmare Painting. Is this a generic thing? Could a Nightmare Painter operate on a Seon or Skaze?

I think the answer is in the middle. Investiture everywhere is affected by perception - Rosharan spren have some of the form they do because of human perception, cognitive shadows are affected by how they're viewed. But the extreme nature of it (how Painter is able to convert a shadow into a bamboo, or something else, in one quick painting on demand) seems fairly extreme - if I had to guess, I think things made from Virtuosity's investiture are extra-susceptible to having this done to them with art.

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The Nightmares themselves. The Midnight Mother, respectively Midnight Aethers. I guess this almost certainly kills the theory that the Midnight Mother was an Aether.

Interestingly, I got the impression that this tells us quite little about Midnight Aether - it seemed to me this whole world was entirely unrelated to midnight aether realmatically. This planet had virtuosity's investiture being used to create shades of formerly living people, with those people's souls being destroyed and converted to the shroud. I don't think this really says anything about the midnight mother or midnight aethers, which seem to be quite different - no formerly living people involved, unclear if it's related to a specific investiture or is general, etc.

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The flying trees. Skyeels? It seems to be the same arcana. This looks like a clear evolutionary adaption. That means that Virtuosity did not create them. What is going on?

Seems like an evolutionary adaptation to me. Just like on Roshar, animals adapted to having a lot of Investiture around (lots of Rosharan fauna interact with spren to help them out), same here. The trees probably get help from spirits to become lighter.

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When I list them like this, this beats Roshar. This is an alarming number of Arcana. What is going on there?

It's a major shardworld, like Roshar. The Shard is splintered and there's lots of Investiture around, also like Roshar.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

27 minutes ago, ftl said:

Makes sense to me. They're splinters; Spirits are to Virtuosity as Seons are to Devotion, (speculation) Skaze are to Dominion, Rosharan spren are to Honor/Cultivation, etc.

Spren are different

• they predate the splintering
• they predate Honor's death

29 minutes ago, ftl said:

That reminded me of how to attract spren on Roshar. It's basically the same process as Shallan attracting creationspren.

But for her then it ends. The attracted spren are useless. At best they are pretty. Yumi, however, is highly invested and that is needed to get the Spirits to do something.

32 minutes ago, ftl said:

I think the answer is in the middle. Investiture everywhere is affected by perception - Rosharan spren have some of the form they do because of human perception, cognitive shadows are affected by how they're viewed. But the extreme nature of it (how Painter is able to convert a shadow into a bamboo, or something else, in one quick painting on demand) seems fairly extreme - if I had to guess, I think things made from Virtuosity's investiture are extra-susceptible to having this done to them with art.

But Nightmares are not made out of Virtuosity's Investiture. They are ex-people.

35 minutes ago, ftl said:

Interestingly, I got the impression that this tells us quite little about Midnight Aether - it seemed to me this whole world was entirely unrelated to midnight aether realmatically. This planet had virtuosity's investiture being used to create shades of formerly living people, with those people's souls being destroyed and converted to the shroud. I don't think this really says anything about the midnight mother or midnight aethers, which seem to be quite different - no formerly living people involved, unclear if it's related to a specific investiture or is general, etc.

Correct. If we have the same power at three different places, two of which are unrelated, the reason to assume that the other two are related goes away.

36 minutes ago, ftl said:

Seems like an evolutionary adaptation to me. Just like on Roshar, animals adapted to having a lot of Investiture around (lots of Rosharan fauna interact with spren to help them out), same here. The trees probably get help from spirits to become lighter.

It's a major shardworld, like Roshar. The Shard is splintered and there's lots of Investiture around, also like Roshar.

I am sorry, but a few thousand years are not enough for multiple totally new species to develop. Virtuosity can have resided there only since the splintering.

51 minutes ago, Argenti said:

Sky eels use luck spren. The flying trees do not. Evolutionary convergence. Not really related.

That opens a whole can of worms.

• How do we know what lives on the subastral? For all we know it has the equivalent of Spren or even literally Spren.
• What granted them the Investiture before the Splintering?

54 minutes ago, Argenti said:

Also why are you using the word Arcana?

What else? I cannot use Invested Art if a semisentient machine and plants do it, can I? Nor is it a magic system. There is no obvious connection like in allomancy.

57 minutes ago, Argenti said:

It's not necromancy exactly, it's more it forms cognitive shadows of the people it killed. It's no more necromancy than the shades are.

Well, it commands ghosts and edits their memories and drew power from them. Maybe the Shades need to be called necromancy, too, but this is necromancy.

[Argenti he/him]

Just now, Oltux72 said:

Spren are different

• they predate the splintering
• they predate Honor's death

No, they are not. They're splinters of Honor and/or Cultivation just the same. Most don't pre-date the shattering (Besides all the investiture was reassigned to them anyway); it is irrelevant if the shard is broken beforehand for splinters to form.

 

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

But Nightmares are not made out of Virtuosity's Investiture. They are ex-people.

46 minutes ago, ftl said:

As they are from a Virtuosity system, their souls have a lot of Virtuosity in them.  Whenever a shard invests in a system, the people who live there gain extra investiture of that shard, be it Preservation, Endowment, or Honor. This is one of the things that differentiates a major shardworld from a minor one.

 

2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

What else? I cannot use Invested Art if a semisentient machine and plants do it, can I? Nor is it a magic system. There is no obvious connection like in allomancy.

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

Arcana is a catch-all, very rarely used (it's been used like twice by people asking wobs, and once in the coppermind). As far as I can tell, it's a less sciencey term, basically the same thing as just calling something magic. Most of these "Arcana" are the result of an Invested Art; we are literally told the Machine was awakened (Not the Nalthian version), which is an invested art. The plants are using an Invested Art, because invested art already means any action that causes something magic. You could probably call a Highstorm an arcana if you want, but the nightmares and the machine are the result of an Invested art and thus are of one.  It's like calling Nightblood an arcana, he's just some awakening turned up to 11.

28 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, it commands ghosts and edits their memories and drew power from them. Maybe the Shades need to be called necromancy, too, but this is necromancy.

They are not ghosts, as they are not dead. At least not entirely, as a death in the cosmere comprises two parts. You can bring someone back from the first gate, where physical death occurs. (Pretty much every healing magic can do it.) But you can not, bring some back from The Beyond. It just doesn't work. Sometimes you can make a vague echo of a person by filling their corpse with investiture, but that is a whole different process from making a cognitive shadow. You can call making a lifeless Necromancy, though. What The Machine did was capture the souls of the people and use them as fuel. It's somewhere in-between a Fabrial and Nightblood. 

34 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

I am sorry, but a few thousand years are not enough for multiple totally new species to develop. Virtuosity can have resided there only since the splintering.

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

(Do you mean the shattering? Or are you referring to Virtuosity splintering herself?) Either way it is plenty of time. Lots of investiture means evolution is speeding up. 

 

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Questioner

Do the Purelakers get pruney feet because of the water? If not, is it because they have special feet or does it have to do with the magic fish?

Brandon Sanderson

They have adapted over time and they do not have magic feet. They have special feet, but they have adapted over time to the situation. Now, let's make the note that most natural selection does not work on the timescale of the cosmere and so there probably have to be some magical foundations for this. The fact that everyone on Roshar is Invested with a bit of Investiture more than average is going to push people over time in a way. Kind of the rationale I give myself on this is because Intent and these sorts of things are so important cosmerelogically that we get evolution on a faster scale in most of the cosmere. And so you can see this just by adaptations that have happened since the history of Roshar itself and the arrival of humans on Roshar and things like that.

YouTube Livestream 9 (May 28, 2020)

 

42 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

• How do we know what lives on the subastral? For all we know it has the equivalent of Spren or even literally Spren.

The Hijo, probably. 

 

43 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

• What granted them the Investiture before the Splintering?

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

Either

A: The spirits were around before. (You can have splinters of a shard before the shard splinters. Yes, it's confusing)
B: Virtuosity's background magic powered them; they used the ambient investiture to form special weight fields.

C: They just were not on Komashi before Shattering/Splintering.
 

[ftl]

 

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Spren are different

• they predate the splintering
• they predate Honor's death

Both of those might be true for Spirits, too? We don't know when they arose, I think?

Though throughout most of the story it's easy to kind of assume that the start of all this was Virtuosity splintering herself, as it turns out that event basically has little bearing on the story. The spirits might have been around before that too, like spren on Roshar. (Or they could be way different, but I don't see a reason to think that, with what we know.)

Spoiler

But for her then it ends. The attracted spren are useless. At best they are pretty. Yumi, however, is highly invested and that is needed to get the Spirits to do something.

Yes, that's true.

I wonder if this process that is used to make spirits into something useful is similar to how the old-style fabrials are made, the ones that are a spren in the physical realm rather than a spren in a gemstone. The part of attracting them is the same, though.

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But Nightmares are not made out of Virtuosity's Investiture. They are ex-people.

Well, they're ex-people but it's Virtuosity's investiture that makes them into these weird shadow things. (What else would it be? Not some other shard's investiture, and they certainly couldn't do that without investiture.)

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Correct. If we have the same power at three different places, two of which are unrelated, the reason to assume that the other two are related goes away.

Ah, yeah, good point. Might mean that the Midnight Mother and the Midnight Aether aren't as related as they seem. I could buy that.

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I am sorry, but a few thousand years are not enough for multiple totally new species to develop. Virtuosity can have resided there only since the splintering.

So, I don't think we know the timelines at all.

The Machine was activated about 1700 years ago. But we don't know how long before that Virtuosity splintered herself, or even how long Virtuosity was in this system before splintering herself. The plants of this world could have had quite some time to adapt to the presence of Investiture, such as the floating trees.

I suppose the adaptation of the plants and animals to the shroud would have to have been quick, if such adaptations happened; but, well, the presence of a lot of Investiture speeds up things like that. And losing flight might be easier than gaining it.

[Firesong she/her]

1 hour ago, ftl said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

But for her then it ends. The attracted spren are useless. At best they are pretty. Yumi, however, is highly invested and that is needed to get the Spirits to do something.

The Machine was activated about 1700 years ago. But we don't know how long before that Virtuosity splintered herself, or even how long Virtuosity was in this system before splintering herself. The plants of this world could have had quite some time to adapt to the presence of Investiture, such as the floating trees.

I suppose the adaptation of the plants and animals to the shroud would have to have been quick, if such adaptations happened; but, well, the presence of a lot of Investiture speeds up things like that. And losing flight might be easier than gaining it.

 Brandon has said before places with high Investiture tend to lead to fast evolution. Because it would kinda have to for some of his ideas to make sense without a timescale in the millions or billions of years. Or up to tens of thousands of years for substantial phenotypical differences in human groups (basically I am talking about race). I actually remember him bringing it up specifically in regards to Rosharan humans, with how they evolved for the lower-gravity higher-oxygen environment in so short a time, for example. 

But with this situation, I believe that this might be due to some direct intervention by some entity. Like what happened on Scadrial as TLR tried to fix his mistakes by making plants, animals, and humanity able to survive in the wasteland he created. We do actually know part of the way plants work has to do with the spirits making them lighter. So it is most likely all down to divine intervention. 

 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

8 hours ago, Argenti said:

No, they are not. They're splinters of Honor and/or Cultivation just the same. Most don't pre-date the shattering (Besides all the investiture was reassigned to them anyway); it is irrelevant if the shard is broken beforehand for splinters to form.

• Seons and Skaze are blobs of light, so are spirits - Spren are not
• Spren are attracted to natural phenomena

8 hours ago, Argenti said:

As they are from a Virtuosity system, their souls have a lot of Virtuosity in them.  Whenever a shard invests in a system, the people who live there gain extra investiture of that shard, be it Preservation, Endowment, or Honor. This is one of the things that differentiates a major shardworld from a minor one.

I think I now see the difference in the subconcious assumptions we are making.

To put it bluntly there is no evidence the Komashi/UTol system was unsplintered Virtuosity's seat as opposed to only the site of her death.
I would say it wasn't, because (though the evidence is thin):

• no mentioning of her in the letters between Hoid and Harmony
• no memento in the trophy cases seen in Oathbringer

And the Machine operated on every human, but only on humans. It triggered Hoid's defenses, who apparently still counts as human, despite all modifications, but hordelings and Spren are fine. Every human including those from ordinary worlds bears Investiture. It was certainly not intentionally built to do so, so we must assume that human is the template it learned to drain because they were available.

9 hours ago, Argenti said:

They are not ghosts, as they are not dead. At least not entirely, as a death in the cosmere comprises two parts. You can bring someone back from the first gate, where physical death occurs. (Pretty much every healing magic can do it.) But you can not, bring some back from The Beyond. It just doesn't work. Sometimes you can make a vague echo of a person by filling their corpse with investiture, but that is a whole different process from making a cognitive shadow. You can call making a lifeless Necromancy, though. What The Machine did was capture the souls of the people and use them as fuel. It's somewhere in-between a Fabrial and Nightblood.

Well, this looks incomplete, at least for some people. In fact I am not sure this was settled. Cognitive Shadows can be reincarnated. So while we are at it, is the state of being a Cognitive Shadow universal, just very brief for most people due to too little Investiture, or is it an exception?

What does soul mean in that regard? Did it really use the spiritual component of people as fuel? If not, then whence did the Investiture needed to make Cognitive Shadows that last for centuries without a body come from? It would seem that a process that does that would require additional Investiture, not generate it. Or is this a side effect of using that particular kind of "necromancy" close to the place a Shard has died? That would analagous to Threnody then.

[Argenti he/him]

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

• Seons and Skaze are blobs of light, so are spirits - Spren are not
• Spren are attracted to natural phenomena

16 hours ago, Argenti said:

They are all splinters. All the evidence needed is on the coppermind here. I can find wobs too if you'd like.

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I think I now see the difference in the subconcious assumptions we are making.

To put it bluntly there is no evidence the Komashi/UTol system was unsplintered Virtuosity's seat as opposed to only the site of her death.
I would say it wasn't, because (though the evidence is thin):

• no mentioning of her in the letters between Hoid and Harmony
• no memento in the trophy cases seen in Oathbringer

That is completely fair, but kinda irrelevant. At the time of the machine, virtuosity had splintered there. Otherwise, the huge amount of spirits there would have either never been captured, as virtuosity would probably never have allowed such a violation, or they wouldn't have been there to begin with.

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

And the Machine operated on every human, but only on humans. It triggered Hoid's defenses, who apparently still counts as human, despite all modifications, but hordelings and Spren are fine. Every human including those from ordinary worlds bears Investiture. It was certainly not intentionally built to do so, so we must assume that human is the template it learned to drain because they were available.

16 hours ago, Argenti said:

I'm not sure what you mean here, but technically it didn't kill every human; otherwise, where did Painter come from? It drains easily accessible investiture, like people's souls. I don't think Hoid counted as a human for the machine; more like a spirit. (Hoid Hion!?)

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, this looks incomplete, at least for some people. In fact I am not sure this was settled. Cognitive Shadows can be reincarnated.

Do you mean the Heralds or Yumi? Painter shapes Yumi's investiture into Yumi again, and the Oathpact shapes the Heralds back into Herald shape. They aren't dead, just gone from the physical realm.

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

So while we are at it, is the state of being a Cognitive Shadow universal, just very brief for most people due to too little Investiture, or is it an exception?

It's a normal thing, then extended by more investiture.
 

6 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

What does soul mean in that regard? Did it really use the spiritual component of people as fuel? If not, then whence did the Investiture needed to make Cognitive Shadows that last for centuries without a body come from? It would seem that a process that does that would require additional Investiture, not generate it. Or is this a side effect of using that particular kind of "necromancy" close to the place a Shard has died? That would analagous to Threnody then.

It used the investiture of souls to kick start it's process. Once it absorbed the souls, they were kinda part of the machine and would stay around as long as it did. The Machine keeps them in the physical realm, and the investiture to do so comes from the spirits.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Argenti

[Njvodin]

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

Could a Nightmare Painter operate on a Seon or Skaze?

I think the way the book explained it, Painter could paint the shadows because he was able to impress his thoughts onto the shadow itself. This could be a property of Cognitive Shadows themselves, maybe ones that aren't very Invested. However, the more Invested something is, the harder it is to influence it.

So something such as a Seon, Skaze, Spren, or Spirit, or just any Splinter of a Shard in general is going to be harder to influence with something such as Painting. That's not to say it's impossible though. Maybe a skilled enough Painter that is really good at art, that is on some level Invested, or has something powering their Painting, could rewrite a Splinter (depending on size of the Splinter I guess).

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

The art of calling up the Spirits. That has no direct equivalent.

I reckon that you could say spren are attracted to emotions (Honor and Odium are kind of emotions, I guess?), and are pulled out of the Cognitive Realm, just like how the Spirits are attracted to art (Virtuosity is about art), and are potentially maybe pulled out of the CR at Komashi?

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

The Spirits materializing and doing work. They are basically old-style fabrials like they were to be found on Roshar.

I think you're pretty spot on with this one, the Spren of Roshar are somehow attracted (probably emotions), and coerced into becoming fabrials as the ancient Rosharans knew them.

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

The Machine. This seems to be a cross between Awakening and new-style fabrials.

I think I saw in a WOB somewhere, but I can't find it now, that the father machine is akin to Nalthian Awakening, but doesn't use Breaths to Awaken it, just like how Yolish Lightweaving and Rosharan Lightweaving share a name, yet are slightly different. I think maybe this is the direction that even newer-style fabrials are going to go. We've only ever seen one other thing like this machine though, and that's Nightblood.

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

The Nightmares themselves. The Midnight Mother, respectively Midnight Aethers. I guess this almost certainly kills the theory that the Midnight Mother was an Aether.

I don't think these three are terribly related. The nightmares are Cognitive Shadows, whereas Midnight Aethers are an aether, which I'm not 100% on what that even is, and the Midnight Mother is something unrelated to Cognitive Shadows, I think. But in saying that, it's also similar to my previous point, how different magics share the same name but are slightly different origin. 

On 03/07/2023 at 2:59 AM, Oltux72 said:

The flying trees. Skyeels? It seems to be the same arcana. This looks like a clear evolutionary adaption. That means that Virtuosity did not create them. What is going on?

In my opinion, these two are not related. Skyeels seem to be somehow manipulating the Surge of Gravitation through a luckspren bond. Yes, the trees are are also manipulating Gravitation, but I doubt that they're also bonding luckspren.

Maybe like you say, they are related. I could see the Spirits somehow being a part of this, but for a flora, an unthinking entity, being able to form a bond, is a little strange to me. Additionally to this, there does seem to be a thing with Spirits where if you have one half of a Spirit doing one thing, the other half has to be doing the complete opposite. So, if the trees are being Lashed upwards, then something has to be Lashed downwards, or some such.

On 03/07/2023 at 0:03 PM, Firesong said:

So it is most likely all down to divine intervention. 

I agree with Firesong here, I don't think that it's due to a bond or anything. Just good ol' fashioned divine intervention.

 

Feel free to correct me and point out any errors I've most likely made 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

2 hours ago, Njvodin said:

I reckon that you could say spren are attracted to emotions (Honor and Odium are kind of emotions, I guess?), and are pulled out of the Cognitive Realm, just like how the Spirits are attracted to art (Virtuosity is about art), and are potentially maybe pulled out of the CR at Komashi?

I am afraid I have to disagree. If that were the simple explanation, anybody could do it. But we find that it takes ultrainvested people.

2 hours ago, Njvodin said:

I don't think these three are terribly related. The nightmares are Cognitive Shadows, whereas Midnight Aethers are an aether, which I'm not 100% on what that even is, and the Midnight Mother is something unrelated to Cognitive Shadows, I think. But in saying that, it's also similar to my previous point, how different magics share the same name but are slightly different origin.

They are incorporated somehow. A pure CS would not be in the physical realm, or if it could somehow transfer it would look like something from Threnody. Some process made them thos eshadow bodies to inhabit.

2 hours ago, Njvodin said:

In my opinion, these two are not related. Skyeels seem to be somehow manipulating the Surge of Gravitation through a luckspren bond. Yes, the trees are are also manipulating Gravitation, but I doubt that they're also bonding luckspren.

Maybe like you say, they are related. I could see the Spirits somehow being a part of this, but for a flora, an unthinking entity, being able to form a bond, is a little strange to me. Additionally to this, there does seem to be a thing with Spirits where if you have one half of a Spirit doing one thing, the other half has to be doing the complete opposite. So, if the trees are being Lashed upwards, then something has to be Lashed downwards, or some such.

OK, so first, luckspren manipulate mass not gravity. Look at how a chasmfiend goes around corners. Lowering gravity does not affect centrifugal/centripetal force. You need to actually go for mass to achieve that.

The point is that you have multiple species of plant having adapted to extraordinary environments, like on Roshar and First of the Sun. That adaption needs enough time for evolution to act. That is, the plants must predate the shattering of Adonalsium.

 

[ellione]

53 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

 

OK, so first, luckspren manipulate mass not gravity. Look at how a chasmfiend goes around corners. Lowering gravity does not affect centrifugal/centripetal force. You need to actually go for mass to achieve that.

The point is that you have multiple species of plant having adapted to extraordinary environments, like on Roshar and First of the Sun. That adaption needs enough time for evolution to act. That is, the plants must predate the shattering of Adonalsium.

 

Hi! You are correct that luckspren manipulate mass, not gravity. This is evident in the way that chasmfiends are able to go around corners while under the influence of a chasmfiend lashing. The lashing lowers the gravity around the chasmfiend, but it does not affect the centrifugal force, so the chasmfiend is still able to turn.

[Njvodin]

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I am afraid I have to disagree. If that were the simple explanation, anybody could do it. But we find that it takes ultrainvested people.

16 hours ago, Njvodin said:

I actually think that anyone CAN do it, as we see Nikaro, who is barely Invested, if at all, summon both a few Spirits, AND Yumi, who is actually most likely more Invested than those Spirits. So we have evidence that any random person can do it. I believe that maybe the Yuki-Hijo are better at summoning Spirits than the average Joe off the street, but that doesn't mean no one else can do it. If we correlate spren directly to spirits, then we can see that anyone can attract them, as anyone can have emotions (or in the case of true spren, whatever the order is interested in, like lies with Cryptics), just like anyone can make art. Which, I also believe, is part of the underlying themes, that anyone can make art. 

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

OK, so first, luckspren manipulate mass not gravity. Look at how a chasmfiend goes around corners. Lowering gravity does not affect centrifugal/centripetal force. You need to actually go for mass to achieve that.

The point is that you have multiple species of plant having adapted to extraordinary environments, like on Roshar and First of the Sun. That adaption needs enough time for evolution to act. That is, the plants must predate the shattering of Adonalsium.

I don't think I said that it affects gravity, but the Surge of Gravitation, as the Rosharans know it, which affects mass. They are two seperate things (except for maybe Reverse Lashings?).

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

They are incorporated somehow. A pure CS would not be in the physical realm, or if it could somehow transfer it would look like something from Threnody. Some process made them thos eshadow bodies to inhabit.

A Cognitive Shadow like which we see on Threnody exists because their Connection to the Spiritual Realm is damaged somehow. The Nightmares on Komashi are the same as the Threnodite shades because they have also a damaged Connection to the Spiritual Realm, as the father machine is consuming their Investiture (which comes from the SR). That process you reference is just the father machine drawing them from the Cognitive Realm to the Physical, so it can feast upon them (at least until it started eating spirits, but by then the CS's Connection to the SR is already damaged). 

However, Midnight Aethers and the Midnight Mother are unrelated. They are the result of corrupted Investiture, not Cognitive Shadows, as far as I know.

[ellione]

 

I think this is an interesting observation. This means that there is some connection between the cognitive shadow and the physical world. Perhaps the cognitive shadow can be materialized in some way if its connection to the Spiritual Realm is damaged.

yarovoe.org

Edited September 11, 2023 by ellione