Sleepless collapsing

[AonSoo he/him]

In the part where the two Dawnshards meet the sleepless in the room collapse into piles of hordelings. I just can't figure out if it was because of a physical force (like what Rysn was experiencing, but that was a pulling force), or was it because of a investiture force (what came to mind was that sleepless use investiture to stick together and the Dawnshards almost combining negated that power. Can anyone help me with this? I've researched but came up empty handed.

[Ewery1]

This is a very interesting question. My guess would be investiture force - if it was physical it seems they’d be pulled more like one body?

[TheoreticalMagic]

I'm working on a theory that Autonomy created the Sleepless on whatever world they originated, and am trying to link up certain things we know about Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain. The nature of the Sleepless has always seemed to me to be an inverse of the Iriali, who seem to have some history with them....whereas the Iriali talk about people all being pieces of the One experiencing different things and bringing those different experiences back into the One, the Sleepless through their hive mind experience things as a singular entity even through their separate parts. So like, the parallels/overlaps are there, but they approach the concept of the-one-as-many in completely different ways.

I'm of the opinion that Adonalsium created the Iriali directly, or they're in some way tiny Splinters of him, and I think Autonomy....who likes to experience things and present herself in very different ways but without ever truly sacrificing her own autonomy or oversight of the self....I think she was intrigued by the concept of the Iriali and tried to create her own version of them. BUT because her mindset genuinely can't reconcile the idea of the One Prime Being of a collective giving up total control and agency and just....waiting on its various pieces to come back together....her version of this concept resulted in the Sleepless. Beings who experience life in a thousand different ways as part of a greater whole, without ever being truly separate from each other or at any point NOT still connected to the greater whole.

Anyway, the Sleepless also made me think of sand mastery, and the way its all about connecting millions of singular grains of sand into a collective unit directed by the will of the sand master, and I think similar principles are at work with the Sleepless and the way hordelings integrate and connect as part of their collective. Not to mention how Investiture is distributed on Dayside by a micro-organism in the lichen....aka a tiny organism integrating into a larger whole and spreading an ability to Connect small things into Larger Wholes in the process. I'm just trying to connect dots from how the lichen/micro-organisms conduct Investiture to link up individual sand particles to how individual hordelings might be similarly Connected through Investiture and I feel like there's a piece I'm still missing, but that's where my thoughts are at currently.

So yeah, my answer is its not just to do with the Dawnshards specifically and more to do with the nature of the Sleepless' innate Investiture. Based on cosmere timelines, I'd guess if Autonomy DID create the Sleepless, they would have to be among her first creations (or among the first creations of any Shards, likely), which would account for their greater knowledge of ancient matters like the use of the Dawnshards, back when those things were still relatively well known by the already cosmere-aware players. I suspect if she sent some Sleepless to Roshar way back in the early days, given that she and Tanavast seem unlikely to be friends or like-minded, she might have made a point to Invest her creations in some way that's deliberately resistant to Honor's power over bonds, because she didn't want his innate Connection to...well....Connection, to override the way SHE used Connection in the creation of her The-One-As-Many entities to keep each Sleepless as a singular collective, and so that would account for the way Surgebinders and even Heralds seem less than effective against them. Even Skybreakers using the Surge of Division. They were designed to be resistant to such forces in specific.

(Note: this doesn't mean I think the Sleepless we've met are actively agents of Autonomy...they wouldn't be the first to disagree with the designs or agendas of the Shard who first created them. And due to the nature of the Rosharan system and how the Shards within it are bound to it, it seems likely that Autonomy can't actively reach any Sleepless on Roshar and was reliant on them worldhopping off Roshar to have any influence over them again - at least, if she didn't want to alert Odium to their presence or her potential meddling. Which would mean the Sleepless on Roshar could have had a lot of time away from their creator's active influence to go rogue or develop their own agendas contrary to hers).

Anyway, so yeah, I think the answer to OP's question is it was a combination of factors: the nature of the Sleepless and their own innate Investiture and not just the sheer overwhelming deluge of two Dawnshards coming together in the same place, but the fact that the two Dawnshards were Change and Exist specifically. Essentially, the Primal Commands best suited to turning something from what it is into something different, without negating what it is. So the Sleepless collapsed because the nature of the Dawnshards, plus their sheer power, combined to unintentionally effect change upon - or disrupt - the way the hordelings that comprise a Sleepless are Connected. 

[1000CremlingsInATrenchcoat He/Him]

1 hour ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

I'm of the opinion that Adonalsium created the Iriali directly, or they're in some way tiny Splinters of him

I agree with most of your observations; the Sleepless seem very very ancient in name and mannerism, so they probably date to early Shattering or before. The Iriali's Long Trail and Oneness stuff does feel like some big cool thing set in motion by a long forgotten god, and that whole "God is the universe experiencing itself" philosophy feels like it must relate to a more "true" god. Personally I feel like the less tenuous connection is to Virtuosity and Komashi. Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow are the three colours in the subtractive colour system, and that bright, glowing neon yellow is strangely missing from the scene on Komashi. Adonalsium has been Shattered for 10,000 years and in the span of less than a thousand years we know they have transited 4 of the 7 planets (Roshar, Scadrial, Lumar, and wherever they left Lumar for) on their journey which feels like quite a short journey. Not eliminating the possibility that they just had 5000 years of stuff to do on Roshar for whatever reason, but it kind of feels to me like a 2000 year journey not a 10,000 year one.

That said, I agree that it makes sense that Investiture would hold the Sleepless together. I think that weird Dawnshard reaction would be rough for all cognitive entities, and like the Kandra, they probably need some pretty rigorous Invested Arts to keep them together because they kind of aren't alive.

[TheoreticalMagic]

If the Iriali aren't of Adonalsium directly, I'd definitely agree with them being of Virtuosity. With her as thoroughly as Splintered as she seems to be, and given that the Returned are tiny Splinters of Endowment, it makes sense that a Shard who willingly Splintered herself past the point of having a core remaining centerpoint to her power/Intent could be the basis of an entire people. I do think the Iriali (and the Sleepless, who I believe only came to Roshar BECAUSE of the Iriali, perhaps the original Sleepless were following the Iriali Long Trail or watching them throughout their journey from world to world for whatever reason, hence both ending up in what became the Silver Kingdoms and having shared history) - anyway, I do think they've been on Roshar for a long time, thousands of years at least, but I do agree that there's a strong basis for the Iriali Long Trail not stretching back as far as the Shattering.

(Though....that doesn't necessarily mean that the Iriali and their original world couldn't have existed pre-Shattering. They could have been experiencing life as individuals on their homeworld for millennia before something forced an exodus from their original planet....such as one of the Shards taking an interest in them because of a suspected connection to Adonalsium. I think we're so used to associating the Iriali and worldhopping, its easy to conflate them as having ALWAYS existed as worldhoppers. Even the idea of them as Splinters or pieces of a Shard or Adonalsium himself doesn't inherently mean the Long Trail itself stretches back to their origins as a people. Something set the Long Trail in motion, and we have no idea what or when that was....it could just as easily have been five thousand years after the Shattering, with them having existed all that time on their original planet....or in Virtuosity's star system a thousand years before they came to Roshar, and mere centuries after Virtuosity Splintered).

All that said, I think a strong case could be made for matching the Iriali to Virtuosity and still being one of the more ancient cosmere cultures, albeit not as ancient as the Shattering itself. And Virtuosity - the Intent of artistry, which is born of and relates heavily to experience, identity and perspective - makes a lot of sense as the source of a nomadic people intent on experiencing life across the cosmere in whatever form. I believe there was even a WoB that talked about how before she Splintered herself, Virtuosity was known to travel throughout the cosmere observing and inspiring artistic expression across multiple worlds. The Iriali, then, would definitely be following in her footsteps in a lot of respects. 

(My original theory about the Iriali way back when was that they started out as golden counterparts to the Elantrians, Skai's Dominion based version of Aona's chosen devotees of scholarship, arts and culture, and intent on consolidating all peoples' of the cosmere as part of the One....their god, who they saw as having Dominion over all. Thus still making them one of the oldest cultures in the cosmere, and their Long Trail having begun when Odium killed Aona and Skai and shoved the remnants of Devotion and Dominion into the Cognitive Realm.

My initial suspicion was that they were originally on the level of Elantrian power, just geared towards Dominion pursuits, and so Autonomy swooped in trying to hijack the potentially deadliest army in the cosmere for herself, sparking the Iriali to set out on the Long Trail to stay out of her reach - and forgetting/disconnecting from their original region-based magics in the process, at the same time as their passed down religion moved away from Skai's original philosophy of conquest and forced consolidation under one rule and became what we know as the Iriali view of the One and the nature of life in the cosmere - as those who did fall into Autonomy's grasp became corrupted by her Investiture and turned into the much-feared men of red and gold, powered by magic similar in type and potency to Elantrian magics and that Autonomy hacked to be less region-dependent.

I've since moved away from this one as there's too much we still don't know about the timeline of Sel but the Elantris sequels might end up shifting me back in this direction, depending on what history we get about Elantris and if there are any hints of a pre-Fjordell society that potentially matched their power level as well).

Edited January 15, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[AonSoo he/him]

16 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

I'm working on a theory that Autonomy created the Sleepless on whatever world they originated, and am trying to link up certain things we know about Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain. The nature of the Sleepless has always seemed to me to be an inverse of the Iriali, who seem to have some history with them....whereas the Iriali talk about people all being pieces of the One experiencing different things and bringing those different experiences back into the One, the Sleepless through their hive mind experience things as a singular entity even through their separate parts. So like, the parallels/overlaps are there, but they approach the concept of the-one-as-many in completely different ways.

I'm of the opinion that Adonalsium created the Iriali directly, or they're in some way tiny Splinters of him, and I think Autonomy....who likes to experience things and present herself in very different ways but without ever truly sacrificing her own autonomy or oversight of the self....I think she was intrigued by the concept of the Iriali and tried to create her own version of them. BUT because her mindset genuinely can't reconcile the idea of the One Prime Being of a collective giving up total control and agency and just....waiting on its various pieces to come back together....her version of this concept resulted in the Sleepless. Beings who experience life in a thousand different ways as part of a greater whole, without ever being truly separate from each other or at any point NOT still connected to the greater whole.

Anyway, the Sleepless also made me think of sand mastery, and the way its all about connecting millions of singular grains of sand into a collective unit directed by the will of the sand master, and I think similar principles are at work with the Sleepless and the way hordelings integrate and connect as part of their collective. Not to mention how Investiture is distributed on Dayside by a micro-organism in the lichen....aka a tiny organism integrating into a larger whole and spreading an ability to Connect small things into Larger Wholes in the process. I'm just trying to connect dots from how the lichen/micro-organisms conduct Investiture to link up individual sand particles to how individual hordelings might be similarly Connected through Investiture and I feel like there's a piece I'm still missing, but that's where my thoughts are at currently.

So yeah, my answer is its not just to do with the Dawnshards specifically and more to do with the nature of the Sleepless' innate Investiture. Based on cosmere timelines, I'd guess if Autonomy DID create the Sleepless, they would have to be among her first creations (or among the first creations of any Shards, likely), which would account for their greater knowledge of ancient matters like the use of the Dawnshards, back when those things were still relatively well known by the already cosmere-aware players. I suspect if she sent some Sleepless to Roshar way back in the early days, given that she and Tanavast seem unlikely to be friends or like-minded, she might have made a point to Invest her creations in some way that's deliberately resistant to Honor's power over bonds, because she didn't want his innate Connection to...well....Connection, to override the way SHE used Connection in the creation of her The-One-As-Many entities to keep each Sleepless as a singular collective, and so that would account for the way Surgebinders and even Heralds seem less than effective against them. Even Skybreakers using the Surge of Division. They were designed to be resistant to such forces in specific.

(Note: this doesn't mean I think the Sleepless we've met are actively agents of Autonomy...they wouldn't be the first to disagree with the designs or agendas of the Shard who first created them. And due to the nature of the Rosharan system and how the Shards within it are bound to it, it seems likely that Autonomy can't actively reach any Sleepless on Roshar and was reliant on them worldhopping off Roshar to have any influence over them again - at least, if she didn't want to alert Odium to their presence or her potential meddling. Which would mean the Sleepless on Roshar could have had a lot of time away from their creator's active influence to go rogue or develop their own agendas contrary to hers).

Love this theory. You bring up some great points. I've always thought that sleepless are from Taldain because they're so similar to Sandlings (see the second to last species) The interactions we see in Dawnshard are vaguely similar to other Autonomy created leaderships like the Taishin but also pretty different to others like the Set. This hive mind mentality in the Sleepless culture could be push back against the individualism Autonomy likes.

 

16 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Anyway, so yeah, I think the answer to OP's question is it was a combination of factors: the nature of the Sleepless and their own innate Investiture and not just the sheer overwhelming deluge of two Dawnshards coming together in the same place, but the fact that the two Dawnshards were Change and Exist specifically. Essentially, the Primal Commands best suited to turning something from what it is into something different, without negating what it is. So the Sleepless collapsed because the nature of the Dawnshards, plus their sheer power, combined to unintentionally effect change upon - or disrupt - the way the hordelings that comprise a Sleepless are Connected. 

This makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

12 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

If the Iriali aren't of Adonalsium directly, I'd definitely agree with them being of Virtuosity. With her as thoroughly as Splintered as she seems to be, and given that the Returned are tiny Splinters of Endowment, it makes sense that a Shard who willingly Splintered herself past the point of having a core remaining centerpoint to her power/Intent could be the basis of an entire people. I do think the Iriali (and the Sleepless, who I believe only came to Roshar BECAUSE of the Iriali, perhaps the original Sleepless were following the Iriali Long Trail or watching them throughout their journey from world to world for whatever reason, hence both ending up in what became the Silver Kingdoms and having shared history) - anyway, I do think they've been on Roshar for a long time, thousands of years at least, but I do agree that there's a strong basis for the Iriali Long Trail not stretching back as far as the Shattering.

(Though....that doesn't necessarily mean that the Iriali and their original world couldn't have existed pre-Shattering. They could have been experiencing life as individuals on their homeworld for millennia before something forced an exodus from their original planet....such as one of the Shards taking an interest in them because of a suspected connection to Adonalsium. I think we're so used to associating the Iriali and worldhopping, its easy to conflate them as having ALWAYS existed as worldhoppers. Even the idea of them as Splinters or pieces of a Shard or Adonalsium himself doesn't inherently mean the Long Trail itself stretches back to their origins as a people. Something set the Long Trail in motion, and we have no idea what or when that was....it could just as easily have been five thousand years after the Shattering, with them having existed all that time on their original planet....or in Virtuosity's star system a thousand years before they came to Roshar, and mere centuries after Virtuosity Splintered).

All that said, I think a strong case could be made for matching the Iriali to Virtuosity and still being one of the more ancient cosmere cultures, albeit not as ancient as the Shattering itself. And Virtuosity - the Intent of artistry, which is born of and relates heavily to experience, identity and perspective - makes a lot of sense as the source of a nomadic people intent on experiencing life across the cosmere in whatever form. I believe there was even a WoB that talked about how before she Splintered herself, Virtuosity was known to travel throughout the cosmere observing and inspiring artistic expression across multiple worlds. The Iriali, then, would definitely be following in her footsteps in a lot of respects. 

(My original theory about the Iriali way back when was that they started out as golden counterparts to the Elantrians, Skai's Dominion based version of Aona's chosen devotees of scholarship, arts and culture, and intent on consolidating all peoples' of the cosmere as part of the One....their god, who they saw as having Dominion over all. Thus still making them one of the oldest cultures in the cosmere, and their Long Trail having begun when Odium killed Aona and Skai and shoved the remnants of Devotion and Dominion into the Cognitive Realm.

My initial suspicion was that they were originally on the level of Elantrian power, just geared towards Dominion pursuits, and so Autonomy swooped in trying to hijack the potentially deadliest army in the cosmere for herself, sparking the Iriali to set out on the Long Trail to stay out of her reach - and forgetting/disconnecting from their original region-based magics in the process, at the same time as their passed down religion moved away from Skai's original philosophy of conquest and forced consolidation under one rule and became what we know as the Iriali view of the One and the nature of life in the cosmere - as those who did fall into Autonomy's grasp became corrupted by her Investiture and turned into the much-feared men of red and gold, powered by magic similar in type and potency to Elantrian magics and that Autonomy hacked to be less region-dependent.

I've since moved away from this one as there's too much we still don't know about the timeline of Sel but the Elantris sequels might end up shifting me back in this direction, depending on what history we get about Elantris and if there are any hints of a pre-Fjordell society that potentially matched their power level as well).

Before WaT I had a theory about them being Selish beacause of their appearance and Iri & Ali sound like Aons. I like your ideas much better though. I do think it's quite possible that them and the sleepless predate the shattering. In my opinion The One seems like a religion not about a shard. In addition they seem decently Cosmere aware for a culture which may be because they might predate the shattering. The technological advancements seem to be limited as far as we've seen.

 

Also do you think that the Sleepless or Iriali would fight against a Autonomy-Retribution alliance? (Men of Gold and Red death rattles on scadrial is a  big reason I think this is likely) I think that most shards and definitely Scadrians and Rosharans would fight but the more neutral forces like the Sleepless or Iriali might not.