Chapter 50 The Process of Peace - Question about a Wit comment

[Calten_Gnomercy]

There is an interaction where Wit is talking to Navani about halfway through.

 

Wit is having a panic attack in the ground and is talking to Navani about how he isn’t real so his emotions don’t matter and hes “a puppet for raw investiture.”

Then he says “Damn, is this how the Iriali feel?”

Who are they? I know they’re an odd group, blind hair (I think) and were working for Ishar.

Anyone know what he meant by that?

[Sedside she/her]

2 minutes ago, Calten_Gnomercy said:

Anyone know what he meant by that?

I guess this is about their religion. They believe that they are part of the One, and they exist to provide different kinds of experience for the One. You can read Ym's interlude in WoR, it's described pretty well there.

[RedBlue]

The Iriali are a group of people who believe that everyone is a fragment of a god called the One. The purpose of each fragment is to collect lived experiences to be brought back to the One when they die.

While this does not seem to be strictly true, this belief does colour how a lot of Iriali see the world. The devout believers go through life viewing their own conscious minds as constructs created by a greater being, of which they are a part.

Fake Wit has something vaguely similar going on, in that he/it is a small chunk of investiture trying to simulate a conscious mind while ‘knowing’ that he/it is just a simulation.

[Calten_Gnomercy]

Thank you! I didn’t realize.

 

i was thinking they were something like a splintered shard. Or some highly invested, near shard entity like Hoid who reacted the same way while in the visions.

[Atlas333]

2 hours ago, Calten_Gnomercy said:

i was thinking they were something like a splintered shard. Or some highly invested, near shard entity like Hoid who reacted the same way while in the visions.

I personally see this as the case. When Wit is speaking he's being very specific. He's saying he's a "puppet of raw investiture" and then directly comparing that to the Iriali.

Combining that with Brandon's fondness of in-book religions having some historical foundation I highly doubt that the Iriali have a religion founded on nothing. Additionally, I find it incredibly unlikely that Brandon is setting up this people as a through line across the entire cosmere and it isn't setting up some kind of grand reveal when they reach the seventh land. They believe themselves to be a piece of god, and Hoid hints that may be true, so I'm inclined to believe him.

I see them as being the remnants of a shard (potentially Reason or Valor as they're hard to find) or maybe even the cognitive shadow of Adonalsium splintered and divided between them (not sure if the last one works mechanically but it does match their religion). 

[Stoneward65]

There is a theory that the iriali are a splinter of the shard virtuosity. In Yumi we learn that virtuosity splintered theirselves, and the hion lines are a part of their investiture. The lines are cyan and magenta, which one astute reader noticed are two of the three colors used by printers to create all colors. The color missing is yellow, which corresponds to the Iriali having golden skin, hair and eyes. Brandon also sneakily answered a question about where the yellow line went.  

Lacrosse Demon

In the Yumi and the Nightmare Painter prerelease spoiler stream, someone asked about a third hion, colored yellow, which you hinted was a thing. Nothing like that appeared in the novel beyond the third color on the cover artwork. Could you expand on that a bit?

Brandon Sanderson

There could be a third theoretical color that would be relevant in this conversation. And it would be yellow. If there were a third hion line, it would be yellow. And there is not a third hion line, currently. I wonder why…

YouTube Spoiler Stream 6 (Dec. 19, 2023)

 

[Calten_Gnomercy]

Was there ever any mention of the color that the 4th moon appeared to be before crashing into Roshar?

Venli mentions hearing a 4th rhythm of Roshar just a few chapters after this one…