The Unsoulcastable Stick He/Him Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 This could contain some spoilers if you haven't read Warbreaker and the 4th book of Wax and Wanye stop here, also this does briefly mention a possibly sensitive subject if that makes you uncomfortable please stop reading. In warbreaker you can have more Breaths than just one but each person only starts with one so if you accept that the consciousness is different from the soul then you can take someone's soul from them and they can still think and walk around if you were to get to the fifth heightening you would never die from old age. Also at some point in the Forth book of Wax and Wayne someone who has an Aether who essentially bonded them like a spren would, he said something along the lines of (Aether) wants you to know if you still chose to fight me you will not be reborn for 100(0) years to think about what youve done. so we know the basis of the afterlife in the cosmere. if you got the breath from every person born could you up the number of people born without a soul in the cosmere or as i imagine it people who are stillborn
Trusk'our he/him Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 48 minutes ago, The Unsoulcastable Stick said: This could contain some spoilers if you haven't read Warbreaker and the 4th book of Wax and Wanye stop here, also this does briefly mention a possibly sensitive subject if that makes you uncomfortable please stop reading. In warbreaker you can have more Breaths than just one but each person only starts with one so if you accept that the consciousness is different from the soul then you can take someone's soul from them and they can still think and walk around if you were to get to the fifth heightening you would never die from old age. Also at some point in the Forth book of Wax and Wayne someone who has an Aether who essentially bonded them like a spren would, he said something along the lines of (Aether) wants you to know if you still chose to fight me you will not be reborn for 100(0) years to think about what youve done. so we know the basis of the afterlife in the cosmere. if you got the breath from every person born could you up the number of people born without a soul in the cosmere or as i imagine it people who are stillborn Reincarnation isn't the standard occurrence in the Cosmere afterlife (as far as we know). Fused reincarnate and Returned are resurrected, but those aren't normal by any means. Most souls move to the Beyond after death, and what exactly that's like is up to the interpretation of the reader and characters of the story. Spoiler https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406-general-reddit-2020/#e13765 dIvorrap Was really Evi the voice that Dalinar heard when he opened Honor's perpendicularity? Brandon Sanderson RAFO. (You knew it was coming.) So here's the thing--I'm never going to confirm or deny anything from Beyond the Spiritual Realm. Because it is unfair for me to do so. I believe there is an afterlife in our world, while others (quite rationally) conclude there is not. The Cosmere has systems in place for ghosts and things to be real, yes, but I want it to always be possible for intelligent people to disagree about things like Evi's voice. Spiritual Connection creates visions in the Cosmere that are quite realistic (like all the ones Dalinar experienced.) What Dalinar heard here could very rationally be a version of such a vision. That's what the Death Rattles are, for example. Or, it could be his dead wife speaking to him from beyond the grave. Navani would say that's what it is; Jasnah would say it's the first. I try very hard (despite my personal biases) to not undercut the viewpoint of someone who doesn't believe in an afterlife. It is vital to me that the author not sweep in and say, "Yeah, it's cool some characters are Atheists at all who doesn't believe in an afterlife...but nudge nudge, we both know there is one." The existence of an afterlife (not Cognitive Shadow style, but in the Beyond) in the cosmere is subject to your own personal interpretation. Everything that happens like this CAN be explained by Realmatic Theory, with very valid examples from the books. Breaths aren't your consciousness, but they are a part of you; giving it up shouldn't affect your existence in the Beyond any more than getting Hemalurgically spiked would. Spoiler https://wob.coppermind.net/events/41-firefight-release-party/#e7232 Lady Radagu Does being the donor of a Hemalurgic spike have any implications for your afterlife? Or how about the recipient? Brandon Sanderson That is actually going to depend on-- Okay. Yes it has implications for the afterlife. Yes. Lady Radagu Okay so are there a bunch of Scadrian souls wandering the afterlife with holes in their personalities or memory or identity? Or some with extra parts tacked on? Brandon Sanderson So it has implications, but they are not exactly ones that you are assuming. So in the cosmere there is "dead" and "mostly dead". Okay? And this has been shown several times so once someone dies there is a period before they transition. Sazed talks about this in Mistborn 3. And so most of the implications are for before transition. Does that make sense? Post-transition you are going to have to ask the philosophers and the theologians who are the ones that talk about that. So there is an afterlife and an after-afterlife. Not as many implications for after-afterlife. Middle? Yes. Okay? Still, gathering lots of Investiture in the form of Breaths is pretty powerful, especially since you become biologically immortal and have greater intuitive insight with Awakening. 1
The Unsoulcastable Stick He/Him Posted August 15, 2024 Author Posted August 15, 2024 that makes sense i was just trying to put some conjecture out there i also could have read things wrong dyslexia sucks. I also did put a few stretches into the theory
Trusk'our he/him Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 20 minutes ago, The Unsoulcastable Stick said: that makes sense i was just trying to put some conjecture out there i also could have read things wrong dyslexia sucks. I also did put a few stretches into the theory Eh, we all love a good theory here. Better to share an idea to get feedback than not to 1
alder24 Posted August 15, 2024 Posted August 15, 2024 1 hour ago, The Unsoulcastable Stick said: In warbreaker you can have more Breaths than just one but each person only starts with one so if you accept that the consciousness is different from the soul then you can take someone's soul from them and they can still think and walk around if you were to get to the fifth heightening you would never die from old age. Also at some point in the Forth book of Wax and Wayne someone who has an Aether who essentially bonded them like a spren would, he said something along the lines of (Aether) wants you to know if you still chose to fight me you will not be reborn for 100(0) years to think about what youve done. so we know the basis of the afterlife in the cosmere. if you got the breath from every person born could you up the number of people born without a soul in the cosmere or as i imagine it people who are stillborn Breaths aren't a soul, they are just an additional part of the soul. People without Breaths are just Drabs - they still have a soul, they just lack this extra part. We don't know and we won't know if there is a true afterlife in Cosmere, but there are ways to cheat death - like Returned do. As for the last question - no. It's the Shard of Endowment that gives Breaths to people, and she has basically infinite investiture at her disposal. She won't ever run out of Breaths to give and as long as Endowment wants to do it, people on Nalthis will always be born with Breaths. And this is happening ONLY on Nalthis, people on different planets won't be affected if Endowment stops giving Breaths to newborns. On other planets this additional part of the soul is more independent from the will of a Shard - they are just have it because of how invested is the world they live on. Spoiler Luke Beartline Along the lines of BioChromatic Breath being akin to a person's soul, how would a Shardblade react to someone who does not have any Breath, would it cut them like an inanimate object? Brandon Sanderson No. Remember, one of the things with Breath is I consider Breath to be a part of someone's soul, but it is the extra part that the Cosmere has that non-Cosmere doesn't have. I don't know how far I want to lean into this, but there is definitely a part of me that thinks that Drabs, people who have given up their breath on Nalthis, are just like people from our world. That's what they are, that if we went to the Cosmere we would all be Drabs. Even on planets that aren't Nalthis, where you can't take part of that and give it away and things like that, people are invested. They are invested generally more than here. Why do I do this? There's a couple reasons. One, it's really convenient for some narrative reasons. A lot of books I'm writing are these kind of action-adventure stories, and can human beings actually take the punishment that is delivered, let's say to Adolin in the end of Oathbringer? *noncommital negative sounds* He doesn't come off well from that, but could a human being really take that? I go back and forth. Humans are capable of some pretty incredible feats, particularly with adrenaline driving them, but my kind of blanket answer is everyone in the Cosmere has got a bit more Investiture; everyone's got something like Breath. Nalthians have something kind of extra special because they can use it in different ways, but everybody's got something like that. It's leading to the fact that for instance, I highlighted this in the books, this part is canon: There are things about Rosharans that make it so that a lot of diseases have trouble getting a foothold. You do not have the bubonic plague on Roshar. You could maybe say this is because they are not living in close enough proximity to mammals for diseases to hop species as happens on our planet, which is a pretty valid point. Things that affect a horse or a cow (a lot of different diseases from cows come to us), things that affect a cow are much more likely to be able to affect a human than something that affects a chull being able to affect a human. Totally valid, but I also think that there is something more going on here. This allows me to do fantasy stories where... In Warbreaker we don't have to be worrying about the next outbreak of smallpox, which legitimately they probably would have to be worrying about. It means that, while this is kind of a trope that people, trope is the wrong term, but that people in the past did not have as bad as teeth as we assume that we do because they did not eat the levels of sugars and starches that we do. Investiture also in the Cosmere means that you're not going to... Dalinar probably would not have a full set of teeth, even without being punched in the face and stuff, if he were a human from Earth. But on Roshar he's got just a little bit extra vitality, a little bit extra something, just like everyone on the planet, that is making him a little tougher and making him a little more disease resistant and some of these things. It makes the stories more fun for me to tell and also gives us some suspension of disbelief on some of these things. You do not have to worry about smallpox outbreaks on most planets. You do have to worry about catching the curse of the Elantrian disease and being thrown into a prison city, but smallpox, not as big of a deal. Adam Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that too much anymore. Brandon Sanderson No, but I'm saying you could have to worry about things like that. Magical diseases, totally on the board, but the big plague they're dealing with in Roshar is the common cold that got brought across by some of the members of Seventeenth Shard, and that's going to die out pretty quickly. They will get over it and their immune system is... The common cold has come over multiple times before for reasons like that, colds just from another planet. Roshar, they've got three Shards. Basically if you want something like this to happen you go to a planet that's not quite as highly Invested where they might have a few more diseases, you pick one up, you bring it, and it spreads a little bit but then it dies off. That sort of thing happens a lot in the Cosmere. You do not have to worry about during the space age that people are going to be bringing lots of diseases across planets. YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 (June 3, 2021) Spoiler Questioner Are the glyphwards in Stormlight from Elantris? Brandon Sanderson No, the glyphwards are purely cultural. There are people who would say that they aren’t, even in-world, but that gets into theology and religion, whether there’s a definitive god and afterlife in the Cosmere or not, which I leave up to personal interpretation, in an effort to not undermine characters who believe spiritually different than I do. Boskone 54 (Feb. 18, 2017) Spoiler emailanimal From a very recent signing, we have this new Word of Brandon... chasmfriend's son: Is there a finite amount of Investiture? Brandon: Yes. chasmfriend's son: So is Nightblood consuming it? Brandon: Yes. Very, very slowly. This worries me somewhat because of the following observation. Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second). Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath. Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing. This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing. I can see the following possible explanations to this: Endowment can give Breath to many more people than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit). Thoughts? Brandon Sanderson Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy. Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born. uchoo786 So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm? Brandon Sanderson The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak. General Reddit 2015 (Dec. 14, 2015)
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