[Secret History Spoilers] Cognitive Realms Appearence in Different Shardworlds

[lookingglass she/her]

So we know that the cognitive realm in Scadrial is covered in mists. We already knew that the cognitive realm in Roshar is filled with spears. From this we can assume that the cognitive realm in each shardworld appears to be covered in the manifestation of their shard's power in the physical world. So will the cognitive realm look on other shardworlds?

 

I believe Sel's cognitive realm would be at least partially covered in Aons and other symbols for the other magic systems on the planet whilst Nalthis could be covered in colors since I'm not sure how breath would look there.

 

As for other shardworlds I have no idea at all. Maybe the minor shardworlds' will look like like a mixture of other major worlds nearby of just one or completely different.

 

So any ideas or thoughts?

Edited January 27, 2016 by lookingglass

[CaptainRyan he/him]

So we know that the cognitive realm in Scadrial is covered in mists. We already knew that the cognitive realm in Roshar is filled with spears. From this we can assume that the cognitive realm in each shardworld appears to be covered in the manifestation of their shard's power in the physical world. So will the cognitive realm look on other shardworlds?

 

 

I bolded and underlined the word you used that might be a mistake - I had to reread this sentence several times before I guessed that you meant "spheres". At first, I was really struggling to remember any mention of Shadesmar being filled with spears or spearmen or something haha

 

Aside from that, I like the idea that the Cognitive Realm is symbolically reflective of the shard... though I would have to wonder why there was no mention of anything involving Ruin in Scadrial's Cognitive Realm. Perhaps the only reason the mist was in the CR for Scadrial is because it existed in the Physical Realm as well and not because it was a reflection of Preservation.

 

As for Nalthis, maybe those plants that generate colors for dye are everywhere?

[StormyAngel he/him]

Actually there is a mention of Ruin in Scadrial's Cognitive Realm. He's the writhing darkness hanging overhead and blocking the sun. I think Kelsier mentions it a couple of times.

 

As for Sel, WOB is that traveling there is extremely difficult/dangerous. I follow the theory that this is because Dominion and Devotion's investiture has flooded the Cognitive Realm there rather than staying put in the Spiritual Realm like it is supposed to. I like the theory because this explains why images of geography in the physical realm (which happen to be exact matches for the Cognitive Realm) can summon power. Draw a map of water (form something in your cognitive mind) and thus summon through some of that spiritual aspect. hence why the aon for water has the big lake in it, and the aon for wood has the forests in it, etc. etc.

 

I don't track ongoing discussions too often though, so some of this may be out of date or already proven wrong.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Sorry, I meant that Ruin did not have a matching Physical/Cognitive representation like Preservation does (the mists). Ruin did indeed block out the Cognitive Realm's sun but, unless we make the stretch that Ruin's physical manifestation is the ash from the Ashmounts, there is no Physical Realm symmetry.

[TheOneKEA]

Are we sure Ruin didn't appear in the Cognitive Realm? I need to reread the story and see what color the mists are; Ruin is associated with black mists, according to WoB, so they may be there.

Given that Ruin is Cognitively trapped by Preservation for most of the story, it makes sense that the mists are not a uniform mix.

[FirstSelector]

I have the distinct feeling that it is not a property of the local Shards, but rather of the Identity of the planet and its inhabitants.  A very interesting question for Brandon would be if Shadesmar was made of glass beads before Honor arrived.  Note that when another Shard arrives on Scadrial, it manifests as metal, which is a property of the planet and not the Shard.

 

Moreover, "solid" things in the Cognitive Realm near Roshar are made out of beads, whereas things near Scadrial are made out of mists.  In both cases, touching the spheres/mists gives an impression of the Physical Realm object corresponding to the Cognitive Realm object.

 

Thus, I would instead guess that the Cognitive Realm near Sel is made out of some sort of viscous light or other continuous liquid - perhaps even that which they were drinking to maintain their Connection to Sel.  This is because they make a solid wall, with no gaps, out of whatever their native material is.  And we guess it is native to Sel, since when Kaladin touches it he gets an impression of their world.  Doing so near Roshar would have yielded a wall made out of the glass beads, which would give the impression of Rosharan objects when touched.

Also, Ruin does have a physical, gaseous form - Vin and Sazed encounter it when going down to the Well.

[Voidus]

See this makes me even more interested in the glass beads thing in Shadesmar, at first I just thought it was unrelated to spheres but now it's pretty obvious that there must be some connection. But then why would they be Spheres? Why not Stormlight? Or a Highstorm? Or heck even just a regular old gemstone, there's nothing special about spheres in particular, they're not even natural it's just a way of holding a certain amount of gemstone and turning it into currency.

I am confuse about Roshar right now.

[FirstSelector]

Maybe the connection runs the other way - Adonalsium set it up so that Shadesmar had ideas represented by spheres, and this caused people (unconsciously) to shape their currency in that fashion.  I have serious doubts that the shape of money could alter something so fundamental as the Cognitive Realm.

[StormyAngel he/him]

I thought the Cognitive realm was expressly shaped by thoughts and the cognitive functions of sentient beings. That's why the geography is so similar for one thing. For another, there's nothing happening (no one sentient) in empty space, which is why in the cognitive realm you can just walk from one world to another.

 

If that is the case, then the cognitive realm could absolutely be altered by the way people value things, aka their monetary system. Money is an essential part of strong economies, and therefore part of our daily lives. People have to think about it a lot.

 

That being said, I get the feeling that this case on Roshar is more of a correlation than causation thing. Something about symmetry and holiness and the way Rosharan's view things, and thus the way those things show up in the cognitive realm.

 

Edit: I think I misread your post at first. I partially agree, the shape of the money itself shouldn't matter unless it is tied into some deep cognitive aspect of the Rosharan worldview. 

Edited January 28, 2016 by StormyAngel

[FirstSelector]

You are absolutely correct in how the Cognitive Realm is shaped, but I think there is a difference between "shaped" and "created."  I think it highly likely that Shards have considerable control over the Cognitive nature of new planets they create, meaning composition and so on.  However, once that is set, I would then guess that the humans who inhabit the world shape it from there.

 

A few relevant questions (especially to Roshar): What happens if there are no people?  Presumably the planet can still exist and have life, but what form would Shadesmar take?  What happens if another group of humans joins the planet, with completely different Cognitive aspects?

 

This is all highly speculative, of course.  And I do agree with your point that money is very important.  I just don't see how it can be the primary driving factor to shape Shadesmar in a world where humans probably did not originally reside and were using stone tools (very far away from gemstones in glass beads) for the vast, vast majority of their history.

[Argent he/him]

I think an equally interesting - and perhaps relevant - question is why bodies of water appear solid. "Dark, smoky stone" Kelsier calls it. Preservation explains that "It congeals here. It has to do with the way men think, and where they are likely to pass. Somewhat to do with that, at least." Which is not the most useful explanation, but I think it gives credibility to the hypothesis that the perception of the people shapes not only cognitive aspects of  things, but the Cognitive Realm itself.

[Windrunner he/him]

I was under the impression that the solidness of the oceans and other bodies of water has to do with less cognitive activity occurring there.

[FirstSelector]

The funny thing is that in both the Cognitive and the Physical, fish are far, far out of reach of mankind.  In the former, they are buried deep within the obsidian (c.f. the extra Stormlight scene) and in the latter they are far bellow the water.

Edit to reply to Windrunner - if the mists congeal without human thought, then maybe the process of people wandering nearby (or thinking that they could wander nearby) "churns" the mists, preventing them from solidifying.

Edited January 28, 2016 by FirstSelector

[StormyAngel he/him]

This probably isn't at all right, but I always just assumed that because everyone views the ocean as one large singular thing it was more solid. Admittedly that worked better in Roshar where even things like a ship were represented by a single sphere.

[Jess]

See this makes me even more interested in the glass beads thing in Shadesmar, at first I just thought it was unrelated to spheres but now it's pretty obvious that there must be some connection. But then why would they be Spheres? Why not Stormlight? Or a Highstorm? Or heck even just a regular old gemstone, there's nothing special about spheres in particular, they're not even natural it's just a way of holding a certain amount of gemstone and turning it into currency.

I am confuse about Roshar right now.

 

My thoughts exactly. If I were to guess at a mist analogue for Roshar, it would be stormlight, not glass beads. But what if it has more to do with the material (glass) than the shape (beads/spheres)?

 

Actually, where does glass on Roshar even come from? It's not obviously not that rare, but doing a ctrl+f through WoK and WoR reveals that there are actually not that many casual references to glass objects. And there is this interesting quote in chapter 23 of WoK:

 

Behind it, in a splintery half-crate, lay a pile of discarded liquor bottles. Glass was precious enough that whole bottles would be reused, but these had cracks or broken tops.

 

So while glass isn't super valuable on Roshar, it still seems to be more scarce than we might expect. I suspect that most glass on modern Roshar is soulcast (since "quartz, glass, crystal" is one of the ten essences), but in the past there may not have been as much (or any?) access to soulcasting.

 

After doing some googling it seems that the first glass production on earth used ground up quartz pebbles. I suspect such a thing might be relatively hard to find on Roshar, with most of the continent's surface being bare rock. Furthermore, amethyst, which is one of the polestones, is a type of quartz. And last but not least, wikipedia's History of Glass article states that the earliest known glass objects were beads.

 

So, what if there was a time in Roshar's history where glass was much more rare, made out of naturally occuring quartz, and always shaped into beads? Could it be possible that this glass/crystal was able to hold stormlight, unlike the probably-soulcast glass of modern Roshar? In that case, Shadesmar being full of glass beads would be a holdover of an earlier method of harnessing stormlight...

 

Edit: Just as the mist could (under the right circumstances) be used as a blank-slate allomancy fuel, able to stand in for any of the metals, perhaps this hypothetical stormlight-holding-glass could have taken on the properties of any of the ten polestones.

 

Edit 2: Here's something interesting, from WoR chapter 7 when Shallan is on the ship...

 

The walls, the furniture, it all shattered into little globes of black glass. Shallan prepared herself to fall into the ocean of those glass beads, but instead she dropped onto solid ground.

 

She stood in a place with a black sky and a tiny, distant sun. The ground beneath her reflected light. Obsidian? Each way she turned, the ground was made of that same blackness. Nearby, the spheres—like those that would hold Stormlight, but dark and small—bounced to a rest on the ground.

 

Bolding mine. The beads are also described as "dark" in WoK chapters 45 and 70. So they definitely aren't the same type of glass that is used in spheres, and they also don't match the description of the crystal ("a figure of pure, flawless quartz") that Jasnah soulcast one of the thugs into in WoK chapter 36. Thus it's entirely plausible that they could be some substance capable of holding stormlight which modern Rosharans don't know about.

Edited January 29, 2016 by Jess

[KidWayne he/him]

I'm going to give a nod to Skaa's "Each Shardworld has an Essence" theory [1] here and guess that the cognitive realm of each of the Cosmere's ShardWorlds is represented by its essence.

Furthermore we know (or can reasonably discern) from WoBs & the Shadesmar map in The Way of Kings that...
• The Expanse of the Vapors connects Roshar to Scadrial
• The Expanse of the Densities (most likely) connects Roshar to Nalthis [2]
      ○ If you accept the essence theory density and smoke work pretty well together.
• The Expanse of the Broken Sky (most likely) connects Roshar to Sel [3]
     ○ Brandon's hint in response to, "Why it is hard to get to Shadesmar on Sel?" was "Has to do with the name of that expanse." In my mind "broken sky" presents a much better obstacle than "Vibrance" or "Density."
• The Expanse of the Vibrance... I have no idea where this leads (this is the expanse on the Shadesmar map that was covered up by the word "Shadesmar" [4]).
     ○ One guess - based on Secret History - is Threnody
     ○ My best guess - based on the knowledge that Hoid is from Yolen and that planet's native magic system is lightweaving - is Yolen.

So, Sel's cognitive realm would most likely take the form of stones, Nalthis' cognitive realm would most likely take the form of smoke, and Roshar's cognitive realm appears as spheres because it's essence is crystal (spheres being a refined form of crystal to differentiate it from Sel's stone). However, I fully admit that this falls apart when applied to Scadrial. You'd expect coins, chunks of ore/metal, or some other sort of metallic object but mist makes its own kind of sense.

Links:
[1] http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6062-theory-each-shardworld-has-an-essence/?hl=heraldry#entry123762
[2] http://coppermind.net/wiki/Expanse_of_the_Densities
[3] http://cybister13.rssing.com/chan-6721024/all_p1.html(search for the word "expanse")
[4] http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=984#3

[Windrunner he/him]

Personally, I think Vibrance sounds more like Nalthis than Densities does. My theory for Broken Sky is currently Ashyn, because they live on their weird upside down floating cities instead of on the surface, thus the Broken Sky.

[Ryshadium she/her]

Vibrance seems much more like colors and awakening. I don't know how Density would connect to Nalthis.

[AndrewStirlingMacDonald he/him]

This makes me want Nalthis' cognitive realm to be only colors with no edges, like a comic with all of the coloring done but the inking removed.

[Ryshadium she/her]

That's a lovely visual. Or, you know how people claim other people and objects have color auras? Or people with synesthesia see music or other things as color? All would be lovely to read about. I do hope we see the cognitive realm on nalthis.

[Argent he/him]

Given that we've seen both Ruin and Harmony literally cover the sky in the Cognitive Realm, it is not entirely unreasonable to claim that Shards and cognitive skies are related in some way. Which makes a very strong case for Sel being connected to the Expanse of the Broken Sky.

[Landis963 he/him]

That's a lovely visual. Or, you know how people claim other people and objects have color auras? Or people with synesthesia see music or other things as color? All would be lovely to read about. I do hope we see the cognitive realm on nalthis.

We have seen Nalthis' Cognitive Realm.

Warbreaker spoilers:

Lightsong remembered it quite clearly as a wave of colors, through which he could see the vision that caused him to Return.

[Ryshadium she/her]

It's been so long since I've read Warbreaker, and I was Cosmere-illiterate at the time. Glad to know it is as lovely as I hoped.

[Ari he/him]

I have the distinct feeling that it is not a property of the local Shards, but rather of the Identity of the planet and its inhabitants.  A very interesting question for Brandon would be if Shadesmar was made of glass beads before Honor arrived.  Note that when another Shard arrives on Scadrial, it manifests as metal, which is a property of the planet and not the Shard.

 

Moreover, "solid" things in the Cognitive Realm near Roshar are made out of beads, whereas things near Scadrial are made out of mists.  In both cases, touching the spheres/mists gives an impression of the Physical Realm object corresponding to the Cognitive Realm object.

 

Thus, I would instead guess that the Cognitive Realm near Sel is made out of some sort of viscous light or other continuous liquid - perhaps even that which they were drinking to maintain their Connection to Sel.  This is because they make a solid wall, with no gaps, out of whatever their native material is.  And we guess it is native to Sel, since when Kaladin touches it he gets an impression of their world.  Doing so near Roshar would have yielded a wall made out of the glass beads, which would give the impression of Rosharan objects when touched.

Also, Ruin does have a physical, gaseous form - Vin and Sazed encounter it when going down to the Well.

 

Right, it's something to do with whatever Investiture manifests itself as on that world. (I wouldn't personally use the term Essence, although what that theory refers to as essence is definitely touching on the cognitive realm to some degree) On Scadrial, it's mists. On Nalthis, it's colours. On Roshar, it should be Stormlight, but I have the suspicion for whatever reason that Roshar is being difficult and is instead using the ideal material that stormlight would adhere to, and those spheres represent Roshar's focus instead.

 

Given that we've seen both Ruin and Harmony literally cover the sky in the Cognitive Realm, it is not entirely unreasonable to claim that Shards and cognitive skies are related in some way. Which makes a very strong case for Sel being connected to the Expanse of the Broken Sky.

 

Indeed. It actually makes it very clear what happened there when you hear Preservation's explanation that the sun represents the spiritual realm- if the sky has broken in the cognitive realm where Sel is located, all of the Investiture from the spiritual realm will have "fallen" through down into the cognitive, as if it's a layer between the physical and spiritual realms. The interesting question then becomes- why is Sel's cognitive realm different to Roshar when as far as we know the same thing happened on both planets?

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

The Stormfather did as Kelsier did but helped disperse the power more in the form of spren. On Sel, we have the Seons and the Skaze, but their numbers are nowhere near that of the Spren + there is no mind to take up the remaining power and guide it, so unattended investiture does...weird things