Doubts about shadesmar?

[Xabben]

I'm reading RoW, and man, I have SO MANY questions about shadesmar.

 

- Sprens seem to have plenty of food to sell to travelers. However, how do they get that food? Do they buy it from other human travelers? Do they manifest it? Does manifested food actually nourish?

 

- Many sprens seem to know modern Rosharian languages. How is this possible if humans from roshar haven't been to shadesmar for thousands of years?

 

- Is "manifesting" a different thing from what Shallan and Jasnah do when they rearrange beads to form objects?

 

- The only stable entrance to shadesmar is cultivation's perpendicularity. However, it seems to be heavily guarded by Horneaters. How do worldhoppers enter/exit Roshar then? Wouldn't they be stopped by Horneaters?

 

I know that they are too many questions at once, but man, I don't get shadesmar at all. It's the only part of Stormlight Archive that doesn't seem to be really detailed.

[Frustration]

38 minutes ago, Xabben said:

Sprens seem to have plenty of food to sell to travelers. However, how do they get that food? Do they buy it from other human travelers? Do they manifest it? Does manifested food actually nourish?

There are a handful of Ardents that discuss this question in WoK. From what we've seen a lot of food comes from other planets that have canning and other forms of food preservation.

40 minutes ago, Xabben said:

- Many sprens seem to know modern Rosharian languages. How is this possible if humans from roshar haven't been to shadesmar for thousands of years?

Because spren exist off of human thought, they don't have languages of their own and speak the same languages that humans do at the corresponding point in the PR, because that's the languages that the humans there think in.

45 minutes ago, Xabben said:

Is "manifesting" a different thing from what Shallan and Jasnah do when they rearrange beads to form objects

Yes, manifesting causes an object itself to appear in the CR, so you would have a real table, rather than one made of beads.

45 minutes ago, Xabben said:

The only stable entrance to shadesmar is cultivation's perpendicularity. However, it seems to be heavily guarded by Horneaters. How do worldhoppers enter/exit Roshar then? Wouldn't they be stopped by Horneaters

The horneaters don't stop off worlders from going through, they might charge tolls, but travel is allowed.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Sprens seem to have plenty of food to sell to travelers. However, how do they get that food? Do they buy it from other human travelers? Do they manifest it? Does manifested food actually nourish?

They buy food from merchants, the most popular food is canned one which is brought to Roshar by traders from other worlds. Canned food doesn't spoil that fast so it can be stored for a long time, perfect for Shadesmar. There are thousands of people travelling between worlds, there is a whole trade network, which deals with distributing food around Shadesmar.

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Many sprens seem to know modern Rosharian languages. How is this possible if humans from roshar haven't been to shadesmar for thousands of years?

They have been. There is a perpendicularity in Horneaters Peaks and a massive trade hub there. People from Roshar can use it to cross into Shadesmar, and while most people don't know about it, it still happens. I would also assume that as languages evolve on Roshar, due to the fact that spren are influenced by perception of people, they naturally pick up those changes. However, we have seen many spren who struggle to communicate in human languages (for example capitan Ico), so its clear that they need to learn too. 

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- Is "manifesting" a different thing from what Shallan and Jasnah do when they rearrange beads to form objects?

Yes, what Shallan and Jasnah do is force beads around to take the shape of an object, manifesting an object creates it physically in Shadesmar. 

1 hour ago, Xabben said:

- The only stable entrance to shadesmar is cultivation's perpendicularity. However, it seems to be heavily guarded by Horneaters. How do worldhoppers enter/exit Roshar then? Wouldn't they be stopped by Horneaters?

They don't stop people from crossing between realms, Hoid, Zahel or Azure had no problems with passing through Cultivation's perpendicularity.

 

Edit:

20 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Because spren exist off of human thought, they don't have languages of their own

Actually, they do have their own languages. Cryptics are probably most famous as their language use clicking sounds, Lightspren use vibrations through metal to communicate and there are several other spren languages. 

Spoiler

IneptProfessional

Since you mention languages on Roshar, are there any languages that are completely unrelated to any other on the planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Our basic language families are:

Vorin: Alethi, Veden, Herdazian, and more distantly Thaylen. Nathan is close to dead, but shares a root, and Karbranthian is basically a dialect. Other minor languages like Bav are in here.

Makabaki: Azish is king here, and most the languages around split off this. There are around thirty of these.

Dawnate: A varied language family with distant roots in the dawnchant. Shin, parshendi, Horneater. They share grammar, but they diverged long enough ago that the vocabulary is very different.

Iri: Iriali, Reshi, Purelake dialects, Riran, and some surrounding languages.

Aimian: These two are lumped together, but are very different. Probably what you were looking for.

That isn't counting spren languages, of course. I might have missed something. Typing on my phone without my wiki handy.

General Reddit 2016 (Nov. 29, 2016)

 

Edited Saturday at 01:47 PM by alder24

[Frustration]

27 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Edit:

  42 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Because spren exist off of human thought, they don't have languages of their own

Actually, they do have their own languages. Cryptics are probably most famous as their language use clicking sounds, Lightspren use vibrations through metal to communicate and there are several other spren languages. 

 

Huh, interesting.

I had always viewed those more as codes than actual languages.

[Xabben]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

The horneaters don't stop off worlders from going through, they might charge tolls, but travel is allowed.

Maybe I'm a little bit biased by Rock, which is a true cinnamon roll, but I don't see Horneaters making business with what they consider to be a sacred place. But, again, I suppose that there are selfish and greedy people between them too... I would love to learn more about the Horneater culture.

[alder24]

23 minutes ago, Xabben said:

Maybe I'm a little bit biased by Rock, which is a true cinnamon roll, but I don't see Horneaters making business with what they consider to be a sacred place. But, again, I suppose that there are selfish and greedy people between them too... I would love to learn more about the Horneater culture.

It's even better. Apparently Horneaters will treat you like a god. We will know more about Horneaters and their perpendicularity once Brandon writes Horneater novella.

Spoiler

Questioner

[SH spoilers removed] What amount of people are travelling between worlds? Hundreds? Thousands? Billions?

Brandon Sanderson

...Thousands.

Questioner

Is it like vacation? Or is it like...

Brandon Sanderson

Well, I wouldn't call it--

Questioner

Is it the frontier? Or is it from where you could go?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on the roadway. Let's say you look at frontier era America. How hard was it to get to England? It was really far away, but it was actually relatively safe and common to do this. How difficult was it to get to Boise, Idaho? That's harder, but you know how to do it. How easy was it to get to, let's say, the Hawaiian Islands? You're starting to get into like, the question comes here, certain pathways are more traveled. There are going to be caravans, there are going to be guides. There are going to be safe travels between certain places that are done commonly enough that if you are in the know and are in the right place you can be like "I wanna buy passage here." And you go there, and you can have a reasonable expectation that you're going to make it to where you're going. 

Other places, you say, "I wanna go here", and they're like, "Yeah, I've known someone who tried that and they never came back. I'm not taking you." So, where you're going, where you're trafficking, Khriss gives you some indications of which ones are easy to get to and which ones are commonly visited. I would recommend that if you want to go on vacation in the cosmere, like, "I want to go somewhere different," go to Nalthis. Go to Nalthis. Nalthis is great to go to, right? They even have customs that you can go through. You can like, arrive, and things like this. Don't go to Sel. Sel is not good to go to. Sel is really dangerous to go to. There's a dead Shard--two of them--in the Cognitive Realm that will destroy you. Other places, Scadrial, used to be a lot easier to get to. Roshar, depends on which era you're talking about. Sometimes it's pretty easy to go to. Those nice Horneaters will treat you like a god and feed you food. However, right now, it might not be a good time to try to visit Roshar.

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)