ScarletSabre he/him Posted November 29, 2016 Report Share Posted November 29, 2016 So it's time once again to grab your aluminium lined bowler hats, for some random speculation off the top of my head, that has literally just occured to me! My current random thought is on our ever present cameo maker, Hoid. We don't know much about his backstory outside of the now (at least mostly) non-canon Liar of Partinel chapters, and WOBs have been few and far between, but from a few of them, I've pieced together a slight idea about Hoid's magic system, or at least one of them. SO. Spoilers ahead for here and there, for WOBs and Secret History at least! Read at your own peril, you rusting airsick lowlanders! (Sources for my points below will either be coming when I'm more free from work, or if you kind Sharders add them with your speculation and additions to my thoughts ^-^) We know that Hoid cannot harm living people, but can apparently beat up Cognitive Shadows, as of Secret History at least. Hoid also knows how to stop pain and damage from physical blows from harming him in the Cognitive Realm, again from Secret History. We know that Hoid has a form of Feruchemy, via WOB. We know that "What Hoid does heals the soul", via WOB. We know Hoid has Lerasium, a Godmetal that can change someone's Spirit Web, and may have used it for a purpose that we don't know of yet, to make a change we haven't seen in the Cosmere so far. We know via WOB that Hoid has time dialation techniques for moving forwards in time, possibly to permit travel between planets avoiding the Cognitive Realm (Which would explain him getting on and off of Sel with the Dor making it so storming difficult in the CR) We know that in the Spiritual Realm, all things are connected, and there are idealised versions of everything, an ideal concept of Fire, and time and space don't apply to the Spiritual Realm, despite it not being the Beyond. We know from recent WOBs - Here Quote Hoid and age Q: Now we have some idea of how Hoid changes his age? A: I haven't said if this is a method Hoid uses or not, but it's part of the reason the Lord Ruler turned to dust when he lost his metalminds. (His body tried to match the age his spirit said he was.) We know that Lift exists partly in the Cognitive Realm, moreso than most humans are, enabling all sorts of things for her, (like perhaps her cognition of her age affecting her physical age, but that's a theory for another ramblepost....) mainly her absorption and metabolism of Stormlight. This all leads me to believe that Hoid has a form of magic that can affect the Spiritual Realm, either drawing power from, or connecting directly to, the Spiritual Realm. Hoid is immortal, ageless, as defined by Brandon's tiers of immortality within the Cosmere, and from what we know about Lift, I suspect that Hoid may be able to pull himself partially into the Spiritual Realm, and exist mostly there. The idealised self there wouldn't age as time doesn't exist in the SR, and we can see that TLR's age trick using Feruchemy wouldn't work because of the overriding Spiritual age forcing itself onto his Physical body. Thi may also account for him being unable to hurt Physical, living beings, since the Spiritual Realm is filled with idealised versions and true selves of everything, so I can't imagine that someone in the SR would be able to actually do something negative to harm the Physical form of someone in the PR. If Hoid could manipulate the SR, at least for himself, he could also change the ideal version of himself there, perhaps through an overwriting method like Forging, and change his appearance more than just Lightweaving (Both KR and Yolish) and age-manipulating Feruchimey could, explaining his various disguises, and how he could change his height to be short when he first met Kelsier in The Final Empire. Considering Hoid's longevity lasting from before the Shattering and long after, I can't imagine that he gained my proposed SR Magic from Lerasium, but I suspect it could enhance it somehow, considering it's a Godmetal that can affect Spiritwebs after all. Sooooooo, thoughts? Additions? Rebukes? This is based almost entirely on the SR containing ideal versions of each individual human, rather than one for Rosharans, Scadrians, etc, but I think that that would be the case, especially considering the different races on each planet, and the fact everyone and everything exists on all three Realms, rather than just the ideal versions in the SR. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoModius Posted August 25, 2017 Report Share Posted August 25, 2017 Quote so I can't imagine that someone in the SR would be able to actually do something negative to harm the Physical form of someone in the PR. How would you account for Preservation stabbing Elend in the Well of Ascension (albeit with Kelsier's intervention per SH). Surely Preservation, even in his degraded state, existed largely still in the Spiritual realm, being a shard and all. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletSabre he/him Posted August 31, 2017 Author Report Share Posted August 31, 2017 On 25/08/2017 at 8:24 PM, JoModius said: How would you account for Preservation stabbing Elend in the Well of Ascension (albeit with Kelsier's intervention per SH). Surely Preservation, even in his degraded state, existed largely still in the Spiritual realm, being a shard and all. That... is a very good point and not one that I had considered. Though I suppose an argument COULD be made that Preservation technically didn't do it, as Kelsier quite literally forced his hand. .... Though then again the only thing stopping him WAS the overpowering Shardic Intent, so I guess that point of my rambletheory is a bust. Oh well o3o 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The One Who Connects he/him Posted August 31, 2017 Report Share Posted August 31, 2017 On 8/25/2017 at 2:24 PM, JoModius said: How would you account for Preservation stabbing Elend in the Well of Ascension (albeit with Kelsier's intervention per SH). Surely Preservation, even in his degraded state, existed largely still in the Spiritual realm, being a shard and all. Elend/Vin could see the Mist spirit with their own eyes. That means that it existed within the Physical Realm in some capacity. Kelsier forced his hand from the Cognitive Realm, so Preservation was existing in the Cognitive at the time as well. Outside of literal magic(a la The Well), it stands to reason that one needs to exist within the PR/CR to physically affect them in a meaningful way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoModius Posted September 1, 2017 Report Share Posted September 1, 2017 That's also a good point. I guess then that aside from their god metals we could say that shards don't normally personally inhabit the physical realm (at least in a physical body) though it is possible as we've seen from Preservation and Ruin (He also imitated the mist spirit). I would accept that this might be necessary to physically affect somebody. Though, with that being said. it just occurs to me now: How does Ruin affect the text in the physical world? He doesn't have a corporeal self when it occurs as far as we know. (Though we don't actually see it occur so we can't be sure on that). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleet he/him Posted September 1, 2017 Report Share Posted September 1, 2017 Well, it's been a while since I've read the original Mistborn trilogy, but from what I remember, there was a physical stab/slash would on Elend, which leads me to believe that he was hurt in the PR. This kind of makes sense to me because I remember reading that the Mist was the "body" of Preservation, which is synonymous with the Mists being his physical form. And to jump back to what @The One Who Connects said, Elend and Vin could see the mists, meaning that Preservation was manifesting physically even while Leras was interacting with Kelsier in the Spiritual? Realm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brightlord M. Alhstrom he/him Posted September 2, 2017 Report Share Posted September 2, 2017 Just to clarify things: Shards exist in all three Realms. In fact, I'm fairly sure that almost all entities do (minus Cognitive Shadows, and Spiritual Shadows, if there is such a thing). Most everything has a physical aspect, with a couple noted exceptions. They also have a Cognitive aspect, but then even a stick will have a cognitive aspect. And we know that they have a spiritual aspect because Forging affects the spiritweb of an entity. Anything that can be stamped, needs to have a spiritweb. And I'm assuming that the Spiritweb is in the SR. Shards exist in all three realms, while also being able to deliberately see and interact with all three realms. The difference is that most of their power/Investiture is stored in the SR. As for it being hard to interact with the physical realm, I thought that that was just because of how Ruin was locked up, Preservation was braindead, and then after that because Shards can counter each other. I mean, if you can create a Volcano, and move the entire planet, I'm fairly sure you can do some of the smaller things. However going back to the original question, I think that it would be possible for someone completely in the SR to interact with and hurt a human being in the PR. Why? The aforementioned Forging. It implies that the Spiritweb can be changed, and that if it is changed, the Physical aspect will also change. So I think it would be possible for an entity completely in the SR (if such a thing were possible) to find the Spiritweb of an individual, and change it. And several of these changes could be deadly. They got cancer 6 years ago. Their bones all splinter. etc. You get the idea. I'm not saying that anyone in the SR could do it, I'm just saying that interaction with the Spiritweb could be very harmful to the Pysical aspect of an entity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The One Who Connects he/him Posted September 2, 2017 Report Share Posted September 2, 2017 44 minutes ago, Lord Maelstrom said: However going back to the original question, I think that it would be possible for someone completely in the SR to interact with and hurt a human being in the PR. Why? The aforementioned Forging. It implies that the Spiritweb can be changed, and that if it is changed, the Physical aspect will also change. So I think it would be possible for an entity completely in the SR (if such a thing were possible) to find the Spiritweb of an individual, and change it. Technicality: You aren't directly altering their Physical Aspect, you are changing their Spiritual Aspect and that is changing their physical aspect. Sure you achieve the effect that the question is asking while being fully in the SR, but I wouldn't count it as "interacting with a person in the PR." Your interactions are conducted entirely within the SR, and you are changing something that is also entirely in the SR. Altering the physical aspect of that person is almost a side effect of changing the Spiritweb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brightlord M. Alhstrom he/him Posted September 4, 2017 Report Share Posted September 4, 2017 On 9/2/2017 at 11:42 AM, The One Who Connects said: Technicality: You aren't directly altering their Physical Aspect, you are changing their Spiritual Aspect and that is changing their physical aspect. Sure you achieve the effect that the question is asking while being fully in the SR, but I wouldn't count it as "interacting with a person in the PR." Your interactions are conducted entirely within the SR, and you are changing something that is also entirely in the SR. Altering the physical aspect of that person is almost a side effect of changing the Spiritweb. I'm not sure I'd consider it a side effect. After all, if the purpose of the change is to influence the Physical aspect, then I would consider it the primary effect. Just like how pulling the trigger might kill someone, you wouldn't consider the murder to be a side effect of pulling the trigger, even if the trigger only interacted with the rest of the gun, and it was the gun that killed the person. Just like how you wouldn't consider a transformation to be the side effect of using a stamp in Forging. The transformation is the primary effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The One Who Connects he/him Posted September 5, 2017 Report Share Posted September 5, 2017 On 9/3/2017 at 8:07 PM, Lord Maelstrom said: I'm not sure I'd consider it a side effect. After all, if the purpose of the change is to influence the Physical aspect, then I would consider it the primary effect. Just like how you wouldn't consider a transformation to be the side effect of using a stamp in Forging. The transformation is the primary effect. The word I should have used was "secondary effect" rather than side effect. You action(like placing a Soulstamp on someone) changes the Spiritweb. The primary effect of doing the Forging is altering the Spiritweb. Then that changes their physical aspect among other things. So yes, the PR transformation is the "primary effect" of altering someone's Spiritweb, but it is still a secondary effect of your action(Forging/Soulstamp). I suppose that if you cut out the Soulstamp and interfaced with the Spiritweb directly, then that would count. I guess I took too much stock in the "Forging" comment and not enough in the "someone in the SR could find the spiritweb and change it." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForcesOfNoodles Posted September 8, 2017 Report Share Posted September 8, 2017 (edited) Huh. Forgery is the most direct way to change something's Spiritual aspect that we've seen so far, isn't it? No wonder Hoid wanted the Moon Scepter. I wonder how those permanent Forgeries on those vases work, and if there would be better uses for that. Edited September 8, 2017 by ForcesOfNoodles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calderis he/him Posted September 8, 2017 Report Share Posted September 8, 2017 42 minutes ago, ForcesOfNoodles said: Huh. Forgery is the most direct way to change something's Spiritual aspect that we've seen so far, isn't it? No wonder Hoid wanted the Moon Scepter. I wonder how those permanent Forgeries on those vases work, and if there would be better uses for that. Forgeries on inanimate objects are permanent because the soul of an object is static. Stamps on a person are temporary because people are constantly changing. There's no difference in the stamp itself. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermanBolivia Posted September 10, 2017 Report Share Posted September 10, 2017 It's obvious, Hoid's a shard. The 17th shard chases him. Ever think that they're chasing the 17th shard. Brandon's religions that he has the character's from the starlight archive follow say that the god was smashed into 16 shards. Maybe they were wrong. There were 17 shards. Hold is that seventeenth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForcesOfNoodles Posted September 10, 2017 Report Share Posted September 10, 2017 We have WoB saying that Hoid isn't a Shardholder, though after the Shattering he was offered a Shard. As far as we know, the Seventeenth Shard is an organization of Worldhoppers affiliated with Frost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beast_c_a_t Posted September 12, 2017 Report Share Posted September 12, 2017 I think the key to Hoid's magic is hinted at in LoP, unlike the other magic users we see, Hoid can use investure without needing an intermediary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FiveLate Posted September 12, 2017 Report Share Posted September 12, 2017 8 hours ago, Beast_c_a_t said: I think the key to Hoid's magic is hinted at in LoP, unlike the other magic users we see, Hoid can use investure without needing an intermediary. Ummm he uses dust for the light weaving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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