Hell

[Moirne she/her]

This is just a musing in response to the assertion on the most recent Shardcast (and the previous episode on Threnody) that Threnodites in the Homeland did not form Shades upon death. Do we know that for sure?

 

My initial impression years back was that Hell has been collecting Shades for quite some time, even prior to the forescouts arriving.  My assumption was that the Shades generated when homeworlders died appeared in Hell, because … well, it’s Hell, right?  Could this explain why the prey animals were already gone when the first settlers arrived in Hell, because their own civilization’s ghosts had already been active there for quite some time?

 

This made even more sense to me when reading about Braize - that a large collection of investiture, or a special type of it, can draw spirits/souls.  Might something like that be present in Hell?  And then on Canticle, where investiture is moving around based on the alignment of planet and sun, the Shades either form and get vaporized or form and have nowhere to go other than the Chorus tanks if they happen to die outside of the sunlight?

 

If there is textual evidence going against this, my apologies! 

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Moirne said:

This is just a musing in response to the assertion on the most recent Shardcast (and the previous episode on Threnody) that Threnodites in the Homeland did not form Shades upon death. Do we know that for sure?

All points towards this conclusion. The Shades were first discovered in the Forests of Hell by the first expeditioners who landed there. The AU Threnodite system essay says that people only sometimes turn into Shades, not always:

Quote

Or perhaps they fear the spirits of the dead. People on Threnody are afflicted with a particular ailment that—upon death—sometimes turns them into what we call a Cognitive Shadow.

 

1 hour ago, Moirne said:

My initial impression years back was that Hell has been collecting Shades for quite some time, even prior to the forescouts arriving.  My assumption was that the Shades generated when homeworlders died appeared in Hell, because … well, it’s Hell, right?  Could this explain why the prey animals were already gone when the first settlers arrived in Hell, because their own civilization’s ghosts had already been active there for quite some time?

This made even more sense to me when reading about Braize - that a large collection of investiture, or a special type of it, can draw spirits/souls.  Might something like that be present in Hell?  And then on Canticle, where investiture is moving around based on the alignment of planet and sun, the Shades either form and get vaporized or form and have nowhere to go other than the Chorus tanks if they happen to die outside of the sunlight?

My opinion is that the original inhabitants of this continent died off shortly after the clash of Shards and turned into Shades, remaining there ever since. It's possible that you are right, as on Canticle Shades are often drawn into the Chorus rather than remaining where they died. But this is something that is visible, a mist appears and moves away. However, this isn't always the case and Shades sometimes do rise from corpses. If things like this were happening on the Homeland too, it would have been noticed and Shades would have been known before landing in the Forests of Hell. TSM ch 22:

Quote

“We think that maybe,” Zeal said, “people who die without being given to the sun are drawn to join the Chorus. They say that shades will rise from those who die and don’t become sunhearts, but we rarely experience that—instead, sometimes after a death, we see mist gather and move to the Reliquary.”

It's still a valid theory as we only have scares information about Threnody, however we don't really have anything that would supoort your claim either.